Price Volatility and Risk Exposure: On the Interaction of Quota and Product Markets

We consider an industry with firms that produce a final good emitting pollution to different degree as a side effect. Pollution is regulated by a tradable quota system where some quotas may have been allocated at the outset, i.e. before the quota market is opened. We study how volatility in quota price affects firm behaviour, taking into account the impact of quota price on final-good price. The impact on the individual firm differs depending on how polluting it is??whether it is ??clean?? or ??dirty????and whether it has been allocated quotas at the outset. In the absence of long-term or forward contracting, a grandfathering regime??where clean firms are allocated no quotas and dirty firms are allocated quotas for a part of their emissions??minimizes the impact on firm behavior relative to a risk-neutral benchmark.With forward contracts and in the absence of wealth effects initial quota allocation has no effect on firm behaviour. Allowing for abatement does not change the qualitative nature of our results.     

International trade and competitiveness

We analyze the role of international market size differences in determining the investment in process R&D (and thus firms?? competitiveness) in a trade model with oligopolistic market structure, non-homothetic production technology and costly trade. We show that the R&D effort is higher (or even disproportionately so) for firms in the larger market, which causes endogenous asymmetries across countries. As a result, firms in the larger market have higher competitiveness, which increases their market shares in international markets. Furthermore, and contrary to what is predicted by Krugman (Am Econ Rev 70:950?C959, 1980) ??home market effect??, in equilibrium the larger country does not need to host a disproportionately higher share of the world??s industry than of the world??s demand. Despite this, the larger country can still continue to run a trade surplus in the oligopolistic sector, since it hosts firms with higher competitiveness than firms in the smaller country.     

Investment dynamics in electricity markets

We investigate the incentives for investments in capacity in a simple strategic dynamic model with random demand growth. We construct non-collusive Markovian equilibria where the firms?? decisions depend on the current capacity stock only. The firms maintain small reserve margins and high market prices, and extract large rents. In some equilibria, rationing occurs with positive probability, so the market mechanism does not ensure ??security of supply??. Usually, the price cap reflects the value of lost energy or lost load (VOLL) that consumers place on severely reducing consumption on short notice. Our analysis identifies a minimum price cap, unrelated to the VOLL, that allows the firms to recoup their investment and production costs in equilibrium. However, raising the price cap above this minimum increases market prices and reduces consumer surplus, without affecting the level of investment.     

国企民营化与企业创新效率：促进还是抑制?

文章基于混合所有制改革的背景，从创新效率的视角考察了微观创新主体民营化前后创新行为的变化。研究发现，民营化抑制了企业的创新效率，企业的专利数量显著减少，这种影响在缺乏原国有大股东制衡、无系族的上市公司以及外部产权保护较弱的地区更加显著，而且相对于创业型企业，民营化企业的创新效率更低。进一步研究发现，民营化抑制企业创新效率的一个重要途径是关联交易显著增加、投资显著减少，民营化后非国有大股东更多地表现出掏空动机，减少了创新活动，降低了创新效率。文章的研究结论为理解民营化企业的效率提供了新视角，有助于我们正确认识和理解新兴转轨经济体的民营化行为，而且对于监管层如何推进混合所有制改革具有重要的政策启示。     

Detecting discrimination in the hiring process: evidence from an Internet-based search channel

This article uses data from an Internet-based CV database to study how job searchers?? ethnicity, employment status, age, and gender affect how often they are contacted by firms. Since we know which types of information that are available to the recruiting firms, we can handle some of the problems with unobserved heterogeneity better than many existing discrimination studies. We find that searchers who have non-Nordic names, are unemployed or old get significantly fewer firm contacts. Moreover, this matters for the hiring outcome: searchers who get more contacts have a higher probability of getting hired.     

Stackelberg leadership with product differentiation and endogenous entry: some comparative static and limiting results

Allowing for endogenous entry in the traditional Stackelberg setup with product differentiation, leads to reverting of the standard comparative static and limiting results. Unlike in the standard Stackelberg setup with barriers to entry, the leader??s profit increases when the differentiation becomes lower. The reason is that competition becomes tougher when products become more alike, and consequently, fewer firms enter in equilibrium. On the other hand, increasing product differentiation towards its limit results in number of entrants tending to infinity and for very large market, the profit of the leader approaches zero. Thus market structure approaches monopolistic competition, rather than the standard monopoly outcome that occurs with exogenous number of followers.     

