The Optimal Use of Fines and Imprisonment If Governments Do Not Maximize Welfare

We consider a stylized model of crime and punishment in which the prosecution policy is defined by three variables: the size of punishment, the type of punishment, and the detection probability. We derive the optimal type of punishment under the assumption that the detection probability is chosen by a government whose objective function places a higher weight on the government's budget than the social welfare function does. We show that for serious crimes exclusive imprisonment is welfare maximizing. If costs of imprisonment are taken into account, the optimal punishment is a prison term with an additional fine that is smaller or equal to the costs of the prison term. For less serious crimes, fines without imprisonment are welfare maximizing. Therefore, this paper demonstrates that the standard result of the literature that fines should be used whenever feasible need not hold in the presence of a rent‐seeking government. Moreover, it offers a new explanation for the widespread use of mandatory imprisonment for serious crimes.     

On income fluctuations and capital gains

We consider the infinite time horizon problem of asymptotically maximizing the expected accumulated discounted utility in a one-good production economy. The available capital in a given period is given by the production of the previous period plus a random variable. The product of the discount and interest factors is either (1) greater than or (2) equal to one. Under (1) the optimal policy exists under certain conditions and always under (2). The optimal capital sequence almost surely goes to infinity. Under (1) with conditions on the utility one almost surely reaches a capital level above which the sequence is increasing.     

Cooperation under alternative punishment institutions: An experiment

While peer punishment has been shown to increase group cooperation, there is open debate on how cooperative norms can emerge and on what motives drive individuals to punish. In a public good experiment we compared alternative punishment institutions and found (1) higher cooperation levels under a consensual punishment institution than under autonomous individual punishment; (2) similar cooperation levels under sequential and simultaneous punishment institutions.     

Maximising Happiness?

The measurement of individual happiness challenges the notion that revealed preferences only reliably and empirically reflect individual utility. Reported subjective well-being is a broader concept than traditional decision utility; it also includes concepts like experience and procedural utility. Micro- and macroeconometric happiness functions offer new insights on determinants of life satisfaction. However, one should not leap to the conclusion that happiness should be maximized, as was suggested for social welfare function maximization. In contrast, happiness research strengthens the validity of an institutional approach, such as reflected in the theory of democratic economic policy.     

Formal and informal quota enforcement

I study renewable resource use and compliance in a dynamic model with both informal and formal modes of enforcement. Agents obtain utility from both resource use and from behaving according to a norm of quota compliance. The users can exceed their quota at the risk of being detected and formally punished, but they also risk informal sanctions in the form of social disapproval and guilt. I find that when accounting for informal enforcement, there is an indirect effect of regulatory change in addition to the intended direct effect. When policy change, such as tougher enforcement, makes individuals more compliant, the norm of compliance is gradually strengthened, which in turn induces more compliant behavior. I study the implications of policy change on compliance level, quota prices, and the norm of compliance, and show how the properties of the punishment function have important implications for the outcome.     

The Collective Household, Household Production and Efficiency of Marginal Reforms

Most research on the welfare properties of taxes employs the unitary model of the household, ignoring household production. A simple model provides expressions for the changes in individual utility given marginal reforms to government policy. It is shown that the burden of a higher tax on household goods falls on the household member that consumes more than they produce or purchase. Numerical calculations show that price substitution (complementarity) between home and market labor increases (decreases) aggregate efficiency costs of a marginal redistribution of income without impacting the intra-household distribution of utility changes. Modeling household goods as public versus private can alter the distributional consequences of marginal reforms.     

On the empirical relevance of the Lucas critique: the case of euro area money demand

This paper examines the relevance of the Lucas critique for euro area money demand. Based on the money in the utility function approach, a vector error correction model is specified to investigate the relationship between money and inflation in times of policy shifts. A well defined equation for money demand is obtained. The results indicate that the evolution of M3 is still in line with money demand. In the long run, inflation is affected by asset prices and detrended output. Our results show that the Lucas critique can be refuted in case of euro area money demand for the period of quantitative easing. Thus, the estimated money demand equation provides reliable information for the conduct of future monetary policy.     

A variable-production generalisation of Lerner's theorem

A government wishes to choose an optimal set of wage rates, but it is uncertain of individual characteristics. All it knows for certain is that each utility function is strictly quasi-concave and that the production function is linear. We assume that it can determine probability distributions, for each individual. of possible utility functions and ability levels. If each of these probability distributions is the same for every individual, expected social welfare is maximised by equalisation of wage rates. But since actual utility functions, and therefore labour supplies, will generally be unequal, incomes will then be unequal.     

