Monetary policy with linear information costs

The paper adresses the problem of a monetary economy with costs of information, imposed in linear form. In particular, we make use of a strategic market game with money where equilibria are standardly non-Walrasian, permitting an active role to monetary policy. The imposition of information costs alters the demand of real balances since traders demand extra money for gathering and processing the necessary information. As a result, money injections could be proved welfare improving only when the induced information costs do not offset the resulted gains to trade.     

Non-neutral information costs with match-value uncertainty

This paper investigates a model featuring a monopolist seller and a buyer with an uncertain valuation for the seller’s product. The seller chooses an information system which allows the buyer to receive a private signal, potentially correlated with her valuation. No restrictions are imposed on the conditional distributions of the signal; the cost of the information system is proportional to its precision, measured by the mutual information between the distributions of the buyer’s valuation and the signal. In equilibrium, the information system trades off the information cost against the losses deriving from a probability of trade that is either “too high,” or “too low”—depending on the relative weight of the expected losses resulting from errors of the two types—and sends “non-neutral” signals, typically. Thus, in general, the probability of a correct signal depends on the buyer’s actual valuation, and the probability of trade differs from the probability of a valuation exceeding the cost of production. The expected total surplus generated by the exchange is maximized, in equilibrium.     

Sunk costs and fairness in incomplete information bargaining

We study a bilateral trading relationship in which one agent, the seller, can make a nonrecoverable investment in order to generate potential gains from trade. Afterwards, the seller makes a price offer that the buyer can either accept or reject. If agents are fairminded, sellers who are known by the buyer to have high investment costs are predicted to charge higher prices. If the investment cost is private information, low-cost sellers should price more aggressively and high-cost sellers less aggressively than under complete information, giving rise to disagreement and/or underinvestment. Our experiment support these predictions.     

The costs and benefits of additional information in agency models with endogenous information structures

We study the effect of additional private information in an agency model with an endogenous information structure. If more private information becomes available to the agent, this may hurt the agent, benefit the principal, and affect the total surplus ambiguously.     

The social value of public information with convex costs of information acquisition

In a beauty contest framework, welfare can decrease with public information if the precision of private information is exogenous, whereas welfare necessarily increases with public information if the precision is endogenous with linear costs of information acquisition. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile these results by considering nonlinear costs of information acquisition. The main result of this paper is a necessary and sufficient condition for welfare to increase with public information. Using it, we show that costs of information acquisition are linear if and only if welfare necessarily increases with public information. Thus, welfare can decrease with public information for any strictly convex costs. This is because convex costs mitigate the so-called crowding-out effect of public information on private information, thereby making the social value of public information with endogenous precision closer to that with exogenous precision.     

Dilution costs,underinvestment, and utility regulation under asymmetric information

This article addresses the problem faced by a regulated natural monopolist who must raise outside funds to finance socially desirable projects. We demonstrate that fair rate of return utility price regulation will lead to underinvestment incentives in the presence of asymmetric information between the firm and the capital markets regarding the firm's assets and future costs. This problem is especially severe when financing choice is restricted to equity. Underinvestment can be either completely eliminated by adjusting the allowed rate of return above the fair rate or reduced by switching to debt finance.Support from the Center for the Study of Regulated Industry at Georgia State University is gratefully acknowledged. We have benefited from the comments of Victor Andrews, two anonymous reviewers, and the editor, Michael A. Crew. The usual disclaimer applies.     