政府科技资助对谁更有效?--基于企业规模与所有制三维交互的研究

何种企业能更有效地利用政府科技资助提升创新水平？文章结合资源基础理论、委托代理理论和信号传递理论,运用上海张江高科技园区2382家企业2006—2009年共计6718条非平衡面板数据,研究企业规模和所有制性质在政府科技资助影响企业创新过程中的三维调节机制。研究结果表明：(1)在应用倾向值匹配法纠正政府资助选择偏差的基础上,政府资助对企业创新具有显著的促进作用;(2)企业规模能够影响政府资助对企业创新的“杠杆效应”的发挥程度,规模越大,资助对企业创新水平的正向激励越强;(3)政府资助对不同所有制性质企业的作用存在差异,相比国有企业,非国有性质的企业能更好地利用政府资助提升创新水平;(4)企业规模的调节作用还取决于企业的所有制性质,相比之下,政府资助对非国有企业的创新激励作用会随着企业规模的增加而不断增强。     

The evolution of markets and the revolution of industry: a unified theory of growth

This paper puts forth a theory of the Industrial Revolution whereby an economy transitions from Malthusian stagnation to modern economic growth as firms implement cost-reducing production technologies. This take-off of industry occurs once the market reaches a critical size. The mechanism by which market size affects process innovation relies on two overlooked facts pre-dating England??s Industrial Revolution: the expansion in the variety of consumer goods and the increase in firm size. We demonstrate this mechanism in a dynamic general equilibrium model calibrated to England??s long-run development, and explore how various factors affected the timing of its industrialization.     

Revolving doors: entrepreneurial survival and exit

The high turbulence of new entrepreneurial ventures that are rapidly selected out at the fringe of the firm population has been emphasized using the ??revolving doors?? metaphor. However, well-planned exit strategies can be the root of entrepreneurial success and a mechanism to transfer novelty to established firms. The aim of this Special Issue is to highlight the multiple aspects of exit as part of the entrepreneurial process.     

Market Integration and Competition in Environmental and Trade Policies

Recent empirics suggest the relevance of transport cost reductions for world trade growth along with eliminations in protectionist trade barriers. To address the welfare effects of trade cost reductions in a context of ??trade and the environment,?? we develop a two-stage game model where governments choose environmental and trade policies and firms play a Cournot-Nash game. We show that reductions in transport costs lead to lower emission taxes and higher tariffs. And, we find that the degree of pollution damage plays a central role in whether market integration is welfare-improving relative to autarky.     

Walrasian equilibria as limits of noncooperative equilibria. Part II: Pure strategies

We examine the connection between Walrasian equilibria of a limit economy (with infinitesimal firms) and noncooperative (Cournot) equilibria of approximating finite economies (with significant firms). Nonconvex production sets, decreasing returns in the aggregate, and endogenous determination of the number of active firms are allowed. A Walrasian equilibrium is a limit of pure strategy noncooperative equilibria only if a condition (loosely analogous to downward sloping demand in the partial equilibrium constant returns to scale case) holds. The condition is also sufficient to guarantee the existence of a robust sequence of pure strategy noncooperative equilibria which converges to the Walrasian equilibrium.     

Firms’ human capital, R&D and innovation: a study on French firms

This article investigates the effects of human capital and technological capital on innovation. While the role of technological capital as measured by research and development (R&D) expenditure has been intensively investigated, few studies have been made on the effect of employee training on innovation. This article explores the relationship between innovation and firm employee training. Our methodological approach contributes to the literature in three ways. We propose various indicators of firm employee training. We build a count data panel with a long time-data series to deal with the issue of firms?? heterogeneity. We propose a dynamic analysis. Using dynamic count data models on French industrial firms over the period 1986?C1992, we find positive and significant effects of R&D intensity and training on patenting activity. Whatever the indicators of training our results show that the firm employee training has a positive impact on technological innovation.     

经济金融化行为的政治经济学分析--一个演化博弈框架

自2008年美国金融危机发生以来,经济金融化成为国内外学界关注的焦点。文章从政治经济学的角度指出了金融化的本质在于资本积累演变为资本脱离剩余价值的生产与交换而通过金融系统实现增殖的过程,进而通过构建一个包含异质性主体的非对称演化博弈模型,揭示了非金融主体与金融主体之间从普通经济关系到金融关系的动态演变过程及其作用机制。研究表明：(1)经济主体之间的动态关系演变表现为非金融企业主要通过金融活动获取利润,金融企业则关注中间业务和表外业务并将普通家庭纳入其体系使之成为新的利润源泉,而普通家庭则被迫接受强势经济主体的二次分利,这些关系的变化将导致一国经济的金融化乃至金融危机。(2)经济发展状态取决于金融主体与非金融主体之间的相互关系,其中,非金融主体行为起主导性作用。在既定假设下,当非金融主体仅通过其资源保护行为影响金融主体的分利技术时,既可以促使一国经济走向新的稳定状态也可促使其走向崩溃;当非金融主体通过其资源保护行为和分利技术影响金融主体的分利技术时,经济可以实现演化稳定状态。(3)经济主体的金融化行为有三个层面的影响：一是经济主体的金融化行为促进经济主体自身在短期内实现高额资本积累;二是金融主体的分利行为与非金融主体的生产行为经常呈现对立的经济关系并容易被激化;三是没有政府介入的自由市场必然导致矛盾激化而陷入危机。因此,深入理解经济金融化问题的本质及其对经济的影响机制,对当前中国的经济转型和金融改革都具有重要意义。     

Do Chinese executives reward for luck?

