Limit-pricing as Bertrand equilibrium

Summary. We consider a Bertrand duopoly model with increasing returns to scale where one of the firms have a cost advantage and prices vary over a grid. We find that typically more than one equilibria exist. However, there are only two perfect equilibria. Moreover, as the size of the grid becomes small, both these equilibria converge to the limit-pricing outcome. Received: February 25, 2000; revised version: January 9, 2001     

学界对先进生产力的思考

先进的社会生产力,就是智能化的生产力、社会化的生产力、市场化的生产力。先进生产力具有丰富的内涵和特征,有自己的实现机制和社会条件。加强对先进生产力的研究,是一个很重大的理论和实践问题。     

Giffen goods and market making

Summary. This paper shows that information effects per se are not responsible for the Giffen goods anomaly affecting traders demands in multi asset noisy, rational expectations equilibrium markets. The role that information plays in traders strategies also matters. In a market with risk averse, uninformed traders, informed agents have a dual trading motive: speculation and market making. The former entails using prices to assess the effect of error terms; the latter requires employing them to disentangle noise traders demands within aggregate orders. In a correlated environment this complicates the signal extraction problem and may generate upward sloping demand curves. Assuming (i) that competitive, risk neutral market makers price the assets or that (ii) uninformed traders risk tolerance coefficient grows unboundedly, removes the market making component from informed traders demands rendering them well behaved in prices.Received: 30 April 2002, Revised: 3 December 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: G100, G120, G140.Support from the Barcelona Economics Program of CREA and the Ente per gli Studi Monetari e Finanziari Luigi Einaudi, are gratefully acknowledged. I thank Anat Admati, Jordi Caballé, Giacinta Cestone, and Xavier Vives for useful suggestions. The comments provided by the Associate Editor and an anonymous referee greatly improved the papers exposition.     

Gender differences in self‐employment

This paper examines the factors that influence transitions into self‐employment, paying particular attention to gender differences. We find that: (i) men are more responsive to the wage differential between wage/salaried employment and self‐employment; (ii) liquidity constraints are more important for men; and (iii) the link between father's self‐employment status and the probability of self‐employment is stronger for men. Taken together, these results suggest that, for women, self‐employment is a closer substitute for part‐time work and labour‐market inactivity than it is for men. We attribute such differences to the different labour market opportunities and occupational strategies of women.     

Time variation in the cointegrating relationship between stock prices and economic activity

The present paper examines whether there exists a long‐run cointegrating relationship between a stock market index and output and interest rates. Moreover, estimation is conducted over the full sample and both a recursive and rolling sample to examine any time variation in the nature of the relationship. The results support evidence of a single cointegrating vector, where stock prices typically exhibit a positive relationship with industrial production and a negative relationship with interest rates. However, there is significant time variation and periods of time where contrary results are observed. As such any model of stock prices needs to account for such time variation     

Communication equilibrium payoffs in repeated games with imperfect monitoring

We characterize the set of communication equilibrium payoffs of any undiscounted repeated matrix-game with imperfect monitoring and complete information. For two-player games, a characterization is provided by Mertens, Sorin, and Zamir (Repeated games, Part A (1994) CORE DP 9420), mainly using Lehrer's (Math. Operations Res. (1992) 175) result for correlated equilibria. The main result of this paper is to extend this characterization to the n-player case. The proof of the characterization relies on an analogy with an auxiliary 2-player repeated game with incomplete information and imperfect monitoring. We use Kohlberg's (Int. J. Game Theory (1975) 7) result to construct explicitly a canonical communication device for each communication equilibrium payoff.     

Problems of private industrial economic development and its countermeasures for Zigong City,Sichuan Province,China

The differences of regional economic development between underdeveloped areas and developed areas are mainly embodied by different levels of private economic development. Since 20-year reform and opening-up to the outside world, the private industry of Zigong has developed gradually, become more and more economically competitive, and played a more and more important role in the economic structure of Zigong. This paper analyzes the problems of private economy and its countermeasures based on the research on its status quo.     

Making green discourses matter in policy-making: Learning from discursive power struggles within the policy area of car taxation

This paper is about stability and change in the policy-making discourse of a traditional neoclassical policy area, the area of car taxation. Stability is here related to the unquestioned continuation of a traditional neoclassical economics perspective in policy-making, whereas change is related to the introduction and impact of environmental concerns. The aim of the paper is to investigate, what makes green discourses matter in traditional policy-making. It is based on an in-depth study of policy-making processes related to car taxation in two environmental front-runner countries, Sweden and Denmark.Making green discourses matter in policy-making is an important contemporary environmental challenge. Therefore, as Tian Shi argues, we need more research into the institutional setting of the policy-making process. Ecological economics as a policy science has to have a broad understanding of the political economic nature of the policy process. Taking this standpoint as the point of departure, the paper seeks to uncover questions such as, what is the policy-making reality in which Swedish and Danish green discourses have to make a difference? How do existing neoclassical regimes react, when green actors attempt to influence policy-making from an environmental point of view? And to what extent can green discourses actually have an impact on the policy world within the area of car taxation?The paper concludes that the traditional neoclassical economic discourse is particularly robust and resistant against alternative green discourses. Stability rather than change is the dominating picture. This does not imply that environmental concerns will not be taken into account in the future. Rather it implies that only the changes, which keep up the existing order, or enhance the narrow power-related interests of the dominating actors, will materialise more or less easily. The rest is a power struggle in which timing, coalition-building, persistence and thorough knowledge about the field in question is of importance. In this struggle change agents will also benefit from the ability to rethink dominating ways of thinking and doing in an environmentally benign way. A rethinking that is based on environmental values while at the same time holding positive visions that are ‘compatible’ with the existing dominating discourse.     

高等教育大众化与高等教育可持续发展问题探析

高等教育大众化是实现高等教育可持续发展的必然选择.我国在推进高等教育大众化的进程中取得了巨大成绩,也出现了不少矛盾和问题.其中,教育质量能否保障,高校能否持续发展等成为全社会关注的焦点.正确处理高等教育大众化与可持续发展的关系和选择、建立高等教育大众化的发展战略及运行机制是问题的关键所在.     

大股东对上市公司掏空与支持的经济学分析

在公司的所有权安排中,大股东拥有公司的控制权,有能力为获取控制权的私人利益而侵占上市公司的资源。但是,当上市公司陷入经营困境时,大股东可能通过减少自己的侵占行为而使公司具有偿债能力,甚至会用自己的资源进行支持以防止公司破产。如果上市公司的投资回报率低于大股东的预期水平,或者预期上市公司无法继续生存下去时,大股东会以公司外部股东和债权人的利益为代价而对上市公司进行掠夺。