Ranking Committees,Income Streams or Multisets

Multisets are collections of objects which may include several copies of the same object. They may represent bundles of goods, committees formed of members of several political parties, or income streams. In this paper we investigate the ways in which a linear order on a finite set A can be consistently extended to an order on the set of all multisets on A of some given cardinality k and when such an extension arises from a utility function on A. The condition of consistency that we introduce is a close relative of the de Finetti’s condition that defines comparative probability orders. We prove that, when A has three elements, any consistent linear order on multisets on A of cardinality k arises from a utility function and all such orders can be characterised by means of Farey fractions. This is not true when A has cardinality four or greater. It is proved that, unlike linear orders that can be represented by a utility function, any non-representable order on the set of all multisets of cardinality k cannot be extended to a consistent linear order on multisets of cardinality K for sufficiently large K. We also discuss the concept of risk aversion arising in this context.A significant part of this work was written when both authors were visiting professors at Bilkent University, Ankara. Slinko thanks Semih Koray and Mefharet Kocatepe for making this possible and Serguei Stepanov for discussion about Farey fractions. Sertel thanks the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES), Bures-sur-Yvette, France, for a couple of invitations, in 1999 and 2000, during which he had a chance to elaborate on some of the questions addressed in this paper. The authors thank students of The University of Auckland Irene Peng and Mark Lui who participated at an early stage of this project and Marston Conder for checking the result of Theorem 6 with MAGMA and correcting it. Murat Sertel was deceased (1942 – 2003).An erratum to this article is available at .     

Material efficiency and economic-environmental sustainability. Results of simulations for Germany with the model PANTA RHEI

Based on empirical evidence, the paper discusses the impact of a consulting and information program for the improvement of material productivity with regard to economic and environmental targets for Germany. The instrument used in the analysis is the integrated economic-environmental model PANTA RHEI, which is parameterized econometrically. The paper presents the model and shows in a baseline forecast that without policy changes, sustainability will be violated in both the economic and the environmental dimensions. This applies to the latter particularly with regard to land use and material consumption. The alternative simulation that introduces a consulting and information program for the improvement of material productivity yields a win-win result: growth rates of GDP and employment are rising, the public debt is reduced, and material consumption is much lower than in the baseline and remains at the actual level, which means that a decoupling of growth and material consumption is possible.     

Geographically explicit global modeling of land-use change, carbon sequestration, and biomass supply

This study aims to determine whether carbon sequestration policies could present a significant contribution to the global portfolio of climate change mitigation options. The objective is to model the effects of policies designed to induce landowners to change land use and management patterns with a view to sequester carbon or to reduce deforestation. The approach uses the spatially explicit Dynamic Integrated Model of Forestry and Alternative Land Use (DIMA) to quantify the economic potential of global forests. The model chooses which of the land-use processes (afforestation, reforestation, deforestation, or conservation and management options) would be applied in a specific location, based on land prices, cost of forest production and harvesting, site productivity, population density, and estimates of economic growth. The approach is relevant in that it (1) couples a revised and updated version of the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios with the dynamic development of climate policy implications through integration with the Model for Energy Supply Strategy Alternatives and their General Environmental Impact (MESSAGE); (2) is spatially explicit on a 0.5° grid; and (3) is constrained by guaranteeing food security and land for urban development. As outputs, DIMA produces 100-year forecasts of land-use change, carbon sequestration, impacts of carbon incentives (e.g., avoided deforestation), biomass for bioenergy, and climate policy impacts. The modeling results indicate that carbon sequestration policies could contribute to a significant part of the global portfolio of efficient climate mitigation policies, dependent upon carbon prices.     

An empirical study of the impact of e-business technologies on organizational collaboration and performance

The use of e-business technologies between supply chain organizations has been thematic in recent literature. Organizational collaboration, the foundation of supply chain management, has been enabled by the development and use of e-business technologies. Organizational collaboration and information sharing, in turn, are expected to improve organizational performance. We propose and test a model of the relationship between organizational use of e-business technologies, organizational collaboration, and performance, using empirical data. Our model differs from past studies in that collaboration is viewed as two unique constructs, differentiating between intra- and inter-organizational collaboration. Our findings show that use of e-business technologies impacts performance both directly and indirectly by promoting both measures of collaboration. Intra-firm collaboration is also found to have a direct impact on organizational performance. However, the impact of inter-organizational collaboration on performance is found to be only indirect, through the impact of intra-organizational collaboration. These findings reveal the complexity of organizational collaboration, underscore the importance for companies to promote internal collaboration, and invest in information technologies that facilitate it.     

