A model of electoral competition with incomplete information

A model of two-candidate electoral competition is developed in which voters are uncertain about the policy either candidate would implement if elected. Candidates simultaneously announce policy positions, from which voters attempt to infer the true positions the candidates would adopt. Announcing a position different from the true position is costly to the winning candidate, with these costs increasing as the difference between the true policy and the announced policy increases. A refinement of the sequential equilibrium concept is used to describe the behavior of candidates and voters.     

Optimal menu when agents make mistakes

This paper studies how an optimal menu chosen by a social planner depends on whether agents receive imperfect signals about their true tastes (imperfect self-knowledge) or the properties of available alternatives (imperfect information). Under imperfect self-knowledge, it is not optimal to offer fewer alternatives than the number of different tastes present in the population, unless noise is infinite (agents have no clue about their true preferences). As noise increases, the social planner offers menu items that are closer together (more similar). However, under imperfect information, as noise increases, it could be optimal to construct a menu with more distinct alternatives, restrict the number of options, or, for some finite noise, offer a single item.     

Experimenter demand effects in economic experiments

Experimenter demand effects refer to changes in behavior by experimental subjects due to cues about what constitutes appropriate behavior. We argue that they can either be social or purely cognitive, and that, when they may exist, it crucially matters how they relate to the true experimental objectives. They are usually a potential problem only when they are positively correlated with the true experimental objectives’ predictions, and we identify techniques such as non-deceptive obfuscation to minimize this correlation. We discuss the persuasiveness or otherwise of defenses that can be used against demand effects criticisms when such correlation remains an issue.     

中国房地产市场的地域特征分析

建立在全国性市场假设基础之上的关于我国房地产业市场集中度较"低"和"过度竞争"的推断,忽视了其本地性。事实上,由于房地产市场的本地特征,不同"板块"间相互分离。房地产企业只是与"板块"内相邻的企业发生竞争,即便是这样,它们也还都有其各自的垄断市场区;加之房地产业存在较高的进入壁垒,垄断性较强,房地产企业拥有着较强的市场力量①。     

The loss from uncertainty on policy targets

What is the welfare loss arising from uncertainty about true policy targets? We quantify these effects in a DSGE model where private agents are unable to distinguish between temporary shocks to potential output and to the inflation target. Agents use optimal filtering techniques to construct estimates of the unknown variables. We find that the welfare costs of not observing the inflation target and potential output are relevant even in the case of a small measurement error. We also show that, in our framework, uncertainty about the inflation target is more costly than uncertainty about potential output.     

A general asset pricing model

With only minimal assumptions, a general version of the security market line is obtained. In addition, it is suggested that instead of concentrating on the relationship between risk and return, the testable theories of capital market equilibrium should contain specific hypotheses about the true aggregate demands and supplies of risky assets.     

加强服务业统计的探讨

要加快发展服务业,就必须要掌握服务业发展的现状,研究服务业发展变化的规律。这就相应地要求完善服务业统计制度,研究适合当前社会经济现状的服务业统计方法,加强服务业统计,及时取得真实反映服务业发展状况的数据,为研究服务业发展情况,制定新时期服务业发展政策、发展规划服务。     

技术进步实现机制和生产要素产出弹性理论假说——来自我国9个发达经济区的实证检验

按照管理、资本和劳动要素的产出弹性关系的新理论假说,利用我国9个发达地区2000—2006年的面板数据对要素产出弹性理论假说的检验,其结果表明,由于我国在技术进步中一直主要依靠技术引进和缺乏自主创新,从而使技术进步表现为资本增加型,理论假说前提的偏离导致实证分析结果和理论分析结果不一致。结论表明,在不同的工业化发展阶段,可以选择的技术进步方式不同,要素投入的组合方式也不同。当前我国应该改变资本投入过快增长的现状,强调管理要素和高素质劳动力投入,通过不断促进技术进步,提高要素的使用效率,实现经济平稳快速增长。     

Market demand of smart but uninformed consumers rotates counterclockwise with better information: surprising welfare effects

Providing truthful and unbiased information about the true value of a good to a priori heterogeneous consumers generates a mean-preserving counterclockwise rotation of demand. The welfare analysis of such rotation in monopoly and perfectly competitive models indicates that consumers can lose surplus if they become better informed.     

DELAYED OVERSHOOTING AND REAL EXCHANGE RATE PERSISTENCE IN AN IMPERFECT INFORMATION MODEL

Recent studies have pointed out that monetary shocks in sticky price models cannot generate real exchange rates that exhibit delayed overshooting and are highly persistent. This paper demonstrates that such exchange rate dynamics can be generated by incorporating incomplete information about the true nature of the monetary shock into a standard New Keynesian model of a small open economy.     

