信誉的价值:基于淘宝数据对我国电子市场的特色解释

为了解释信誉在我国特色电子市场中的价值,本文基于2008年3月下旬淘宝网上三个电子产品的相关数据,分析卖方的长短期肯定信用度和否定信用度、运费、剩余时间、消费者保障服务及价格等对其销售价格、售出概率、售出数量及售出价格的影响。实证分析发现:信誉度对卖方销售及售出行为存在一定的显著影响;价格对销售等行为没有显著相关作用,而只有价格升水对售出概率存在调节作用;剩余时间会正向影响卖方的销售价格,运费却只对卖方售出概率存在负向影响,而消费者保障尚不能显著影响卖方的销售及售出行为。     

Exit, sunk costs and the selection of firms

Summary. This paper aims to identify the cost characteristics of exiting firms whenever firms are playing an infinite horizon supergame with time-invariant cost and demand functions. With more than two firms, the problem of which firms exit is quite similar to a coalition formation one. Solving this coalition formation problem, we obtain that the exiting firms are those with higher average cost functions whenever reentry is costless while, whenever reentry is unprofitable, the exiting firms are those with lower marginal (and possibly average) cost functions. Since reentry costs are typically sunk, our analysis points out that the presence of sunk costs affects not only the size (as it is well known) but also the composition of the industry. Received: April 5, 1995; revised version: January 28, 1998     

高新技术产业投资、沉淀成本与补偿制度创新

高新技术产业投资对我国国民经济发展具有重要的作用和潜在的扩张力,但由于没有充分利用高新技术产业投资,严重影响国民经济的整体发展.为此,本文从沉淀成本角度出发,使用一个动态的投资模型,探讨高新技术产业投资所面临的障碍以及提供刺激高新技术产业投资的基本原则,在于完善投资成本补偿机制:一方面,需要大力完善市场制度;另一方面,更需要大力完善非市场制度,同时,政府折旧和税收政策等也是不可替代的.     

Tax compliance and obedience to authority at home and in the lab: A new experimental approach

In most experimental studies of tax evasion, participants are instructed that they may report any amount of income from zero up to the amount they actually earned or received. This amounts to an invitation to gamble. In contrast, real-world tax authorities unambiguously demand compliance. We develop two new settings for conducting tax experiments. Both involve an explicit demand for compliance. Thus, we can determine whether knowing that the experimental authority would regard evasion as wrongful disobedience will influence compliance decisions. We demonstrate that simply telling people that they are required to pay a “participation fee” analogous to a tax produces remarkably high compliance rates and less sensitivity to changes in economic variables than in the earlier experimental literature using invitation-to-gamble language. This suggests that many people pay taxes despite the financial attraction of non-compliance because they are strongly inclined towards obeying authority. Furthermore, we show that giving participants a week to make their reporting decisions at home without an authority figure physically present overcomes the inclination to obey for some people, significantly lowering compliance rates. However, the majority still complies, even after the audit rate falls from 25% to 1%, which would make non-compliance extremely attractive if it were viewed only as a simple matter of risk and expected return. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at . JEL Classification C91, H26     

Contracting inside an organization: An experimental study

In this paper we propose and test a contracting mechanism, Multi-Contract Cost Sharing (MCCS), for use in the management of a sequence of projects. The mechanism is intended for situations where (1) the contractor knows more about the true costs of various projects than does the contracting agency (adverse selection), and (2) unobservable effort on the part of the contractor may lead to cost reductions (moral hazard). The proposed process is evaluated in an experimental environment that includes the essential economic features of the NASA process for the acquisition of Space Science Strategy missions. The environment is complex and the optimal mechanism is unknown. The design of the MCCS mechanism is based on the optimal contract for a simpler related environment. We compare the performance of the proposed process to theoretical benchmarks and to an implementation of the current NASA ‘cost cap’ procurement process. The data indicate that the proposed MCCS process generates significantly higher value per dollar spent than using cost caps, because it allocates resources more efficiently among projects and provides greater incentives to engage in cost-reducing innovations. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at . JEL Classification C72, C92, D82, L32     

