Free entry equilibria with positive profits: A unified approach to quantity and price competition games

Free entry equilibria are usually characterized by the zero profit condition. We plead instead for a strict application of the Nash equilibrium concept to a symmetric simultaneous game played by actual and potential entrants, producing under decreasing average cost. Equilibrium is then typically indeterminate, with a number of active firms varying between an upper bound imposed by profitability and a lower bound required by sustainability. We use a canonical model with strategies represented by prices, although covering standard regimes of quantity and price competition, to show that in equilibrium the critical (profit maximizing) price must lie between the break-even and the limit prices.     

粮价、盐价与房价调控的比较

粮价、房价以及前段时间发生的"盐慌"问题是最近人们关注的焦点话题,本文在分析一般商品价格调控原理基础上,通过比较粮价、盐价与房价的调控,提出房价调控的政策建议:增加住房供给,尤其是增加中小户型住房的供给;限制投资性住房需求和投机性住房需求;完善住房保障制度。     

Revising price history: consumer price index for Norway 1492–2018

ABSTRACT

The paper presents a new combined annual cost of living and consumer price index for Norway covering 1492–2018, indicating that Norwegian price history has to be revised. The new historical price index is constructed on a significantly richer data material, which also makes it cover a longer period of price history than the existing one. This is made possible by the compilation of quantitative data from numerous sources, mostly originating from the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with grain prices stretching back to 1492. The new combined cost of living and consumer price index is constructed by a Laspeyres approach with shifting baskets for commodities and expenditure groups.

The index makes it possible to follow annual inflation and deflation in Norway for a period of 526 years. When comparing to existing indices, the new series reveals that revisions are needed in Norwegian price history. These make the historical price development more in line with those of the neighbouring countries and more in line with the pattern of wholesale prices.     

价格竞争与非价格竞争的理性思考

本文通过对价格竞争与非价格竞争的比较,衡量价格竞争与非价格竞争的利弊,分析企业价格竞争策略选择,揭示价格竞争的引发因素及社会经济效应,并提出了价格竞争的替代方案。     

广州市住宅房价收入比及合理房价的探讨

本文首先对国际通用的房价收入比公式进行修改与完善,使其更贴合我国现实国情。然后选择广州市的房地产市场进行实证分析,分别对广州市的新建商品房、存量房的房价收入比进行测算,继而得出广州市住宅总体房价收入比。在此基础分析房地产市场存在问题,并提出相应对策。     

Inflation and relative price variability: Evidence for India

This study decomposes relative price variability into a component due to inflation and a component due to real factors. The empirical results for India suggest that real factors account for 55% and inflation accounts for 45% of the variability in relative price changes. The proportion of inflation induced relative price variability increases with the rise in inflation, implying that inflation has distortionary effects on the structure of relative prices. Further, larger part of variability in the relative price changes seems to have been generated by fluctuations in the relative prices of a few commodities. The sector wise analysis shows that the major share of total relative price variability is contributed by fluctuations in the prices of manufactured products. The more crucial inference that emerges from the empirical analysis is that the inflation rate at which variability of relative price changes is minimum is found to be 4.5%, which is consistent with the official threshold rate often claimed by the Reserve Bank of India.     

Accounting for Multiplicity in Inference on Economics Journal Rankings

Nearly all journal ranking analyses assume that rank statistics of journal quality are deterministic, yet they are clearly random. The only study to recognize ranking uncertainty is Stern (2013), which calculates standard errors for a ranking of five‐year impact factors for 232 economics journals and performs inference using a series of univariate t‐tests. We revisit the Stern study but perform multivariate inference to control the overall error rate of the testing procedure. The results are compared and differences highlighted.     

Pluralism and well-being indices

This paper advocates a variation on James Griffin's prudential value theory of well-being. Prudential value theory is consistent with various forms of pluralism. It also helps us understand how we do intra- and interpersonal comparisons of well-being. If we start from this view of well-being, I suggest we do not have a problem analogous to Arrow's impossibility result for a social welfare function: the analogous conditions are not appropiate constraints on a well-being function. The account of well-being is brought to bear on attempts made by some, particularly Dasgupta and Weale, to make international comparisons of well-being. It is argued that difficulties with such attempts occur chiefly because of disanalogies between interpersonal and international comparisons of well-being.     

