The Effect of Respondent Experience/Knowledge in the Elicitation of Contingent Values: An Investigation of Convergent Validity,Procedural Invariance and Reliability

Tests of convergent validity and procedural invariance were used to investigate whether individuals lacking direct experience with a commodity can provide valid responses to contingent-valuation questions eliciting ex post use values. Convergent validity between samples with and without experience was shown to hold for dichotomous-choice responses, but not for open-ended responses.     

发展中国家的普遍服务政策

该文构建非对称信息模型分析普遍服务政策问题,其中政府对企业在农村提供服务的边际成本具有非对称信息.该文对区别定价和统一定价两种情形进行了对比分析.在实施区别定价时,不完全信息将提高农村地区的资费水平,并且降低相应的网络覆盖面积;而在实施统一定价时,农村地区的定价可能降低,但却是以网络覆盖的减少为代价的.该文的政策结论是:在实施普遍服务政策时,需要综合考虑网络投资的激励和用户承受能力.     

Voluntary development of environmental management systems: motivations and regulatory implications

Encouraging firms to develop voluntarily more comprehensive environmental management systems (EMSs) is touted as a policy tool to augment mandatory environmental regulations. Using a unique dataset of environmental management practices of Japanese manufacturers and controlling for self-selection bias in survey responses, we find that proxies for regulatory pressures and consumer pressures are the most important factors that motivate firms toward more comprehensive EMSs. Despite the oft-claimed “voluntary” nature of EMS development, our results show that the government may have a role to play in both directly and indirectly affecting EMS development by firms.      

欧洲单一金融市场中的最后贷款人(LLR)

本文研究在欧盟单一金融市场中有效发挥最后贷款人功能所面临的挑战.简要分析了欧盟金融业的一些特点,这些特点可能增加欧盟系统性金融风险;讨论了预防和解决金融问题的欧盟金融稳定构架的复杂性(最后贷款人的运作也包括在这个构架之中);论述了当系统性金融风波影响不止一个欧盟成员国时,如何实现最后贷款人功能.最后提出了提高现有构架效率所面临的挑战和可行的途径.     

Do Australian Trade Policies Discriminate Against Less Developed Countries?*

The view that Australian protection discriminates against the less developed countries (LDCs) is examined in this paper. It distinguishes between direct discrimination through tariff preferences and indirect discrimination through inter-commodity differences in rates of protection. The second mechanism proves to be more important. While Australian protection did not discriminate against the LDCs in 1968–49, by 1977–78 it did. This reflects changes in the commodity composition of Australia's imports from the LDC_S.     

A comparison of alternative methods of updating input-output coefficients

In recent years there has been a growing number of input-output models of economies ranging in scale from the rural to the national. While offering invaluable insights into the interaction of sectors within an economy, the input-output model suffers from the fact that its coefficient values are altered over time due particularly to technological change. Two of the prominent techniques designed to update these technical coefficients, the RAS and linear programming methods, are compared herein with regard to changes in U.S. national coefficients between 1963 and 1967. Suggestions for improvements to the latter method are outlined.     

Specification and Estimation of ELES

The Extended Linear Expenditure System b reformulated to yield private per capita net worth as the basic explanatory variable. As a by-product the model implies that the marginal propensity to consume/save out of permanent income varies with the rate of interest. In the estimation, account is taken of inconsistencies in data compiled from different sources by explicity including the savings relationship in the system. Parameter estimates based on Australian data are presented.     

Anonymous sequential games: Existence and characterization of equilibria

Summary In this paper we consider Anonymous Sequential Games with Aggregate Uncertainty. We prove existence of equilibrium when there is a general state space representing aggregate uncertainty. When the economy is stationary and the underlying process governing aggregate uncertainty Markov, we provide Markov representations of the equilibria.Table of notation Agents' characteristics space ( ) - A Action space of each agent (aA) - Y Y = x A - Aggregate distribution on agents' characteristics - (X) Space of probability measures onX - C(X) Space of continuous functions onX - _X Family of Borel sets ofX - State space of aggregate uncertainty ( ) - x _t=1 aggregate uncertainty for the infinite game - = (₁,₂,...,_t,...) - ^{t t} (₁, ₂,..., _t) - L₁(^t,C ×A),v _t Normed space of measurable functions from ^t toC( x A) - 8o(^t,( x A)) Space of measurable functions from ^tto( x A) - X^t X^t= x _s=1 ^t X - _X ^t Borel field onX ^t - v Distribution on - v_t Marginal distribution of v on ^t - v(^t)((¦^t)) Conditional distribution on given ^t - v^t(^s)(v_t(¦^s)) Conditional distribution on ^t given ^s (wheres) - _t Periodt distributional strategy - Distributional strategy for all periods =(₁,₂,...,_t,...) - _t Transition process for agents' types - ( _t,^t,y)(P _t+1(, _t , ^t ,y)) Transition function associated with _t - u _t Utility function - V _t (, a, , ^t) Value function for each collection (, a, , ^t ) - W _t (, , ^t ) Value function given optimal action a - C() Consistency correspondence. Distributions consistent with and characteristics transition functions - B() Best response correspondence (which also satisfy consistency) - E Set of equilibrium distributional strategies - x _t=1 ( ^t , (x A)) - S Expanded state space for Markov construction - (, a, ) Value function for Markov construction - P( _t ^* , _t y)(P(, _t ^* , _t , _y )) Invariant characteristics transition function for Markov game We wish to acknowledge very helpful conversations with C. d'Aspremont, B. Lipman, A. McLennan and J-F. Mertens. The financial support of the SSHRCC and the ARC at Queen's University is gratefully acknowledged. This paper was begun while the first author visited CORE. The financial support of CORE and the excellent research environment is gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Priority Network Access Pricing for Electric Power

We propose a priority-pricing scheme for zonal access to the electric power grid that is uniform across all buses in a zone. The independent system operator (ISO) charges bulk power traders a per unit ex ante transmission access fee. The zonal access fee serves as an access insurance premium that entitles a bulk power trader to either physical injection of one unit of energy or a compensation payment. The access fee per MWh depends on the injection zone and a self-selected strike price that serves as an insurance deductible that determines the scheduling priority of the insured transaction and the compensation level in case of curtailment. Inter-zonal transactions are charged (or credited) with an additional ex post congestion fee equal to the differences in zonal spot prices. The compensation for curtailed transactions equals the difference between the realized zonal spot price and the selected strike price (deductible level). The ISO manages congestion so as to minimize net compensation payments and thus, curtailment probabilities increase with strike price and for any particular strike price may vary from bus to bus. We calculate the rational expectations equilibrium for three-, four- and six-node systems and demonstrate that the efficiency losses of the proposed second best scheme relative to the efficient dispatch solutions are modest.