Are we nice(r) to nice(r) people?—An experimental analysis

We experimentally investigate whether individuals can reliably detect cooperators (the nice(r) people) in an anonymous decision environment involving “connected games.” Participants can condition their choices in an asymmetric prisoners’ dilemma and a trust game on past individual (their partner’s donation share to a self-selected charity) and social (whether their partner belongs to a group with high or low average donations) information. Thus, the two measures of niceness are the individual donation share in the donation task, and the cooperativeness of one’s choice in the two games. We find that high donors achieve a higher-than-average expected payoff by cooperating predominantly with other high donors. Group affiliation proved to be irrelevant. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at . JEL Classification C91, C72, D3     

Environment, Asset Characteristics, and Optimal Effluent Fees

This article investigates theissue of optimal effluent fees in a frameworkwhere waste emissions are abated by investingin capital of which the pay-off is uncertainand the cost is fully sunk. The stock of wasteemissions harms an individual firm'sproduction, but the firm will underestimatethis external effect upon investing. Consequently, the firm will invest lesscapital, and thereby, pollute more than issocially desirable. The regulator, who can useeffluent fees to correct this, should imposelower effluent fees on irreversible investmentsthan on costlessly reversible ones whenuncertainty arises.     

EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE OF A SUNK‐COST PARADOX: A STUDY OF PRICING BEHAVIOR IN BERTRAND–EDGEWORTH DUOPOLY*

We experimentally test the effect of sunk costs on decision making. In the experiment, subjects play the role of price‐setting duopolists. Both firms have identical costs, including an exogenous sunk cost that varies across sessions over six different values. We observe that the sunk cost has a U‐shaped effect: From low to medium levels, average prices decrease, but from medium to high levels, average prices increase. This effect, which is consistent with loss avoidance, develops quickly and persists throughout the game. A follow‐up experiment confirms the main results of the original experiment.     

Revealing the depth of reasoning in <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-beauty contest games

The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of information on levels of reasoning on individuals' choices in p-beauty contest games. In the baseline design, subjects received information only on the average and target values from the previous period. In the alternative design, the winner(s) explained in a short message (30 words maximum) what reasoning he/she applied in selecting the target value and then stopped playing. The winner's message, the winning number, the target and average values were then displayed on all computer screens. The results show that non-winning players imitate the level of rationality of winners, and a significant proportion of the population adopt strategies which are best responses to other imitators' behaviour rather than to the average level of rationality. Both the imitative strategies and the best responses to the imitative strategies stimulate a strong acceleration of the learning process. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at . JEL Classification C72, C91, C92     

Progressive Taxation, Tax Exemption, and Irreversible Investment under Uncertainty

We analyze the impact of progressive taxation on irreversible investment under uncertainty. We show that if tax exemption is lower than sunk cost, higher tax rate will decelerate optimal investment by increasing the optimal investment threshold, while if tax exemption exceeds sunk cost, three different regimes arise. For “small” volatilities the optimal investment threshold is a positive function of volatility, but independent of tax rate. For “medium” volatilities it is independent of both tax rate and volatility. Finally, for “high” volatilities the optimal investment threshold depends positively on volatility, but negatively on tax rate so that we have “tax paradox”.     

沉淀成本与政府管制政策

新古典一般均衡理论的假设前提是完全的产品和要素市场,这是一个没有沉淀成本的经济模型。一旦我们放松新古典经济学资源流动性的假设前提,引入沉淀成本概念,就会发现,沉淀成本不仅导致要素市场失灵,造成进入壁垒,而且还为政府管制奠定了理论指导。为了提高市场绩效,政府管制必须将沉淀成本管制（进入壁垒）、产权管制（外部性）和信息不完全管制（交易成本）有机结合起来。     

An African Growth Trap: Production Technology and the Time-Consistency of Agricultural Taxation, R&D and Investment

Why do so many African governments consistently impose high tax rates and make little investment in productive public goods, when alternative policies could yield greater tax revenues and higher national income? The authors posit and test an intertemporal political economy model in which the government sets tax and R&D levels while investors respond with production. Equilibrium policy and growth rates depend on the initial cost structure. It is found that in many (but not all) African countries, low tax/high investment regimes would be time‐inconsistent, primarily because production technology requires relatively large sunk costs. For pro‐growth policies to become sustainable, new political commitment mechanisms or new production techniques would be needed.     

