A microeconomic analysis of wage determination in the Canadian public sector

Using cross-section, micro wage rate data for the period 1967–1975, this paper analyses the extent to which price expectations, price ‘catch-up’, and labour market conditions affect the rate of change of base wage rates in the Canadian public sector. The results indicate that both price movements and labour market conditions do influence base wage rates in a manner that is not radically different from that in the private sector. The paper also explores the importance and significance of these factors when the data are disaggregated according to jurisdiction and method of contract settlement. The final section of the paper is devoted to an exploration of wage spillovers within the public sector and between the public and private sectors.     

Industry margins and the business cycle: Some new microeconomic evidence

Analysis of margin flexibility is an important item on the research agendas in macroeconomics and industrial economics. Using a new panel data set for U.S. manufacturing industries, we offer new evidence on the cyclical sensitivity of price-cost margins and on the concentration-margins debate in industrial organization.     

The microeconomic determinants of emigration and return migration of the best and brightest: Evidence from the Pacific

A unique survey which tracks worldwide the best and brightest academic performers from three Pacific countries is used to assess the extent of emigration and return migration among the very highly skilled, and to analyze, at the microeconomic level, the determinants of these migration choices. Although we estimate that the income gains from migration are very large, not everyone migrates and many return. Within this group of highly skilled individuals the emigration decision is found to be most strongly associated with preference variables such as risk aversion and patience, and choice of subjects in secondary school, and not strongly linked to either liquidity constraints or to the gain in income to be had from migrating. Likewise, the decision to return is strongly linked to family and lifestyle reasons, rather than to the income opportunities in different countries. Overall the data suggest a relatively limited role for income maximization in distinguishing migration propensities among the very highly skilled, and a need to pay more attention to other components of the utility maximization decision.     

The relationship between revenue,production and demand functions,and the implications for some microeconomic problems

The properties of concave revenue functions (in input terms) are often of considerable importance in the theory of the firm. One reason for this is the similarity between the sufficient conditions for an interior maxima (the requirement that the Hessian matrix be negative semidefinite) and the necessary and sufficient conditions for concavity. However, the concavity assumption imposes severe restrictions on the production and demand functions which apparently have not been acknowledged in the literature. It is the purpose of this note to explore these restrictions and to point out their implications for a proper formulation of some microeconomic problems.     

现代产业体系下产业政策解析——基于分工的超边际分析框架

本文主要探讨一国经济起飞与其产业政策之间的关联性这一个超边际问题。通过对现代产业体系发展动力的分析,对中央政府在产业政策、地方政府在产业集群发展方面的作用局限性分析,提出替代产业政策的商业化方式用以促进现代产业体系高级化的可行性。同时,还对中观层面的同业协会在现代产业体系中的作用及作用机制问题作了初步阐述。     

Ambiguity aversion and the absence of indexed debt

Summary. Following the seminal works of Schmeidler (1989), Gilboa and Schmeidler (1989), roughly put, an agents subjective beliefs are said to be ambiguous if the beliefs may not be represented by a unique probability distribution, in the standard Bayesian fashion, but instead by a set of probabilities. An ambiguity averse decision maker evaluates an act by the minimum expected value that may be associated with it. In spite of wide and long-standing support among economists for indexation of loan contracts there has been relatively little use of indexation, except in situations of extremely high inflation. The object of this paper is to provide a (theoretical) explanation for this puzzling phenomenon based on the hypothesis that economic agents are ambiguity averse. The paper considers a general equilibrium model based on Magill and Quinzii (1997) with ambiguity averse agents, where both nominal and indexed bond contracts are available for trade and all relevant prices are determined endogenously. We obtain conditions which prompt an endogenous cessation of trade in indexed bonds: i.e., conditions under which there is no trade in indexed bonds in any equilibrium; only nominal bonds are traded.Received: 7 April 2003, Revised: 8 March 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D81, E31, D52, E44.Correspondence to: Sujoy MukerjiWe thank seminar members at Birkbeck, Oxford, Paris I, Southampton and Tel Aviv, the audience at the 00 European Workshop on General Equilibrium Theory, and especially, E.Dekel, I. Gilboa, D. Schmeidler and A. Pauzner for helpful comments. The first author acknowledges financial assistance from an Economic and Social Research Council of U.K. Research Fellowship (# R000 27 1065). The second author thanks financial support from the French Ministry of Research (Action Concertée Incitative).     