Non‐Negative Quantity Constraints and the Duration of Punishment

In an oligopoly supergame, firms face an obvious technological constraint: the positivity of their production quantities. Applicability of single‐period optimal punishment hinges critically upon the degree of supermodularity in the stage game, as well as upon the positivity constraints on prices and/or quantities. If both prices and quantities are constrained to be positive, then the relevant multi‐period punishment prescribes securitylevel payoffs (where individual rationality binds) when and only when the game is perfectly supermodular, i.e. is either a Bertrand supergame with perfect substitute products or a Cournot supergame with perfect complement products. JEL classification numbers: D43, L13, C72.     

Temporal stability of preferences and willingness to pay for natural areas in choice experiments: A test–retest

The main objective of this paper is to test the temporal stability of stated preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) values from a Choice Experiment (CE) in a test–retest. The same group of participants was asked the same choice tasks in an internet-based CE, conducted twice with a time interval of one year without interviewer interference. We examine choice consistency at individual choice task level and transferability of the underlying indirect utility function and associated WTP values. The results show that choices are consistent in 57 percent of the choice occasions. Comparison of the choice models over time shows that the estimated preference and scale parameters are significantly different, suggesting that choice behaviour changed between the two surveys. Differences between marginal WTP estimates for individual choice attributes are statistically significant only at the 10 percent level. However, we show that this can result in significantly different WTP values for policy scenarios. The instability of estimated mean WTP values for different policy scenarios asks for caution when including WTP values in cost-benefit analysis.     

Interior Optimal Chaos with Arbitrarily Low Discount Rates

In this study, we demonstrate, for an arbitrarily small discount rate, the existence of a topologically chaotic policy function that lies in the interior of the technology set in a two-sector model with smooth production and utility functions. For this purpose, we adopt CES production functions and a utility function with a constant elasticity of intertemporal substitution. The two-sector model with those functions always has a policy function lying in the interior of the technology set (interior policy function). The existence of a scramble set of a policy function may be proved even in the case in which the discount rate is arbitrarily small.
JEL Classification Number: 041.     

如何最优地"放权"——行政事项集权与分权的最优边界

"简政放权、放管结合"是深化行政体制改革、转变政府职能的重要内容之一."放权"政策体现了政府的权力分配模式从集权向分权的转变,其本质是一种"行政性分权".文章从提高经济运行效率即最大化中央政府效用的视角,以建模方式——建立了一个三层次政府的动态博弈模型,给出了集权与分权的边界,揭示"放权"政策的逻辑,从而试图为研究政府最优行政分权提供一种可行的思路,并尝试用这一模型为"放权"政策提供合理的解释.模型分析结果表明,(1)分权能够在不改变社会福利水平的情况下,通过减少中央政府的信息成本负担提升了经济运行的效率,这也是"放权"政策的主要目的.同时,权力的下放可能导致下级政府"寻租"的隐患,需要加大对这一行为的惩罚力度."权力清单"制度的建立,通过明确规定中间政府的权力范围,加强了对中间政府行使权力的监督,减弱了其滥用权力的动机.(2)具有以下特征的权力,分权往往比集权更优:下级政府的成本负担轻、连带惩罚力度小;权力实施时底层政府追求的目标差异程度小、彼此之间相互影响程度小.与历次国发文中下放的权力做了比对后发现,这些被下放的权力能够用上述的特征进行较好的解释.(3)各因素影响分权最优性的强弱关系是:信息成本和对中间政府滥用权力的惩罚力度这两个因素强于权力本身的若干特征,即带给下级政府的成本负担、连带惩罚程度;政策实施时底层政府追求的目标差异程度、外部性大小.     

Focusing effect and the poverty trap

I build a dynamic consumption-savings model in which agents׳ choices are distorted by the focusing effect: agents overweight the utility of goods in which their options differ more. I show that the consumption-savings choice depends both on the marginal return on savings and on the total return on savings, implying that the incentive to save may increase with the initial level of wealth. As a consequence, a salience-based poverty trap may exist when the marginal return on savings is sufficiently high and sufficiently flat. I also consider the case of a perfect credit market and show that a poverty trap may emerge when the salience of consumption is bounded above. I discuss policy implications. In particular, imposing upon an agent a punishment for decreasing savings below a threshold leads to a higher level of savings, even when the threshold triggering the punishment is not binding     

Fraudulent collection of unemployment benefits : A theoretical analysis with reference to income tax evasion

The harshest abusers of the unemployment insurance program are those employed who collect benefits while working. This paper analyzes fraudulent claiming behavior and optimal deterrence policy under two alternative penalty schemes, commonly used in tax evasion analyses: one relates punishment to the magnitude of the dishonesty, whereas the other relates punishment to the amount of illegal returns. Two exclusive features of fraudulent benefit claiming are given special attention: the requirement to report at a labor exchange to demonstrate availability for work, and the need to serve a waiting period before benefits can be collected.     

