Demand for investment in productive and financial capital

The paper deals with an entrepreneur who operates in imperfect capital markets, making rational decisions about productive and financial investment. Using the economic rule that the allocation of assets between productive and financial purposes is carried out according to the equality of the marginal productivity and the marginal factor costs of debt, the paper analyses the factors which determine the size of the firm, the size of debt, and the optimal dynamic path.     

European Monetary Integration and Aggregate Relative Deprivation: The Dull Side of the Shiny Euro

Drawing on the premise that the integration of economies revises people's social space and their comparators, we quantify social stress by aggregate relative deprivation, ARD; we calculate the effect of monetary mergers on ARD; and we document the validity of the superadditivity property of ARD for successive adoptions of a common currency by European countries. One feature of monetary unification, which replaces diverse currencies with a common currency, is that it brings about a change in the comparison environment, expanding the reference space of individuals in a given country to encompass individuals from the joining countries. Overall, calculations regarding six enlargements of the Economic and Monetary Union between 1999 and 2011 reveal an increase of ARD on six occasions when we hold incomes constant, and on five when we take into consideration changes in incomes. In addition, we observe an uneven distribution of the costs and benefits from monetary integration among the participating countries when these costs and benefits are measured in terms of ARD.     

Learning from Trading

The incorporation of diverse information into asset prices isempirically examined in an actual securities market with multiplerounds of trade. Using prices of Israeli index and nominal bondsof equal maturity, we calculate implied expectations of inflationthat has already occurred but for which the official statistichas not yet been announced. Learning is defined as the convergenceof these expectations to the actual level of inflation in theperiod after the end of the month but before the announcementof the official statistic. We find that the variance of theinflation expectation errors decreases with trading days inthis period. The decline in the variance suggests that investorslearn, by repeatedly observing prices, about the distributionof other investors' information. We also find a positive relationbetween the dispersion of relative price changes and the sizeof the inflation-expectation errors on the first round of trade.The correlation diminishes as investors learn about the distributionof inflation information in the economy.     

Congestable local public goods in an urban setting

In this paper, we recognize two types of unpure local public goods (LPGs): congestable and pollutable. This paper and the forthcoming one (Clubs in an urban setting, mimeo, 1980) are devoted to congestable LPGs (CLPG). In Part I we define, classify, and characterize CLPGs. CLPGs may vary in their degree of congestability between zero, in the case of a pure LPG, and one, in the case of a private good. Spatially, we recognize two types of LPGs: the dispersed LPG (DiLPG) and the concentrated LPG (CoLPG). The first is distributed throughout the residential ring and the second is provided in specific locations to which households must travel. The second part of this paper is devoted to the investigation of the properties of a CDiLPG in an urban setting. The properties of CoLPG are investigated in (Clubs in an urban setting, mimeo, 1980). A version of Samuelson's rule as to the optimal allocation of pure public goods is extended on one hand to local dispersed public goods and on the other hand to CLPGs. Two corrective Pigouvian taxes are identified: congestion tolls levied on households, and a residential land tax. These two taxes cover total government expenditure on the LPG. The fraction of the expenses on the LPG covered by congestion tolls is α, and that covered by land taxes is (1 − α), where α is the degree of congestability. Efficiency can also be achieved by zoning the residential ring and regulating the housing density in it. This procedure may replace taxation and its advantage is that we can control a large number of externalities by a single set of zoning rules and regulations. An a posteriori rule to guide the local government as to the desirability of its actions is provided.     

Adverse selection and the market for annuities

Adverse selection is often blamed for the malfunctioning of the annuities market. We simulate the impact of adverse selection on the consumption allocation of annuitants under alternative parameter values, and explore the resulting welfare implications. We show that, for most parameter values, the welfare losses associated with equilibriums that are subject to adverse selection correspond to a loss of wealth of around one percent in a first-best equilibrium. These losses are smaller than the corresponding losses associated with equilibriums with no access to an annuity market by an order of magnitude of ten. The existence of substitutes for annuities such as a bequest motive or a social security system intensifies the adverse selection but reduces its welfare impact.

The effect of leverage on bargaining with a corporation

This paper shows that the choice of a capital structure by a firm affects the bargaining posture of its shareholders vis-a-vis its suppliers of specialized production factors. The pricing of the firm's securities and the choice of a capital structure are analyzed in light of this effect of debt financing.