Durability in a Monopoly With a Small Number of Buyers

This paper shows that the number of buyers is a crucial demand characteristic for a monopolist's choice of durability. When he sells to a few large buyers, he offers a more durable good than when selling to many small buyers. By increasing durability of the good sold to large buyers, the monopolist encourages current purchasing and can thus engage in greater intertemporal price discrimination and make more profit. Therefore Bulow's proposition of minimal durability does not survive in the case of few buyers. This has not been pointed out thus far.     

Durable goods with quality differentiation

We study the optimal strategy of a durable-goods monopolist who can offer goods in different qualities. The key finding is that the presence of the additional sorting variable further undermines the firm's commitment problem, leading to results that contrast sharply with those of standard durable-goods models or those of models where the firm can commit.     

Entry deterrence and innovation in durable-goods monopoly

This paper investigates the efficiency of innovation investments in a durable-goods monopoly when a potential entrant threatens to innovate as well. We show that the durability of the good endows the monopolist with the power to discourage rival innovation since current sales alter the demand for a new generation of the good. The equilibrium is therefore determined not only by the incentive for intertemporal price discrimination in durable-goods monopoly, but also by the incumbent's concern for maintaining the technological leadership. We demonstrate that entry deterrence followed by no innovation always implies underinvestment in innovation.     

Flexible and Committed Profit Sharing with Wage Bargaining: Implications for Equilibrium Unemployment

We analyze the relationship between profit sharing, employee effort, wage formation and unemployment under different relative timings of the wage and profit sharing decisions. The optimal profit share under commitment exceeds that under flexibility, because through a profit share commitment the firm can induce wage moderation. The negotiated profit sharing depends positively on the bargaining power of trade union and it has both effort-enhancing and wage-moderating effects. Higher profit sharing is shown to reduce equilibrium unemployment under ``sufficiently rigid' labor market institutions, but it can harm employment when labor market ``rigidities' are ``small enough'.     

收入分配、需求体制与经济增长*——基于“马克思-凯恩斯-卡莱茨基”理论的经验研究

本文运用1978—2015年省级面板数据分析了我国劳动收入份额变动对消费、投资、净出口以及总需求的长期效应及其与经济增长的关系，对“马克思-凯恩斯-卡莱茨基”（MKK）理论进行检验。结果显示：（1）我国的国内需求体制为工资拉动型，但是包括净出口在内的总需求体制为利润拉动型。（2）劳动收入份额上升对消费具有明显的促进作用，对净出口有明显的抑制作用，但对投资的影响不显著。其原因在于我国政府和国企主导的“逆周期”投资和非利润导向型投资。（3）随着国企改革的深化、民间投资占比提升，我国的国内需求体制有向利润拉动型转型的趋势。相比中部和西部地区，东部沿海地区的需求体制更偏向于利润拉动型。     

Organizational form and output quality

This paper re‐examines the relationship between a firm's organizational form, not‐for‐profit versus for‐profit, and its output quality. The Arrow‐Hansmann theory of hidden action on the part of providers predicts higher quality for not‐for‐profit suppliers. This prediction has a puzzling lack of support in the empirical literature. We propose a theory that resolves the empirical puzzle and generates additional testable implications. The theory starts with the traditional assumptions of hidden action and supplier altruism. It then incorporates two additional features of real‐world markets: hidden information on supplier ability to provide high quality and a variation across buyers in the degree of informational asymmetry. The central prediction of the theory is that quality has a higher variance across for‐profits than across not‐for‐profits. Preliminary evidence from the US market for hospital care is consistent with this prediction.     

Advance disposal fee vs. disposal fee: A monopolistic producer’s durability choice model

This study examines how the timing of waste disposal fee collection affects the producer’s choice of built-in product durability and social welfare in a durable-goods monopoly model. We categorize the waste disposal fee policies into two: advance disposal fee (ADF) policy and disposal fee (DF) policy. We show that a DF policy has two opposing effects on durability. Firstly, a DF policy gives the producer an incentive to increase durability in order to delay the households’ waste disposal and to discount future payments of the disposal fee (the payment-discounting effect). Secondly, a DF policy creates an incentive for consumers to dump waste illegally in order to mitigate the payment of the disposal fee, and gives the producer an incentive to reduce durability in order to avoid market saturation and the associated future price cuts (the illegal-dumping effect). When the disposal fee is low, the payment-discounting effect dominates the illegal-dumping effect under a DF policy, leading to the enhancement of durability. In this case, from a social welfare viewpoint, a DF policy may be more desirable than an ADF policy if the environmental damage associated with illegal dumping is not serious. However, when the disposal fee is high, a DF policy induces more illegal dumping, reduces durability, and inflicts more environmental damage. Therefore, an ADF policy is more socially desirable than a DF policy when the disposal fee is high. Moreover, we consider an oligopoly case and find that an ADF policy is more socially desirable in an industry with smaller market power.     

