Does Rigidity of Prices Hide Collusion?

Cartel detection is one of the most basic and most complicated tasks of competition authorities. In recent years, however, variance filters have provided a fairly simple tool for rejecting the existence of price-fixing, with the added advantage that the methodology requires only a low volume of data. In this paper we analyze two aspects of variance filters: (i) the relationship that can be established between market structure and price rigidity, and (ii) the use of different benchmarks for implementing the filters. This paper addresses these two issues by applying a variance filter to a gasoline retail market that is characterized by a set of unique features. Our results confirm the positive relationship between monopoly and price rigidity, and confirm the variance filter??s ability to detect non-competitive behavior when an appropriate benchmark is used. Our findings should serve to promote the implementation of this methodology among competition authorities, albeit in the awareness that a more exhaustive complementary analysis is required.     

Factors helping the HR function gain greater acceptance for its proposals and innovations: evidence from Spain†

On the basis of the sense-making and sense-giving literature, this study addresses factors helping the HR function gain greater acceptance by employees for its proposals and innovations. Using an original sample of 298 employees from nine firms in Spain, we find that HR department credibility is only one of the factors that influence employees' acceptance. Other essential elements are top management and supervisor support. We also investigate the consequences that differential levels of support from supervisors and top managers can have for the acceptance of HR innovations, and we find that supervisor support carries more weight than that of top managers. Finally, we explore variations in the importance of the HR function credibility as an acceptance enabler under different organizational innovation climates. The results suggest that HR credibility plays an essential role independently of climate.     

Trade law and trade flows

This paper develops and estimates a model to study the effect of improving the quality of commercial trade law on trade flows. We focus on improvements aimed to privately resolve disputes among trading partners: international commercial arbitration and conciliation. The main novelty of the model is to explicit the balance between the contractual quality of importer and exporter (contractual distance) in an environment with informational frictions (contractual noise). Using a structural gravity estimation with high-dimensional fixed effects, the main contribution of the empirical exercise is to confirm previous results and unravel new traits that align with our theoretical results. Arbitration has a moderate and positive effect on exports that increases (decreases) with the contractual quality of the exporter (importer) and the remoteness of markets. The effects of conciliation are similarly positive, but only for similar trading partners with high levels of income. Results also suggest both domestic trade law reform and international treaties have a positive effect on trade, with a stronger effect of the latter.     

Sustainable development and circular economy: The role of institutional promotion on circular consumption and market competitiveness from a multistakeholder engagement approach

The transition from a linear economy to a circular economy (CE) is a real challenge to achieve long‐term sustainability. To push CE in the market, institutional promotion could become a key driver to positively impact both circular consumption and the competitiveness of the market. This paper analyzes the influence that soft and hard initiatives have on circular consumption and market competitiveness. Based on a survey of 1,281 respondents from different types of stakeholders, structural equations modeling statistical analysis was run. Results show that soft initiatives support the achievement of both objectives, whereas hard ones only influence greater circular consumption. However, the perception of the different stakeholders considered is very heterogeneous. It is indicative that not all institutional promotion initiatives are effective. Thus, institutions should guide, in an adequate and differentiated manner, their efforts to promote CE and sustainable development depending on the stakeholder they are targeting.     

Weighted approval voting

To allow society to treat unequal alternatives distinctly we propose a natural extension of Approval Voting by relaxing the assumption of neutrality. According to this extension, every alternative receives ex-ante a strictly positive and finite weight. These weights may differ across alternatives. Given the voting decisions of every individual (individuals are allowed to vote for, or approve of, as many alternatives as they wish to), society elects the alternative for which the product of total number of votes times exogenous weight is maximal. If the product is maximal for more than one alternative, a pre-specified tie-breaking rule is applied. Our main result is an axiomatic characterization of this family of voting procedures.      

Gains from Wage Flexibility and the Zero Lower Bound*

We analyse the welfare impact of greater wage flexibility in the presence of an occasionally binding zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint on the nominal interest rate. We show that the ZLB constraint generally amplifies the adverse effects of greater wage flexibility on welfare when the central bank follows a conventional Taylor rule. When demand shocks are the driving force, the ZLB implies that an increase in wage flexibility reduces welfare even under the optimal monetary policy with commitment.     

Fakers becoming believers: how opinion dynamics are shaped by preference falsification,impression management and coherence heuristics

In the vast and rich literature on opinion dynamics, the role of preference falsification has generally been dismissed. Following the lead of Timur Kuran, in this paper we present one of the first multi-agent models that explores how opinion dynamics can be affected by the possible divorce between private and public opinions. It is also the first attempt to explore the role of social hierarchies in opinion dynamics conditioned by preference falsification. Our model formalizes heterogeneous evolving agents guided by a cognitively feasible set of heuristics and embedded in a social-rank-dependent structure of interactions. In social-rank-heterophilic encounters where people experience a high pressure of face-to-face interactions, unanimous support for the high social-rank preferred option emerges, while in any other scenario this option gathers majority but not unanimous support. Preference falsification has a crucial role in the emergence of unanimity, but it also creates the conditions for further private opinion actualizations that end up generating a self-sustained and sincere unanimity. When social-rank-homophilic encounters are the rule, or when group dynamics are irrelevant for opinion expression, agents never find incentives to falsify their opinions, therefore generating a social situation that resembles the general idea behind the ethnographic work of James C. Scott: true opinion expression in daily social-rank-homophilic encounters and a persistent opinion falsification in dissimilar social-rank interactions.     

Gains from Wage Flexibility and the Zero Lower Bound*

We analyse the welfare impact of greater wage flexibility in the presence of an occasionally binding zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint on the nominal interest rate. We show that the ZLB constraint generally amplifies the adverse effects of greater wage flexibility on welfare when the central bank follows a conventional Taylor rule. When demand shocks are the driving force, the ZLB implies that an increase in wage flexibility reduces welfare even under the optimal monetary policy with commitment.