Existence and Welfare Properties of Equilibrium in an Exchange Economy with Multiple Divisible and Indivisible Commodities and Linear Production Technologies

In this paper we consider a class of economies with a finite number of divisible commodities, linear production technologies, and indivisible goods and a finite number of agents. This class contains several well-known economies with indivisible goods and money as special cases. It is shown that if the utility functions are continuous on the divisible commodities and are weakly monotonic both on one of the divisible commodities and on all the indivisible commodities, if each agent initially owns a sufficient amount of one of the divisible commodities, and if a “no production without input”-like assumption on the production sector holds, then there exists a competitive equilibrium for any economy in this class. The usual convexity assumption is not needed here. Furthermore, by imposing strong monotonicity on one of the divisible commodities we show that any competitive equilibrium is in the core of the economy and therefore the first theorem of welfare also holds. We further obtain a second welfare theorem stating that under some conditions a Pareto efficient allocation can be sustained by a competitive equilibrium allocation for some well-chosen redistribution of the total initial endowments. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D4, D46, D5, D51, D6, D61.     

Policymakers’ Coalitions and Stabilization Policies in the EMU

A highly integrated area like the EMU features a large amount of interactions between the participating countries. In this context the interactions of monetary and fiscal policies are a crucial issue. This paper focuses on how coalitions among policymakers are formed and discusses their effects on the stabilization of output and price. We emphasize the role played by the institutional design of cooperation forums (as, e.g., the ECOFIN). If the coalition formation game is played without communication among the policymakers, full cooperation is an unlikely outcome. On the other hand, if policymakers can communicate, full cooperation becomes a possible equilibrium, while the complete non-cooperative solution is, in general, not a stable equilibrium. This supports the view that institutions for discussions can play a crucial role in achieving international cooperation even when these institutions are not endowed with enforcement powers.revised version received August 1, 2003     

效率与公平兼顾的最优所得税:理论框架及最优税率估计

最优所得税主要探讨税收如何兼顾公平与效率问题,以及给定公平偏好程度下,如何确定最优边际税率水平。即使在崇尚罗尔斯社会福利函数的社会里,政府同时兼顾再分配和财政收入目标的基础上,只要略加考虑税收对劳动供给的效应,哪怕是微弱的考虑和兼顾,最高边际税率都不会达到100%。而且,借鉴斯特恩最优线性所得税模型及美国个人所得税制度,估计我国现行个人所得税最高边际税率还可以适当降低到36%左右。     

Strategic Behavior and Efficiency in the Common Property Extraction of Groundwater

Externalities that arise from privateexploitation of groundwater are analyzed by comparing socially optimal and privateextraction. Open-loop Nashequilibrium and stationary Markov feedbackequilibrium in nonlinear strategieshave been computed to characterize privateextraction. The use of thesetwo equilibrium concepts allows us todistinguish between cost andstrategic externalities as long as the open-loop solutioncaptures only the cost externality, and the feedback solution capturesboth. The results show thatstrategic behavior increases theoverexploitation of the aquifer. However, ifthe groundwater storage capacity is large, thedifference between the sociallyoptimal and private extraction is negligible.     

汽车生产厂家定价策略研究

讨论了汽车行业中厂商一般的定价方法,并引入具体例子,利用统计学中的多元线性回归模型导出两种不同型号汽车的销售量和价格的经验关系式,检验了此模型的拟合优度,讨论了其整体显著性的F检验;讨论了两寡头垄断企业的产品的需求函数为二元函数的伯特兰德模型的纳什均衡解,并给出了某两型号汽车的定价博弈问题的均衡结果.     

探究全面建设现代小康社会面临的困难与出路

小康社会昭示的理念是:从以物为本转向以人为本,从以官政为本转向以民生为本,从耗散发展模式转向和谐发展模式,从而真正转变单纯依靠以经济的增长来解决社会和政治问题的观念,改变以对财富的追求和持有来回答人生本质意义的观念.通过对全面的、均衡的小康社会所需要具备的文化环境、物质资源和制度条件观察,进而探究全面建设现代小康社会所面临的困难与出路,可以更好地理解全面小康的真实内涵.