On the difficulty of eliciting summary information

The revelation principle asserts that, in principle, the allocative performance of direct mechanisms (institutions in which an exhaustive report of privately held information is elicited from each agent) is at least as good as that of any other class of institutions. The distinction between the incentive properties of such exhaustive reporting and of summary reporting is studied here. It is shown that, unless strong restrictions are placed on an agent's utility function, the incentive properties of truthful summary reporting about a multidimensional parameter (e.g., reporting of its first coordinate) are extremely fragile.     

On the evolutionary selection of sets of Nash equilibria

It is well established for evolutionary dynamics in asymmetric games that a pure strategy combination is asymptotically stable if and only if it is a strict Nash equilibrium. We use an extension of the notion of a strict Nash equilibrium to sets of strategy combinations called ‘strict equilibrium set’ and show the following. For a large class of evolutionary dynamics, including all monotone regular selection dynamics, every asymptotically stable set of rest points that contains a pure strategy combination in each of its connected components is a strict equilibrium set. A converse statement holds for two-person games, for convex sets and for the standard replicator dynamic.     

On the role of intentionality in evolutionary economic change

One important challenge to evolutionary economics consists of tackling the paradoxical relationship between purposeful human action and the ‘blindness’ of evolutionary processes. We argue that the theoretical treatment of intended action is a prerequisite for venturing beyond the phenomenological explanation of evolutionary processes. If so, evolutionary processes are not (at least completely) ‘blind’. Of course, not every change in a society is a consequence of purposeful action. However, even if not every action were intended and not every novelty were the consequence of pursuing particular goals, the evolution of individual intentions and pursued goals (micro-level) is a key process in explaining economic change. In this context, an evolutionary efficiency criterion is proposed.     

Reciprocity—an indirect evolutionary analysis

This paper investigates agents who face a stylized pecuniary ‘game of life’ comprising the ultimatum game and the dictator game. Utility may but need not be attached to equity and reciprocity, as formalized by Falk and Fischbacher (Games Econom Behav, 54(2): 293–315, 2006) but, critically, this social component of preferences cannot be conditioned on whether an ultimatum or a dictator game is played. Evolutionary fitness of agents is determined solely by material success. Under these conditions, a strong preference for reciprocity, but little interest in equity as such evolves. Possible exogenous constraints that link reciprocity and equity concerns imply long-run levels of both which depend on the relative frequency of ultimatum vs. dictator interaction in agents’ multi-game environment. Financial support from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) is gratefully acknowledged.     

On economic applications of evolutionary game theory

Evolutionary games have considerable unrealized potential for modeling substantive economic issues. They promise richer predictions than orthodox game models but often require more extensive specifications. This paper exposits the specification of evolutionary game models and classifies the possible asymptotic behavior for one and two dimensional models.     

On the evolutionary edge of migration as an assortative mating device

In a haystack-type representation of a heterogeneous population that is evolving according to a payoff structure of a prisoner’s dilemma game, migration is modeled as a process of ‘swapping’ individuals between heterogeneous groups of constant size after a random allocation fills the haystacks, but prior to mating. Migration is characterized by two parameters: an exogenous participation-in-migration cost (of search, coordination, movement, and arrangement-making) which measures the migration effort, and an exogenous technology—of coordinating and facilitating movement between populated haystacks and the colonization of currently unpopulated haystacks—which measures the migration intensity. Starting from an initially heterogeneous population that consists of both cooperators and defectors, a scenario is postulated under which ‘programmed’ migration can act as a mechanism that brings about a long-run survival of cooperation.

An evolutionary analysis of insurance markets with adverse selection

The equilibrium nonexistence problem in Rothschild and Stiglitz's insurance market is reexamined in a dynamic setting. Insurance firms are boundedly rational and offer menus of insurance contracts which are periodically revised: profitable competitors' contracts are imitated and loss-making contracts are withdrawn. Occasionally, a firm experiments by withdrawing or innovating a random set of contracts. We show that Rothschild and Stiglitz's candidate competitive equilibrium contracts constitute the unique long-run market outcome if innovation experiments are restricted to contracts which are sufficiently “similar” to those currently on the market.     