Ambiguity and Public Good Provision in Large Societies

In this paper, we consider the effect of ambiguity on the private provision of public goods. Equilibrium is shown to exist and be unique. We examine how provision of the public good changes as the size of the population increases. We show that when there is uncertainty, there may be less free‐riding in large societies.     

金融经济领域中的不确定性研究综述

本文综述了Choquet容度和Choquet积分在刻画金融经济领域中不确定性上的应用,包含非期望效用、资产定价、保险理论、投资消费储蓄理论和宏观经济等五个方面,同时给出不确定性领域的进一步研究方向:动态相容性、理性、效用的合理定义以及非期望效用的推广等。     

Ambiguity and perceived coordination in a global game

In a global game, larger ambiguity is shown to decrease the amount of coordination each player perceives. Consequently, small uncertainty tends to select the Pareto dominated equilibrium of the game without uncertainty. Implications for models of financial crises are drawn.     

Bias and precision in the DEA two-stage method

In Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), the two-stage method is a popular procedure for accounting for exogenous influences on efficiency. With the conventional two-stage method, a DEA is first conducted using only traditional (endogenous) inputs and outputs. Then, the first-stage DEA scores are regressed on the environmental/contextual (exogenous) inputs of interest. The regression outcomes are used to identify exogenous inputs that influence the first-stage DEA scores to a statistically significant degree, and to adjust DEA scores to account for these influences. Herein, it is demonstrated empirically that the conventional method exhibits substantial bias and low precision, with the degree of bias and precision affected by input variance and correlation. A reverse two-stage procedure that yields estimates without the bias and precision problems that compromise the validity of the conventional method's estimates is suggested.     

Effects of food and agricultural imports on domestic factors in the U.S. agricultural sector: a translog cost function framework

The translog cost function of the U.S. agricultural sector unveils dynamic relationships between foreign and domestic inputs. On average, capital and labour are weak substitutes, but they are strong substitutes to food and agricultural imports. Therefore, enhancing trade policies on food and agricultural products should be supplemented by strategic policies aiming at protecting domestic factors' income.     

Satire and Geopolitics: Vulgarity,Ambiguity and the Body Grotesque in South Park

Humour and laughter have become the subject of recent geopolitical scrutiny. Scholars have explored the affirmative and liberatory possibilities of humour, and the affective bodily dimensions of laughter as tools for transformative action in critical geopolitics. Humour that is vulgar and politically ambiguous is yet to be explored as a potent geopolitical avenue of enquiry. Studies of satire have suggested that rather than contesting entrenched geopolitical beliefs, satirical shows can serve to further divide audiences both amenable and antagonistic to the satire in question. I argue that this should not involve a wholesale rejection of satirical shows, as humour that uses irony, subversion, and other discursive techniques is just one way satirical media becomes an effective commentator on political issues. I examine the show South Park and argue its satire combines bodily and scatological humour with more traditional satirical techniques to produce a comedy that ridicules contemporary issues by reducing complex politics to the most basic and crass condition possible. This is defined in a Bakhtinian sense of the body grotesque, a social inversion through reference to the common bodily functions of all human beings.     

Precautionary Principle and the Optimal Timing of Environmental Policy Under Ambiguity

I consider a problem in environmental policy design in which I focus on stock pollutants. In particular, I consider stock pollutants that cause severe damage on the environment and do not depreciate at all once they are released into the atmosphere and the ocean. The purposes of this paper are: (1) to provide an economic foundation for environmental policies based on the precautionary principle and the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and (2) to show that this optimal timing rule has a reservation property. Furthermore, I analyze the effect of an increase in ambiguity on the optimal timing of adopting some environmental policy, and show that an increase in ambiguity decreases the optimal timing of adopting the environmental policy.     

Ambiguity on audits and cooperation in a public goods game

We investigate the impact of various audit schemes on the provision of public goods, when contributing less than the average of the other group members is centrally sanctioned and the probability of an audit is unknown. We study how individuals update their beliefs about the probability of being audited, both before and after audits are permanently withdrawn. We find that when individuals have initially experienced systematic audits, they decrease both their beliefs and their contributions almost immediately after audits are withdrawn. In contrast, when audits were initially less frequent and more irregular, they maintain high beliefs and continue cooperating long after audits have been withdrawn. This identifies the compliance effect of irregularity and uncertainty due to learning difficulties. By increasing both the frequency of audits and the severity of sanctions, we also identify an educative effect of frequent and high sanctions on further cooperation.     