The macroeconomic effects of infrequent information with adjustment costs

We extend the macroeconomic literature on Ss -type rules by introducing infrequent information in a kinked adjustment-cost model. We first show that optimal individual decision rules are both state and time dependent. We then develop an aggregation framework to study the macroeconomic implications of such optimal individual decision rules. In our model, a vast number of agents act together, and more so when uncertainty is large. The average effect of an aggregate shock is inversely related to its size and to aggregate uncertainty. These results contrast with those obtained with full information adjustment cost models. JEL Classification: E0,E1,E2,E3
Les effets macroéconomiques de l'information infréquente quand il y a des coûts d'ajustement. Les auteurs étendent la portée de la littérature spécialisée sur les règles de type Ss en proposant des postulats d'information infréquente et de fonction de coûts d'ajustement pliée. On montre que les règles de décision optimales des individus dépendent à la fois de l'état de l'environnement et du moment. On développe alors un cadre d'agrégation pour étudier les impacts macroéconomiques de ces règles optimales de décision. Dans ce modèle, un grand nombre d'agents agissent de concert, et optimales ce d'autant plus que l'incertitude s'accroît. L'effet moyen d'un choc au niveau global est inversement reliéà son importance et au niveau d'incertitude agrégée. Ces résultats contredisent ceux qu'on obtient dans des modèles de coûts d'ajustement avec pleine information.     

The effects of information costs on search and convergence in experimental markets

Nearly all markets contain some kind of friction, making it difficult to reach full efficiency. One ubiquitous source of market friction is the cost of obtaining pricing information. We determine how market performance as well as buyer and seller behavior are affected by the introduction of price information costs in experimental posted markets.Rothschild [Journal of Political Economy (1973) 1283; Journal of Political Economy (1974) 689] theorizes that search is negatively related to knowledge of the price dispersion and the cost of search, and positively related to market price dispersion. We find that market knowledge and the cost of search itself affect search, but we find no evidence supporting the role of price dispersion in search decisions.We also find evidence supporting Smith and Plott [Review of Economic Studies (1979) 133] and Walker and Williams (1988), both of which show price convergence comes from below in posted-bid markets and from above in posted-offer markets. High information costs tend to reduce or eliminate convergence. Average prices are above the market-clearing price for posted-offer markets, and below for posted-bid markets, and never cross the market-clearing threshold, also consistent with Walker and Williams.More generally, our results support the notion of symmetry between experimental posted-offer and posted-bid markets, broadening the relevance of experimental search research.     

Loan processing costs,information asymmetries and the speed of technology adoption

This paper presents a simple model in which credit-constrained firms might delay the adoption of new and more productive technologies because of the external financing costs involved. Applying for a loan can be a very costly process by itself. Where there is a high degree of credit rationing, these costs might even deter entrepreneurs from applying for a loan altogether. We argue that the efficiency of the banking system, by affecting such costs, can influence the profitability of new technologies and entrepreneur's investment decisions, which, in turn, influence new technology implementation, capital accumulation and growth.     

On the welfare implications of firing costs

This is a paper on the theory of institutions. It provides a rationale for the presence of firing costs in OECD countries based on a market failure that takes the form of an externality. Workers have firm-specific and industry-specific skills, and in each period there is a nonzero probability that a worker quits. The quitting probability makes the private discount rate (used by firms in making decisions about firing workers) higher than the social discount rate. This generates a “quitting externality”, where firms lay off too many workers in a recession. Firms are too quick to dispose of their human capital in a cyclical downturn because it is of less value to them than it is to society. State-mandated redundancy payments become a second-best remedy to overcome the market failure.     

Transaction costs and the collection of information: presale measurement on private timber sales

Measurement efforts to reduce the uncertainty concerning theattributes of heterogeneous goods may simply redistribute wealthand result in social waste. Individuals bearing the cost ofsuch distributional measurement have incentives to develop buyingand selling practices that limit such measurement. We examine,both theoretically and empirically, the determinants of thelevel of distributional measurement efforts in a competitiveauction framework. The empirical application, which uses a sampleof private timber sales, provides strong support for the implicationsof the theoretical model of presale measurement.     

