Informal sector, income inequality and economic development

This paper addresses - with the help of numerical simulations - some of the issues relating to income distribution in the context of development of an economy with an informal sector and migration of both low- and high-skilled workers from the rural to the urban area. A major aim has been to see under what conditions we do or do not get an inverted U-shaped curve of income distribution. The paper finds that the tendency always is for the Gini coefficient to rise and then decline. However, once it starts declining, it need not continuously decline; it may rise, then decline, then rise again and indeed rise above the previous peak before starting to decline again and may well end at the end of the simulation at a higher value than at the start. Any case for the redistribution of income is seen to be much stronger at the later stages of development that at earlier stages, even though at later stages, Gini coefficient may be lower than at earlier stages. The policy implications of the findings are considered.     

Bond yields compared to amortizing yields

A large amount of theoretical research has been conducted concerning the impact of debt instrument features such as callability, tax treatment, and default risk upon valuation and yield. Almost all this research has been performed on bond-like instruments; this is unfortunate since a large proportion of debt instruments is amortizing. This research develops a model for the spread between bonds and amortizing instruments with otherwise identical features. The shape of the term structure is crucial. Furthermore, the behavior of the spread is systematically related to the level of interest rates, tax rates, degree of default risk, and maturity where the maturity relation changes sign at intermediate maturities.     

Transactions data tests of efficiency of the Chicago board options exchange

This paper performs lower boundary condition tests based on rational pricing of call options and an implied standard deviation test based on the bid/ask prices of options. These efficiency tests attempt to closely approximate conditions in the option markets to avoid the pitfalls indicated by Phillips and Smith (1980). The tests use transactions data and account for the effects of stock and option bid/ask prices, simultaneity of stock and option prices, depth of market, execution lag and transaction costs. The small and relatively infrequent profits due to market mispricing disappear in the lower boundary tests when transaction costs are taken into account. Frequent violations of the tighter boundary conditions in the implied standard deviation test are reported, but the estimated profits cannot be unambiguously attributed to option market inefficiency.     

Strategic information revelation when experts compete to influence

We consider a persuasion game between a decision‐maker and a set of experts. Each expert is identified by two parameters: (i) “quality” or his likelihood of observing the state (i.e., learning what the best decision is) and (ii) “agenda” or the preferred decision that is independent of the state. An informed expert may feign ignorance but cannot misreport. We offer a general characterization of the equilibrium. From the decision‐maker's standpoint, (a) higher quality is not necessarily better, (b) extreme agendas are always preferred, and (c) the optimal panel may involve experts with identical (rather than conflicting) agendas.     

Distortions,endogenous managerial skills and productivity differences

We develop a span-of-control model where managerial skills are endogenous and the outcome of investments over the life cycle of managers. We calibrate this model to U.S. plant-size data to quantify the effects of distortions that are correlated with the size of production units, and how these effects are amplified by managerial investments. We find a quantitatively important role for managerial investments. Distortions that consist of a tax rate of 20% on the top 50% managers reduce steady-state output by about 14.6% in our benchmark model. When skills are exogenous the reduction is about 9.2%.     

The Feasibility of Establishing an International Financial Center in Shanghai

This article examines the feasibility of establishing an international financial center in Shanghai by 2020. It analyzes the national regulations and incentives that need to be implemented and evaluates whether the financial market liberalization measures undertaken so far by China meet the requirements for the success of this strategy. It concludes that elevating Shanghai to a primary international financial center providing multiple financial services to domestic and foreign clients is decades away under the sequential approach to liberalization. However, in the short run, Shanghai can emerge as a regional financial center catering essentially to the funding needs of Chinese businesses.     

Market evidence of misperceived mortality risk

We construct and implement a test of rational consumer behavior in a high-stakes financial market. In particular, we test whether consumers make systematic mistakes in perceiving their mortality risks. We implement this test using data from secondary life insurance markets where consumers with a life-threatening illness sell their life insurance policies to firms in return for an up-front payment. We compare predictions from two models: one with consumers who correctly perceive their mortality risk, and one with consumers who are misguided about their life expectancy, and find that our data are most consistent with the predictions made by the second model.     

Do they do it for the money?

Using a sample of all top management who were indicted for illegal insider trading in the United States for trades during the period 1989-2002, we explore the economic rationality of this white-collar crime. If this crime is an economically rational activity in the sense of Becker (1968), where a crime is committed if its expected benefits exceed its expected costs, “poorer” top management should be doing the most illegal insider trading. This is because the “poor” have less to lose (present value of foregone future compensation if caught is lower for them). We find in the data, however, that indictments are concentrated in the “richer” strata after we control for firm size, industry, firm growth opportunities, executive age, the opportunity to commit illegal insider trading, and the possibility that regulators target the “richer” strata. We thus rule out the economic motive for this white-collar crime, and leave open the possibility of other motives.     

Green Electricity Markets as Mechanisms of Public-Goods Provision: Theory and Experimental Evidence

Utility-based green electricity programs provide market opportunities for consumers to reduce the carbon footprint of their electricity use. These programs deploy three types of public-goods contribution mechanisms: voluntary contribution, green tariff, and all-or-nothing green tariff (Kotchen and Moore, 2007). We extend the theoretical understanding of the all-or-nothing green tariff mechanism by showing that an assumption of warm-glow preferences is needed to explain widespread participation in programs deploying this mechanism. We conduct the first experimental test to compare the revenue generating capacity of a pure public good (based on the voluntary contribution mechanism) and an impure public good (based on the green tariff mechanism). In experimental play, the voluntary contribution mechanism raises 50% more revenue than the green tariff mechanism. With the all-or-nothing green tariff, experimental play and regression estimates show that a warm-glow preference positively affects participation, as predicted by the theory.