On Learning to Cooperate

This paper shows that experimentation can have the effect of inducing outcomes that are “far” from Nash in a learning model similar to that studied by D. Fudenberg and D. K. Levine (1993, Econometrica61, 547-573). The game under consideration is a version of a finitely repeated prisoner's dilemma, and the average length of players' lifetimes is arbitrarily large, but fixed. If the number of stages in the prisoner's dilemma is sufficiently large, then experimentation induces cooperation within the society on an arbitrarily large scale, even though the beliefs of almost all players are eventually within an arbitrary η>0 of being correct at all of the information sets in the game. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72.     

Fiscal Flexibility is No Sin When Policies are Failing

In a democracy, willingness to inflict economic pain is rarely a route to credibility. Investors will refuse to believe that the policies will survive. Once they reach that conclusion, credibility disappears. I learnt this in 1992. With the UK economy in recession, the credibility of the government’s commitment to membership of the exchange rate mechanism of the European Monetary System came     

On Optimal Commodity Taxes When Consumption Is Time Consuming

This paper studies the problem of optimal taxation of commodities when consumption is a time‐consuming activity. This is done under two distinct preference separability assumptions: between goods and labor supply, and between goods and leisure. It argues that with the labor separability, the traditional uniform taxation results of optimal tax theory continue to hold. With leisure separability, on the other hand, consumption time is a major ingredient of optimal tax rates. However, the relationship between consumption time and optimal tax rates depends crucially on the representation of the economy. In representative consumer economies, time differences determine the pattern of optimal tax rates so that goods whose consumption take more time are subjected to higher tax rates. When individuals have different earning abilities, redistributive, incentive, and efficiency considerations also come into play resulting in a complex relationship. The paper derives formulas for optimal commodity taxes in this case on the basis of three different tax structures: linear commodity taxes in combination with linear and nonlinear income taxes, and nonlinear commodity taxes in combination with nonlinear income taxes.     

Hazardous Facility Siting When Cost Information Is Private: An Application of Multidimensional Mechanism Design

The siting of hazardous facilities often involves externalities that extend beyond the border of the community selected as a site. Thus, the private information of each community is potentially a vector of costs comprising a cost for each of the possible sites. I characterize the conditions for the existence of a direct mechanism that is incentive compatible, individually rational, and budget balancing. Incentive compatibility implies a pattern of compensation payments that often conflicts with compensation policy goals. When nonparticipating communities cannot block the siting of the facility, it will often be possible to implement siting policies with a balanced budget.     

Introduction to Repeated Games with Private Monitoring

We present a brief overview of recent developments in discounted repeated games with (imperfect) private monitoring. The literature explores the possibility of cooperation in a long-term relationship, where each agent receives imperfect private information about the opponents' actions. Although this class of games admits a wide range of applications such as collusion under secret price-cutting, exchange of goods with uncertain quality, and observation errors, it has fairly complex mathematical structure due to the lack of common information shared by players. This is in sharp contrast to the well-explored case of repeated games under public information (with the celebrated Folk Theorems), and until recently little had been known about the private monitoring case. However, rapid developments in the past few years have revealed the possibility of cooperation under private monitoring for some class of games. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, C73, D43, D82, L13, L41.     

Moral Hazard and Private Monitoring

We clarify the role of mixed strategies and public randomization (sunspots) in sustaining near-efficient outcomes in repeated games with private monitoring. We study a finitely repeated game, where the stage game has multiple equilibria and show that mixed strategies can support partial cooperation, but cannot approximate full cooperation even if monitoring is “almost perfect.” Efficiency requires extensive form correlation, where strategies can condition upon a sunspot at the end of each period. For any finite number of repetitions, we approximate the best equilibrium payoff under perfect monitoring, assuming that monitoring is sufficiently accurate and sunspots are available. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C73, D82.     

关于私营企业发展外向型经济的思考

近年来，借助良好的经济基础、政策环境、人才聚集和地缘优势，无锡的私营经济发展十分迅猛，己成为国民经济和各项社会事业快速发展的不可或缺的重要力量。截止2004年底，无锡共有私营企业6万多家，其中私营企业集团近70家，从业人员50多万人。无锡私营企业总注册资本己具相当规模，是国有及集体企业注册资本总数的1．07倍。私营经济发展的领域也在不断拓宽。但是，对照全球经济一体化和我国加入WTO的背景和形势，     

Private disclosure: Is honesty enough?

If disclosure is costless a truthful monopolist selling to identical rational consumers will never withhold socially valuable information. But it preferences differ between individuals and are non-hierarchical, then too little information may be revealed.     

Optimal Vertical Arrangements When Resale Is Possible

This paper pinpoints optimal vertical arrangements in settingscharacterized by incomplete contracting and resale of an intermediateinput (a "widget"). In the Grossman-Hart-Moore property rightstheory, we conclude that sometimes strictly complementary assetsshould be owned separately to permit the emergence of a secondarymarket. In a richer model where the parties choose specificand nonspecific investments, vertical separation may also dominatejoint ownership. The article then examines the profitabilityof three integration forms when the proposed bargaining modelsubstitutes random-order values (e.g., the Shapley value). Theconclusions differ markedly from existing claims. (JEL C70,C78, D23, L42)     

民营经济不是一个模糊概念

本文针对“民营经济是一个模糊的概念”之说，认为狭义的民营经济指个私等非公有制经济；广义的则除了个私经济外，还包括非国有经济中的公有制经济。民营经济概念并不模糊。之所以会认为它是个模糊概念，一是国务院对民营经济的概念至今尚未有一个科学，权威的界定；二是国家统计局也未建立起与民营经济概念相匹配的统计指标体系。     

Communication in Repeated Games with Private Monitoring

The paper considers repeated games where each player can be observed by only a subset of the other players, and where players can make public announcements about the behavior of the players they observed. We address the following question: What is the minimal level of observability that is required to obtain efficient outcomes? The main result is that the limit set of sequential equilibrium payoffs, when the discount factor tends to one, contains the set of individual rational payoffs whenever each player is observed by at leasttwoother players.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Number: C73.     

