Quality competition,welfare, and regulation

In this paper, we study the supply of quality in imperfectly competitive markets, and explore the role of regulation in markets where firms may use both quality and price to compete for customers. In a model where firms first choose qualities and then prices, we find that quality decisions have strategic effects: firms react to quality disadvantages by price reductions. Because of this strategic effect, firms do not have the correct incentive to set socially efficient quality levels. Price and quality competition results in a socially suboptimal quality level. Efficiency can be restored by lump-sum transfers and price regulatory policies. Simple price regulation may result in lower price and higher quality.We thank Nicholas Economides, Randall Ellis, Thomas McGuire, Michael Riordan, and Monika Schnitzer for discussing various issues in this research with us. We are also grateful to a referee for helpful comments and suggestions. The first author acknowledges support from the Management Science Group, Department of Veterans Affairs at Bedford, Massachusetts. The ideas here do not represent those of the Department of Veterans Affairs.     

Location choice with delegation: Bertrand vs. Cournot competition

The conventional wisdom indicates that firms' optimal locations are sensitive to the modes of product-market competition, leading to a difficulty for firms to make concrete location decisions. This difficulty is especially crucial for the high entry-cost firms. The paper develops an uncovered-market model à la Economides (1984) to explore this sensitivity by taking into account a delegation game. It shows that firms' location configurations remain unchanged regardless of the modes of product-market competition as the owners offer the managers a contract with a relative-performance incentive scheme. Moreover, the paper shows that, by introducing a delegation game, the competition between managers under Bertrand competition is mitigated such that the managers have no incentive to choose price undercutting as they locate themselves far enough away from each other.     

Improving competition in the non-tradable goods and labour markets: the Portuguese case

This study assesses the macroeconomic impacts of increasing competition in the non-tradable goods and labour markets in Portugal. We lean on evidence that the maintenance of low competition in these markets may have contributed to the recent poor performance of the Portuguese economy. The analysis is performed using PESSOA, a dynamic general equilibrium model for a small-open economy integrated in a monetary union, featuring non-Ricardian characteristics, a multi-sectoral production structure and a number of nominal and real rigidities. We conclude that measures aimed at increasing competition in the Portuguese non-tradable goods and labour markets could induce important international competitiveness gains and be valuable instruments in promoting necessary adjustments within the monetary union framework. However, in the short run, real interest rates are likely to increase, driving consumption and output temporarily downwards.     

FDI in agricultural land, welfare and unemployment in a developing economy

The paper purports to examine the consequences of foreign direct investment (FDI) in agricultural land in a developing economy using a three-sector general equilibrium model with simultaneous existence of unemployment of both skilled and unskilled labour. The analysis finds that FDI in agriculture does not only improve national welfare unequivocally but also mitigates the unemployment problem of both types of labour. The paper theoretically justifies the desirability of flow of FDI in agriculture in the developing economies.     

Product market competition, R&D, and welfare

We compare the subgame perfect equilibrium emerging in four regimes of research and development (R&D) competition between duopolists: (i) full competition, (ii) coordination of research strategies, (iii) joint venture with cross licensing of patents, and (iv) full collusion in R&D and the product market. The outcome of the firms' interaction depends on the interplay of the degree of product market competition, the similarity of the research strategies, and the cost of R&D, relatively to market size. Our main result is that each of the four regimes can, for plausible parameter combinations, yield the highest level of welfare. Therefore it is problematic to draw general rules applicable to all proposed research joint ventures.     

人文差异与外商直接投资的区位选择偏好

文章通过建立多国竞争博弈模型分析了人文差异对FDI区位选择偏好的影响机制,构建了基于面板数据的FDI区位选择偏好两步估计计量模型,在此基础上,利用118个国家(地区)1992-2010年的中国FDI和人文地理数据估算了各国及地区对中国FDI的偏好程度,检验了人文及地理差距对FDI区位选择偏好的影响。研究结果表明,投资国与中国的人文及地理差距对投资国的FDI选择偏好具有较强的负面影响,并且人文差异的作用要远大于地理距离。拥有共同语言是提高各国对中国FDI偏好的基础,而增强价值观认同则是提高各国对中国FDI选择偏好的重要推动力。     

Market competition, social welfare in an entry-constrained differentiated-good oligopoly

This paper studies a differentiated-good oligopoly where the socially optimal number of firms (varieties) may be smaller or greater than under the free-entry equilibrium. We show that, under certain conditions, social welfare may be higher when entry is restricted into the industry.     

Transport infrastructure investments and competition for FDI

This paper studies how transport infrastructure investments (TIIs) affect a bidding war for a firm between two asymmetric countries within a region in a context of imperfect competition, where TIIs play the role of a global public good, leading to a reduction in the unit trade cost between the two countries. A number of interesting results are derived from the model. In particular, TIIs can intensify fiscal competition between the two countries. Surprisingly, this conventional wisdom seems to be confirmed by this paper for the first time. Welfare implications of the model are also examined.     

