Municipal welfare functions

In this paper the concept of a municipal welfare function is defined. It reflects the evaluation by local authorities of several levels of local expenditures. On the basis of an extensive survey among all Dutch municipal authorities these functions are estimated for about 550 Dutch municipalities with respect to total expenditures and differentiated with respect to several portfolios, like public works, education, etc. The variation of the estimated municipal welfare parameters is explained by objectively measurable municipal characteristics like the number of the inhabitants, age distribution of inhabitants and houses, number of unemployed, regional situation.     

Retrospective questions: data quality,task difficulty,and the use of a checklist

Data from a national panel study with waves in 1987 and 1991 (N=1257), present evidence of the low accuracy of responses to retrospective questions, concerning both attitudes and behaviour. Applying a split ballot design, it is investigated whether using a checklist improves the response accuracy for a retrospective question about one single event: how respondents (N=363) did obtain the job they had four years ago. Furthermore interaction effects of ‘task difficulty’ are examined. The response accuracy indeed increases by using a checklist; however, this increase is not statistically significant. The expected increase of the checklist effect with higher ‘task difficulty’ appears for longer recall intervals, but not for more frequent changes of jobs. It turned out that for male respondents all the predicted effects are indeed clearly present. But for female respondents the checklist appeared to have no effect, irrespective of the task difficulty. A tentative explanation for this unexpected gender effect is suggested by pointing at indications that the male and female respondents differed in the way they obtained their job.     

Excess payoff dynamics and other well-behaved evolutionary dynamics

We consider a model of evolution in games in which agents occasionally receive opportunities to switch strategies, choosing between them using a probabilistic rule. Both the rate at which revision opportunities arrive and the probabilities with which each strategy is chosen are functions of current normalized payoffs. We call the aggregate dynamics induced by this model excess payoff dynamics. We show that every excess payoff dynamic is well-behaved: regardless of the underlying game, each excess payoff dynamic admits unique solution trajectories that vary continuously with the initial state, identifies rest points with Nash equilibria, and respects a basic payoff monotonicity property. We show how excess payoff dynamics can be used to construct well-behaved modifications of imitative dynamics, and relate them to two other well-behaved dynamics based on projections.     

Recovering Hicksian Consumer Surplus within a Collective Model: Hausman's Method for the Household

The purpose of this paper is to describe the implications of the collective model of household behavior for the methods used to estimate the economic value of non-marketed environmental resources. After demonstrating how the separability restrictions inherent in the collective model allow individual preference and household income allocation choices to be distinguished, the paper demonstrates how the framework can be used to recover Hicksian consumer surplus. An algebraic example is used to illustrate how the framework can be used in valuing environmental resources.     

All politics is local: The effect of fiscal and monetary constitutions on economic policy

The rules of behavior for the monetary authorities changed in 1933 and 1947 and the Fed temporarily changed its operating procedures in 1979, but these changes did not alter the fact that the monetary authorities serve as the agent of the fiscal authorities. On the fiscal side, a shift from a centralized process to one where Congress was composed of a set of individual entrepreneurs altered the fiscal focus from the national economy to one of localized interests. This change led to a more autoregressive and deficit-prone federal budget and changed the interaction between monetary and fiscal policy. It also elevated the status of monetary policy to the extent where financial markets react to every utterance from the monetary authorities.     

Consumer mobility and community tax bases : The financing of local public goods

In a model of economic ‘clubs’, size is fixed and members consuming a public good raise the question of composition; with whom would they rather consume? This depends on the way collective consumption is financed, and three results are proven With a poll tax, clubs must be homogeneous in income for all to be satisfied With a marginal benefit (Lindahl) tax, no consumer is ever satisfied with any composition; and with an income tax, at least one consumer in each club is always dissatisfied. Satisfaction implies there exists no club composition preferred to the existing one.     

Income determination in market disequilibrium: The implications of spillover for the design of monetary policy

This paper specifies and analyzes a generalized disequilibrium macroeconomic model that explicitly includes the concept of spillover in nontatonnement financial and real markets. It is shown that the dynamic quantity and expenditure theories of income determination are special cases of the model which depend upon the degree of spillover from the bond to the commodity market. Simulation experiments designed to produce a vigorous monetary shock to the system clearly show that national product is very sensitive to the degree of spillover, and thus, the design of monetary policy within the context of gradual market clearing should consider the size of spillover.     

Credible assignments in coordination games

This paper uses the experimental method to examine an arbiter's ability to determine the outcome of two-person coordination games. All of the arbiter's assignments in the experiments were strict equilibrium points, but some assignments violated payoff-dominance or symmetry. An assignment that corresponds to the game's outcome is a credible assignment. The experiments test the hypothesis that an assignment to a strict equilibrium is a credible assignment. Our subjects did not find the individual rationality and mutual consistency of an equilibrium assignment to be sufficient reason for implementing the assignment when doing so conflicts with payoff-dominance or symmetry.