论寻美用情在语文教学中的作用

语文学科具有人文性,它的这种属性是借助于一篇篇融自然美、生活美、情感美、艺术美、语言美于一炉的有血有肉的文学作品表现出来的,教师进行语文教学时,既要讲清文章的"理",又要讲清文章的"情".也就是要给传统课堂教学注入新鲜的血液,让它流动起来,使沉闷的课堂活跃起来,焕发出生命的活力,以达到教学的目的,进而提高教学质量.     

EC anti-dumping policy: Are price undertakings a legal substitute for illegal price fixing?

Antidumpingpolitik der EG: Sind Preisverpflichtungen ein legaler Ersatz für illegale Preisabsprachen? — Die Mehrzahl der EG-Antidumpingverfahren wird durch Annahme von Preisverpflichtungen abgeschlossen. Preisverpflichtungen k?nnen als Ersatz für internationale Preisabsprachen betrachtet werden. Ihr Zweck ist es, die Preise gedumpter Importe zu erh?hen und die Preise konkurrierender EG-Güter zu stabilisieren. Es gibt jedoch keine Anzeichen, da? die Kartellwirkungen von Preisverpflichtungen über die von den EG-Beh?rden beabsichtigten Schutzwirkungen hinausgehen. La politique anti-dumping de la CE: Les obligations de prix sont-elles un remplacement légal pour des accords illégals sur les prix? — La majorité des procédures anti-dumping de la CE sont réglées par l’acceptation d’une obligation de prix. On peut considérer de telles obligations comme un remplacement pour des conventions internationales de prix. On poursuit le but d’augmenter les prix d’importations affectés par le dumping et de stabiliser les prix des produits de la CE étant en concurrence. Il n’y a pas d’indications que les effets de cartel des obligations de prix dépassent les mesures de défense que les autorités de la CE ont eu en intention. La política antidumping de la CE: ?son precios guía un substituto legal de concertaciones ilegales de precios? — La mayoría de los procedimientos antidumping de la CE cierran con la aceptatión de precios guía. Precios guia pueden ser considerados como substitutes de concertaciones internacionales de precios. Su fin es elevar los precios de las importaciones bajo dumping y estabilizar los precios de bienes competitivos originarios de la CE. No existen razones, empero, para concluir que el efecto cártel de los precios guia superen el grado de protectión intencionada por la burocracia de la CE.     

Retail price concentration, transaction costs, and price flexibility circa 1900

This paper studies a unique 1901 data set containing prices of three products obtained from grocery stores in over 1400 cities nationwide. A striking characteristic is a high concentration of retail prices at relatively few “even” numbers. I propose a novel transactions cost explanation for this phenomenon on which existing theory is silent. In particular, grocers selected prices that simplified the task of toting up customer bills by hand and reduced related costs. As stores independently adopted this strategy across the country, prices converged to a few even numbers. Several empirical regularities for all three products are consistent with this explanation. An important implication is that preferences for computationally convenient prices would have made prices “sticky.” An independent study of price flexibility circa 1890 supports this hypothesis. The underlying data show price concentration patterns similar to the 1901 data, suggesting that the phenomenon covered a wide range of products.     

Trade-size clustering and price efficiency

Using a sample of 26 markets, this paper investigates if trade-size clustering affects price efficiency. Our results suggest that more clustering trades are associated with greater resemblance of a random walk, less pricing errors, and shorter price delays. Moreover, we examine three underlying mechanisms to explain how clustering improves efficiency. First, we show that clustering trades are informative, consistent with the idea that stealth traders leverage such tactics to convey private information to prices. Second, we discover that clustering trades are positively related to investor attention (stock liquidity), implying that informed clustering trades happen at the presence of enormous uninformed investors. High attention and liquid markets help reduce the trading friction, thereby prompting quick price adjustments to private information released by the stealth trading.     

Agricultural land price and quality

Land quality can be expected to have important implications for productivity and so also for policy. Land quality is a factor influencing the price of land. Factors influencing land prices were therefore disaggregated on a regional basis. Land quality indices were constructed by considering only those factors directly affecting quality, and with significant statistical coefficients. Statistical regions were used as units of observation. Land quality was found to vary considerably. In some South African regions, land quality is comparable to that in the most arid regions of the world. The quality in certain small areas compares with above‐average land qualities in the world, but not with the best.