A Logical Framework for Coalitional Effectivity in Dynamic Procedures

Effectivity frames are introduced as a model of what groups of agents can achieve by coordinated action in dynamic processes such as extensive games with or without simultaneous moves. Local effectivity is distinguished from different kinds of global and terminal effectivity, respectively what groups of players can maintain throughout and what they can achieve eventually. Examples are provided of how effectivity frames can be used as a tool (1) to model complex multi‐agent processes such as voting procedures, (2) to investigate the interplay between local and global properties of these dynamic procedures, and (3) to examine whether a particular effectivity function can be implemented or realized by a dynamic procedure of a specific type. Finally, a modal logic for local and global coalitional effectivity is presented, and it is shown how, for example, a realization question can be translated into this logical framework yielding a satisfiability problem.     

Reducing unwanted consequences of aggregation in large-scale economic models - A systematic empirical evaluation with the GTAP model

We discuss how to avoid aggregation bias in large-scale global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models by reducing the need of pre-model aggregation, based on the combination of algorithmic improvements and a filtering approach which removes small transactions. Using large-scale sensitivity analysis, we show the impact of pre-aggregation and filtering on model size, model solution time and simulated welfare impacts, using a multi-lateral partial trade liberalization simulated with the standard GTAP model as the test case. We conclude that pre-model aggregation should be avoided as far as possible, and that our filtering approach and algorithmic improvements allow global CGE analysis even with highly disaggregated data sets at moderate solution times.     

Economic Dynamics with Learning: New Stability Results

Drawing upon recent contributions in the statistical literature, we present new results on the convergence of recursive, stochastic algorithms which can be applied to economic models with learning and which generalize previous results. The formal results provide probability bounds for convergence which can be used to describe the local stability under learning of rational expectations equilibria in stochastic models. Economic examples include local stability in a multivariate linear model with multiple equilibria and global convergence in a model with a unique equilibrium.     

Governing new global health-care markets: the case of stem cell treatments

Stem cell innovation has enabled the growth of a global market of treatments for a wide range of diseases but most of this market operates outside the domain of orthodox forms of innovation governance. Much of the analysis of this issue has adopted a supply side perspective informed by the values of the orthodox scientific model of biomedical innovation, arguing that national and transnational regulation has failed to impose appropriate standards on the ‘illicit’ supply of stem cell treatments. In contrast, this paper shows how and why the analysis of global stem cell innovation governance must incorporate the market and health consumer demand into the conceptual framework. Central to the argument is the role of innovation models in mediating the relationship between demand and supply in the global market of new stem cell treatments. Different models of scientific and medical innovation mediate that relationship in different ways and, in jurisdictions where health consumer demand is frustrated, may result in parallel political demands for change in stem cell innovation governance. Such demands are likely to be resisted by the dominant scientific model, producing a further response from health consumers and a continuing dynamic in the political economy of stem cell treatments.     

Estimating Macroeconomic Models: A Likelihood Approach

This paper shows how particle filtering facilitates likelihood-based inference in dynamic macroeconomic models. The economies can be non-linear and/or non-normal. We describe how to use the output from the particle filter to estimate the structural parameters of the model, those characterizing preferences and technology, and to compare different economies. Both tasks can be implemented from either a classical or a Bayesian perspective. We illustrate the technique by estimating a business cycle model with investment-specific technological change, preference shocks, and stochastic volatility.     

Managing the transition to sustainable supply chain management practices: Evidence from Dutch leader firms in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Governance literature identifies so-called ‘leader firms’ as the directors of global value chains. But in what direction are they leading? Some leader firms actively try to make a transition towards sustainable supply chain practices, but how can this be assessed? Supply chain management literature provides fragmented insights into the antecedents of transition processes. They adopt a largely ‘top-down’, ‘inside-out’ perspective rather than (also) take a ‘bottom-up’ and ‘outside-in’ perspective in which the consequences for the business models of supplying firms at the bottom of the supply chain are rarely taken into account. This contribution develops a more integrated eclectic approach on sustainable supply business models. We conceptualise antecedents of change along consecutive stages of management that combines different supplier ‘upgrading’ approaches with different ways in which leader firms integrate suppliers in their purchasing strategies. We apply this model to the strategies of 10 leading Dutch companies active in Africa, but with different supply chain positions.     

