Mean-Variance Preferences and Investor Behaviour

We study the comparative statics implications of mean-variance preferences for optimal portfolios. Specifically, we show that all risk-averse mean-variance investors raise their investment in a risky asset in response to a change in that asset's return distribution if and only if the change lowers both the mean and standard deviation of the return by the same percentage. Besides being of interest in its own right, our results allow us to compare some comparative statics implications and the expected utility and mean-variance models systematically.     

Incorporating distributional considerations in the safe minimum standard approach: endangered species and local impacts

Explicitly incorporating current distributional concerns into the safe minimum standard (SMS) approach is the objective of this study. The SMS approach is a collective choice process that prescribes protecting a minimum level of a renewable natural resource unless the social costs of doing so are somehow excessive or intolerably high. More complete implementation of an SMS approach, if it is to be a pragmatic policy tool, requires that distributional considerations be included in determining whether the economic consequences of preservation actions are intolerable. Two case studies involving the US Endangered Species Act are used to illustrate how distributional concerns might be incorporated into the SMS approach.     

Learning to bid: The design of auctions under uncertainty and adaptation

We examine auction design in a context where symmetrically informed adaptive agents with common valuations learn to bid for a good. Despite the absence of private valuations, asymmetric information, or risk aversion, bidder strategies do not converge to the Bertrand–Nash equilibrium strategies even in the long run. Deviations from equilibrium strategies depend on uncertainty regarding the value of the good, auction structure, the agents? learning model, and the number of bidders. Although individual agents learn Nash bidding strategies in isolation, the learning of each agent, by flattening the best-reply correspondence of other agents, blocks common learning. These negative externalities are more severe in second-price auctions, auctions with many bidders, and auctions where the good has an uncertain value ex post.     

Allocative efficiency measurement revisited—Do we really need input prices?

The traditional approach to measuring allocative efficiency exploits input prices, which are rarely known at the firm level. This paper proves allocative efficiency can be measured as a profit-oriented distance to the frontier in a profit-technical efficiency space. This new approach does not require information on input prices. To validate the new approach, we perform a Monte-Carlo experiment providing evidence that the estimates of allocative efficiency employing the new and the traditional approach are highly correlated. Finally, as an illustration, we apply the new approach to a sample of about 900 enterprises from the chemical manufacturing industry in Germany.     

Inverting the Classroom: A Gateway to Creating an Inclusive Learning Environment

Asserting that “elementary teachers are going to become increasingly involved with economic concepts, and that economic education at the elementary level is at an important developmental state,” Professor Ramsett explains how economics can be included in the elementary school curriculum without taking other subject matter out, and suggests approaches to the training of elementary teachers. He describes some innovative techniques being used at North Dakota's New School of Behavioral Studies, illustrates methods for motivating pupils, shows how economic concepts can be related to other subjects (such as arithmetic), and calls for cooperation between educators and liberal arts faculties in preparing the elementary teacher.     

Response to L. Scott Miller

L. Scott Miller confronts us with the inadequacy of the schooling establishment's response to the educational needs of the special and rapidly growing group of minority students. Restructuring is urged as the most effective approach for meeting the urgent needs of disadvantaged at-risk students. Two experienced and prominent economics educators comment on the challenge and policy proposals.     

Irving Fisher's debt deflation analysis: From the Purchasing Power of Money (1911) to the Debt-deflation Theory of the Great Depression (1933)

Abstract

In 1933, Irving Fisher proposed an explanation for the Great Depression based on the distinction between the price level and price change effect of deflation in a context of over-indebtedness. This paper compares the debt-deflation theory of Fisher (1933 Fisher, I., 1933. The debt-deflation theory of great depressions, Econometrica 1 (1933), pp. 337–57. DOI: 10.2307/1907327[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) with the dynamic depression process he had expounded almost 20 years earlier in the Purchasing Power of Money (1911). The role played by both price level and price change effects in the analyses of Fisher (1933, 1911) are clarified in the context of the disequilibrium model of Tobin (1975 Tobin, J., 1975. Keynesian models of recession and depression, American Economic Review 65 (1975), pp. 195–202.[Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). More precisely, we show that the stationary equilibrium is assumed to be locally unstable according to Fisher's 1911 insights and globally unstable according to his 1933 analysis.