Equilibrium Prices When the Sunspot Variable Is Continuous

We analyze sunspot-equilibrium prices in nonconvex economies with perfect markets and a continuous sunspot variable. Our primary result is that every sunspot equilibrium allocation can be supported by prices that, when adjusted for probabilities, are constant across states. This result extends to the case of a finite number of equally-probable states under a nonsatiation condition, but does not extend to general discrete state spaces. We use our primary result to establish the equivalence of the set of sunspot equilibrium allocations based on a continuous sunspot variable and the set of lottery equilibrium allocations. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D51, D84, E32.     

Landfilling Versus ``Backstop' Recycling When Income Is Growing

The paper considers a dynamic model in which an income stream,growing over time, is optimally divided into consumption andexpenditures on waste disposal, the latter being optimally dividedbetween ``recycling'and ``landfilling.' Recycling is thoughtof as a ``backstop' waste disposal technology – it does notrequire landfill space but is a relatively expensive method ofwaste disposal. Landfilling uses up scarce landfill capacity. While conserving landfill space is the major reason themunicipality recycles, another motive for recycling might be thatrecycling itself generates utility. Our analysis suggests thatthe optimal recycling program varies considerably with bothlandfill capacity and initial income. For example, richermunicipalities are likely to introduce recycling much earlier inthe planning period than poorer municipalities. Thus whenlegislating recycling, national or regional governments must besensitive to the differences between municipalities.     

Pollution Abatement Investment When Environmental Regulation Is Uncertain

In a dynamic model of a risk-neutral competitive firm that can lower its pollution emissions per unit of output by building up abatement capital stock, we examine the effect of a higher pollution tax rate on abatement investment both under full certainty and when the timing or the size of the tax increase is uncertain. We show that a higher pollution tax encourages abatement investment if it does not exceed a certain threshold rate. However, akin to the Diamond-Mirrlees tax anomaly, it is possible that a higher pollution tax rate results in more pollution. The magnitude uncertainty discourages abatement investment, but at the time of the actual tax increase the abatement investment path may shift either upward or downward. On the other hand, when the timing is uncertain, the abatement investment path always jumps upward, thus suggesting that the effect of magnitude uncertainty on the optimal investment path may be more pronounced than that of timing uncertainty. Further, we show that the ad hoc practice of raising the discount rate to account for the uncertainty leads to underinvestment in abatement capital. We show how the size of this underinvestment bias varies with the future tax increase. Finally, we show that a credible threat to accelerate the tax increase can induce more abatement investment.     

对发展私营经济的几点看法

一、为什么要发展私营经济 为什么我们要发展私营经济?目前,社会上有3种看法,一是我国的生产力落后;二是我国的生产力是多层次的;三是我国处在社会主义初级阶段,这些概括说到底都是用生产力的原因来解释的,因为初级阶段也是一个生产力落后的问题。这种理论实际上是想根据马克思主义基本原理来论证的,因为马克思主义原理中最根本的一条就是生产关系一定要适应生产力的性质。我们不能机械地来理解马克思的这一原理,因为马克思的这一原理是从历史的     

The Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma with Imperfect Private Monitoring

In this paper, I study a repeated Prisoner's Dilemma game in which monitoring is private and imperfect. A partial folk theorem is proved for the case of almost perfect monitoring.     

Correcting Market Failure Due to Interdependent Preferences: When Is Piecemeal Policy Possible?

Allowing for general utility interdependence and agent heterogeneity, we characterize taxes that will generate first best solutions in markets. We show the equivalence of tax corrections derived from the Marshallian and compensated demand approaches. Next we analyze the conditions that are required for the market failure to be corrected by: (1) specific indirect ad valorem taxes on commodities, (2) the same proportional tax rate on every commodity, and (3) a proportional income tax rate on each individual. The conditions are related to the restrictions necessary to have H synthetic consumers without externalities who replicate behavior of individuals with externalities.     

手术室护士对新生儿窒息复苏的配合

目的探讨新生儿窒息复苏护理配合要点。方法剖宫产发生窒息的60例新生儿回顾总结。结果重度窒息25例,重度窒息35例,复苏成功59例,死亡1例。结论做好复苏前抢救准备工作和及时正确的复苏技术、医护人员的密切配合是抢救新生儿窒息的关键。     

构建中小企业融资的金融支持体系——兼论设立地方性民营银行

作者从深化国有企业改革，国有资本将实行战略转移的大战略背景出发，研究中小企业和民管企业发展机遇与中小企业由来已久的融资难桎梏其发展的矛盾，根据中小企业发展均要经初创、成长、成熟三阶段，在每一个阶段的融资需求和融资量等所需的金融服务的不同性，以及中国的改革和制度变迁的特点，按比较优势的原则，作者提出构建以地方性中小金融机构主体和地方性民营金融机构为重点，国有商业银行为辅助的互有分工，共同发展，共同竞争的中小企业金融服务体系，全面解决中小企业发展中的“融资难”问题。