A contest model of liberalizing government procurements

This paper models liberalization of government procurements as admitting entry of foreign firms in a contest among potential rent seekers. It contributes to the literature on how institutions influence socially desirable outcomes. Liberalizing procurements reduces wasteful domestic lobbying but also increases the likelihood that a foreign firm will capture the rent. A main result is that the domestic welfare change is not monotonic in the foreign firms' abilities. Furthermore, we show that domestic liberalization policies can be inefficient from the global point of view because foreign lobbying costs can outweight productive efficiency.     

AN EQUILIBRIUM SEARCH MODEL WHEN FIRMS OBSERVE WORKERS' EMPLOYMENT STATUS*

This article considers an equilibrium search model, where firms post wages using information on workers' employment status. Earnings differentials between workers of different employment statuses are driven by firms' ability to discriminate workers' reservation wages. I study how these wage policies depend on firms' and workers' characteristics, and how these policies affect the wage distribution. The model delivers new predictions for the amount of wage dispersion that can be generated with search models and provides a better representation of the left tail of the wage distribution in the presence of a legal minimum wage than standard equilibrium search models.     

Multi-dimensional screening:: A user's guide

Multi-dimensional screening models have many potential applications but economists have so far been hindered by the considerable technical difficulties involved in their resolution. This paper studies the simplest formulation of the general screening model, and we provide a complete solution to this case. We then show how this model can be applied to multi-product nonlinear pricing and to multi-product monopoly regulation. Finally, we discuss how the model has been applied to other economic situations of interest, including auction design and optimal taxation.     

A Payoff Uncertainty Explanation of Results in Experimental Centipede Games

This paper investigates how well a simple two-sided incomplete information game with a full support prior can be used to explain non-Nash equilibrium outcomes observed in the centipede game experiments. I estimate the variance of the uncertainty about preferences in several versions of the model, select two models, and compare these models to the estimation results of the altruism model and the quantal response models. It is shown that the two selected models have a better fit than the one-parameter altruism and quantal response models and that the estimated variance can explain all qualitative features of these experimental results.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C72, C19, C 44, C91.     

全球生产性服务价值链位置、知识链整合与本土企业创新绩效

生产性服务企业在全球生产性服务价值链的位置如何影响其创新绩效?研究这一问题有助于找到提升中国生产性服务企业创新绩效的途径。首先，从跨国公司基于知识的价值链分解方式入手，提出待验证的概念模型。然后，用结构方程调节性中介模型进行实证分析，得出结论：全球生产性服务价值链位置对创新绩效有显著正向影响；知识链整合在全球生产性服务价值链位置与创新绩效的关系中发挥中介作用；知识链整合的中介作用受到依特定情势协调的正向调节。最后，根据实证结论提出两类生产性服务企业创新绩效提升策略。     

Computable general equilibrium with financial markets

Summary. There are a wide variety of theoretical general equilibrium models with incomplete security markets. In this paper we give a general recipe for using homotopy algorithm to compute equilibria in these models. In many models, taxes, transaction-costs or other market frictions introduce the additional difficulty that equilibrium prices or choices (but not equilibrium allocations) may be undetermined. In order to demonstrate how these difficulties can be dealt with, we develop a globally convergent algorithm to compute equilibria in a model with cash-in-advance constraints, several goods and incomplete financial markets. Furthermore we describe how to implement the algorithm using a publicly available suite of subroutines for homotopy-pathfollowing. Received: October 1, 1999; revised version: December 16, 2000     

全球失衡治理的博弈论分析

全球经济失衡问题由于其破坏性及强复杂性,一直以来都是全球治理平台上的热议论题之一。探讨全球治理与贸易保护主义之间博弈的形成以及未来如何协调处理的问题。概括来讲,全球治理的艰难发展体现了各国之间的政策博弈结果。利用博弈模型分析全球治理不仅能够帮助鉴别各国接受全球经济治理时的配合度,也有利于督促各国政府采取负责任的调整政策及措施。     

Examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities — Part 2: Review of input-output models for the assessment of environmental impacts embodied in trade

This paper offers a detailed review of recently described single- and multi-region input-output models used to assess environmental impacts of internationally traded goods and services. It is the second part of a two-part contribution. In Part 1 [Turner, K., Lenzen, M., Wiedmann, T. and Barrett, J. in press. Examining the Global Environmental Impact of Regional Consumption Activities — Part 1: A Technical Note on Combining Input-Output and Ecological Footprint Analysis; Ecological Economics.] we describe how to enumerate the resource and pollution content of inter-regional and inter-national trade flows with the aim to illustrate an ideal accounting and modelling framework for the estimation of Ecological Footprints.A large number of such environment-economic models have been described but only in the last few years models have emerged that use a more sophisticated multi-region, multi-sector input-output framework. This has been made possible through improvements in data availability and quality as well as computability. We identify six major models that employ multi-sector, multi-region input-output analysis in order to calculate environmental impacts embodied in international trade. Results from the reviewed studies demonstrate that it is important to explicitly consider the production recipe, land and energy use as well as emissions in a multi-region, multi-sector and multi-directional trade model with global coverage and detailed sector disaggregation. Only then reliable figures for indicators of impacts embodied in trade, such as the Ecological Footprint, can be derived.     

