Credence Goods,Misleading Labels,and Quality Differentiation

Due to differences in information disclosure mechanisms, consumer misinformation about the quality of many credence goods is more endemic at intermediate levels of the quality spectrum rather than at the extremes. Using an oligopoly model of vertical product differentiation, we examine how consumers’ overestimation of the quality of intermediate-quality products affects firms’ incentives to improve product quality. The firms non-cooperatively choose the quality of their product before choosing its price or quantity. Irrespective of the nature of second stage competition, Bertrand or Cournot, we find that quality overestimation by consumers increases profit of the intermediate-quality firm, and motivates it to raise its product’s quality. In response, the high-quality firm improves its product quality even further but ends up with lower profit. Overall, average quality of the vertically differentiated product improves, which raises consumer surplus. Social welfare increases when the firms compete in prices but falls when they compete in quantities.     

Credence Goods,Efficient Labelling Policies,and Regulatory Enforcement

We analyse the optimality of information revelation of hidden attributes of “credence goods” via alternative labelling procedures. When consumers are heterogeneous in their willingness to pay for the hidden attribute, producers can either self-label their products, or have them certified by a third party. The government can impose self or third party labelling requirements on either the “green” or the “brown” producers. Our benchmark model develops a condition that links the optimal imposition of third party labelling to the relative market share of each type of the good under complete information. We extend our analysis to incorporate asymmetric information and cheating by the producers. When corrupt producers can affix spurious labels, the government needs to supplement the labelling policy with costly monitoring activities. We find that mandatory self-labelling schemes generally dominate mandatory third party labelling, unless the “market share effect” greatly exceeds the “incentive-to-cheat effect”.      

Private Sector Involvement in Infrastructure Projects

There has been little systematic discussion of the issues associated with private involvement in infrastructure. Analysis of the relative performance of the private and public sector in different phases of infrastructure provision suggests that, in most cases, the private sector will be most efficient in the construction phase but the public sector will be best equipped to handle the risks associated with ownership. The situation is less clear-cut with respect to operation—a mixture in which core operations are undertaken by the public sector owner with peripheral operations being contracted out may be optimal in many cases.     

Delegating Infrastructure Projects with Open Access

This paper provides a simple model that examines a firm's incentive to invest in a network infrastructure through coalition formation in an open-access environment with a deregulated retail market. A regulator faces a dilemma between inducing an incentive for efficient investment and reducing the distortion generated by imperfect competition. We show that, in such a case, the degree of the cost-reducing effect of the investment is crucial from a welfare point of view. In particular, when network investment through coalition formation creates a large (small) cost-reducing effect, the regulator can (should not) delegate an investment decision to firms with an appropriate level of access charge.     

国际承包工程风险管理之浅见

我国作为一个发展中国家,积极参与国际经济技术合作,对增强我国企业在国际市场上的竞争能力和经济效益的提高具有十分重要的意义,作为国际工程承包企业除了加强企业内部自身管理之外,由于其行业的特殊性,正确认识风险的来源和性质,对于企业抵御风险能力是非常必要的,本文从风险国际承包工程风险管理之角度就国际工程承包中风险的来源,风险与收益之间的关系以及防范和控制风险的方法等问题简要阐述了笔者的一点粗浅看法。     

交通基础设施的公共产品属性探析

交通基础设施是为满足全社会经济生活中人与物的位移需求而生产出的产品,该产品具有显著的公共需求性与公益性。以公共产品理论为基础,从非排他性和非竞争性的角度可以判定交通基础设施具有公共产品属性,通过分析交通基础设施的消费机理深入探讨交通基础设施使用过程中产生拥挤现象的原因,可以否定交通基础设施为拥挤性公共产品的观点。此外,投资主体的变化不会变更交通基础设施的公共产品性质。     

Contracting Boundaries as Institutional Infrastructure: Efficacy, Adaptation, and Obsolescence: Commentary on La Croix and Ghiselin's Comments

The New Institutional Economics (NIE) emphasizes that different governance structures generate a rich variety of observed institutional arrangements. In Yarbrough & Yarbrough (1999), we extended this reasoning to argue that different governance structures also carry implications for the sets of acceptable contracting partners or ‘insiders’. Here we discuss various contracting groups as institutional infrastructures and evaluate their efficiency, ability to adapt, and longevity or possible obsolescence in the face of changes in the nature of transactions or of the transactional environment. The fact that, despite their many shortcomings, private institutional infrastructures continue to be built, to adapt, and to function, even in modern societies with well-developed state-based legal systems, provides a measure of the centrality and complexity of the task of assuring contractual integrity. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

关于城市基础设施项目融资结构框架的研究

目前,许多城市政府采取BOT、TOT、PPP模式进行城市基础设施建设.但是在建设中发现,运用单一的BOT、TOT、PPP模式进行建设时,由于环境的变化,往往会打破项目相关群体原有的收益与风险的平衡,激化项目利益相关群体之间的矛盾,导致项目出现危机.本文提出了城市基础设施集成融资结构框架,即把城市基础设施项目分解为若干个子项目,根据各个子项目的特点分别采取不同的融资方式,并在项目运行过程中根据环境的变化及时变更或组合为其他的模式.以适应环境的变化,保证城市基础设施项目建设的顺利实施.     

