The economic impact of subsidized industrial R&D in Israel

Israel offers contingent subsidies to selected industrial R&D projects, with the purpose of creating high–quality jobs, reducing the trade deficit, increasing productivity and promoting growth. In 1987–94, 1,200 firms received $1,400 million of subsidies in support of $3,500 million of R&D (in constant 1996 dollars). We estimate that this R&D generated more than $31,000 million of sales, increasing industrial employment by about 10% and contributing to the trade balance a sum slightly less than the entire private sector deficit in the current account. It added 0.3% to GDP in increased productivity, each dollar of supported R&D adding an additional $0.45 to GDP and earning the economy a direct annual return of 13.4%. Electronics, broadly defined, received roughly half the subsidies while accounting for nearly two thirds of the gains; small firms that received one sixth of the subsidies contributed over a quarter of the gains.     

A proposition on short-run departures from the law-of-one-price: Unanticipated inflation,relative-price dispersion,and commodity arbitrage

This paper proposes an explanation of short-run departures from the law-of-one-price based on the characteristics of the inflationary process and changes in the distribution of relative prices. Unexpected inflation gives rise to volatility of relative prices. The more unexpected (and hence uneven) the rate of inflation, the greater the difficulty in discerning from a given structure of relative prices commodity-arbitrage opportunities which may be expected to persist and those transient opportunities which do not warrant a firm's incurring fixed costs of arbitrage. An illustration portrays a risk-averse firm confronting an international arbitrage opportunity.     

ASSET ALLOCATION AND ANNUITY-PURCHASE STRATEGIES TO MINIMIZE THE PROBABILITY OF FINANCIAL RUIN

In this paper, we derive the optimal investment and annuitization strategies for a retiree whose objective is to minimize the probability of lifetime ruin, namely the probability that a fixed consumption strategy will lead to zero wealth while the individual is still alive. Recent papers in the insurance economics literature have examined utility-maximizing annuitization strategies. Others in the probability, finance, and risk management literature have derived shortfall-minimizing investment and hedging strategies given a limited amount of initial capital. This paper brings the two strands of research together. Our model pre-supposes a retiree who does not currently have sufficient wealth to purchase a life annuity that will yield her exogenously desired fixed consumption level. She seeks the asset allocation and annuitization strategy that will minimize the probability of lifetime ruin. We demonstrate that because of the binary nature of the investor's goal, she will not annuitize any of her wealth until she can fully cover her desired consumption with a life annuity. We derive a variational inequality that governs the ruin probability and the optimal strategies, and we demonstrate that the problem can be recast as a related optimal stopping problem which yields a free-boundary problem that is more tractable. We numerically calculate the ruin probability and optimal strategies and examine how they change as we vary the mortality assumption and parameters of the financial model. Moreover, for the special case of exponential future lifetime, we solve the (dual) problem explicitly. As a byproduct of our calculations, we are able to quantify the reduction in lifetime ruin probability that comes from being able to manage the investment portfolio dynamically and purchase annuities.     

POLITICALLY CONTESTABLE RENTS AND TRANSFERS*

A rent or transfer is politically contestable when policy decisions are subject to influence by potential beneficiaries and losers. This paper studies contestablility of rents and transfers when contenders place different valuations on the politically allocated prize. Asymmetric valuation inhibits participation by low-valuation contenders. The model explains the phenomena of small numbers of active participants in contests to exercise political influence and low lobbying and other influence-seeking outlays relative to the value of politically allocated prizes.     

Computationally-feasible truthful auctions for convex bundles

In many economic settings, like spectrum and real-estate auctions, geometric figures on the plane are for sale. Each bidder bids for his desired figure, and the auctioneer has to choose a set of disjoint figures that maximizes the social welfare. In this work, we design mechanisms that are both incentive compatible and computationally feasible for these environments. Since the underlying algorithmic problem is computationally hard, these mechanisms cannot always achieve the optimal welfare; Nevertheless, they do guarantee a fraction of the optimal solution. We differentiate between two information models—when both the desired figures and their values are unknown to the auctioneer or when only the agents' values are private data. We guarantee different fractions of the optimal welfare for each information model and for different families of figures (e.g., arbitrary convex figures or axis-aligned rectangles). We suggest using a measure on the geometric diversity of the figures for expressing the quality of the approximations that our mechanisms provide.     

Preemptive rent seeking and the social cost of monopoly power

Monopoly power evokes rent seeking aimed at supplanting an incumbent monopolist as well as preemptive rent seeking by incumbents concerned with deterring entry of potential competitors. Using an illustrative example where preemptive rent seeking takes the form of excess capacity, this note makes the point that the relation between the value of resources expended in the two types of rent-seeking activity determines whether exposure of an incumbent monopolist to the discipline of potential competition reduces the social cost of monopoly power.     

Homogeneity and heterogeneity in stochastic models of brand choice behavior

Heterogeneity of consumers is one of the cornerstones of empirical findings and theories in marketing. It serves, for example, as the foundation for such areas as market segmentation and product differentiation. This paper attempts to trace and clarify the evolution over the last twenty years of the homogeneity assumptions in the area of stochastic models of brand choice behavior. In analyzing individual choice behavior by means of stochastic models, all individuals were often assumed to possess the same set of transition probabilities or follow the same stochastic process. However, empirical studies at the individual level indicate that individuals are actually non-homogeneous in those probabilities and processes. In this article we provide an analytical proof that if the behavior of individuals is specified to be homogeneous when it is not, wrong inferences about the type of stochastic process individuals follow and about the expected behavior of the total population will be drawn. Ways to remedy these problems by allowing for heterogeneity are reviewed. The implications of heterogeneity and our findings in the various application areas which utilize stochastic choice models are examined.     

Portfolio choice and mortality-contingent claims: The general HARA case

We solve a portfolio choice problem that includes mortality-contingent claims and labor income under general HARA preferences. Our contribution beyond existing literature is to (i) focus on the covariance between shocks to human capital and financial capital, to (ii) model the utility of a family with basic needs and (iii) include life insurance and pension annuity claims in one unified life-cycle model. Our solution employs a “similarity reduction” mapping which reduces the two-dimensional HJB equation into one dimension. This allows for the implementation of a quick numerical scheme. And, when shocks to human capital and financial capital are perfectly correlated, a closed-form expression is obtained as a special case.