浅析中国近代美术教育对现代设计的影响

众所周知,1840年的鸦片战争是中国近代史的序幕。随着国门被打开,西方国家一系列的政治、经济、文化元素,不管你愿意还是不愿意,都一股脑儿地涌进国门。可以说,中国是被迫走上近代化的路程的。中国在饱受列强欺凌、被迫开放的环境中不断进行着经济、政治和思想文化的变革,中国的近代化艰难起步,社会结构开始逐步从传统社会向近代社会转型。中国的设计教育该何去何从？中国设计实践的方向在何方？这些是国内设计教育界不愿面对但又不得不面对的严峻问题。     

Ambiguity and the Value of Information: An Almost-objective Events Analysis

Using the concept of almost-objective acts, due to Machina, this paper shows that ambiguity aversion may be defined in terms of the value of information. In particular, for expected utility preferences, the value of information with respect to almost-objective acts is asymptotically equal to zero. I thank Simon Grant, Mark Machina, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments.     

The Williamsonian Ambiguity on Authority and Power in Transaction Cost Economics

Power has traditionally been rejected from economics and more particularly from the economics of the firm. Although he proposes building an interdisciplinary approach to the firm, Williamson rejects power from the economics of transaction costs. However, regarding the theoretical and behavioral hypotheses he makes, we can raise the following question: does the Williamsonian approach to the firm have intrinsic properties for developing a theory of power? After analyzing Williamson’s argument on power/authority, this paper aims to shed light on the fact that the 2009 Williamson, Oliver E. 2009. “Pragmatic Methodology: A Sketch, with Applications to Transaction Cost Economics,” Journal of Economic Methodology 16 (2): 145-157.[Taylor &; Francis Online] , [Google Scholar] Nobel Prize winner has built a theory based on power that he rejects due to a questionable methodological choice. Conversely, we defend the thesis according to which power cannot be removed from the economics of the firm and transaction cost economics–at the risk of providing a distorted picture of the reality of capitalism.     

Average cost and marginal cost pricing in Marshall: Textual analysis and interpretation

Abstract

This paper proposes a textual analysis of Marshall's theory of firm pricing behavior under competitive conditions. Average cost and marginal cost pricing theories have very distinct origins as they are rooted, respectively, in the classical and marginalistic theory of competition. I analyze to what extent and under which circumstances the two theories joined in the work of Alfred Marshall; and I argue that, even though only partial evidence can be found to support the adoption of the notion of marginal cost pricing by Marshall, he developed some concepts, such as the distinction between short and long periods and the notion of quasi-rents, which turned out to be fundamental for the joint acceptance of marginal cost and average cost pricing principles by the Marshallian school.     

Regulation and the cost of childcare

Female labour market choices depend on the availability, affordability and quality of childcare. In this article, we evaluate different regulatory measures and their effect on both the quality and the cost of childcare. First, we analyse data on regulations and costs to estimate the effect of regulatory measures on the cost of childcare. Next, we summarize the existing literature on the effect of regulation on childcare quality. We find that regulation intended to improve quality often focuses on easily observable measures of the care environment that do not necessarily affect the quality of care but that do increase the cost. Thus, we find that the regulatory environment could be improved by eliminating costly measures that do not affect quality of care.     

On the user cost and homeownership

This paper studies the differences in the cost of housing services for renters and homeowners and calculates the bias that results when we value owner-occupied housing services using a rental equivalence approach. Our framework is a life-cycle model with endogenous tenure choice with households facing idiosyncratic uninsurable earnings risk and housing price risk. We model houses as illiquid assets that provide collateral for loans. To analyze the impact of preferential housing taxation on the tenure choice and the bias, we consider a tax system that mimics that of the US economy. Namely, owner-occupied housing services are not taxed and mortgage interest payments are deductible. Through simulations, we show that a rental equivalence approach (relative to a user cost approach) overestimates the cost of housing services. The magnitude of the bias is very sensitive to both the income tax rate and the size of adjustment costs in the housing market.