The dynamics of efficient asset trading with heterogeneous beliefs

This paper analyzes the dynamic properties of portfolios that sustain dynamically complete markets equilibrium when agents have heterogeneous priors. We argue that the conventional wisdom that belief heterogeneity generates continuous trade and significant fluctuations in individual portfolios may be correct but it needs some qualifications. We consider an infinite horizon stochastic endowment economy populated by many Bayesian agents with heterogeneous priors over the stochastic process of the states of nature. Our approach hinges on studying the portfolios that decentralize Pareto optimal allocations. Since these allocations are typically history dependent, we propose a methodology to provide a complete recursive characterization when agents believe that the process of states of nature is i.i.d. but disagree about the probability of the states. We show that even though heterogeneous priors within that class can indeed generate genuine changes in the portfolios of any dynamically complete markets equilibrium, these changes vanish with probability one if the true process consists of i.i.d. draws from a common distribution and the support of some agent's prior belief contains the true distribution. Finally, we provide examples in which asset trading does not vanish because either (i) no agent learns the true conditional probability of the states or (ii) some agent does not know the true process generating the data is i.i.d.     

Using bounds to investigate household debt repayment behaviour

Understanding the factors that influence arrears is crucial if policy makers wish to alleviate the problems caused by debt. But conventional estimates of repayment behaviour impose implausible assumptions about lender behaviour. However, an upper and lower bound for the effect of the determinants of repayment behaviour can be estimated. Reasonable assumptions about the behaviour of economics agents narrow these bands. We use administrative data from a leading Italian lender to the household sector to demonstrate the methodology, and we show that conventional estimates under-estimate the true default probability.     

Unemployment duration models with non-stationary inflow and unobserved heterogeneity

This paper is concerned with econometric problems and methods involved when estimating duration models using data on uncompleted unemployment spells provided by standard labour force surveys. In particular, it considers how the model estimates are affected by the commonly applied assumption of stationary inflow rates when the true inflow rates are non-stationary and when different assumptions about unobserved heterogeneity are maintained.     

An Incentive‐Compatible Condorcet Jury Theorem*

We consider a group of individuals who face a binary collective decision. Each group member holds some private information, and all agree about what decision should be taken in each state of nature. However, the state is unknown, and members can differ in their valuations of the two types of mistakes that might occur, and in their prior beliefs about the true state. For a slightly randomized majority rule, we show that informative voting by all voters is the unique Nash equilibrium, that this equilibrium is strict, and that the Condorcet asymptotic efficiency result holds in this setting.     

ADVANCING THE THEORY OF THE COOPERATIVE ORGANIZATION: THE COOPERATIVE AS A TRUE HYBRID

ABSTRACT: What is a cooperative? Is it a form of vertical integration, an independent organization or an intermediate form of governance between the market and the hierarchy? This paper contributes to the economic theory of the cooperative organization by examining it from a comparative economic perspective. Departing from Williamson's one‐dimensional continuum of governance structures, the paper adopts the view that governance structures exhibit multiple dimensions and true hybrids are market‐like on some of these dimensions while hierarchy‐like on others. I show that the cooperative blends market‐like attributes with hierarchy‐like mechanisms and thus should be viewed as a true hybrid rather than as an intermediate form. The paper concludes with a discussion about the usefulness of this approach and potential avenues for future research.     

Estimating the effects of monetary policy shocks: does lag structure matter?

This paper examines the implications of lag structure for estimating the effects of monetary policy shocks in a VAR. A symmetric lag structure in which all variables have the same lag length and an asymmetric lag structure in which the lag length differs across variables but is the same for a particular variable in each equation of the model are examined. This is important in light of the fact that the true lag structure is generally not known. Four commonly used identification schemes are employed to identify monetary policy shocks. Monte Carlo simulations strongly indicate that the lag structure of a VAR model does matter when assessing the quantitative effects of monetary policy shocks. Given the inherent uncertainty about the true lag structure in practice, it is thus important that one compare the impulse response functions from both symmetric lag and asymmetric lag VARs in assessing the effects of monetary policy shocks.     

Manipulation through political endorsements

We study elections with three candidates under plurality voting. A candidate is a Condorcet loser if the majority of the voters place that candidate at the bottom of their preference rankings. We first show that a Condorcet loser might win the election in a three-way race. Next we introduce to the model an endorser who has private information about the true probability distribution of the preferences of the voters. Observable endorsements facilitate coordination among voters who may otherwise split their votes and lead to the victory of the Condorcet loser. When the endorser has an ideological bias towards one of the candidates, the coordination impact of endorsements remains unaltered, moreover the endorser successfully manipulates the outcome of the election in favor of his bias, even if his ideological bias is known by the voters. The results are true for any endorsement cost and any magnitude of bias as long as the electorate is large enough.