Illustrating Adverse Selection in Health Insurance Markets with a Classroom Game

This paper describes a classroom game that illustrates the effects of asymmetric information and adverse selection in health insurance markets. The first part of this game simulates a market in which buyers can purchase insurance from sellers; in some periods, government regulation prevents sellers from using information about buyer type to determine premiums. The results demonstrate the classic prediction that asymmetric information will result in adverse selection. Here, low-risk buyers will forego the purchase of insurance at a measurable loss of potential earnings. In the second part of the game, sellers and buyers can trade two different types of health insurance policies, one moderate and another generous. Under government-mandated community rating and limits on premium increases, no buyers will purchase the generous plan. Questions are provided to stimulate discussion of the causes and consequences of adverse selection for consumers and insurers and possible solutions for employer- and government-sponsored programs.     

An experimental investigation of bilateral oligopoly in emissions trading markets

Market power in emissions trading has been extensively investigated because emerging markets for tradable emissions permits, such as the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), can be dominated by relatively few large sellers or buyers. Previous studies on market power in emissions trading have assumed the existence of a subset of competitive players. However, a key feature of emissions trading markets is that emissions permits are often traded by a small number of large sellers and buyers. Using a laboratory experiment, our objective in this paper is to test the performance of an emissions trading market utilizing a double auction in a bilateral oligopoly. Our results suggest that the theoretical bilateral oligopoly models can better describe market outcomes of emissions trading. The effects of the slope of the marginal abatement cost function on market power in laboratory experiments are found to be consistent with those predicted by the theoretical bilateral oligopoly model. How market power is exercised depends on the curvature of the abatement cost function. If the marginal abatement cost function of buyers (sellers) is less steep than that of sellers (buyers), the price of permits is lower (higher) than that under perfect competition. This is because the market power of buyers (sellers) exceeds that of sellers (buyers). The price of permits is close to the perfect competitive price when all traders have the sameslope of the marginal abatement cost function.     

The market for corporate subsidiaries in Japan: An empirical study of trades among listed firms

We investigate trades of wholly- or partially-owned subsidiaries between firms listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) for the years 1996–2010, to explore the economic impact in terms of strategic refocusing, stock market valuation and performance effects. By pairing both sides to each deal, we show differences in firm characteristics, returns, and subsequent performance of buying and selling firms. Unlike mergers between whole firms, most subsidiary deals straddled different industries. Most sellers were larger, more diversified and less profitable than buyers. Our event study reveals that abnormal returns were positive for buyers yet insignificantly different from zero for sellers. However, subsidiary sales in the core business earned negative returns, the more so the larger the deal. An analysis of ex-post operating results shows that the performance of sellers often declined after the trade, in particular for firms that divested a core-related subsidiary. We conclude that subsidiary trades in Japan in this period contributed importantly to strategic repositioning and a more efficient use of corporate assets.     

纯粹中介与套利中间人——一个普通商品市场微观结构内生化模型

本文给出了一个包括两种交易方式的普通商品市场微观结构内生化模型,其中,商品的买者、卖者不可以直接进行交易,但被允许在两种相互竞争的中介交易方式——“套利中间人交易”与被现有文献所忽略但又非常重要的“纯粹中介交易”——中进行选择。对于微观结构的内生性,模型给出了如下结论：交易意愿较高的个体倾向于通过套利中间人进行交易,而意愿相对较低的则会选择纯粹中介作为交易媒介;市场的微观结构决定于三个参数——跨期替代率、纯粹中介单位交易量的交易成本与最有效率的套利中间人单位交易量的成本。     

Urbanization,inequality and property prices: Equilibrium pricing and transaction in the Chinese housing market

The particularly overheated Chinese housing market, with its soaring property prices, has attracted a large amount of research. We point out three of its striking empirical features, which current literature leaves unexplored: co-existence of steady growth of real transaction price and excess supply, accelerations in price-to-income ratio, and significantly strong positive correlation between real transaction prices and income inequality. A search-equilibrium model is built to explain these facts. Heterogeneous buyers and homogeneous sellers randomly search for partners to trade in a frictional property market. The search equilibrium of the property market is either a high-price-and-low-transaction elitist matching equilibrium, or a low-price-and-high-transaction pooled matching equilibrium. The terms of trade determine which equilibrium arises. Empirical observations argue for the development of China's property market through evolution from a pooled matching equilibrium to an elitist matching equilibrium. We set out to show that the market equilibrium is always inefficient, due to crowding out externalities and market incompleteness. Policy experiments support redistributive tax, as a means to improve social welfare.     

