Prospects for international maritime shipping

The world’s energy supplies are dependent not only on the producer countries’ production capacities and policies but also on adequate transport facilities. In fact, a shortage of vessels able to carry coal is widely expected to be a major bottleneck for the substitution of oil by coal on a large scale. Shipowner Peter M. Nomikos holds a different view.     

Why Punish? Social reciprocity and the enforcement of prosocial norms

Recently economists have become interested in why people who face social dilemmas in the experimental lab use the seemingly incredible threat of punishment to deter free riding. Three theories with evolutionary microfoundations have been developed to explain punishment. We survey these theories and use behavioral data from surveys and experiments to show that the theory called social reciprocity in which people punish norm violators indiscriminately explains punishment best.JEL Classification: C91, C92, D64, H41 Correspondence to: Jeffrey P. CarpenterWe thank Carolyn Craven, Corinna Noelke and two referees for comments, and Middlebury College for financial assistance. In addition, Carpenter acknowledges the support of the National Science Foundation (SES-CAREER 0092953).     

You can't have a CGE recession without excess capacity

Simulations with dynamic, single country, CGE models typically imply that reductions in domestic demand, e.g. a cut in investment, generate increases in exports and reductions in imports facilitated by real depreciation. However, currently in the U.S. a large reduction in investment is occurring simultaneously with a contraction in exports and little movement in the real exchange rate. We show that to describe this situation it is necessary to drop the standard CGE assumption that capital is always fully employed in every industry. After introducing an excess capacity specification, we simulate the U.S. recession with and without the Obama stimulus package.     

Generalized spatial autocorrelation in a panel-probit model with an application to exporting in China

This paper proposes a generalized spatial panel-data probit model with spatial autocorrelation of the dependent variable, the time-invariant individual shocks, and the remainder disturbances. It proposes its estimation with a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo procedure. Simulation results show that the proposed estimation method performs well in small- to medium-sized samples. This method is then applied to the analysis of export-market participation of 1451 Chinese firms between 2002 and 2006 in the prefecture-level city of Wenzhou in the province of Zhejiang. Empirical results show that two of the three forms of the hypothesized spatial autocorrelation are significant, namely the spatial lag for the dependent variable and the time-invariant firm-specific shocks, but not the time-variant shocks. Ignoring any of these significant spatial effects would lead to misspecification.     

Partial‐ and General‐Equilibrium Measures of Trade Restrictiveness

New partial‐equilibrium forms of the Trade Restrictiveness Index and the Mercantilist Trade Restrictiveness Index have recently been used by the World Bank and others. In this paper we examine the bias in the partial‐equilibrium forms due to the neglect of general‐equilibrium effects. We propose “semi‐general‐equilibrium” measures that capture those general‐equilibrium effects due to vertical input–output relations without the need for a computable general‐equilibrium model. These measures also incorporate nontariff measures. Australian data are used to compute the semi‐general‐equilibrium measures. These estimates indicate that the partial‐equilibrium forms generally underestimate the true value of the indices, and by a large margin in some cases.     

Collusive Bidding: Lessons from the FCC Spectrum Auctions

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) spectrum auctions use a simultaneous ascending auction design. Bidders bid on numerous communication licenses simultaneously, with bidding remaining open on all licenses until no bidder is willing to bid higher on any license. With full revelation of bidding information, simultaneous open bidding allows bidders to send messages to their rivals, telling them on which licenses to bid and which to avoid. These strategies can help bidders coordinate a division of the licenses, and enforce the proposed division by directed punishments. We examine solutions to mitigate collusive bidding in the spectrum auctions, and then apply these ideas to the design of daily electricity auctions.     

区域电力市场的十大障碍及其对策

中国迄今已经在电力改革方面取得了很大进展.目前所处的行业重组阶段,旨在为建立竞争性电力市场奠定必要的基础.尽管最初的省级电力市场试点为提高行业的经济和技术水平创造了条件,但建立区域电力市场以优化资源配置和提高效率的潜力显然更大.但是,建立区域电力市场的难度远大于建立省级电力市场.本文讨论在中国建立区域电力市场的障碍因素及其可以采取的应对措施.