基于不对称需求信息的激励机制模型研究

针对由单制造商和单销售商组成的供应链,提出了供应链双方需求信息对称情况下的激励机制模型,并在此基础上建立了供应链双方在需求信息不对称情况下的运作策略模型。制造商通过折扣,运用激励相容机制使销售商诚实申报需求信息,使得供应链利润最大化的同时供应链成员实现双赢。数字试验结果表明:①所提策略是有效的;②该策略不仅能提高制造商利润,而且也能改善销售商的利润。     

经济波动同步性、需求冲击与供给冲击——来自海湾国家的实证分析

本文运用结构向量自回归模型,将海湾六国产出的同步波动性和遭受冲击的对称性联系起来。研究发现,1977-2006年间海湾六国遭受需求冲击的对称程度要高于供给冲击,对称性的需求冲击对维持六国经济周期的同步性既显著又重要,而供给冲击的对称性对维持六国经济周期的同步性几乎没有作用;另外,本文没有发现供给和需求冲击的对称性对经济周期的同步波动有滞后影响。本文实证研究的结果对于海湾六国未来单一货币的汇率制度选择具有重要的参考意义。     

Asymmetric effects of exchange rate changes on the demand for money in China

In order to account for currency substitution, the majority of recent studies relating to the specification of the demand for money include the exchange rate as another determinant of the demand for money. However, those who have estimated the demand for money in China have been unable to find any significant effects of exchange rate changes on the demand for money by the Chinese. We show that this is due to the assumption that exchange rate changes have symmetric effects. Once depreciations are separated from appreciations of the yuan, those exchange rate changes are shown to have significant effects on the demand for money in China, but in an asymmetric manner.     

Social welfare and the unrepresentative representative consumer

If, for all prices, income distribution is optimal for a planner with a social welfare function, then aggregate demand is the same as that of a single “representative consumer” whose preferences over aggregate consumption are the same as the planner's. This paper shows that the converse is false. Aggregate demand may be the demand function of a representative consumer although the income distribution is not optimal for any social welfare function. The representative consumer may be Pareto inconsistent, preferring situation A to B when all the actual consumers prefer B to A. We give conditions under which existence of a representative consumer implies that the income distribution satisfies first order conditions for optimality. Satisfying the first order optimality conditions for an additively separable social welfare function is essentially equivalent to aggregate demand for every pair of consumers having a symmetric Slutsky matrix.     

A general theory of demand for information about product quality

The purpose of this paper is to construct a general theory—analogous to the neoclassical theory of consumer demand—of demand for information about product quality. The model proposed here introduces uncertain product quality by assuming that commodities possess attributes which consumers desire and that an uncertain commodity possesses are unknown quantity of some attribute. It is assumed that information about the quality of uncertain products is available. The consumer's utility function of information is derived and his information demand function is obtained.Partial analogues of the neoclassical theorems are proved for information demand. Roughly, we find that the Slutsky matrix is symmetric and that a submatrix is negative definite. The negative definite submatrix contains those terms which measure the effect of (income compensated) changes in information prices on information demand.The analysis employed to obtain these results parallels—with some important modifications—the neoclassical analysis of commodity demand. The method used to obtain expressions for the Slutsky substitution terms is an extension of the approach introduced by McKenzie [10] and later used by Hurwicz and Uzawa [6]. This approach uses an “income compensation” function to arrive at an “income compensated” demand function.     

A Further Comment on the Zero Row-Sum Property of Mean-Variance Portfolio Allocation Models

This note considers the conditions under which asset demand equations arising out of mean-variance portfolio allocation models have symmetric interest rate effects. If these conditions are satisfied, it is also valid to write the asset demand equations as functions of interest rate differentials rather than interest rate levels.
The necessary condition for symmetry is that the 'expected return effect' be equal to zero. This will not always be the case and therefore symmetry of interest rate effects is an hypothesis which should be tested rather than a restriction which can be imposed on estimated asset demand equations. Statistical tests of this restriction often lead to its rejection.     

Do exchange rate changes have symmetric or asymmetric effects on the demand for money in Turkey?

As a result of the research conducted by Nobel Laureate Robert Mundell (1963), most studies estimating the demand for money today do include the exchange rate in their specification to account for currency substitution. Previous studies that did this for the Turkish demand for money assumed that exchange rate changes do have symmetric effects on the demand for money in Turkey. In this article, we question this assumption. By using the nonlinear ARDL approach, we show that indeed exchange rate changes do have short-run and long-run asymmetric effects on the M1 demand for money. Introducing nonlinearity also yields a stable money demand.     