制造业对外直接投资在中国的区位选择决策

一、引论 经典的利润最大化理论把对外直接投资(FDI)或企业在外国投资的基本动机刻划为对市场不完善的利用和运营效率上的预期收益(Hymer,1976;Kindleberger,1970)。事实上,这种动机必然涉及到企业的区位决策,即在国外寻找有利的投资地点。许多因素决定了一个国家对FDI的吸引力,其中外国企业与该国在地理上的相近和包容被认为是一项关键的外部因素(Kravis and Lipsey,1982)。 为了强调聚集经济(agglomeration economics)在城市成长过程中的影响,奎格里(Quigley,1998)     

An experimental study on individual choice, social welfare, and social preferences

We experimentally study subjects’ compliance with dominance relationships of income distributions in a ranking task. The experiment consisted of four different treatments: Lottery, individual choice, social preferences, and social planner. Our results suggest that people's risk attitudes do not adequately reflect their inequality attitudes. Uninvolved social planners exhibit randomization preferences, while self-interested social planners are generally more inequality averse and try to avoid extreme outcomes.     

The welfare cost of imperfect competition and distortionary taxation

The welfare cost of imperfect competition in the product and labor markets in the United States is quantified in a dynamic general equilibrium model. We find that the welfare cost of imperfect competition in the product market is 3.62 percent while it is 0.58 percent in the labor market, taking the transition path from the distorted to the optimal steady state into account. If we also take into account that the US economy is characterized by distortionary taxation, the welfare cost of the product market distortion increases to 13.51 percent and the labor market distortion to 4.35 percent.     

Location choice under trade and environmental policies

In this paper, we use a game theoretic model to analyze the trade-off between the attractiveness of FDI and the environmental damage caused by production under asymmetric information. In the first stage, the domestic developing country reveals the level of import tariff and pollution tax under information uncertainty about the environmental damage that the foreign firm can cause. The foreign firm from a developed country decides where to locate afterwards with complete information about its own damage. Results show that the developing country can be better off encouraging FDI if and only if the marginal damage of pollution is sufficiently low. The optimal level of pollution taxes attracting FDI is higher than the marginal damage of pollution. However, the optimal pollution tax without FDI can be lower than the marginal damage of pollution with sufficiently high demand in the developing country.     

Deregulation, competition and consumer welfare in a banking market: evidence from Hong Kong

This paper examines competition among commercial banks following deregulation in a small open economy. I jointly estimate a system of differentiated product demand and pricing equations, and use conduct parameters to identify market structure. Overall, I find positive outcomes for the banking deregulation, which suggest that the benefits of deregulation understood in large industrialized economies indeed apply to a small open economy. Encouragingly, the industry becomes more competitive and the consumers are better-off after the deregulation. Empirical results also indicate that the banking sector is characterized by non-cooperative competitive behavior. Bank size is an important determinant of consumer’s bank choice.     

Social choice and electoral competition in the general spatial model

This paper extends the theory of the core, the uncovered set, and the related undominated set to a general set of alternatives and an arbitrary measure space of voters. We investigate the properties of social preferences generated by simple games; we extend results on generic emptiness of the core; we prove the general nonemptiness of the uncovered and undominated sets; and we prove the upper hemicontinuity of these correspondences when the voters’ preferences are such that the core is nonempty and externally stable. Finally, we give conditions under which the undominated set is lower hemicontinuous.     

中国吸引FDI区位因素实证分析

近年来,随着国际资本流动的愈加频繁迅速,流向中国的外商直接投资越来越多,而FDI在中国经济增长中发挥着发动机的作用。东道国吸引FDI流入的因素有很多,如资源优势、宽松稳定的社会环境等。采用中国1983-2006年的Panel Data数据,在计量方法上采用的是加入虚拟变量的普通最小二乘法并结合格兰杰因果检验,发现FDI累计投资额、市场规模及制度因素促进了FDI的流入,而人力资本、市场开放度对FDI的流入无积极影响。并给出相关的政策建议。     

FDI, Geographic Location and Their Impacts on the Pattern of Regional Economic Development in China

This paper states how the reciprocal matching of foreign direct investment （FDI） and geographic location generally determine the pattern of regional economic development in China by analyzing the co-relations among geographic location, FDI and regional economic development. Among various factors that affect FDI inflow into specific regions of China, it is believed that geographic location might be one of the most essential factors in shaping the overall trend of diversification in regional economic development in China. Examinations are followed for identifying the above judgment both with econometric models and data analysis.     

Markups and bargaining power in tradable and non-tradable sectors

This article jointly estimates product and labour market imperfections for narrowly defined sectors in the Portuguese economy for the period 2006–2009, following Roeger (J Polit Econ 103(2):316–330, 1995), Crépon et al. (Ann Econ Stat (79/80):583–610, 2005), Dobbelaere (Int J Ind Organ 22(10):1381–1398, 2004) and Abraham et al. (Rev World Econ 145(1):13–36, 2009). In addition, we propose a criterion for the identification of tradable and non-tradable sectors based on the export-to-sales ratio and compare markups and workers’ bargaining power along this dimension. Our findings suggest that markups are higher in the non-tradable than in the tradable sector but workers’ bargaining power is similar. In addition, there is a significant level of heterogeneity across markets, particularly in the non-tradable sector. Moreover, the article confirms that, if labour market imperfections are disregarded, markups are significantly understated.     

Modelling the choice between regulation and liability in terms of social welfare

Abstract.  Using a formal political economy model with asymmetric information, we illustrate the conditions under which an environmental protection system based on extending liability to private financiers is welfare superior, inferior, or equivalent to a system based on an incentive regulatory scheme subject to capture by the regulatees. We explicitly consider the following factors: the cost of care and its efficiency in reducing the probability of an environmental accident, the social cost of public funds, the net profitability of the risky activities, the level of damages, and the regulatory capture bias. We characterize in such a parameter space the regions where one system dominates the other. JEL classification: D82, K32