Social interaction and economic organization: Toward an integrative microeconomic model

In the context of increasingly complex economies, with information more and more complicated to handle, social interaction may allow spontaneous co-operation and be more efficient than market or state regulations to overcome co-ordination and information problems. This article provides a theoretical model that compares three “pure forms” of economic organization: state-controlled production, unregulated market, and voluntary organization. We model the behavior of agents who are embedded in a social structure that is characterized by three parameters: the intensity of socialization, the size of individual social space, and the overall level of trust in society. We then study how social interaction parameters influence the relative efficiency of the three different forms of organization.     

The economic basis of social organization

Cereal production as an origin of class societies and dowry as a factor of disintegration of parental authority are, among others, some of the specific results of this study. Beyond these partial conclusions the processing, through multiple correspondence analysis, of the ethnographic data collected in Murdock's Atlas makes it possible to weigh the decisive factors in the formation of human societies, to indicate their role in the functioning of collective life, and to rough out a typology of the modes of social organization.     

An economic model of waterlogging and salinization in arid regions

Waterlogging and salinization arise in arid areas largely because two essential resources, irrigation water and the assimilative capacity of unconfined aquifers, are not priced or allocated correctly to reflect scarcity values and opportunity costs. Farm-level and project-level models of crop production are examined to identify policies that will encourage farmers to consider opportunity costs and the effects of irrigation and leaching on depth to regional water tables. Appropriate policies include volumetric water pricing, water markets, tradable water allotments, adjustments in area-based cost recovery programs, and incentives for farmers to use irrigation methods that reduce deep percolation. Implementing appropriate versions of these policies may reduce the rate of increase in waterlogged and saline areas.     

An economic model of search and matching in international trade

A framework is developed to explain export participation among firms that produce differentiated products and may choose to exert costly effort to find foreign buyers. Export participation is linked to firm search costs, importer search costs, tariffs, the rate of contract breakdown, the distribution of bargaining power, and the degree of product differentiation. Propositions are derived that shed light on historic changes in export participation among firms while also generating hypotheses for further study. The model is applied to small U.S. food manufacturers and is shown to be able to explain changes in export participation among such firms.     

Environmental regulation of households: An empirical review of economic and psychological factors

The literature on sustainable consumption and environmental regulation of household behavior is dominated by conceptual and normative approaches. As a result, many suggestions lack a firm empirical basis. To overcome this deficiency, econometric studies in three areas of environmentally relevant activities of households are reviewed: residential use of energy, generation of solid waste and recycling, and residential use of water. Next to price and income elasticities, attention is devoted to individual socio-economic features and psychological factors, such as attitudes, knowledge, perceptions and values. Potential psychological determinants and related insights are further examined by discussing a range of representative and illustrative statistical–psychological studies of environmental behavior. One important general finding is that there are very few empirical studies that systematically combine socio-economic and psychological determinants. A range of insights for environmental policy is derived, and research recommendations are offered.     

Federal regulation and aggregate economic growth

We introduce a new time series measure of the extent of federal regulation in the U.S. and use it to investigate the relationship between federal regulation and macroeconomic performance. We find that regulation has statistically and economically significant effects on aggregate output and the factors that produce it—total factor productivity (TFP), physical capital, and labor. Regulation has caused substantial reductions in the growth rates of both output and TFP and has had effects on the trends in capital and labor that vary over time in both sign and magnitude. Regulation also affects deviations about the trends in output and its factors of production, and the effects differ across dependent variables. Regulation changes the way output is produced by changing the mix of inputs. Changes in regulation offer a straightforward explanation for the productivity slowdown of the 1970s. Qualitatively and quantitatively, our results agree with those obtained from cross-section and panel measures of regulation using cross-country data.     

Thresholds: A model of religious governance and evolution

Religious organizations set thresholds of belief and behavior required of their members. In a simple model of individual religious behavior, this paper shows that if a religion denies the benefits of membership to those who fall short of the threshold, it stands to gain an increase in compliance with its rules by forcing members to the edge of defection, hence the incentive to set the thresholds strategically. When members’ compliance costs are private information, the model yields several regimes: a pooling contract if costs are close enough to each other, a separating contract if costs are different enough, and an expulsion solution if the proportion of high-cost types in the total membership is too low. Changes in costs and in membership composition trigger changes in thresholds and switches between regimes, thus providing a model of religious governance and evolution. We then review the history of sectarianism in the three monotheistic religions and show that the model can help account for the basic differences between them as well as explain the historical evolution of dogmas and behavioral rules within each of them. A specialized case study focuses on the evolution of Catholic religious orders.     

An optimal monetary policy in an aggregate neoclassical model of economic growth

This paper shows that the usual Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans optimal-growth theory is applicable to decentralized monetary economies and illustrates, with a simple model, how optimal growth can be achieved via a simple monetary policy. Securities and the endogeneity aspect of the money supply are explicitly introduced. This paper shows that the steady state under optimal growth is a saddle point, that the dynamic behavior of the capital-labor ratio and real per capita consumption is identical to that found in the usual literature in which money is not introduced, and that the optimal monetary policy is “counter-cyclical.”     

