Introducing a certified economic accountant (CEA) degree or diploma program: Would Nancy and Richard Ruggles approve?

This paper is inspired by the work of Nancy and Richard Ruggles promoting national economic accounting in academic and non-academic areas. They were concerned with both compilation and use of national accounts as well as developmental issues. Now that the subject has matured with the 1993 SNA standards, the compilation, development and understanding of the accounts require special training and experience, but national economic accounting has become a multidisciplinary matter that cannot easily fit into one academic department. Hence we advocate a Certified Economic Accountant (CEA) degree or diploma program to gain enhanced recognition and greater understanding for national economic accountants and their work. The paper includes an annotated list of 50 references, covering the period 1942–2002, that might form a syllabus, and a section outlining the mechanics and problems of organizing such a program.     

Editor's introduction: Distributional consequences of emerging technologies

Emerging technologies have a great potential to exacerbate inequalities. The papers in this special section represent case studies of the ways five different technologies interacted with particular national contexts to produce distributional effects. A central hypothesis of the study was that the same technological project would have different distributional consequences under different national conditions; this was confirmed. Public interventions shaped the trajectories of the technological project through intellectual property and anti-trust provisions as well as regulations, much more than through the research agenda itself. These technologies were not associated with large gains or losses in jobs, but rather with modest shifts downward in numbers and upwards in skill requirements. Price was not the only determinant of how far the technologies diffused; skills and infrastructure were also important. In sum, distributional consequences take many forms. “Diffusion” consists of both push and pull, need and absorptive capacity. The relevant decision makers are in both the public and private sectors, and a broad range of policies affects this process, not just science, technology, and innovation policies. There are many options for public intervention, but no one size fits all countries.¹     

Introduction to special section in honor of Professor Amartya Sen. Fairness and welfare: An introduction

After a very brief review of Sen and his contributions, Sen's views on capability egalitarianism are discussed. At the ultimate level, equality in welfare weights (the utilitarian objective of maximizing the equally weighted sum of individual welfares) is the morally right objective. Ultimately, everyone wants to have high welfare, not equal welfare with others. Capability and welfare egalitarianisms may lead to very low welfare levels for all and hence be unacceptable. However, Sen's capability egalitarianism may be very useful at the practical level, as a means to promote harmony and ultimately high levels of welfare. Other contributions (including one from Sen himself) to this volume are summarized and commented on.     

A look at Subjectivism,Intelligibility and Economic Understanding: Essays in honor of Ludwig M. Lachmann on his Eightieth Birthday

Conclusion Due to my focusing the detailed analysis on by far the best chapters in this Festschrift, the reader may be left with a better impression of the book than it deserves. In point of fact, this volume is replete with errors and is most disappointing for a book touted as the most modern, up-to-date version of Austrianism and as a challenge to the economics of Mises. Indeed, the majority of its chapters simply ignore the basic tenets of this school of thought, and several of those that do not ignore praxeology misconstrue it.But it is important that an overall assessment of the work of the followers of Professor Lachmann not be lost sight of amid the welter of minutiae about their specific errors. And, unfortunately it is not just that they are wrong about equilibrium, methodology, hermeneutics, time preference, and so on; even worse, if possible, is the fact that there has been a virtual cessation of focus on real economic problems such as money and banking, business cycles, utility and welfare economics, and monopoly theory. Virtually all that is heard from this quarter is an endless repetition that the market is a process, that equilibrium is a red herring or worse, that no one can ever know anything, and that all is subject to interpretation.It is possible to construct a continuum in this regard. On the one extreme would be the mainstream empiricists, who believe that their regression equations can test economic axioms. This might well be called an overreliance on economic research. On the other extreme would be the followers of Lachmann, who have all but eschewed economic research; the impossibility of knowing the future, the divergence of expectations, radical subjectivism, it would appear, make this an extremely dubious path for them to follow. And as moderates on the continuum are the Misesians, who maintain that history can illustrate but not test theory, and who are nevertheless vitally interested in doing just this type of work.The author wishes to express appreciation for comments and criticisms of an earlier draft to Jeffry Tucker, David Gordon, Murray Rothbard, Michael Edelstein, and two anonymous referees. They, of course, are not responsible for any errors that remain.     

Economist and Editor George S. Tolley: A special issue in his honor

The purpose of this special issue of Resource and Energy Economics is to honor economist and founding Co-editor of this journal, George S. Tolley. This introduction to this tribute offers a perspective on his career and an overview of the articles written for this issue.     

Dissertation abstract: Essays on pricing in experimental duopoly markets

This dissertation comprises three independent essays that analyze pricing behavior in experimental duopoly markets. The first essay examines whether the content of buyer information and the timing of its dissemination affects seller market power. We construct laboratory markets with differentiated goods and costly buyer search in which sellers simultaneously post prices. The experiment varies the information on price or product characteristics that buyers learn under different timing assumptions (pre- and post-search), generating four information treatments. Theory predicts that price information lowers the equilibrium price, but information about product characteristics increases the equilibrium price. That is, contrary to simple intuition, presence of informed buyers may impart a negative externality on other uninformed buyers. The data support the model's negative externality result when sellers face a large number of robot buyers that are programmed to search optimally. Observed prices conform to the model's comparative statics and are broadly consistent with predicted levels. With human buyers, however, excessive search instigates increased price competition and sellers post prices that are significantly lower than predicted. The second essay uses experimental methods to demonstrate the anti-competitive potential of price-matching guarantees in both symmetric and asymmetric cost duopolies. When costs are symmetric, price-matching guarantees increase the posted prices to the collusive level. With asymmetric costs, guaranteed prices remain high relative to prices without the use of guarantees, but the overall ability of guarantees to act as a collusion facilitating device depends on the relative cost difference. Fewer guarantees, combined with lower average prices, suggest that cost asymmetries may discourage collusion. The third essay investigates the effect of firm size asymmetry on the emergence of price leadership in a homogeneous good duopoly. With discounting, the unique subgame-perfect equilibrium predicts that the large firm will emerge as the endogenous price leader. Independent of the level of size asymmetry, the laboratory data indicates that price leadership by the large firm is one of the most frequently observed timings of price announcement. In most cases, however, it comes second to simultaneous price-setting. This tendency to wait for the other firm to announce its price is especially strong when the level of size asymmetry between firms is low. We attribute the lower than expected frequency of price leadership to coordination failure, which is further compounded by elements of inequity aversion. JEL Classification C91, D43, D83, L11 Dissertation Committee: Timothy Cason (Chair), Department of Economics, Purdue University Dan Kovenock, Department of Economics, Purdue University Stephen Martin, Department of Economics, Purdue University Marco Casari, Department of Economics, Purdue University     

Contracts and competition: an introduction

Changes in public policy and corporate strategy have enhancedthe role of contracts as mechanisms of economic governance.The understanding that norms, standards and other forms of regulatorymechanism can affect the structure of incentives and the qualityof contractual outcomes has helped to stimulate a wider debateconcerning institutions and economic performance. Among thethemes explored in this Special Issue, which draws on the UKESRC's Contracts and Competition Programme, are the need forinterdisciplinary analysis of economic organisation; the linkbetween contracts and trust; and the complex relationship betweeninstitutional forms and economic outcomes.