Bargaining and efficiency in networks

We study an infinite horizon game in which pairs of players connected in a network are randomly matched to bargain over a unit surplus. Players who reach agreement are removed from the network without replacement. The global logic of efficient matchings and the local nature of bargaining, in combination with the irreversible exit of player pairs following agreements, create severe hurdles to the attainment of efficiency in equilibrium. For many networks all Markov perfect equilibria of the bargaining game are inefficient, even as players become patient. We investigate how incentives need to be structured in order to achieve efficiency via subgame perfect, but non-Markovian, equilibria. The analysis extends to an alternative model in which individual players are selected according to some probability distribution, and a chosen player can select a neighbor with whom to bargain.     

Contemporary Phase of Globalization: Does It Have a Serious Downside?

Abstract

There are many who logically or illogically regard the contemporary phase of economic globalization as a negative, harmful, destructive, marginalizing and malevolent influence. Notwithstanding its positive welfare implications, it has been a serious source of national, regional and global economic problems for many economies, both developing and advance industrial ones. Partial blame for the fall 2008 meltdown of the global financial market does justly go to globalization. It is also blamed for uneven distribution of income within and between countries. Consequently global policy environment has turned globalization-unfriendly. Without negating the affirmative aspects of globalization and its welfare-enhancing contributions, this article focuses on the negative aspects of the contemporary phase of economic globalization.     

Contract Complexity, Incentives, and the Value of Delegation

In settings where the revelation principle applies, delegation arrangements are frequently inferior to centralized decision making, and at best achieve the same level of performance. This paper studies the value of delegation when organizations are constrained by a bound on the number of contingencies in any contract. For a principal-agent setting with asymmetric information, we compare centralized mechanisms where the principal retains sole responsibility for contracting and coordinating production, with delegation mechanisms where one agent (a manager) is delegated authority to contract with other agents and coordinate production. Relative to centralization, delegation entails a control loss, but allows decisions to be more sensitive to the manager's private information. We identify circumstances under which the flexibility gain outweighs the control loss, so that delegation emerges superior to centralized contracting.     

Persistent Inequality

When human capital accumulation generates pecuniary externalities across professions, and capital markets are imperfect, persistent inequality in utility and consumption is inevitable in any steady state. This is true irrespective of the degree of divisibility in investments. However, divisibility (or fineness of occupational structure) has implications for both the multiplicity and Pareto-efficiency of steady states. Indivisibilities generate a continuum of inefficient and efficient steady states with varying per capita income. On the other hand, perfect divisibility typically implies the existence of a unique steady state distribution which is Pareto-efficient.     

Benchmarking in two price financial markets

No arbitrage for two price economies with no locally risk free asset implies that suitably benchmarked prices are nonlinear martingales. However, both the benchmarking asset and the measure change depend on the process being benchmarked. Further assumptions allow the nonlinear martingales in discrete time to become expectations with respect to a nonadditivity probability. Such nonlinear expectations are imminently reasonable given the lack of experience with tail events on both sides of the gain loss spectrum. Continuous time extensions employ measure distortions. The general valuation of economic activities and the leveraging of stability in benchmarked price processes is then addressed. Traditional asset pricing questions and investigations are then reopened for benchmarked prices. In particular, the analytics for benchmarked option pricing and the asset pricing theory for benchmarked prices in a limiting stationary state are developed.     

Crises,contagion and cross-listings

We investigate whether cross-listing shares in the form of depositary receipts in overseas markets benefits investors in emerging market countries during periods of local financial crisis from 1994 to 2002. We regress cumulative abnormal returns for three windows surrounding the crisis events on the cross-listing status while controlling for cross-sectional differences in firm age, trading volume, foreign exposure, disclosure quality and corporate governance. Further, we examine cross-listing effects in countries popularly thought to experience contagious effects of these crises. We find that cross-listed firms react significantly less negatively than non-cross-listed firms, particularly in the aftermath of the crisis. The results on contagious cross-listing effects are however mixed. Our findings are consistent with predictions based on theories of market segmentation as well as differential disclosure/governance between developed and emerging markets. We do not find evidence that foreign investors “panic” during a currency crisis.     

Option Pricing Using Variance Gamma Markov Chains

This paper proposes a Markov Chain between homogeneous Lévy processesas a candidate class of processes for the statistical and risk neutral dynamicsof financial asset prices. The method is illustrated using the variance gammaprocess. Closed forms for the characteristic function are developed and thisrenders feasible, series and option prices respectively. It is observed inthe statistical and risk neutral process is fit to data on time period of4 to 6 months in a state while this reduces to month for indices. Risk neutrallythere is generally a low probability of a move to a state with higher moments.In some cases this is reversed.     

The Effect of Windfall Gains on the Sunk-Cost Effect

Prior research has extensively documented the sunk-cost effect – an irrational attention to irrecoverable past costs while making pending investment or consumption decisions. In a series of experiments, we show that the sunk-cost effect weakens and sometimes disappears when consumers receive a windfall (unexpected) income at the time of making a decision. This unbudgeted income allows consumers to write off their past losses, thereby eliminating the pressure to consume in order to satisfactorily close the account. We further show that the similarity between the nature of the windfall income and the past sunk-cost moderates this relationship. More generally, we argue that mental accounts can be flexible and consumers may have discretion in moving money between different mental accounts.     

A Kiss of Life for the Withering Doha Round of the Multilateral Trade Negotiations?

Abstract

Notwithstanding the gallant intensions, the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations (MTNs) proved to be egregiously problem-prone. It went down in the history of multilateral trade as the first round to be suspended. Potsdam was the final link in this chain of breakdowns. While the G-8 leaders supported the DDA, their trade delegations did not seem to abide by the public pronouncements of their leaders. This article delves into the anatomy of this failure and points toward the salient factors that led to it. There is an imperious need for resuscitating the Doha Round and for the key players to be flexible and take some decisive steps forward. The round is too important for the community of trading economies to be allowed to collapse. Revival is a possible and credible objective. A two-stage revival process is suggested in this article.