Impact of environmental regulation on economic activity-Austria

Zusammenfassung Die Umweltbelastung und Maßnahmen zur Verbesserung der Situation sind ein zentrales Thema der öffentlichen Debatte und Politik. Die vorliegende Arbeit erweitert Ansätze aus der Input-Output-Analyse (im Rahmen eines allgemeinen Gleichgewichtsmodelles) um Umweltbilanzen und Entsorgungskosten. Dies ist ein Ansatz, die wirtschaftlichen Auswirkungen der aktuellen umweltpolitischen Zielvorstellungen in Österreich zu quantifizieren. Dabei zeigt sich, daß die Auswirkungen auf die gesamte Volkswirtschaft überraschend gering bleiben (selbst bei radikaler Schadstoffreduktion), aber sektoral unterschiedliche Belastungen zu erwarten sind. Dies könnte bereits bestehende Strukturprobleme verschärfen.

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I am grateful for the assistance of Florian Gollob; he complied the voluminous data. The cooperation with Roland Pumberger was essential in order to complete this task. I also like to thank Bernhard Böhm, Josef Christl, and Elisabeth Szirucsek for their support. The suggestions and comments of the editor and two anonymous referees were very helpful in revising an earlier draft of this paper. Of course, I am responsible for any remaining error.     

An expository note on depreciation and profitability under rate-of-return regulation

This note provides a simple, general proof that if a regulated firm is allowed to earn its actual (nominal) one-period cost of capital on the depreciated original cost of its investments, and if actual earnings equal allowed earnings, then the net present value of all investments is zero for any method of computing depreciation. Some implications and extensions of this Invariance Proposition are discussed.     

Changing economic mechanisms: A model of the transition from budget regulation to the competitive market

Summary In the framework of dynamic equilibrium theory we propose a model of gradual transition from an Economy with centralized budgets regulation to a Market Economy (with self-financing). It is assumed that information about possible change of the economic mechanism affects essentially the behavior of agents. The duration of the transition period is regarded as a random variable. We study conditions when such a transition allows firms to adapt their plans to future markets and guarantees the existence of equilibrium paths. We also discuss the case of Shock Therapy (instantaneous transition) which may cause bankruptcy, jumps in prices and deficits.This work is supported by Russian Foundation of Basic Researches, grant 93-06-10356     

固化农村集体经济组织成员权的理论思考

在家庭承包制基础上实施以确权颁证为主要内容的农村产权改革,并且维持这一土地关系长久不变,是破解三农难题在重点领域的基础性制度变迁,而固化集体经济组织成员权,则是推行这一土地关系长久不变的逻辑前提。家庭承包制在财产权结构上对不同成员权的包容性,决定了以新增人口来持续调整土地这一绝对平均主义的伪公平性。固化成员权不仅是建立排他性农民家庭土地财产权的基础,而且还需要在固化成员权过程中充分表达农民主体意志,实行用手投票的公共选择,完善村级治理机制。     

Public infrastructure,production organization,and economic development

We develop a political economy model of growth to examine economic development led by the interactions between an economic decision concerning a firm’s production technology (CRS vs. IRS technology) and a political decision concerning public infrastructure. We show that multiple equilibrium growth paths occur due to differences in expectations regarding the quality of public infrastructure. These multiple paths illustrate why economies with poor initial conditions can catch up to and, furthermore, overtake economies with better initial conditions. Our result could explain the experiences of some East Asian countries where the co-evolution of public infrastructure and industrial transformation spurred economic development.     

New technology and the economic organization of the clothing industry

The economic organization of an industry is ultimately determined by the cost functions of its component firms. The costs that matter for the competitive state of an industry are not just long-run variable costs but also the costs of entry to and exit from the industry, and the joint costs of different products that the firms in the industry produce. In the clothing industry the costs of creating and implementing new designs is a further important factor affecting competition between firms. Since costs are largely determined by technology, we expect repercussions on the organization of the industry when technology changes. Application of the new information technologies in the clothing industry will encourag agglomerations by growth and by merger, with larger firms producing a wider range of products and introducing new products faster than hitherto. Trends in the geographic organization of production will also be reversed.     

An economic manufacturing quantity model with probabilistic deterioration in a production system

This paper develops an economic manufacturing quantity (EMQ) model with deterioration and exponential demand in a production system over a finite time horizon under the effect of inflation and time value of money. The production rate is a dynamic variable (varying with time) in a production system. Due to a long run process, the machinery system is converted from in-control state to out-of-control state which results the production of improper items. The improper items are reworked at a fixed cost to make it as proper. With the increasing value of time, the production of improper item also increases. To reduce the production of the improper items, the systems have to be more reliable and with less amount of failure. In this direction, the model considers that the development cost, production cost, and material cost are dependent on the reliability parameter. The deterioration of the product is considered probabilistic to make the research a more realistic one. By considering the reliability parameter as a decision variable, we try to obtain the associated profit of the system which we have to maximize. To derive the maximization procedure, we use Euler–Lagrange formula from control theory. We outline some numerical examples along with graphical representations and sensitivity analysis to illustrate the model.     

Endogenous change and the economic theory of regulation

This paper extends the economic theory of regulation to include endogenous regulatory change. It outlines conditions under which endogenously rising deadweight costs of regulation can alter the policy equilibrium, even if those rising costs are fully anticipated. Within this framework, alternative wealth redistribution mechanisms can alter the equilibrium path if they bias interest groups' organization costs asymmetrically. The history of natural gas regulation is broadly consistent with this theory.