Agricultural policy adjustments in the Korean rice economy

A political preference function is used to endogenize government actions in a simultaneous equation model for South Korean rice policy. The effects of economic changes on rice pricing decisions through estimated political weights are tested to improve our understanding of policy adjustments in that country and open the way for further research in East Asia.     

SPATIAL PERFECT COMPETITION: A UNIFORM DELIVERED PRICING MODEL

Abstract.  Spatial competition is often probed in terms of spatial oligopoly and/or monopolistic competition in the literature. This paper considers spatial competition as a form of perfect competition, in the sense that the firms are assumed to be price-takers located at the centre of a market area and practising uniform pricing. It shows that under scale economy competitive equilibria can occur, and may actually be observed in the form of international price differentials. Both a very high price and a very low price can yield conditions of competitive equilibrium in spatially or otherwise separate markets.     

Agency Contracts,Noncommitment Timing Strategies and Real Options

Given that an owner lacks the ability to commit to his or her timing decisions under a manager's hidden action, we consider the optimal design of the contract and the owner's optimal timing decisions. Using a real options approach, we show that, compared with the full commitment case, a higher (lower)‐quality project is launched later than (at the same time as) the first‐best case, whereas the replacement of the manager is (is not necessarily) made later if the hidden‐action problem is severe enough (is not severe enough). Severance pay may serve to minimize the compensation for the manager's loss of corporate control.     

ECONOMIC INTEGRATION AND RULES OF ORIGIN UNDER INTERNATIONAL OLIGOPOLY*

Free trade agreements (FTAs) have rules of origin (ROOs) to prevent tariff circumvention by firms of nonmember countries. This article points out that in imperfectly competitive markets, ROOs have another role overlooked in the existing literature. Instead of focusing on the impacts of ROOs in the intermediate‐good markets, we draw our attention to the final‐good markets to examine the effects of ROOs. We find that under some conditions, ROOs benefit both firms at the expense of consumers. Under some other conditions, ROOs benefit the firm producing outside the FTA and hurt the firm producing inside the FTA.     

Using managers' expectations for ex-ante policy evaluation: Evidence from the COVID-19 crisis

Evaluation of the impacts of government policies during an economic crisis is often delayed until the outcomes are realized. Policies can be better guided if they can be evaluated amid a crisis, before the realization of outcomes. This study examines whether survey data on the expectations of small business managers can help evaluate two high-stake subsidies for firms amid the COVID-19 crisis in Japan, namely, Subsidy Program for Sustaining Businesses (SPSB) and Employment Adjustment Subsidy (EAS). We evaluate the accuracy of managers' expectations, estimate the impact of subsidies on the expected firm survival, and compare it with the estimated impact on realized survival. We find that the managers' expectations on their future sales, survival rate, and the possibility of receiving these subsidies predict the realized outcomes, although they were highly pessimistic about their survival rates. We find that the estimated impacts of the SPSB on the expected survival rates have the same sign as the estimated impact on the realized survival rates, but the size is more than twice because of the pessimism on survival. The estimated impacts of the EAS are both insignificant. Therefore, although its impact may be overestimated, managers' expectations are useful for selecting an effective policy.     

Incentive efficient risk sharing in a settlement mechanism

The purpose of this paper is to address a question concerning risk management in continuing, multi-party, contractual, clearing and settlement arrangements through which large-value payments are typically made. We are particularly interested in the issues of incentive compatibility when a third party possesses a private information concerning the riskiness of transfers being made. If a third party possesses private information that would be of value in determining how best to settle a payment, how does the exposure of that party to the settlement risk affect the quality of information that the party chooses to provide? In this paper, we address this question by analyzing a specific class of parametric environments of a schematic, formal, model of a settlement arrangement or a payment network.     

OPTIMAL CONSUMPTION AND PORTFOLIO SELECTION WITH INCOMPLETE MARKETS AND UPPER AND LOWER BOUND CONSTRAINTS

We study an optimal consumption and portfolio selection problem for an investor by a martingale approach. We assume that time is a discrete and finite horizon, the sample space is finite and the number of securities is smaller than that of the possible securities price vector transitions. the investor is prohibited from investing stocks more (less, respectively) than given upper (lower) bounds at any time, and he maximizes an expected time additive utility function for the consumption process. First we give a set of budget feasibility conditions so that a consumption process is attainable by an admissible portfolio process. Also we state the existence of the unique primal optimal solutions. Next we formulate a dual control problem and establish the duality between primal and dual control problems. Also we show the existence of dual optimal solutions. Finally we consider the computational aspect of dual approach through a simple numerical example.     

The Role of Network Effects in the US VCR Market, 1978–1986

This paper estimates the importance of indirect network effects in the US video cassette recorder (VCR) market between 1978 and 1986. Estimation reveals the significant role of networks in the format competition between VHS and Beta. The paper also finds that if Sony, the system sponsor of Beta, had aggressively introduced its VCRs at the early stage of competition, Beta would likely have dominated the market in 1985; instead, the format disappeared in 1989. Finally, the paper measures consumer welfare for the value of network effects in VCRs, and assesses the consumer welfare effect of standardization.     

Default and Renegotiation in Financial Distress in the Multiple Bank Model: An Analysis of the Main Bank System

This paper explores whether the "main bank system" in Japan can be explained by a self-enforcing mechanism that motivates delegated monitorin g creditors to be committed not to execute inefficient liquidation even though all agents are risk-neutral. Using a multiple bank model, we specify a standard debt contract equilibrium in which the delegated monitoring creditor does not care about her reputation, and a main bank contract equilibrium in which the delegated monitoring creditor will attempt to honour the loan contract so as not to destroy her reputation. The results show that, under certain conditions, any equilibrium standard debt contract is dominated by an equilibrium main bank contract in which the debtor and the delegated monitoring creditor are strictly better off. Furthermore, the equilibrium main bank contract reflects the prominent features observed in actual bank loan contracts in Japan.
JEL Classification Numbers: D82, G21, G33, G34