中小企业融资困难的原因分析与对策探讨

困扰我国中小企业发展的融资问题一直未能得到缓解,原因是多方面的,本文在分析了信贷机制不对接、直接融资不畅通、担保不足和政策扶持不强等原因的基础上,通过总结其他国家扶持中小企业的经验做法,提出加快解决我国中小企业融资难题的多种措施,包括建立专门的政策机构、完善现有的法律制度、拓展政府服务职能、创新融资手段等。     

中小企业融资难问题探究

中小型企业提供了一大批就业岗位,在我国经济发展中有着不可替代的地位。然而,随着近年来经济危机的影响及我国宏观政策的调整,中小企业的发展速度已经明显减慢,许多专家学者指出融资难问题是其中制约中小企业进一步发展的一个重要因素。因此,正确认识我国中小企业发展的现状和所面临的问题,对于促进我国国民经济持续健康发展具有重要意义。首先对我国中小企业的发展现状和融资现状进行总结和分析,然后针对我国的现实状况提出了解决我国中小企业融资难问题的对策建议。     

A difficulty with the address models of product differentiation

Summary. In models of product differentiation and location models it is implicitly assumed that consumers can afford to buy the differentiated goods in the market. I show that with income heterogeneity there are severe existence problems of a price equilibrium in models of horizontal product differentiation with unit demand because some consumers are income-constrained. The result generalizes to other models of product differentiation, search, and switching costs. I present an alternative specification of variable individual demand in which this kind of existence problem cannot arise. Received: October 17, 1997; revised version: February 20, 1998     

中小企业应对融资困难的财务策略

中小企业融资困难很大程度是受企业自身发展的影响,其财务不规范、信息不透明是影响企业融资的主要障碍。因此,提出加强企业内外部融资的财务策略,以改善企业的融资困境。     

The difficulty of applying the economics of time and ignorance

The Economics of Time & Ignorance (1985) is a key text within Austrian economics. Among the so-called “third generation” of modern Austrian economists, however, the book seems to have had very little impact compared to the notable influence it had upon the proceeding generation. Several possible reasons are considered, including a disagreement with the substantive claims made in Time & Ignorance or the possibility that Time & Ignorance has nothing to offer this generation. We challenge these potential explanations and, argue, that the root cause of this seeming neglect is the movement by this generation towards applied research, an area where Time & Ignorance has relatively less to offer.     

Asymmetric information without common priors: an indirect evolutionary analysis of quantity competition

The common prior assumption justifies private beliefs as posterior probabilities when updating a common prior based on individual information. We dispose of the common prior assumption for a homogeneous oligopoly market with uncertain costs and firms entertaining arbitrary priors about other firms’ cost-type. We show that true prior beliefs can not be evolutionarily stable when truly expected profit measures (reproductive) success.     

A difficulty with the “command” allocation mechanism

This paper studies the implementation of taut economic plans under uncertainty in a simple dynamic model of resource allocation. It argues that the “command” mechanism is unable to control the stochastic system, causing unexpected shocks to accumulate, disrupting the production process and leading to increasing divergence between plan and performance. The principal source of this problem is lack of feedback from the state of the system to the allocation decision. Two market-like mechanisms are also analized. Both stabilize the system and minimize the impact of uncertainty on its performance, showing that the difficulty is indeed with the “command” allocation mechanism.     

土地一级市场透明化殊非易事

1月9日,北京市国土资源局公布,两家房地产开发企业成为首批土地一级开发招投标项目的优胜者.舆论称,政府垄断土地一级开发的局面从此将被打破.此前,北京先后出台了三个"办法"来推动土地一级开发向市场化迈进.