Policy making and rent-dissipation: An experimental test

We present a transfer-seeking model of political economy that links the theory of Becker (1983) with Tullock-type models of politically contestable rents. In our model the size of the transfer is determined endogenously, and over-dissipation of rents is predicted even under conditions of risk-neutrality and perfect rationality. We implement an empirical test of this model by collecting behavioral data in a laboratory experiment. We confirm the existence of behavior that leads to over-dissipation of rents in games with both symmetric and asymmetric political power. To the extent that the transfer-seeking costs are social costs, our findings imply that the total costs of running government might be greatly underestimated if the value of the rent is used as a proxy for the rent-seeking cost. We also confirm the hypotheses that lowering the political power of one player can lead to smaller rent-seeking expenditures and to larger transfers Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at . JEL Classification C91, D72     

Does Auctioning of Entry Licences Induce Collusion? An Experimental Study

We use experiments to examine whether the auctioning of entry rights affects the behaviour of market entrants. Standard economic arguments suggest that the licence fee paid at the auction will not affect pricing since it constitutes a sunk cost. This argument is not uncontested though, and this paper puts it to an experimental test. Our results indicate that an auction of entry licences has a significant positive effect on average prices in oligopoly but not in monopoly. These results are consistent with the conjecture that entry fees induce players to take more risk in pursuit of higher expected profits. In oligopoly, entry fees increase the probability that the market entrants coordinate on a collusive price path. In monopoly, taking more risk does not make sense since average prices are already close to the profit-maximizing price.     

Misperceiving the value of information in predicting the performance of others

Economic models typically allow for “free disposal” or “reversibility” of information, which implies non-negative value. Building on previous research on the “curse of knowledge” we explore situations where this might not be so. In three experiments, we document situations in which participants place positive value on information in attempting to predict the performance of uninformed others, even when acquiring that information diminishes their earnings. In the first experiment, a majority of participants choose to hire informed—rather than uninformed—agents, leading to lower earnings. In the second experiment, a significant number of participants pay for information—the solution to a puzzle—that hurts their ability to predict how many others will solve the puzzle. In the third experiment, we find that the effect is reduced with experience and feedback on the actual performance to be predicted. We discuss implications of our results for the role of information and informed decision making in economic situations. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10683-006-9128-y. JEL Classification C91, D83     

贸易保护主义的制度经济学分析

随着国际贸易经济的发展,资产在国际间的流动逐渐成为国际贸易中不可忽略的一个重要组成部分,其是否发生沉淀成本有可能对国际商品贸易和投资产生重要影响,不仅会影响国际贸易的总量和产品构成,而且还会影响一国贸易政策的选择。如果一国进行了沉淀成本投资,就会使其在贸易谈判中陷入进退两难困境,失去了讨价还价的力量,并影响其在贸易利益上的分配格局。因而为了摆脱这种被要挟和被控制的风险,政府实行一定的保护主义政策是十分必要的。     

DYNAMIC WELFARE COST OF STAGNATION: AN ALTERNATIVE MEASURE TO THE LUCAS–OBSTFELD MODEL

The present paper proposes an alternative measure to the Lucas–Obstfeld model to analyze the welfare costs of stagnation, and provides a practical illustration of both the Lucas–Obstfeld model and the alternative model. Compared with the Lucas–Obstfeld model, the alternative model can evaluate: (i) whether policy was implemented in a timely fashion; (ii) whether the policy cost was expensive compared with the cost of stagnation; and (iii) whether the policy implemented was effective or whether an additional policy is required.     

Irreversibilities and the timing of environmental policy

The standard framework in which economists evaluate environmental policies is cost–benefit analysis, so policy debates usually focus on the expected flows of costs and benefits, or on the choice of discount rate. But this can be misleading when there is uncertainty over future outcomes, when there are irreversibilities, and when policy adoption can be delayed. This paper shows how two kinds of uncertainty — over the future costs and benefits of reduced environmental degradation, and over the evolution of an ecosystem — interact with two kinds of irreversibilities — sunk costs associated with an environmental regulation, and sunk benefits of avoided environmental degradation — to affect optimal policy timing and design.