Competition,economies of scale,and diversity of firm sizes

This paper presents an empirical example in which small firms are able to compete by specializing, without monopolistic conduct, despite economies of scale. The viability of small commercial banks in Illinois is established both by casual observation and by a finding of constant returns to scale, not correcting for specialization. A second specification of the cost function, correcting for specialization, exhibits economies of scale, suggesting that specialization is the means by which small banks survive. Monopoly conduct is ruled out by a Rosse–Panzar test, rejecting the alternative hypothesis that monopoly power has allowed inefficient banks to survive.     

Establishment Size by Sector and County-Level Economic Growth

Median household income is found to grow faster in counties with smaller manufacturing, retail, wholesale, and service establishments.     

Establishment Size and Local Employment Growth

In a sample of more than 2000 U.S. counties, smaller average establishment size is generally associated with faster subsequent growth rates of sectoral employment, both within and across sectors. The estimated effects are large in magnitude and thus economically important, and are consistent with several theories previously developed. These findings contribute toward a more precise understanding of the role of small businesses in economic growth and labor markets.     

Licensing Requirements as a Coordination Mechanism for Entry

Cheap talk, side payments, and arbitration are limited in their ability tocoordinate asymmetric entry among symmetric potential entrants.Externally imposed licensing requirements may provide a viablemechanism to attain the desired asymmetric outcome in equilibrium.     

Machiavellianism,stakeholder orientation,and support for sustainability reporting

This study investigates the relations among Machiavellianism, the stakeholder orientation, and Italian managers' support for corporate social and environmental reporting (SER). These relationships have not previously been investigated among a sample of experienced managers but have important implications. As anticipated, Machiavellianism had a strong negative association with the support for SER. Machiavellianism was also negatively related to the stakeholder orientation, which in turn was positively correlated with the support for SER. Support for the stakeholder orientation partially mediated the association between Machiavellianism and SER. The findings advance our understanding of the motivations for sustainability reporting by documenting that managers' fundamental personality traits and economic ideologies are closely associated and are important determinants of normative support for social and environmental disclosures. We further suggest that the results support the case for mandated compliance‐with‐standard sustainability reports coupled with a requirement that such reports be independently audited.     

Keynesian Chaos

This paper shows how nonperiodic fluctuations can emerge in the standard fix price macroeconomic model when induced investment is strong enough. Specific functional forms are used to illustrate the phenomenon and to compute numerical evidence that nonperiodic fluctuations need not be rare.     

Equilibrium in economies without ordered preferences or free disposal

Recent work in competitive equilibrium analysis, pioneered by Mas-Colell (1974), ‘An equil- brium existence theorem without complete or transitive preferences’, has established existence of equilibrium in an economy in which preferences are not orderings. The purpose of this note is to show that the assumption of free disposal is not necessary for existence.     

Regulatory inertia and risk reduction

This paper is adapted from Chapter IV of the author's Ph.D. dissertation. The author gratefully acknowledges helpful comments from Therese Flaherty. Hajime Miyazaki, James Rosse, participants in the Stanford Economics Department Workshop in Industrial Organization and Applied Microeconomics, and an anonymous referee. This paper embodies the views of the author and does not represent the views or policy of the Federal Reserve System or the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.     

Some theorems on the existence of competitive equilibrium

The purpose of this paper is to point out a relationship between theorems on the existence of competitive equilibrium in economies with externalities, and recent results (pioneered by A. Mas-Colell) on the existence of equilibrium for economies in which consumer preferences are neither complete nor transitive. This observation leads both to a substantial strengthening of the theorem on the existence of equilibrium with externalities, and at the same time to a revealing perspective on the Mas-Colell theorem.