二手房交易中中介机构的信息屏障及其破解对策

目前房地产中介公司已成为二手房交易的主要渠道,许多中介公司利用买卖主体的信息不对称,有意制造信息屏障,获取额外收益。了解中介公司设置信息屏障的方式方法十分必要,它可以帮助买卖主体有效规避交易风险,减少不必要的经济损失。     

Seller Beware: Supply and Demand Reduction and Price Manipulation in Multiple‐Unit Uniform Price Auctions

We experimentally compare under‐revelation of supply and demand across alternative variations of ascending and descending two‐sided price clock auctions. We find that buyers reduce demand more when the price is ascending but sellers’ behavior is consistent across clock directions. As a result, the clock price rule has empirical effects on efficiency even though it is theoretically neutral.     

Costly Buyer Search in a Differentiated Products Model: An Experimental Study

This study examines whether the content of buyer information and the timing of its dissemination affects seller market power. We construct laboratory markets with differentiated goods and costly buyer search in which sellers simultaneously post prices. The experiment varies the information on price or product characteristics that buyers learn under different timing assumptions (pre‐ and postsearch), generating four information treatments. Theory predicts that price information lowers the equilibrium price, but information about product characteristics increases the equilibrium price. That is, contrary to intuition, the presence of informed buyers may impart a negative externality on other uninformed buyers. Data support the model's negative externality result when sellers face a large number of robot buyers that are programmed to search optimally. Observed prices conform to the model's comparative statics and are broadly consistent with predicted levels. With human buyers, however, excessive search instigates increased price competition, and sellers post prices that are significantly lower than predicted.     

经济全球化与中国的对外开放

XML (eXtensibleMarkupLanguage,可扩展标记语言 是由万维网络联盟于 1998年 2月发布的一种标准 ,它以一种开放的自我描述方式定义了数据结构 ,人们可以利用XML的一组规则创建针对特定应用领域的标记语言。cnXML则是基于XML技术建立的一个符合中国大陆商业习惯、传统和商业流     

Measuring Market Power in Bilateral Oligopoly: The Wholesale Market for Beef

Econometric methods for assessing the degree of market power typically rely on a maintained hypothesis of price-taking behavior on one side of the market or the other. In the analysis of bilateral oligopoly, however, one would like to leave open the question of whether buyers or sellers (or both) behave competitively while allowing for the possible exercise of market power on either side. In this paper, we address the problem of measuring market power in bilateral oligopoly. This requires that we first distinguish among three candidate equilibrium concepts: bilateral price-taking, seller price-taking, and buyer price-taking. Choosing among them comes down to a test of nonnested, nonlinear, simultaneous equation models. Our application to the U.S. wholesale market for beef, characterized by high degrees of concentration among both sellers (beef packers) and buyers (primarily retail grocery chains), reveals seller price-taking among the three candidates to be the most consistent with the data. In particular, the hypothesis of price-taking conduct on both sides of the market can be rejected. This is a conclusion that would not have been reached had we considered monopoly conduct by sellers as the only alternative to perfect competition.     

Financial Intermediation Development and Economic Growth： Does the Chinese Counterexample Exist？

In terms of the degree-of-freedom of bank loan decision-making, the ratio of loans of private enterprises and individuals to total loans is used to measure the development of China ＇s financial intermediation. Applying generalized method of moments estimation developed for dynamic panel data models, the present paper finds that the effect of financial intermediation development on economic growth is positive and statistieally significant when controlling for other variables, such as human capital foreign direct investment, securitization and foreign trade. The empirical results indicate that the concept of the so-called Chinese counterexample in financial development is questionable. Financial system reforms, including encouraging banks to operate independently, reducing or eliminating mandatory loans, and maldngfinancial decision-making more market-oriented, are important for China＇s economic growth.     

Supply Chains in Times of Crisis: Evidence from Kenya’s Production Network

Trading relationships between suppliers and buyers play a key role in transmitting both local and international shocks. We use transaction-level data from Kenya to study the relevance of a firm’s domestic network position and links to international supply chains in determining its trajectory during the COVID-19 crisis. We document that firms with high exposure to import and export markets tend to be larger, older, and employ more workers. The specialisation of direct importers, often intermediaries, on international markets made them very vulnerable to the initial COVID-19 shock. Exporters, one-third of whom operate in primary sectors, experienced a less severe decline in sales. We find that both importers and exporters adjust their domestic supply chains in response to international trade shocks — before and during the crisis alike. Sourcing from international markets does not crowd out domestic purchases, while sales abroad and at home can act as substitutes. Diversified domestic supply chains helped firms to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis and recover more strongly.     

