Endogenous Group Formation

While the rules governing the formation of groups engaging in collective action may have significant impact on group size and behavior of members, most experiments on public goods have been conducted with the subjects in exogenously fixed groups or of fixed sizes. We study endogenous formation of groups in a public‐goods provision game by allowing subjects to change groups under three sets of rules: free entry/exit, restricted entry with free exit, and free entry with restricted exit. We find that the rules governing entry and exit do have a significant impact on individual behavior and group‐level outcomes.     

Endogenous Lobby Formation and Endogenous Environmental Protection with Unilateral Tariff Reduction

This paper studies how one country’s decision to liberalize trade affects the political economic structure that determines environmental policy in another country. By constructing a political economy model in which the formation of lobby groups and environmental policy are endogenously determined, we show that unilateral tariff reductions by a large country importing a polluting good will generate a lobby group with a relatively lower cost of organization in a small country exporting that good. A formulated lobby demands an inefficient environmental policy, and hence, the small country’s environmental regulations become less efficient. Then, we show that when a lobby already exists, unilateral tariff reductions result in the formation of a rival lobby and consequently make the small country’s environmental policy more efficient.     

人本资本形成与内生经济增长

在生产力与生产关系之间关系上分析了技术进步与制度创新的匹配关系。在知识经济时代资本泛化趋势下,以技术要素、制度要素为核心黏合其他要素形成具有多元产权主体的人力资本、治理资本在经济组织内有机整合为人本资本。以制度要素为核心的治理资本边际收益递减假设、技术要素为核心的人力资本边际收益递增假设、制度创新和技术进步匹配假设的基础上导出人本资本形成与其内生经济增长关系,并分析了我国某些国有企业存在的一些弊端。     

Endogenous Formation of Coalitions in Noncooperative Games

In this paper we extend the definitions of coalition-proof Nash equilibrium and communication-proof equilibrium to situations of partial communication. Then we use the model of endogenous formation of coalitions of Aumann and Myerson to find that one of these situations in which the corresponding equilibrium exists will be endogenously determined by the players in the game.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C70, C72.     

Cartel formation and managerial incentives

We study the formation of cartels within two different contexts. First, we consider internal–external stability based models which, due to firms’ free-riding incentives, lead to the inexistence of stable cartels. Second, we introduce the dynamic aspect of coalition formation. That is, when considering a cartel we consider also any cartel that can be reached through a succession of moves. Despite firms’ free-riding incentive, the dynamic process predicts that the collusion of the whole industry can occur with some regularity. We show that free-riding incentives decrease and incentives to merge increase when firms’ owner delegate production decisions to managers.      

Cartel Stability and Economic Integration

This paper revisits the notion that economic integration—modeled as a reduction of trade costs—may be anticompetitive, in the sense that it may reinforce the ability of an international cartel to maintain a collusive understanding about staying out of each other’s markets. The paper is novel in terms of introducing ad valorem and fixed trade costs in addition to the customary unit trade costs. It is shown that an anticompetitive effect, found for reductions in unit trade costs, may disappear once trade costs are ad valorem or fixed.     

Implications of Endogenous Group Formation for Efficient Risk-Sharing

The existing literature on sub-game perfect risk-sharing suffers from a basic inconsistency. While a group of size n is able to coordinate on a risk-sharing outcome, it is assumed that deviating subgroups cannot. I relax this assumption and characterise the optimal contract among all coalition-proof history-dependent contracts. This alters the predictions of the standard dynamic limited commitment model. I show that the consumption of constrained agents depends on both the history of shocks and its interaction with the current income of other constrained agents. From this, I derive a formal test for the presence of endogenous group formation under limited commitment.     

Trade Liberalization and Cartel Stability

Can reduced trade barriers promote a collusive understanding about not exporting into each others domestic markets? Reduced trade costs increase the short‐run gains from starting exporting, but can also make the long‐run punishment of such a strategy harsher. If collusion on prices is supported by a trigger strategy, a reduction in trade costs weakens competition in the sense that collusion is easier to sustain. In a corresponding model with collusion on quantities, this conclusion is reversed. The authors also discuss how results change if grim trigger strategies are replaced by stick‐and‐carrot punishments.     

Capital Tax Competition and Cooperation with Endogenous Capital Formation

Incorporating consumption–savings choices under a general concave utility function and hence an endogenous capital supply into a model of capital tax competition, we re‐investigate Nash equilibrium and compare it with the optimum under cooperative tax policy. In contrast to the case of fixed capital supply, it is shown that if savings sufficiently increase with the interest rate, a Nash equilibrium may be more efficient than a cooperative tax policy. Therefore, the distortionary effects of capital supply are important to issues of tax policy coordination.     

Cartel instability and periodic price shocks

The paper explains periodic commodity price shocks in a market with a cartelized supply side. It is shown how the interactions of sluggish demand and the inherent instability of the cartel create cyclical behavior and price shocks. The theoretical model is applied to the world petroleum market.I am indebted to two referees for helpful comments and critique. None of them is responsible for any deficiencies of the paper.     

多中心城市的内生形成与政府政策的影响

用主流经济学的工具研究空间经济问题有两个难点,即对规模经济和不同地区不同生产、消费和价格体系难以模型化.本文的贡献之一是通过界定合成实物资本和产量的真实货币价值两个概念,赋予了柯-道生产函数新的内涵,使其可以直接比较厂商和工人在不同地区的收益,而不必考虑价格因素.在此基础上,本文考察了城市空间形态的内生演变及政府政策的影响,发现对中心城市的倾斜性投资政策阻碍了大城市向多中心城市的转变.     