THE SCOPE FOR NON‐PROFIT OBJECTIVES IN A MIXED OLIGOPOLY UNDER INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

We ask how the scope for non‐profit objectives in a state‐owned enterprise (SOE) in a mixed oligopoly changes because of competition from firms in another country. There is no change if costs and demand are given, unless the trade partner is a low‐cost country. However, the scope for non‐profit objectives is limited by the country's relative size if wages are market‐clearing and if workers and firms are stationary, because of reduced competitiveness caused by higher real wage rates. The total surplus is then not affected by the actions of the SOE. International trade does not otherwise reduce the scope for its non‐profit objectives if workers and firms are mobile, but productivity differences might require restrictions in order to avoid a complete relocation of the workforce in either country.     

中国彩票业对经济发展的影响分析

彩票经济随着彩票销量的不断攀升,彩票市场的逐渐繁荣和彩票业的迅速发展应运而生,并成为推动我国经济发展的重要因素.在经济学上,专家把彩票看做是“第三次分配”.彩票行业经过25年的发展已逐渐形成,彩票消费已日益成为现代经济生活中一种重要的经济现象.彩票业对我国整体经济的发展具有“软税收”、拉动内需、增加就业、提供社会保障资金支持、推动普惠型社会福利事业的发展,但同时在彩票业发展中也存在着穷人购彩、购彩者投机心理过重等不利于经济发展的负面影响.因此,为实现我国彩票业的健康与可持续发展,应当加强我国彩票业的规范化管理,提高法律层级,加强彩票资金的监管力度,同时加强彩票文化建设,引导彩民理性购彩.     

重资产配置与国有企业效率——兼议混合所有制改革中的价值网优化

在全面深化经济体制改革的过程中，国有企业改革一直处于核心环节。此前的研究主要关注了国有资本的“进退”或“比例”对企业效率的影响，本文则从异质性资源的角度分析了国有企业的重资产配置带来的效率差异。本文基于动态博弈模型提出基本命题并进行实证检验，得出以下主要结论：第一，国有企业较之非国企业具有更高比例的重资产配置；第二，当重资产配置对非国有企业的效率产生负向拖累时，改由国有企业承担有助于减少其不利影响；第三，在混合所有制中，随着非国有资本介入程度的减弱，重资产配置效率得到加强。本文的研究启示在于，对于业已形成重资产配置特征的国有企业而言，轻资产转型并不是其改革的必然方向，应当从异质性资源角度审慎定夺，利用异质性资源循序渐进地提升效率。在混合所有制改革中，非国有资本和国有资本可在轻资产和重资产中实现优势互补，提升价值网络整体的绩效水平。同时，当国有企业的决策目标中社会福利的权重相对减少、企业利润的权重相对增加时，国有企业才可能降低重资产配置倾向，并提高轻资产配置效率。     

中国就业发展新论——核心就业与非核心就业理论分析

正如企业创新作为市场经济的基本动力受到忽视 ,核心就业作为市场就业的基础在中国经济改革以来一直没有受到足够重视 ,因此造成了今天就业发展特别困难的局面。核心就业是指直接参与、引导、促进和扶持企业创新活动的那部分就业。在长期 ,核心就业的兴衰决定了市场经济中总体就业的兴衰。中国企业的核心就业水平目前仅达到 2 5%左右 ,总体核心就业水平达到 3 0 %左右。为了达到 80 %左右的市场一般核心就业水平的目标 ,中国需要改变现行的国有企业改革模式 ,建立政府权力均衡机制 ,以良性发挥政府功能 ,以及完善农村的改革和发展道路等各项政策措施。     

Trading networks with price-setting agents

In a wide range of markets, individual buyers and sellers trade through intermediaries, who determine prices via strategic considerations. Typically, not all buyers and sellers have access to the same intermediaries, and they trade at correspondingly different prices that reflect their relative amounts of power in the market. We model this phenomenon using a game in which buyers, sellers, and traders engage in trade on a graph that represents the access each buyer and seller has to the traders. We show that the resulting game always has a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium, and that all equilibria lead to an efficient allocation of goods. Finally, we analyze trader profits in terms of the graph structure — roughly, a trader can command a positive profit if and only if it has an “essential” connection in the network, thus providing a graph-theoretic basis for quantifying the amount of competition among traders.     