策略性采购联盟、集体谈判与最优贸易政策选择——基于广义Cournot-Nash谈判函数的分析

文章发展了一个关于由本国企业组成的中间品策略性采购联盟与外国垄断性供给者进行集体谈判的模型一—该模型以中国的制造业外包服务,即出口加工贸易实践为基础,其中,中间品的采购价格与数量通过有效的Nash谈判过程同时决定。当采购联盟的效用函数的数量弹性高于（低于）价格弹性,则该联盟的偏好为数量（价格）导向的。文章证明：（1）当本国与外国的中间品与最终产品贸易具有互补性时,政府贸易政策调整的价格、数量以及福利效应是不确定的,它们依存于本国采购联盟的偏好、最终产品需求曲线的弹性与曲率、外国企业的技术以及生产专业化程度;（2）政府贸易政策的干预功能与企业策略性联盟的自主调整功能存在重叠与冲突。     

央行货币政策操作政策拐点与开关函数的测定

货币政策操作是政府对经济进行宏观调控的重要手段。不同的国家和地区、不同的经济发展时期,其货币政策的运用效果及特点存在明显的差异。赵进文、闵捷(2005)的研究结果表明:在1993年第1季度至2004年第2季度期间,我国货币政策操作在效果上表现出明显的非对称性,具有很强的非线性特征。在此基础上,本文首先通过Terasvirta检验法判定了央行货币政策操作开关函数的类型,之后基于先进而复杂的T-O-O网格点搜索法,测定了我国货币政策操作的政策拐点与开关函数的具体形式。     

Majority Voting in Multidimensional Policy Spaces: Kramer–Shepsle versus Stackelberg

We study majority voting over a bidimensional policy space when the voters’ type space is either uni‐ or bidimensional. We study two voting procedures widely used in the literature. The Stackelberg (ST) procedure assumes that votes are taken one dimension at a time according to an exogenously specified sequence. The Kramer–Shepsle (KS) procedure also assumes that votes are taken separately on each dimension, but not in a sequential way. A vector of policies is a Kramer–Shepsle equilibrium if each component coincides with the majority choice on this dimension given the other components of the vector. We study the existence and uniqueness of the ST and KS equilibria, and we compare them, looking for example at the impact of the ordering of votes for ST and identifying circumstances under which ST and KS equilibria coincide. In the process, we state explicitly the assumptions on the utility function that are needed for these equilibria to be well‐behaved. We especially stress the importance of single‐crossing conditions, and we identify two variants of these assumptions: a marginal version that is imposed on all policy dimensions separately, and a joint version whose definition involves both policy dimensions.     

Collaborative innovation and policy support: the emergence of trilateral networks

ABSTRACT

The present article models the critical factors for a successful and evolutionarily stable National System of Innovation. We simulate a model, against the background of increasingly complex technologies, in a national process of agents’ interactions with social-dilemma characteristics. In particular, the articleinvestigates the emergence of a trilateral collaborative innovation alliance among ‘enterprise’, ‘university’ and ‘government’. We apply a tripartite evolutionary game with a replication process and explore the role and options of the public policy agent to support collaboration on innovation. We find that some policy mix, in particular, a combination of (1) public rewards for cooperation, (2) public punishment for non-cooperation and (3) settings of public cost controls and tax income from innovation, can promote broad and sustainable innovation alliances. For instance, threats of strong punishment, even with low public rewards for cooperation, may promote the formation of a collaborative innovation alliance. We run some sensitivity analyses of the results through parametric variation of two critical factors of the model, knowledge spillover and output elasticity of knowledge input. We find some qualifications for the velocity of the process.     

The taxation of capital returns in overlapping generations models

This paper shows that in the Diamond (1965) overlapping generations economy with production and capital savings, there is a period-by-period balanced fiscal policy supporting a steady state allocation that Pareto-improves upon the laissez-faire competitive equilibrium steady state (whether dynamically inefficient or efficient) without resorting to intergenerational transfers. The policy consists of taxing linearly (or subsidizing, in the dynamically efficient case) the returns to capital, while balancing the budget period by period through a lump-sum transfer (or tax, respectively) in second period. This intervention grants every generation the highest steady state utility attainable through markets (i.e. remunerating factors by their marginal productivities and without transfers) which under laissez-faire is not a competitive equilibrium outcome. A transition from the competitive equilibrium steady state to this other steady state is also Pareto-improving when the former is dynamically inefficient. The result disentangles from redistributive considerations the impact of the taxation of capital returns on steady state welfare, and thus provides a rationale for the taxation of capital returns that is based on efficiency considerations and not on redistributive goals.