Endogenous City Formation with Production Externalities: Existence of Equilibrium

I show that equilibria exist in closed city‐system models with production externalities if firms' production possibilities vary continuously with the source of the externality, are constant returns to scale in own inputs, include inaction, and satisfy free disposal; if firms have to employ their own inputs to produce output; if there is a finite number of firm types; and if some standard conditions on preferences and endowments are satisfied. This is the first model to include production externalities in the fully general equilibrium framework required for endogenous city formation. Thus, this result provides formal support for the conjecture that production externalities lead to urban agglomeration.     

Trade and Endogenous Formation of Regions in a Developing Country

The authors present a model of regional catching‐up and development without scale effects. Regional growth is driven by technological imitation which is determined by positive externalities from international trade, the regions’ geography, and regional institutions. For the two regions considered, factor endowments are immobile land and human capital which is perfectly mobile between the two regions. Endogenous formation of regions is analyzed by introducing a non‐symmetric decrease in international transaction costs, reflecting the different geography and institutions in the two regions. Using panel data from 354 South African magisterial districts over the period 1996 to 2000, we find that geography is important in explaining trade patterns. As predicted, regions that are larger in terms of economic size, with good foreign market access and know‐how of foreign markets, competitive transport costs and a good local institutional support framework will be more successful in exporting manufactured goods than other regions.     

Technology and Cartel Stability under Vertical Differentiation

The interplay between R&D activity and cartel stability is investigated in a vertical differentiation framework with convex costs. The behaviour of firms' critical discount factors as the curvature of the cost function varies is investigated, considering either price- or quantity-setting behaviour. In order to stabilize collusion, firms are better off playing à la Cournot and supplying the non-cooperative qualities. There emerges a tradeoff between the reduction of the convexity of the cost function and the associated increase in marginal cost. The decision to carry out joint or independent ventures in research is also investigated, showing that such a decision is non-monotone in intertemporal discounting. Policy measures are then briefly discussed.     

Cartel Stability in a Delivered Pricing Oligopoly

Using the spatial price discrimination framework, the relationship between the locations of firms and their ability to collude is investigated. Gupta and Venkatu (2002) show that in a duopoly model agglomeration at one point is the most stable location. We find that agglomeration stabilizes the cartel when there are three firms, too. When there are more than three firms, however, agglomeration of all firms is never the most stable location. With four firms, the following location pattern produces the most stable cartel: two firms at one point and the other two at the farthest point from the first two.     

出口卡特尔与反垄断的法律探讨

出口卡特尔是出口商之间设定价格同盟以及建立排他性出口销售渠道的横向协议.为了鼓励出口,维护本国利益,世界各国反垄断法普遍对本国出口卡特尔予以反垄断"豁免",而对外国出口卡特尔则依据"合理原则"认定其是否危害本国竞争环境,并进行相应制裁.我国的反垄断法应当限制国外出口卡特尔,同时应明确对国内出口卡特尔的"豁免".     

Cartel size and collusive stability with non-capitalistic players

A well established belief both in the game-theoretic IO and in policy debates is that market concentration facilitates collusion. We show that this piece of conventional wisdom relies upon the assumption of profit-seeking behaviour, for it may be reversed when firms pursue other plausible goals. To illustrate our intuition, we investigate the incentives to tacit collusion in an industry formed by labour-managed (LM$LM$) enterprises. We characterise the perfect equilibrium of a supergame in which LM$LM$ firms play an infinitely repeated Cournot game under grim trigger strategies. We show that the critical threshold of the discount factor above which collusion is stable (i) is lower in the LM$LM$ industry than in the capitalistic one; (ii) monotonically decreases with the number of firms.     

The Effect of Spillovers and Congestion on the Endogenous Formation of Jurisdictions

This paper analyzes the effect of interjurisdictional spillovers and congestion of local public services on the segregative properties of endogenous formation of jurisdictions. Households choosing to live at the same place form a jurisdiction which produces congested local public services, which generates positive spillovers to other jurisdictions. In every jurisdiction, the production of the local public services is financed through a local tax based on households' wealth. Local wealth tax rates are democratically determined in every jurisdiction. Households consume the available amount of public services in their jurisdiction and a composite private good. Any household is free to leave its jurisdiction for another that would increase its utility. A necessary and sufficient condition to have every stable jurisdiction structure segregated by wealth is identified: the public services must be either a gross substitute or a gross complement to the private good.     

A New Bargaining Set of an N-Person Game and Endogenous Coalition Formation

The two most fundamental questions in cooperative game theory are: When a game is played, what coalitions will be formed and what payoff vectors will be chosen? Few solution concepts or theories in the current literature provide satisfactory answers to both questions; answers are especially lacking for the first one. In this paper we introduce a new bargaining set, which is the first solution concept in cooperative game theory that provides answers to both fundamental questions endogenously. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: C71.     

The Fear of Exclusion: Individual Effort when Group Formation is Endogenous*

To secure their membership in a popular group, individuals may contribute more to the group's local public good than they would if group formation were exogenous. Those in the most unpopular group do not have this incentive to contribute. This may result in substantial differences in individual effort level between groups. Our model thus provides one explanation for the existence of group‐specific behavioral norms. A principal will prefer exogenous or endogenous group formation depending on whether he prefers high or low levels of the local public good. We analyze two stylized examples: social interaction in schools, and multiple‐task teamwork.