Asymmetric monetary policy and the effective lower bound

We use the canonical New Keynesian model to study optimal discretionary policy when the nominal interest rate is constrained by the effective lower bound (ELB). We show that policymakers who seek to minimize a (symmetric) quadratic loss function involving deviations of inflation and output from targets will achieve an average inflation rate below target due to the contractionary effects associated with hitting the ELB. We also characterize optimal discretionary policy for policymakers who view output losses as asymmetric: they place weight on the output gap when output is below potential but place little or no weight on the gap when output is above potential. In comparison to optimal policy using the symmetric loss function, the average inflation rate is higher and closer to the central banks target. Moreover, in response to contractionary demand shocks that push the nominal interest rate to the effective lower bound, policymakers with an asymmetric loss function adopt a policy rate path that remains at the ELB longer but eventually rises more quickly than the path adopted by a policymaker with a symmetric loss function.     

Personalized pricing and advertising: An asymmetric equilibrium analysis

We study personalized price competition with costly advertising among n quality-cost differentiated firms. Strategies involve mixing over both prices and whether to advertise. In equilibrium, only the top two firms advertise, earning “Bertrand-like” profits. Welfare losses initially rise then fall with the ad cost, with losses due to excessive advertising and sales by the “wrong” firm. When firms are symmetric, the symmetric equilibrium yields perverse comparative statics and is unstable. Our key results apply when demand is elastic, when ad costs are heterogeneous, and with noise in consumer tastes.     

Location choice,competition, and welfare in non-tradable service FDI

We investigate whether non-tradable service FDI is efficient from a welfare point of view. A fixed number of firms strategically decide which markets to locate in and then compete in quasi-Cournot fashion. Considering firm location in two symmetric markets, non-tradable service FDI may or may not be efficient for the source country, depending on the total number of firms, competition in markets and the curvature of the demand function. In contrast, non-tradable service FDI is always efficient for the host country and the overall economy. This implies that any policy that affects firm location between two symmetric markets will not be beneficial from a welfare viewpoint.     

Demand-Creating R&D in a Symmetric Oligopoly

Spillovers with demand-creating research and development (R&D) activities are investigated by revisiting a widely employed market share rivalry demand structure. Positive technological spillovers may inflict positive or negative side effects on rivals and this has important implications for the effects on innovative efforts of loose or tight R&D cooperation in symmetric oligopolies. A comparison with the effects that apply with linear demand structures and implications for empirical research are also touched upon.     

Bottom‐up world climate policies: Preserving fossil fuel deposits vs. capping fuel consumption

The policy of purchasing fossil fuel deposits for preservation is an alternative to the demand‐side climate policies that predominate in practice and in professional studies. This paper analyzes the deposit purchase approach and compares it to the standard demand‐side policy in a model with international trade and non‐cooperative governments that account for the effects of their policies on equilibrium prices. We investigate how the two regimes differ with respect to their equilibrium allocations and, in particular, with respect to the countries’ mitigation effort and welfare. If countries are symmetric, mitigation is stronger in the demand‐side than in the supply‐side regime and the transition from the latter to the former is welfare enhancing for all countries. If countries have different endowments of deposits in a two‐country economy, the country with higher extraction costs does not purchase deposits for preservation, and the country with lower extraction costs is better off with the supply‐side than with the demand‐side policy. Finally, we consider the case of combined policies and find surprisingly that no equilibrium in pure strategies exists, when heterogeneous countries apply both policy instruments.     

Investment under uncertainty: The nature of demand shocks and the expected profitability of capital

This paper analyses the disparity regarding the sign of the investment-uncertainty relationship in models of investment under symmetric adjustment costs. That sign is determined by the shape of the profit function, which is related to the nature of demand shocks.     

