Determinacy with nominal assets and outside money

Summary. We build a finite horizon model with inside and outside money, in which interest rates, price levels and commodity allocations are determinate, even though asset markets are incomplete and asset deliveries are purely nominal.Received: 2 July 2003, Revised: 1 December 2004 JEL Classification Numbers: D50, E40, E50, E58.Correspondence to: J. Geanakoplos     

Evolutionary Stability in the Investment-Opportunism-Retaliation Game

Can economically efficient outcomes be obtained and sustained in the absence of externally enforced property rights? We study the evolutionary properties of a game that exhibits two well-defined Nash equilibria: one generates an inefficient outcome while the other set generates an efficient outcome supported by the potential for retaliation. Although standard forward-looking refinements eliminate the efficient equilibrium, neither equilibrium type satisfies strict evolutionary stability criteria. However, both types of equilibrium define strategies that are neutrally stable, which makes them vulnerable to drift in dynamic environments. We conduct computer simulation experiments in which players learn adaptively via a tournament selection mechanism called sophisticated experimentation. Our simulations demonstrate that while the system spends a disproportionately high proportion of time in the inefficient equilibrium set, the efficient equilibrium is pervasive as the system drifts back and forth between the equilibrium sets, never settling on one or the other.     

Integrated water and economic modelling of the impacts of water market instruments on the South African economy

A static computable general equilibrium model of South Africa is adapted to compare new taxes on water demand by two industries, namely forestry, and irrigated field crops. Comparisons are made with respect to both the short and the long run, in terms of three target variables, namely (i) the environment; (ii) the economy; and (iii) equity. Since the taxes on the two industries do not raise the same amount of revenue, the target variables are calculated per unit of real government revenue raised by the new taxes (also referred to as the marginal excess burdens of the taxes). The model results are robust for moderate values of the water elasticity of demand in the two industries, in both the long and the short run. The tax on irrigated field crops performs better in terms of all three the target variables in the short run. In the long run the tax on irrigated filed crops is better in terms of water saving, but reduces real GDP and the consumption by poor households.     

Jevons's Theory of Political Economy and the ‘Marginalist Revolution’ *

Very many statements have been made about the (non-)existence and characterisation of the ‘marginal revolution’ but it is urged here that detailed study of the relevant texts is far more valuable than the making of grand statements about such matters. In particular, a close reading of Jevons's Theory of Political Economyis proposed as an antidote to over-easy generalisation. Jevons by no means rejected all elements of classical theory. He did not propose a catallatic revolution; he attributed such an emphasis to earlier authors and himself stressed the role of production. It is shown that Jevons was very aware of the necessarily general equilibrium nature of his theory but that he was simply not able to cope with it satisfactorily; it is suggested that this explains, at least in part, his fluctuating and apparently inconsistent statements relating utility and labour to value. Jevons certainly attempted to sketch a complete marginal productivity theory of distribution, even if he was far from successful in providing one.     

Existence of Sparsely Supported Correlated Equilibria

We show that every N-player K ₁ × ... × K _N game possesses a correlated equilibrium with at least zero entries. In particular, the largest N-player K × ... × K games with unique fully supported correlated equilibrium are two-player games. We thank an anonymous referee for most useful comments. The first author acknowledges financial support from Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, grant SEJ2004-03619, and in form of a Ramón y Cajal fellowship. The second author acknowledges support by the PASCAL Network of Excellence under EC grant no.506778, as well as from Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology and FEDER, grant BMF2003-03324. Both authors also acknowledge financial support from BBVA grant “Aprender a jugar.”