This paper examines the sensitivity of executive compensation to luck based on Chinese listed companies. To identify the causal effect, we rely on companies’ market performances driven by exogenous oil prices. We document a positive relationship between executive compensation and market performance driven by oil prices, which support the story of pay for luck. Moreover, by introducing a natural experiment China in 2015, i.e., the policy of “CEO compensation limit” in state-owned firms, we show that the shock of CEO compensation limit significantly weakens the effect of pay-for-luck. We further show that there is asymmetry in pay for luck. Specifically, when oil prices rise, executive compensation is more sensitive to good luck. In addition, the sensitivity of executives to pay-for-luck is more pronounced in firms with state-owned, higher equity concentration, and related party transaction.     

The comparative statics of cumulative distribution function changes for the class of risk averse agents

We examine the connection between Walrasian equilibria of a limit economy (with infinitesimal firms) and the noncooperative (Cournot) equilibria of approximating finite economies (with significant firms). Following earlier work of Novshek and Sonnenschein we allow for set-up cost and permit a minimal form of mixed strategies. We depart from them by requiring that the aggregate production set exhibits some degree (however small) of decreasing returns. Contrasting with their results, it is shown that a (regular) Walrasian equilibrium of a limit economy can always be approximated by a sequence of noncooperative equilibria for the tail of the approximating (finite) economies. Thus, there is a surprising qualitative discontinuity when one passes from the Novshek-Sonnenschein case of aggregate constant returns to scale of the decreasing returns case of this paper.     

Extended generalized purchasing power parity and optimum currency area in East Asian countries

We build a model in which corporate governance allows for the adoption of an institution acting as a mechanism to control agency problems. Our model predicts that the incentive to adopt such an institution is decreasing in ownership concentration and increasing in free cash flow. Testing our theoretical model by means of a sample of 157 Italian listed companies over the period 2004–2007, we find that board composition favours independent members in firms with a large free cash flow, and executive members in firms with high ownership concentration, supporting the view of governance as a way to limit agency costs.     

Imperfect price discrimination, market structure, and efficiency

Abstract.  We introduce a flexible third‐degree price discrimination framework by modeling the information firms possess about consumers' locations (preferences) on the Salop circle as a partition. Higher information quality is translated into a partition refinement. In the limit, we obtain the perfect price discrimination paradigm. We show that the free‐entry equilibrium number of firms exhibits a U‐shape as a function of the quality of information. This implies that imperfect price discrimination generates the most efficient free‐entry outcome. JEL classification: D43, L11, L43     

Restricted capacity and rent dissipation in a regulated open access fishery

A common strategy for limiting the total annual catch in a fishery is to restrict entry and season length. We examine the results of this strategy when entry limitation amounts to a limit on capital, but fishing firms can vary an unrestricted input, and thereby use the restricted input more intensively. Under these regulatory constraints, fishing firms will earn rents that depend on the elasticity of substitution between restricted and unrestricted inputs. Using simulations with data from the Alaskan pollock fishery, rents and season length are shown to depend on fish and variable input prices, sometimes in surprisingly non-monotonic ways.     

Perfectly competitive markets as the limits of cournot markets

A perfectly competitive, partial equilibrium market for a single homogeneous good with a (bounded) continuum of infinitesimal firms is considered. Cost functions are essentially unrestricted and are allowed to vary smoothly across firms. A sequence (net) of Cournot markets (each with a finite number of firms) which converge smoothly to the perfectly competitive limit in terms of both the inverse demand functions and the distributioon of firm technologies is introduced and it is shown that all markets sufficiently far along the sequence have a Cournot equilibrium and all the Cournot equilibria converge to the perfectly competitive equilibrium of the limit market.     

Factors Influencing Corporate Environmental Protection Activities for Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions: The Relationship Between Environmental and Financial Performance

This paper analyzes the relationship between a firm??s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and its profitability in Japanese manufacturing. Defining the difference between the marginal revenue and cost of reducing GHG emissions as the ??net benefit,?? which is endogenously characterized by various factors, we estimate a switching regression model where the sign of the net benefit determines the relationship between GHG emissions and profitability. Our empirical analysis focuses on ISO 14001 adoption, market competition, uncertainty, financial flexibility, and share ownership structure as the factors, and indicates that firms with low firm-specific uncertainty, high financial flexibility, and a high proportion of large shareholders tend to have a nonnegative net benefit, so that the positive relationship between their GHG emissions and profitability is mitigated. On the other hand, although ISO 14001 adoption is generally considered to be an indicator of a firm??s stance on environmental proactiveness, it does not provide a sufficient incentive to reduce emissions. Factors such as uncertainty, financial flexibility, and share ownership structure are more important to GHG emission reductions.