Monopolistic Screening with Boundedly Rational Consumers*

In this paper, I revisit the monopolistic screening problem with two types assuming that consumers are boundedly rational. Bounded rationality implies that the revelation principle does not apply and the choice of the selling mechanism entails a loss of generality. I show that if the monopolist restricts attention to the mechanisms that offer menus of two choices, the profits are lower than in the case of fully rational consumers by the term of order ln λ/λ, where λ is the degree of rationality of the consumers. The monopolist, however, can approximate the profits earned when consumers are fully rational by using a more elaborate message game.     

Search frictions and labor market participation

Cross-country differences in labor market participation are often larger than differences in unemployment rates. The same holds true across demographic groups within a given economy. We argue that the interaction between labor force participation decisions and labor market frictions can help us understand these patterns. This interaction highlights dynamic aspects of the participation decision, in contrast to standard textbook treatments that emphasize static costs and benefits of participation. We extend the standard labor market search problem to allow for a third state—non-participation—and assumes that stochastic participation costs precipitate flows into and out of non-participation. We fully characterize the worker's decision problem and use numerical simulations to demonstrate how participation patterns vary with individual characteristics and with labor market conditions.     

Industry concentration in South African manufacturing industry: Trends and consequences, 1972–96

This paper reports industry concentration measures for the South African manufacturing sector over the 1972–1996 period for the three digit industry classification. Noted are high level of industry concentration in South African manufacturing, and a rising trend in concentration across a wide range of industries as measured by the Gini coefficient, though some countervailing evidence emerges on the Rosenbluth index. Analytically the paper examines the impact of concentration on employment and investment rates. Results show that increased concentration unambiguously lowers employment. For investment rates, increased inequality of market share serves to raise investment rates, while falling firm numbers for any given inequality of market share lowers investment rates. The difference is consistent with a disciplining effect of a competitive fringe of firms on the behaviour of large firms in a market.     

Risk factors in accepted and rejected new industrial products

Faced with limited and increasingly expensive resources, managers in most industrial product companies are constantly confronted with the difficult task of choosing which new product opportunities to accept for development funding and which to reject. Their decision is made even more difficult because of both the high failure rates and high development costs typical of high-technology industrial products, both during development and after market introduction. This research identifies some critical dimensions of risk in potential new product opportunities. This is an important step toward identifying the most relevant dimensions of government incentives for research and development assistance, as well as an aid to managers attempting to recognize and deal with the greatest risks in the new product opportunities they face.     

基于IPv6的入侵检测系统

在分析现有网络安全系统的基本原理和IPv6网络主要特点后,提出了一个基于IPv6的网络入侵检测系统模型,对系统中各个组件的功能进行了详细描述。     

Public goods, merit goods, and the relation between private and government consumption

In this paper, we investigate the relation between public and private consumption, by constructing a general government spending data set, by function, for 12 European countries. In particular, we split government consumption into two categories. The first category—“public goods”—includes defence, public order, and justice. The second category—“merit goods”—includes health, education, and other services that could have been provided privately. Equations from a relatively general permanent income model are estimated by GMM. The estimates are fairly robust in showing that public goods substitute while merit goods complement private consumption. However, the relation between merit goods and private goods turns out to be stronger than that between public goods and private goods. Thus, in the aggregate government and private consumption are complements.     

FISCAL INDULGENCE IN CENTRAL EUROPE: LOSS OF THE EXTERNAL ANCHOR?

In recent years, fiscal performance in Central Europe has steadily deteriorated, in contrast to the improvement in the Baltics. This paper explores the determinants of such differences among countries on the path to European Union (EU) accession. Regression estimates suggest that economic and institutional fundamentals do not provide a full explanation. An alternative explanation lies in the political economy of the accession process, and a game‐theoretic model illustrates why a country with a stronger bargaining position might have an incentive to deviate from convergence to the Maastricht criteria. The model generates alternative fiscal policy regimes – allowing for regime shifts – depending on country characteristics and EU policies.     

Fiscal deficits and growth in developing countries

This paper examines the relation between fiscal deficits and growth for a panel of 45 developing countries. Based on a consistent treatment of the government budget constraint, it finds evidence of a threshold effect at a level of the deficit around 1.5% of GDP. While there appears to be a growth payoff to reducing deficits to this level, this effect disappears or reverses itself for further fiscal contraction. The magnitude of this payoff, but not its general character, necessarily depends on how changes in the deficit are financed (through changes in borrowing or seigniorage) and on how the change in the deficit is accommodated elsewhere in the budget. We also find evidence of interaction effects between deficits and debt stocks, with high debt stocks exacerbating the adverse consequences of high deficits.     

International interdependencies in fiscal stabilization policies

Trade links imply that business cycle fluctuations are transmitted among trade partners. To the extent that fiscal policy can mitigate business cycle fluctuations international interdependencies in stabilization policies arise. We analyse in a two country general equilibrium model the role of fiscal policy in mitigating risk or providing implicit insurance in the presence of capital market imperfections and adjustment failures (rigid wages). It is shown that there is a welfare case for an active stabilization policy, and that it is larger in the presence of adjustment failures (rigid wages). Non-cooperative policy decisions imply inefficiencies in fiscal stabilization policies, which in the case of flexible wages may imply too much stabilization, whereas stabilization is always insufficient in the case of rigid wages.     

Intermediaries and payments instruments

We study an economy in which intermediaries have incentives to issue circulating liabilities as part of an equilibrium. We show that, with arbitrarily small transactions costs, only the liabilities of intermediaries will circulate, and not those of other private sector agents. Therefore, our model connects intermediation activity with the issuance of payments media, a connection that has not been made in earlier literature. We use our model to suggest a resolution of the “ banknote underissue puzzle” of Cagan (in: D. Carson (Ed.), Banking and Monetary Studies, Richard D. Irwin Publishing, Homewood, IL, 1963).