附加职工安置约束的国企产权拍卖机制研究

The transfer of SOE’s property right involves benefits readjustment of its stakeholders; therefore the design of the trading mechanism is not only to sell the SOE with a high price but also to realize other non-price objectives such as rearrangement of original employees, further development of the enterprise etc. This paper constructs a bidding mechanism with the constraint of accommodating employees to analyze the tradeoff between maximizing SOE auction revenue and minimizing induced unemployment. By adding that the winner is required to settle down a certain quantity of former SOE employees in the new enterprise, this mechanism brings on the competition among prospective investors in both the price and the quantity of employment, which can help the government to balance the different objectives more efficiently. However, the constraint will only work under the condition that the government has stressed sufficiently on the employees’ rearrangement and set the best constraint threshold. Moreover, the government should set an explicit compensation standard for the induced lay-offs to eliminate the investors’ accommodating cost dispersion and introduce more strategic investors with considerable heterogeneity to participate in the bidding. __________ Translated from Jingji yanjiu 经济研究 (Economic Research Journal), 2007, (10):115–125     

Dynamic signaling and market breakdown

We consider the effects a public revelation of information (e.g. rating, grade) has on trading in a dynamic signaling model. Competing buyers offer prices to a privately informed seller who can reject them and delay trade. Delay is costly and the seller has no commitment to its duration. The external public information allows for signaling in equilibrium. More interestingly, we characterize the dynamics of trade and prices. If signals are noisy, no trade takes place just before the revelation of external information. If signals are fully revealing, then trade occurs even close to revelation, however, transaction prices are discontinuous.     

Commitment and choice of partner in a negotiation with a deadline

This paper analyses the effects of partially revocable endogenous commitments of a seller in a negotiation with a deadline. In particular, we examine when commitment is a source of strength, a source of inefficiency and when it does not affect the bargaining outcome at all. We show that when commitment possesses a minimum amount of irrevocability this crucially determines the bargaining outcome. In the bilateral bargaining case, commitment becomes a source of inefficiency since it causes a deadline effect. In the choice of partner framework, however, the deadline effect disappears and there is an immediate agreement and, moreover, commitment becomes a source of strength since it increases the seller's equilibrium payoff by triggering off competition between the buyers.     

Sustainable reputations with rating systems

In a product choice game played between a long lived seller and an infinite sequence of buyers, we assume that buyers cannot observe past signals. To facilitate the analysis of applications such as online auctions (e.g. eBay), online shopping search engines (e.g. BizRate.com) and consumer reports, we assume that a central mechanism observes all past signals, and makes public announcements every period. The set of announcements and the mapping from observed signals to the set of announcements is called a rating system. We show that, absent reputation effects, information censoring cannot improve attainable payoffs. However, if there is an initial probability that the seller is a commitment type that plays a particular strategy every period, then there exists a finite rating system and an equilibrium of the resulting game such that, the expected present discounted payoff of the seller is almost his Stackelberg payoff after every history. This is in contrast to Cripps, Mailath and Samuelson (2004) [5], where it is shown that reputation effects do not last forever in such games if buyers can observe all past signals. We also construct finite rating systems that increase payoffs of almost all buyers, while decreasing the seller?s payoff.     

What's behind the rise in profitability in the US in the 1980s and 1990s?

Profitability in the US has been rising since the early 1980sand by 1997 was at its highest level since its post-World WarII peak in the mid-1960s, and the profit share, by one definition,at its highest point. In this paper, I examine the role of thechange in the profit share and capital intensity, as well asstructural change, on movements in the rate of profit between1947 and 1997. Its recent recovery is traced to a rise in theprofit share in national income, a slowdown in capital–labourgrowth at the industry level, and employment shifts to relativelylabour-intensive industries.     

More on alternative objectives of labor-managed firms

This paper focuses on an alternative theory of a labor-managed firm where the main behavioral assumption is profit per laborer maximization subject to an employment constraint, or, alternatively, employment maximization subject to a profit per laborer constraint. This theory and its implications are derived employing a standard duality approach. The results are then compared with those obtained in the theory of the traditional labor-managed firm which maximizes profit per laborer.     

STATE OWNED ENTERPRISES AS INSTRUMENTS OF INNOVATION POLICY

This article expands the literature on the rationales and governance of state owned enterprises (SOEs). We show that SOEs could be seen as instruments of innovation policies and change agents within broader innovation systems that can overcome many of the conventional challenges of innovation policy and its implementation, from coordination and implementation of policies and innovation system actor networks to financing innovation. We review the existing literature on the rationales of SOEs and extend it to include innovation as a central rationale. Thereafter we provide a taxonomy that reveals the necessary policy and managerial conditions and constraints for using SOEs as instruments of innovation policy. We place some of the better‐known innovation‐oriented SOE successes and failures into this taxonomy and show that this approach will allow in future research to explore different SOE practices and potential for using SOEs as innovation policy instruments across countries.     

中国工业产业结构与企业技术研发行为的实证分析

产业结构升级一直是我国经济学界所关心的一个问题，工业产业的升级更是一个众所关注的焦点。本文在前人研究的基础上，利用中国工业产业数据，采用了经典的SCP范式模型．对熊彼特的两个经典假说进行了验证。发现竞争与企业利润同时对企业研发具有促进作用．熊彼特两个相互矛盾的结论同时得到了支持。通过对应分析，我们对中国工业内产业不同特点和企业不同特点进行了归类，提出国有企业在不同行业的产值比重是导致了这两个看似矛盾的结论同时并存的原因。