Sraffa numeraire and reswitching: A note A note

The paper demonstrates that changing the numeraire from Hicks' to Sraffa's does not affect the location and, a fortiori, the number of switch points between two given techniques. This negates some recent claims to the contrary, and supports the earlier general position that the choice of numeraire has no bearing on reswitching, even though it does have a bearing on capital reversal. In the process the paper shows that the rate of growth of the economy and the marginal propensity to save also do not affect the switch points, which may thus be regarded as depending essentially on technical factors alone.     

A note on ‘trying to value a life’

Broome's alleged paradox that application of the usual compensation test to the valuation of life would produce an infinite monetary value is shown to be false because it is based on illegitimate generalisation from a special case in which no effective compensation is possible. In the general case, relevant to public sector project appraisal, such compensation is possible, and finite values are to be expected, judging by people's ordinary behaviour.     

A note on Stackelberg competition

This note investigates a Stackelberg–Nash competition model. We determine the conditions under which the leaders may achieve better profits than the followers when all firms compete on quantity in a two stage game. We focus on the properties of the followers’ best response functions. It is shown that the Stackelberg equilibrium may coincide with the Cournot equilibrium. In addition, the followers may achieve higher profits than the leaders. Such results put forward the working and the consequences of strategic complementarities. These results are illustrated with three examples.     

A note on endogenous transfers

In a competitive and Walrasian stable world with two goods transfer paradoxes are very robust to endogenization (relating the size of the transfer to either the donor's or the recipient's GNP). Donor enrichment and/or recipient impoverishment occur in very general formulations of endogenization if and only if they occur in the model in which transfers are exogenous (as is usually assumed). Endogenization in practice will probably cause a dampening effect (smaller price and welfare changes than in the case of pure exogenous transfers).An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Econometric Society European Meeting in Munich, 1989, and EADI (European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes) in Oslo, 1990. We are grateful to an anonymous referee, Willem Buiter, Peter van Bergeijk, Richard Gigengack, Jan Pen, Georg Tillmann, Edward Towrr, and Casper de Vries for helpful comments.     

A note on nurse self-scheduling

Self-scheduling began in the 1960s and many hospitals have been using it with success. Benefits include saving management time, improved morale and professionalism, and cost reduction on matters related to personnel turnover. For nursing units experiencing scheduling challenges, self-scheduling may be a solution.     

A note on linear utility

Summary We show that any complete, lower-semicontinuous, and translation-invariant preorder defined on a topological vector space admits a linear and continuous utility representation.Thanks are given to an anonymous referee for his/her valuable suggestions and comments.     

A note on an anniversary

ASSA Paper. ASA Session on Schumpeter     

A note on balanced growth

In a simple linear production model each solution to the technological expansion problem is an eigenvector.This result is proved without assuming the cone to be the usual nonnegative cone.     

A note on long-term contracts

The purpose of this paper is three-fold: (i) to interpret Townsend's (1982) long-term contract model as a labor contract model where a value of job matching for a worker is a private information, (ii) to contrast Townsend's long-term contract model with Holmstrom's (1983) long-term contract model in a common framework, and (iii) to explore the effect of workers' mobility on the contract configuration of the two models.Both Holmstrom and Townsend construct models in which a single-period contract is not viable, but a long-term contract is. However, reasons for this characteristic in the two models are quite different. This paper proposes a simple framework of labor contracts with illustrates the essential difference of the two models, and the role of mobility costs. Mobility costs in the two types of long-term contracts are shown to be beneficial for both workers and the firm. Results of comparative statics show how contract configurations in two models are influenced by changes in mobility costs.     

A note on feasible implementations

This paper is concerned with the problem of individually feasible outcomes in decentralized allocation mechanisms. We consider a well-known mechanism which achieves efficient allocations in equilibrium. This mechanism, however, may leave agents bankrupt, if they fail to reach equilibrium. It is shown that the bankruptcy problem can be avoided, if a voting stage is added to the original mechanism.     

A note on linear utility

This note shows how a spectrum of specific axiomatizations for linear utility for decision-making under risk can be integrated under a generalized axiom scheme in which one of the two binary relations used in the axioms parameterizes specific applications.