Taxes versus quantities for a stock pollutant with endogenous abatement costs and asymmetric information

We compare emissions taxes and quotas when a (strategic) regulator and (non-strategic) firms have asymmetric information about abatement costs, and all agents use Markov perfect decision rules. Firms make investment decisions that affect their future abatement costs. For general functional forms, firms’ investment policy is information-constrained efficient when the regulator uses a quota, but not when the regulator uses an emissions tax. This advantage of quotas over emissions taxes has not previously been recognized. For a special functional form (linear–quadratic) both policies are constrained efficient. Using numerical methods, we find that a tax has some advantages in this case.     

On measuring the benefits of lower transport costs

Despite large amounts invested in rural roads in developing countries, little is known about their benefits. This paper derives an expression for the willingness-to-pay for a reduction in transport costs from the canonical agricultural household model and uses it to estimate the benefits of a hypothetical road project. Estimation is based on novel cross-sectional data collected in a small region of Madagascar with enormous, yet plausibly exogenous, variation in transport cost. A road that essentially eliminated transport costs in the study area would boost the incomes of the remotest households – those facing transport costs of about $75/ton – by nearly half, mostly by raising non-farm earnings. This benefit estimate is contrasted to one based on a hedonic approach.     

On the dynamics of interstate migration: Migration costs and self-selection

This paper develops a dynamic structural model of migration decisions that is aggregated to describe the behavior of interregional migration. Our structural approach allows us to deal with dynamic self-selection problems that arise from the endogeneity of location choice and the persistence of migration incentives. The self-selection problem is solved by keeping track of the distribution of migration incentives over time. This econometric treatment has important consequences for the estimation of structural parameters such as migration costs. For US interstate migration, we obtain a cost estimate of roughly two-thirds of an average annual household income. We also show that the treatment of income persistence has important consequences for comparative statics of the model as well as microeconomic age patterns of migration.     

On the demand for information

Most previous research on the economics of information has been based on the expected utility hypothesis and Bayesian learning. Yet there is experimental evidence that decision makers do not always maximize expected utility and that human learning is not always consistent with Bayes' rule. Using a two-period model, this paper examines the valuation of information as well as the demanf for information in the broader context of a state preference approach under an ordinal representation of preferences. In particular, it is not assumed that the decision maker is Bayesian, nor that he behaves in a way consistent with the expected utility hypothesis. In this general framework, the value of information is defined and analysed. Also, under active learning, the optimal allocation of information gathering activities is discussed. Behavioural properties of the demand for information are derived making use of a compensation function. Implications of the results for measuring the value of information and for the economic analysis of learning activities are discussed.     

On the welfare costs of misspecified monetary policy objectives

This paper quantifies the effects on welfare of misspecified monetary policy objectives in a stylized DSGE model. We show that using inappropriate objectives generates relatively large welfare costs. When expressed in terms of ‘consumption equivalent’ units, these costs correspond to permanent decreases in steady-state consumption of up to two percent. The latter are generated by both the inappropriate choice of weights and the omission of variables. In particular, it is costly to assume an interest-rate smoothing incentive for central bankers when it is not socially optimal to do so. Finally, a parameter uncertainty decomposition indicates that uncertainty about the properties of markup shocks gives rise to the largest welfare costs.     

Water quality trading with asymmetric information,uncertainty and transaction costs: A stochastic agent-based simulation

We examine the efficiency of emissions trading in bilateral and clearinghouse markets with heterogeneous, boundedly rational agents making decisions under imperfect and asymmetric information, and transaction costs. Results are derived using a stochastic agent-based simulation model of agents’ decision-making and interactions. Trading rules, market structures, and agent information structures are selected to represent emerging water quality trading programs. The analysis is designed to provide a strong test of the efficiency of trading occurring through the two market structures. The Differential Evolution algorithm is used to search for market trade strategies that perform well under multiple states of the world. Our findings suggest that trading under both bilateral and clearinghouse markets yields cost savings relatively to no trading. The clearinghouse is found to be more efficient than bilateral negotiations in coordinating point–nonpoint trading under uncertainty and transaction costs. However, the market under both structures is unlikely to achieve or even approximate least-cost pollution control allocations. Expectations of gains from water quality trading should, therefore, be tempered.