A macroeconomic limit cycle with financial perturbations

Utilizing the Hopf-bifurcalion theorem for nonlinear differential equations and Olech's theorem on global stability, the paper shows how a nonlinear macro limit cycle can change its character when financial perturbation terms are introduced into the model. As demonstrated financial perturbations affect the vector field in certain regions of the trajectories and a variety of different outcomes can be generated. Financial instability as put forward in Minsky's writings can result from the proposed dynamics under not too restrictive conditions.     

A hard slog, not a leap frog: Globalization and sustainability transitions in developing Asia

How does globalization influence transitions toward more sustainable socio-technical regimes in the developing world? This paper argues that transformations of regimes, the networks and institutions governing technological and environmental practices in an industry, can be positively influenced by globalization but it depends on how global forces interact with local socio-political landscapes—the political-economic institutions, values, and regulations broadly guiding an economy and its relationship to the environment. We evaluate these relationships through a comparison of two kinds of socio-political landscapes—the neo-liberal export-led development model commonly found in the developing world and the uniquely Asian capitalist developmental state. We first show how the neo-liberal model overemphasizes the power of market forces to facilitate upgrading and more sustainable industrialization. We then argue that capitalist developmental states in East and Southeast Asia have been better able to harness global economic forces for technological and sustainability transitions through an openness to trade and investment and effective public-private institutions able to link cleaner technologies and environmental standards to production activities in firms. We buttress this argument with firm-level evidence showing the evolution of socio-technical regimes in two industries—cement and electronics. The case studies demonstrate how interactions with OECD firms can contribute to environmental technique effects provided the socio-political landscape is amenable to changes in an industry's regime. Ultimately, we find the process of transition to be complex and contingent; a hard slog not a leap frog toward a potentially more sustainable future. We close by considering the limitations on the capitalist developmental state model and with comments about what else needs to be learned about globalization's role in sustainability transitions.     

Pitfalls of post-model-selection testing: experimental quantification

Traditional specification testing does not always improve subsequent inference. We demonstrate by means of computer experiments under which circumstances, and how severely, data-driven model selection can destroy the size properties of subsequent parameter tests, if they are used without adjusting for the model-selection step. The investigated models are representative of macroeconometric and microeconometric workhorses. The model selection procedures include information criteria as well as sequences of significance tests (“general-to-specific”). We find that size distortions can be particularly large when competing models are close, with closeness being defined relatively to the sample size.     

Development of a Fuzzy optimization model,supporting global warming decision-making

An increasing number of models have been developed to support global warming response policies. The model constructors are facing a lot of uncertainties which limit the evidence of these models. The support of climate policy decision-making is only possible in a semi-quantitative way, as presented by aFuzzy model. The model design is based on an optimization approach, integrated in a bounded risk decision-making framework. Given some regional emission-related and impact-related restrictions, optimal emission paths can be calculated. The focus is not only on carbon dioxide but on other greenhouse gases too. In the paper, the components of the model will be described. Cost coefficients, emission boundaries and impact boundaries are represented asFuzzy parameters. TheFuzzy model will be transformed into a computational one by using an approach of Rommelfanger. In the second part, some problems of applying the model to computations will be discussed. This includes discussions on the data situation and the presentation, as well as interpretation of results of sensitivity analyses. The advantage of theFuzzy approach is that the requirements regarding data precision are not so strong. Hence, the effort for data acquisition can be reduced and computations can be started earlier.     

Initial beliefs and the global stability of least squares learning

This article provides an operational framework of global stability analysis when Ljung's (1977) ordinary differential equation (ODE) approach is applied to the recursive stochastic system. We first establish the notion of stable set under which sufficient conditions for the equivalence between them can be translated to restrictions on initial beliefs in agents' forecasts. The maximum ODE-stable set is simply the largest range of initial beliefs. We then demonstrate how to implement this operational framework for the analysis of stability beyond the local sense in some well-known models in the learning literature.