Is There a Free‐Market Economist in the House? The Policy Views of American Economic Association Members

A bstract .   People often suppose or imply that free-market economists constitute a significant portion of all economists. We surveyed American Economic Association members and asked their views on 18 specific forms of government activism. We find that about 8 percent of AEA members can be considered supporters of free-market principles, and that less than 3 percent may be called strong supporters. The data are broken down by voting behavior (Democratic or Republican). Even the average Republican AEA member is "middle-of-the-road," not free-market. We offer several possible explanations of the apparent difference between actual and attributed views.     

全球化与WTO：利益分析及争端解决

一、引言“全球化”这一说法是最近才开始流行的,而我们这些贸易经济学家对它的研究历史却有几十年甚至上百年了;世界贸易组织(WTO)也是最近才成立的,而国际贸易方面的法律专家对它和它的前身--GATT的研究也已近五十年了。在前面的两种情况中,国际贸易方面的专家都会强调世界经     

What Makes an Independent Regulator Independent?

As private capital is increasingly invested in utilities across the globe, the issue of regulation and its inferace with different types of government, culture and society has become every more complex. This article focuses on the design of regulatory systems outside the US and the UK. With references to current practice in many countries, the author argues that formal regulatory independence and accountability is not always a necessary condition for effective regulation (though where feasible and effective it carries potential economic benefits). On the other hand, he also argues that an informal or advisory regulatory system may work better in some situations. In all circumstances, informal accountability and a clear understanding of the "rules of the game" are crucial for effective regulation.     

Infrastructure Contracts: Trust and Institutional Updating

This paper discusses trust and trust perceptions in infrastructure contracts and supporting institutions. We focus on perceptions of the trustworthiness of the government purchasers of infrastructure services by the supplying companies and by the governments themselves. In particular, we allow for trust updating and trust misalignments, which may give rise to ‘undertrusting’ and ‘overtrusting’. The core of the paper sets out a game theoretic model of contracts with dynamic adjustment of trust perceptions, which we use to explore the impact of trust misalignment both on economic efficiency (measured by expected welfare) and on investment levels. We explore flexible contracts with and without pre-payments, rigid contracts (which do not allow for post-investment renegotiation), and hybrid contracts. We then compare the efficiency of the flexible contracts to that of hybrid contracts using as a criterion the expected welfare implications of each contract. The model is used to shed light on current issues on the sustainability of private investment infrastructure contracts in developed and in developing countries, including the role of regulatory institutions.     

A note on the allocation of time

A multi-commodity model in which time as well as nominal income is necessary in the process of consumption is analyzed. Duality theory is used to provide a counter example to the ‘Linder Theorem’ that a rise in real wages will decrease consumption of some good if it is more time intensive than the weighted average of the time intensity of all other commodities.     

Oligopoly and welfare: A unified presentation with applications to trade and development

We develop a unified sequence of models to examine the determinants of price, output, profitability and concentration for different kinds of oligopolistic market. We relate various magnitudes of significance to judges of welfare and to policy makers, such as consumer surplus, profit, or added benefits of employment or trade surplus, to observable magnitudes such as the size and concentration of the market. It emerges that various appropriately formulated Herfindahl indices are useful in several of these relations. We attempt to present results in a way that is useful for empirical investigations and pay particular attention to applications in trade and development.