城市基础设施建设:公共物品投资主体的异化

城市基础设施建设属公共物品范畴,其投资的主体应是各级政府.但地方政府为了最大限度加快城市基础设施建设,普遍以公司法人名义投资和借款,投资主体异化产生不良的经济后果,其原因和政策值得关注.     

作为公共品的组织

组织是一种特别的公共品。如果能够使不同成员的边际贡献与他们从组织中得到的边际收益相等,那么组织就实现了均衡。由于成员的边际贡献难以测度,因此只有通过实施“一报还一报”的策略才能激励成员实现组织的共容利益。     

市政公用基础设施项目后评价管理研究

由于投资项目后评价要对立项决策、施工建设、生产经营、投资效益和环境影响等作出全面评价,它需耍大量的资料和数据。文章介绍了市政公用基础设施项目后评价管理信息系统的设计目标,详细规定了系统开发环境、系统构架和系统功能,对促进我国后评价工作的普遍开展有一定的帮助。     

Subsidies versus Public Provision of Private Goods as Instruments for Redistribution

The literatures on differential commodity taxes and on quantity controls to supplement income taxation have developed separately. This paper combines these two strands in the standard framework of optimal non-linear income taxation. We use a model with two types of households where the government has access to both subsidy policy and public provision of a good substitutable for leisure, and ouseholds can supplement the publicity provided good from the market. We present conditions under which policy should involve one or both of these two instruments alongside income taxation. The model is extended to many ability types.     

Threatened Species as Public Goods and Public Bads

This paper discusses Pareto efficient allocations of an environmental commodity, which is both a public good and a public bad, with an application to the Scandinavian problem of conserving wild predators that are killing semi-domesticated reindeer. The paper begins by briefly outlining this conflict. This is followed by a theoretical analysis employing a diagrammatic tool called the Kolm triangle, which is an analogue of an Edgeworth box in an economy with a public good. Bargaining, Pareto improving reallocations and the shape of the Pareto set are discussed, using a simple model, where one of the agents is involountarily contributing to a public good. The paper concludes with an analysis of income-loss compensations and incentives for illegal hunting of predators.     

Contracting for Health Services with Unmonitored Quality

In both the NHS and Medicare, recent emphasis has been on contracts with payment based only on the number of patients treated. It is shown that, without direct monitoring of quality or effort to reduce costs, such contracts are efficient only when it is efficient to treat all patients wanting treatment. It may not be when treatment costs are insured or subsidised. Such contracts can then be improved by including payments for the number of patients wanting treatment, as well as for the number actually treated. Even then, the outcome will not generally be efficient if quality is multi-dimensional.     

Access Prices for Rail Infrastructure

Separation of railway infrastructure, a natural monopoly, from a contestable train operator industry raises policy options for setting the infrastructure access fee and for regulation of the infrastructure supplier. Marginal cost, average cost. Ramsey prices and multipart tariff rules for access fees are assessed. Recognizing the importance of train operator entry decisions, a single access fee per gross tonne kilometre based on a mark-up of marginal cost is favoured. An independent regulator and the use of price ceilings on the infrastructure supplier are proposed.     

论以城市政府作为基础设施投资主体的合理性

在城市基础设施多元投资新格局下,城市政府由传统的唯一投资者,演变为多元投资主体之一。要重新界定政府投资的合理性,有必要从城市政府投资地位、投资范围、投资方式等三个方面进行分析。应当建立“一主多元”的投资格局;政府投资范围应界定在非经营性资产和未能得到合理回报的经营性资产;重视城市政府投融资方式在融合与分离上的创新。     

Technology roadmaps: Infrastructure for innovation

The value of technology roadmaps for technology planning, technology selection, and technological innovation has become widely recognized. In this article, we explore how technology roadmaps can support virtual innovation and innovation factories. We also consider how technology landscapes can provide metrics for technology roadmaps. We explore how knowledge of patterns of technological evolution can be incorporated into technology roadmaps to detect opportunities for innovation and possible market limitations. Finally, we discuss how agent models can provide the basis for simulation and possibly for self-organization.     

Collusion-Proof Samuelson Conditions for Public Goods

We analyze a public good problem when agents form a grand coalition to promote their own collective goal instead of that of society as a whole. When collusion takes place under symmetric information , the collusion-proof Samuelson rule takes a simple form that is close to an ex ante cost-benefit analysis . Then, we analyze the case where agents collude under asymmetric information . First, we describe the set of collusion-proof allocations. Second, we establish the collusion-proof Samuelson rule that highlights the role of coalitional virtual valuations . Asymmetric information within the coalition allows the principal to recover some flexibility in the design of the optimal policy. We finally discuss the nature of the inefficiency created by the agents' collusive behavior and the scope of their ex ante gain in forming a coalition.     

Contracting for the second best in dysfunctional electricity markets

Power pools constitute a set of sometimes complex institutional arrangements for efficiency-enhancing coordination among power systems. In many developing countries, where such institutional arrangements can’t be established over the short term, there still can be scope for voluntary electricity-sharing agreements among power systems. Using a particular type of efficient risk-sharing model with no commitment we demonstrate that second-best coordination improvements can be achieved with low to moderate risks of participants leaving the agreement. In the absence of an impartial market operator who can observe production fluctuations in connected power systems, establishing quasi-markets for trading excess electricity helps to achieve some cooperation in mutually beneficial electricity sharing.