The Effect of Environmental Risk on the Efficiency of Negotiated Transfer Prices

This study investigates whether environmental risk affects the efficiency of negotiated transfer prices. We analyze a setting where the buyer faces environmental risk but the seller does not. From the risk‐neutral firm's perspective, the transfer should be made in our setting because the expected value of the buyer's profit is greater than the certain opportunity cost of the seller from the transfer. We develop hypotheses to predict that, as environmental risk increases, it becomes more difficult for buyers and sellers to reach agreement. Such difficulty reduces efficiency in terms of both firm profit and negotiation time. We test our hypotheses via an experiment in which buyer and seller dyads negotiate over the transfer of a resource at six levels of environmental risk. Results show that, as predicted, environmental risk decreases efficiency. Specifically, as environmental risk increases, the frequency of agreement decreases, thereby reducing expected firm profit. Further, environmental risk increases negotiation time for those dyads that are able to reach an agreement. Data suggest that the cause of the decreased efficiency is that buyers and sellers use different reference points for determining a fair transfer price and environmental risk exacerbates the effects of such differences.     

Globalisation and Consumer Protection in East Asia: is it a zero sum game?

The provision of comprehensive consumer protection legislation is not high on the policy agenda in most developing economies, given what are seen to be more urgent economic and social goals such as encouraging economic growth and the eradication of poverty and illiteracy. Yet large welfare losses can occur as a result of market failure due to the significant information asymmetries that usually exist in developing economies, with buyers being at the mercy of much better informed sellers. It is time to overcome this problem through education, legislation and the creation of appropriate bureaucratic institutions. However, through globalisation the market itself may be able to achieve a greater degree of consumer protection, certainly in the short term, than would otherwise be achieved in the absence of such forces. While globalisation may create problems, it provides an opportunity to solve some consumer protection problems—a benefit from globalisation not previously highlighted. This article suggests that the nations of East Asia seek a regional consensus on developing a culture for consumer protection and on the implementation of consumer protection laws and enforcement procedures.     

商务谈判中的语言表达艺术

商务谈判不仅可以维护买卖双方自身权益,也可以有效解决分歧,还可以通过沟通、协商、妥协、合作等方式确保买卖双方取得各自的经济利益。在商务活动中,谈判不仅是一种方法和手段,也是一门语言表达艺术。能否有效利用这种语言表达艺术,对谈判成功与否起到决定性的作用。     

基于企业文化的企业品牌建设研究

在买方主导市场的今天,名牌产品成为卖方吸引并留住顾客、赚取高利润的最有力的武器。然而名牌产品的产生却要以名牌企业的建设为基础,名牌企业才是名牌产品的摇篮。如何通过建设企业品牌,增强企业竞争力,使企业持续发展,是国内许多企业共同面临的问题。国内外许多知名企业的发展事实表明,企业文化是建设企业品牌的前提和基础,只有基于企业文化来建设企业品牌才能够获得最终成功。     

公益性节庆活动自我营销筹措经费的途径探讨

将公益性节庆活动的政府拨款改为商业化筹款是必由之路。其实现的基本条件是:有愿买之人、有可卖之理、交易公平。实现途径是:转变观念、加速市场化改革;回顾总结推广、试点探索提高;加快行业建设和人才培养;强化营销管理、严格营销审计。第23届奥运会的经营思想和经营方法证明了这种改革的可能性。     

Subsistence and sales: the peasant economy of Württemberg in the early seventeenth century

This article examines the engagement of peasant cultivators with the grain market in Germany in the seventeenth century. It demonstrates a differentiated propensity to sell in regard to different grains; a preference among cultivators for retaining subsistence foodstuffs; the importance of payment in kind in the labour market; and the lack of a clear-cut social structural divide between grain sellers and buyers among those who cultivate arable land. It is thus argued that the analytical concept of 'the peasant' retains its use in understanding this society, but that attitudes displayed by the peasantry to 'the market' must be clearly set in the context of the specific product markets and practices to retain any analytical value.     

消费者保障计划的作用机理——基于信号博弈的理论分析

信息不对称是阻碍电子商务进一步发展的关键问题。消费者保障计划是淘宝网在2007年推出的一种交易机制,旨在解决网上交易信任问题。本文运用信号博弈理论分析了该机制中的＂先行赔付＂计划和＂7天无理由退换货＂计划在网上交易中的作用机理,并据此讨论了各种因素对分离均衡产生及卖家利润的影响,比较了两种计划在降低消费者购买风险方面所起到的不同作用,为该机制的使用和完善提供了理论参考。     

Tax Liability-Side Equivalence in Experimental Posted-Offer Markets

In theory, the incidence of a tax should be independent of the side of the market on which it is levied. This principle of liability-side equivalence underlies virtually all theories of tax incidence. Policy discussions, however, tend to place great emphasis on the legal division of tax payments. We use computerized experimental posted-offer markets to test liability-side equivalence. We find that market outcomes are essentially the same when the tax is levied on sellers as when it is levied on buyers. Thus, we cannot reject liability-side equivalence.