Exchange rates of oil exporting countries and global oil price shocks: a nonlinear smooth-transition approach

This paper models logistic and exponential smooth transition adjustments of real exchange rates for six major oil-exporting countries in response to different shocks affecting oil prices. The logistic form captures asymmetric and the exponential form symmetric adjustments in regards to positive and negative oil price shocks. We chose oil-exporting countries that do not peg their exchange rates. For most countries, we detect no statistically significant non-linearities for the adjustment process of real exchange rate returns, be they asymmetric or symmetric, in response to oil supply shocks, idiosyncratic oil-market-specific shocks, and speculative oil-market shocks. Exceptions are oil supply shocks in the UK and possibly Brazil, where exchange rates respond nonlinearly, though the effects are symmetric for both countries. On the other hand, global aggregate demand shocks, which are shocks not originating directly in the oil market, have nonlinear asymmetric effects on real exchange rate returns for Canada, Mexico, Norway and Russia, and nonlinear symmetric effects for Brazil and the UK.     

COLLUSION,FLUCTUATING DEMAND,AND PRICE RIGIDITY*

We study an infinitely repeated Bertrand game in which an i.i.d. demand shock occurs in each period. Each firm receives a private signal about the demand shock at the beginning of each period. At the end of each period, all information but the private signals becomes public. We consider the optimal symmetric perfect public equilibrium (SPPE) mainly for patient firms. We show that price rigidity arises in the optimal SPPE if the accuracy of the private signals is low. We also study the implications of more firms and firms' impatience on collusive pricing.     

Trading mechanism selection with directed search when buyers are risk averse

We endogenize the trading mechanism selection in a model of directed search with risk averse buyers and show that the unique symmetric equilibrium entails all sellers using fixed price trading. Mechanisms that prescribe the sale price as a function of the realized demand (auctions, bargaining, discount pricing, etc.) expose buyers to the “price risk”, the uncertainty of not knowing how much to pay in advance. Fixed price trading eliminates the price risk, which is why risk averse customers accept paying more to shop at such stores.     

Regulation through a revenue contest

This paper proposes a mechanism for the regulation of duopolies a revenue contests among the firms. Under the mechanism, the firm with the lower revenue is to pay a penalty to the firm with the higher revenue proportional to the difference between their revenues. In a homogenous good Cournot duopoly with convex cost and demand functions, the mechanism implements the optimal outcome when the firms have symmetric costs. When one firm is more efficient, the mechanism leads to increased social surplus under a large set of parameters. We also consider extensions that involve cost uncertainty, repeated games and differentiated goods.     

Are sports teams multiproduct firms?

The appropriate conception of team outputs is investigated by estimating a two-output factor demand system for baseball teams, relative to which single-output models are rejected. This finding is robust to alternative approaches to testing and model choice. The factor demands are those of the symmetric generalized McFadden cost function, which has several advantages in this context. The team factor inputs are the skill characteristics of players, the prices of which are obtained hedonically. In addition to investigating one- versus two-output models, the estimation results are used to obtain demand and substitution elasticities, factor input elasticities with respect to output, cost elasticities, and measures of economies of scale and scope. Although the results support a multiproduct conception of team production, output separability is not rejected, suggesting that team outputs may sometimes be adequately treated as a production aggregate.     

Collusion and Price Rigidity

We consider an infinitely repeated Bertrand game, in which prices are publicly observed and each firm receives a privately observed, i.i.d. cost shock in each period. We focus on symmetric perfect public equilibria, wherein any "punishments" are borne equally by all firms. We identify a tradeoff that is associated with collusive pricing schemes in which the price to be charged by each firm is strictly increasing in its cost level: such "fully sorting" schemes offer efficiency benefits, as they ensure that the lowest-cost firm makes the current sale, but they also imply an informational cost (distorted pricing and/or equilibrium-path price wars), since a higher-cost firm must be deterred from mimicking a lower-cost firm by charging a lower price. A rigid-pricing scheme, where a firm's collusive price is independent of its current cost position, sacrifices efficiency benefits but also diminishes the informational cost. For a wide range of settings, the optimal symmetric collusive scheme requires (i) the absence of equilibrium-path price wars and (ii) a rigid price. If firms are sufficiently impatient, however, the rigid-pricing scheme cannot be enforced, and the collusive price of lower-cost firms may be distorted downward in order to diminish the incentive to cheat. When the model is modified to include i.i.d. public demand shocks, the downward pricing distortion that accompanies a firm's lower-cost realization may occur only when current demand is high.     

信息不对称条件下企业跨国并购的动因探析

信息不对称是促使企业跨国并购的重要原因。跨国Cournot垄断竞争模型考虑产出协调和信息分享两方面。非对称信息下并购发生的可能性超过对称信息情形,外国企业总倾向于与一国内企业分享信息,并购的发生取决于需求波动程度及产品异质性程度。