Reputational cheap talk

We analyze information reporting by a privately informed expert concerned about being perceived to have accurate information. When the expert's reputation is updated on the basis of the report as well as the realized state, the expert typically does not wish to truthfully reveal the signal observed. The incentives to deviate from truth telling are characterized and shown to depend on the information structure. In equilibrium, experts can credibly communicate only part of their information. Our results also hold when experts have private information about their own accuracy and care about their reputation relative to others.     

Post-earnings-announcement Drift: Some Preliminary Evidence for the UK

This paper tests for the presence of post-earnings-announcement drift on the London Stock Exchange using data for seven half-years for a constant sample of 206 quoted companies. Separate results are presented for interim and final earnings announcements and the results are disaggregated by firm size. Overall, we find evidence of significant drift for the earnings announcements of small firms but not for the announcements of large firms.     

Productive efficiency and growth policies for the Caribbean

Productive (economic) efficiency and factors affecting it was evaluated in the Caribbean between 1983 to 1992. Results from non-parametric programming indicated that efficiency (i.e. pure technical, allocative and economic) measures were lower and more variable in Caribbean than in other Western Hemisphere countries (i.e. North America and Latin America). Tobit regression analysis indicated higher levels of private and foreign investments, productive infrastructure, credit availability, education level, and consumption of domestically produced goods had positive impacts on the efficiency measures. On the other hand, higher levels of public expenditure, income tax, and export taxes, and higher inflation rates had negative effects. These results support the current trend towards advocating more open economies (i.e. letting the free market work) and encouraging governments to confine their functions to facilitative/regulatory type roles and to undertaking tasks that are not generally undertaken by the private sector (e.g. developing infrastructure, providing education). Although, generally, the same factors were associated with efficiency in the Caribbean and Latin America, their relative impacts differed. Consequently, in order to improve efficiency in the Caribbean countries, relatively greater emphasis should be placed on encouraging foreign and private investment and developing infrastructure than would be the case in Latin American countries.     

Product Differentiation and Upstream-Downstream Relations

This paper examines the relationship between a differentiated downstream market and a specialized upstream market. We analyze three different types of vertical relation between the upstream and downstream sectors when the upstream market supplies specialized and complementary inputs to a downstream product-differentiated market. The first is the benchmark case of decentralized markets, the second is a network of alliances among upstream suppliers, and the third is partial vertical integration. We identify the perfect equilibrium for a symmetric model in each case and show that there is no simple relationship between the degree of connection between upstream and downstream firms and profitability. The key factor affecting prices and the relative profitability of the different market organizations is the degree of product differentiation among the downstream firms, because it affects the intensity of competition among upstream suppliers. We show that vertical foreclosure is not an equilibrium strategy.     

Agglomeration and Congestion in the Economics of Ideas and Technological Change

Urban economists have long recognized that space is economically important. Evidence of the importance of urban agglomeration and the offsetting effects of congestion are provided in a number of studies of productivity and wages. Little attention has been paid to this evidence in the economic growth literature. The new growth research focuses on technological change. We extend the production function for new ideas common to this research in a way that allows for congestion and agglomeration in innovation and test the hypothesis that these forces are important in explaining innovation. Strong evidence is found that agglomeration and congestion are important in explaining the vast differences in per capita patent rates across US states. This suggests an important new agenda in linking studies of urban economics with the rapidly advancing field of endogenous growth.     

Generic Product Advertising, Spillovers, and Market Concentration

We examine the decision to advertise a homogenous good. We show that the likelihood of inefficiently low advertising rests heavily on how one models the mechanism by which advertising affects demand. Regardless of this mechanism, however, there is always a lower bound of concentration below which no advertising occurs even when welfare-enhancing. In such cases, mandatory programs will raise welfare if they induce entry, although producer surplus may decline. Our model also provides an explanation for the stylized fact that advertising intensity first rises and then falls as concentration increases.     

Economics of advertising: Emerging functions of Internet advertising

This paper intends to highlight the emerging force of the Internet as an advertising medium. The economic functions of Internet advertising are examined. Moreover, the paper aims to evaluate the relative impacts on optimal advertising models. Our discussion also includes analysis of associated price-cost margins with respect to optimal advertising budgets and strategic reactions. All in all, this paper should provide entrepreneurs with more crucial knowledge of advertising strategies offered by the new medium. Moreover, it will equip scientists and technologists with more insights into the economic aspects and strategic values of Internet advertising. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.