The economics of shortage and problems of reform in Chinese industry

This paper employs the economics of shortage framework to examine post-Mao reforms in Chinese state-owned industry. Performance has been disappointing because reforms through 1985 failed to fundamentally alter economic agent behavior. The “soft” budget constraints at the enterprise and local government levels continue to generate “quantity” and “expansion” drives. The resultant inflationary pressures have necessitated administrative interventions and thwarted reform progress. The Maoist legacy of active participation by local governments in economic management is high-lighted as a major obstacle to the elimination of paternalism in state-enterprise relations.     

Editor's Introduction: Symposium on Free-Market Competitive Goals and Antitrust Policies

Review of Industrial Organization -     

Tort Reform and Insurance Markets

Proposed tort reforms have focused on punitive damages and noneconomic damages, each of which pose problems for jury decision making. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in State Farm v. Campbell will greatly limit very large punitive damages awards, and will affect smaller punitive awards to a lesser degree. Noneconomic damages caps enacted by state legislatures have greatly enhanced insurance market performance. Insurers operate within the context of a highly imperfect, regulated market in which there is substantial price rigidity induced by regulation. Reform efforts should strive to establish greater predictability and stability in these awards components rather than simply being concerned with imposing specific numerical caps.     

Uncertainty in the Austrian Theory of Capital

This paper is based on the traditional Austrian Theory of Capital which deals with expected values of future returns of investments over various periods of time. The longer the time period that elapses between the beginning of a production process and its end, the higher the (expected) productivity must be due to positive time preferences of individuals. This paper focuses on the uncertainty of future returns and on uncertainty preferences, instead. Based on the Hayekian idea of the dispersion of knowledge in society, it will be shown that there is a systematic relationship between the structure of capital and uncertainty. This result will be derived for a production process characterized by complete vertical integration and one which is not completely vertically integrated. The distinction between these two settings is crucial, if one accepts the distinction between an individual and a social period of production and the planning horizon which are introduced in this paper.     

Protection versus Promotion: An Empirical Investigation

Using Turkish industry-level data from 1983 to 1990, we find that politically organized industries receive both higher protection and promotion than unorganized ones. Tariff rates are decreasing (increasing) in the import-penetration ratio and the absolute value of the import-demandelasticity for organized (unorganized) industries. Subsidy rates are decreasing (increasing) in the output-supply elasticity for organized (unorganized) industries. The results are consistent with the predictions of the Grossman–Helpman model and its extension in this paper. The mix of protection and promotion is inversely related to the ratio of their respective marginal deadweight cost measures.     

Finding Pareto Optimal Insurance Contracts

This paper deals with on-line computation—or step-wise learning—of Pareto optimal insurance contracts. Our approach tolerates that the loss distribution might be unknown, intractable, or not well specified. Thus we accommodate fairly inexperienced parties. Losses are here simulated or observed, one at a time, and they cause iterated revisions of the premium. The mechanical and global nature of probability calculus thereby yields to more tentative, myopic procedures, possibly closer to how humans operate or reason in face of risk. Sequential revisions may also reduce the expense of insurers' time and money in seeking sufficient statistics. Emphasized below is the remarkable simplicity and stability of the resulting adaptive procedures. Special attention goes to catastrophic risks, and to subsidized or competitive insurance.