Sequential Screening

We study price discrimination where consumers know at the time of contracting only the distribution of their valuations but subsequently learn their actual valuations. Consumers are sequentially screened, as in a menu of refund contracts. Initial valuation uncertainty can differ in terms of first-order stochastic dominance or mean-preserving-spread. In both cases, optimal mechanisms depend on informativeness of consumers' initial knowledge about their valuations, not on uncertainty that affects all consumers. It can be optimal to "subsidize" consumers with smaller valuation uncertainty through low refund to reduce the rent to those who face greater uncertainty and purchase more "flexible" contracts.     

Canada's beef exports: Border effects and prospects for market access

This paper examines the magnitudes of border effects on Canada's beef exports, and assesses the prospects for market access. The empirical analysis relies on a gravity model derived from a supply-based framework, and implements different econometric methodologies. It covers the conventional measurement of border effects that is determined relative to the intranational trade baseline. Also, it sets alternative baselines to estimate the wedge between the border effects on beef exports of Canada and those of other countries. The estimated parameters are used to carry out different scenarios to examine the tariff-related and nontariff border effects, and to evaluate the impacts of trade preferences for Canada's bilateral beef exports. The results reveal significant trade impediments facing Canada's bilateral beef exports to many large markets (e.g., EU-15, Japan, Republic of Korea, China, and Russia), and they often indicate that the effects of tariff reductions become considerably larger when coupled with reductions in nontariff impediments. Also, they underscore the significance of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)’s preferential market access for Canada's beef exports. The export opportunities for the Canadian beef industry that are generated through lower trade barriers would, however, decrease when trade barriers facing other beef-exporting countries are reduced.     

Does responsive pricing smooth demand shocks?

Using data from a unique pricing experiment, we investigate Vickrey's conjecture that responsive pricing can be used to smooth both predictable and unpredictable demand shocks. Our evidence shows that increasing the responsiveness of price to demand conditions reduces the magnitude of deviations in capacity utilization rates from a pre-determined target level. A 10% increase in price variability leads to a decrease in the variability of capacity utilization rates between 2% and 6%. We discuss implications for the use of demand-side incentives to deal with congestible resources.     

Do sectoral training funds stimulate training?

Sectoral levelling funds are an arrangement aimed at alleviating a well‐known theoretical problem of underinvestment in worker training because of free‐rider behaviour of firms. In the Netherlands, collective agreements require firms to participate in such funds in a number of sectors. Using a comprehensive dataset of Dutch firms, we attempt to determine the extent to which these levelling funds have a stimulating effect on the level of training investments of firms. Surprisingly, no indications are found for the existence of such an effect. Training levels are not higher in sectors with a fund than in sectors without a fund. Several explanations are discussed to account for these findings.     

Deleveraging crises and deep recessions: a behavioural approach

Macroeconomic dynamics are characterized by alternating patterns of periods of relative stability and large swings. Standard microfounded macroeconomic models account for these patterns through exogenous and persistent shocks. In this article, we develop a fully decentralized and microfounded macroeconomic agent-based model, augmented with an opinion model, which produces endogenous waves of pessimism and optimism that feed back into firms’ leverage and households’ precautionary saving behaviour. A major emergent property of our model is precisely the complex successions of stable and unstable macroeconomic regimes. The model is further able to account for a wide spectrum of macro and micro empirical regularities. Within this framework, we analyse a series of macroeconomic phenomena of key relevance in the current macroeconomic debate, especially the occurrence of deleveraging crises and Fisherian debt-deflation recessions. Our analysis suggests that the relative dynamics of prices and wages and the resulting income distribution along a deflationary path are critical determinants of the severity of the recession and the chances of recovery.     

Discretionary Accounting Choices: A Debt covenants Based Signalling Approach

This paper seeks to explain the discretionary accounting choices made by managers in a world characterised by asymmetric information between managers and investors. It considers a firm whose capital structure consists of both debt and equity, a manager who protects the interests of the firm's existing shareholders, and a financial market. The manager is committed to engage in an investment opportunity and needs to raise some equity to finance it. He is furthermore endowed with some private information about his firm's future earnings. The paper shows how, under certain conditions, the manager may credibly communicate his private information to investors through his accounting choices. In this equilibrium, the selection of balance sheet strengthening and income increasing accounting choices signals unfavourable information while the use of balance-sheet weakening and income- decreasing accounting choices signals favourable private information. The latter firms should thus experience positive abnormal returns around the announcement dates of their accounting choices.     

Registering Ideology in the Creation of Social Entrepreneurs: Intermediary Organizations, ‘Ideal Subject’ and the Promise of Enjoyment

Few industries have been pressured to develop corporate social responsibility (CSR) standards and policies like oil and gas. This has translated into the creation of non-governmental organizations and branches of the oil and gas firms focused on CSR. However, given the intrinsic complex characteristics of this industry, its global reach, and the fact that its operations affect and involve a wide variety of stakeholders, CSR issues cannot be defined and implemented exclusively at the industry or firm levels, but require the participation of other actors affected directly or indirectly by oil and gas activities. In this paper we argue, first, that oil and gas CSR issues are collectively constructed through meta-organizations (organizations composed by other organizations), and, second, that the complexity and variety of CSR issues require companies to build industry-specific and non-industry-specific collective actions. Based on how oil and gas firms participate in this multi-level co-construction of CSR issues, we created a typology of meta-organizations as infra-sectoral, sectoral, cross-sectoral, and supra-sectoral meta-organizations.     

New Scale and Scope for Industrial Policies in the 1990s

A central hypothesis of this paper is to consider that changes in the economic and political environment invite us to appraise the status that industrial policies can have in the making of contemporary macroeconomic policies. This perspective is first referred to the post-war debate on standard and radical Keynesianisms. The main trends in the fields of public interventions up to the 80s are recalled. It helps to stress the change of context in the 80s and 90s, especially regarding the forms of competition prevailing on product markets. All of which set opportunities to reshape industrial policies and all the more so given that macroeconomic policies are losing momentum. Despite their renewed legitimacy and efficiency, the question of the macroeconomic impact of these coordinated industrial policies remains open, still depending on the scale that central and local authorities are willing to give us to these new schemes.