Foundations of Dominant-Strategy Mechanisms

Robert Wilson criticizes applied game theory's reliance on common-knowledge assumptions. In reaction to Wilson's critique, the recent literature of mechanism design has adopted the goal of finding detail-free mechanisms in order to eliminate this reliance. In practice this has meant restricting attention to simple mechanisms such as dominant-strategy mechanisms. However, there has been little theoretical foundation for this approach. In particular it is not clear the search for an optimal mechanism that does not rely on common-knowledge assumption would lead to simpler mechanisms rather than more complicated ones. This paper tries to fill the void. In the context of an expected revenue maximizing auctioneer, we investigate some foundations for using simple, dominant-strategy auctions.     

A note on the extension of tables for the Friedman statistic

Abstract  The tables for the Friedman rank-test arc extended using a sampling method. A table is given for the traditional significance levels .01, .025, .05 and .10 for number of blocks equal to 7 and 8 and for treatments of size 6 and 7. A brief discussion of available tables is also included along with an example of an application.     

The First U.S. Food Stamp Program: An Example of Rent Seeking and Avoiding

Abstract . Rent seeking involves the wasteful expenses incurred to secure, acquire, or maintain a monopoly position. Rent avoiding involves the expenditures undertaken to avoid the imposition of rent-seeking costs. Each represents a social cost of Tullock rectangle loss in addition to the dead-weight or Harberger triangle loss that combined to form the Harberger-Tullock trapezoid social cost. The first Food Stamp Program in the United States came about through the rent-seeking and/or rent-avoiding efforts of farmers, grocers, bankers, and other economic agents and did not lead to the promotion of social welfare. The evidence of these self-interested efforts was gleaned from articles in the New York Times and government documents. The first Food Stamp Program also fits the economic theory of regulation developed by Stigler, Jordan, Peltzman and others, and it involved imposed costs on economic agents as the program evolved.     

发言摘登

这次会议讨论的是一个很重要的题目──国企转型与企业文化构建。我们现在对企业文化的认识,如果同10年前相比,可以说是跨越了一个世纪。当时感觉企业文化是个新鲜东西,并不知道它有多大用途,好像很时髦,多数人对它的认识还是狭窄的、浮面的。10年后的今天,经过理论界的探索研究,特别是经过企业界的创新实践,使得我们对企业文化的认识有了很大的发展。中外企业文化杂志社利用庆祝创刊10周年的机会,组织大家共同研讨国企转型与企业文化构建,这个题目选得非常好。当前,企业文化在中国的需求,很重要的一点就是与国企转型联系在了一起。企业文化…     

Exceptional Convergence of the Sample Variance

The case is investigated when Hoeffding's one sample U–statistic theorem for the sample variance S² is not applicable. It is shown that this occurs only when the parent distribution is the two–point distribution with jumps of equal magnitude. For this exceptional case the standardised S² is shown to converge in distribution to (1 – V )√2, where V has chi–square distribution with one degree of freedom.     

Exact finite sample properties of double k-class estimators in simultaneous equations

In our earlier paper [Srivastava, Agnihotri and Dwivedi (1980)] the dominance of double k-class over k-class with respect to exact mean squared error matrix criteria is established. It is observed that given a member of k-class, one can pick up a member of double k-class that will provide an improved estimator of the coefficients. This result prompted us to study the exact finite sample properties of the double k-class estimator. For this, we have considered a structural equation containing two endogenous variables and have investigated the properties of double k-class estimators of the coefficients of explanatory endogenous variables assuming characterizing scalars to be non-stochastic.     

Robustness to the unavailability of data in block designs

We present general results for finding or boundingt _maxB , the maximum number of arbitrary whole blocks of observations which can be removed from a block design, and still leave all of the elementary treatment contrasts estimable. The block sizes may be larger than the number of treatments. The results are applied to BBDs, reinforced BIBDs and BBDs, BTIBDs, and a series of variance balanced incomplete block designs with two block sizes. Also given for most of these designs, are results fort _max, the maximum number of arbitrary, scattered observations that can become unavailable, and still leave all of the elementary treatment contrasts estimable.The work was undertaken while Dr. Whittinghill was visiting Ohio State University, and supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences Division, Colby College, Waterville, Maine.     

Testing equality of variances in the analysis of repeated measurements

The problem of comparing the precisions of two instruments using repeated measurements can be cast as an extension of the Pitman-Morgan problem of testing equality of variances of a bivariate normal distribution. Hawkins (1981) decomposes the hypothesis of equal variances in this model into two subhypotheses for which simple tests exist. For the overall hypothesis he proposes to combine the tests of the subhypotheses using Fisher's method and empirically compares the component tests and their combination with the likelihood ratio test. In this paper an attempt is made to resolve some discrepancies and puzzling conclusions in Hawkins's study and to propose simple modifications.
The new tests are compared to the tests discussed by Hawkins and to each other both in terms of the finite sample power (estimated by Monte Carlo simulation) and theoretically in terms of asymptotic relative efficiencies.