Competition and Information Production in Market Maker Models

Abstract:   The microstructure literature models the mechanisms through which fundamental information is incorporated into market prices. This paper extends previous models by endogenising information production and analysing incentives for costly information production. In contrast to the existing literature, increasing the number of informed traders can result in reduced price informativeness. When prices have an allocative role this has welfare consequences: the regulatory implications of a dichotomy between private and public incentives for information gathering are discussed.     

营销角度的特许经营及其竞争法上的思考

特许经营是一种新型的销售方式,作为企业分销系统的构成要素,能够起到降低风险,沟通生产与消费的作用。然而在实际经营过程中也会出现许多诸如指定购买与搭售、联合定价、独占经营等违反竞争法的问题。为适应不断变化的竞争形势,应从竞争法的层面上对其加以规制。     

Regulatory reform of the UK gas market: The sase of the storage auction

The UK gas industry has undergone major changes since it was privatised in 1986 as a fully integrated monopoly. The most significant of these has occurred not as a result of the privatisation legislation but by the intervention of the ordinary competition authorities in support of an active industry regulator. While price capping continues to be used as the primary instrument for welfare protection against the still substantial monopolistic powers of the incumbent, new competition (which has been positively encouraged) has had the greater impact on prices and choice. Recently, however, the regulator has encouraged the use of auctions for the sale of storage capacity. This paper considers the merits of auctions and makes a tentative evaluation of their effectiveness. Further use of auctions is recommended but reserve prices are considered inappropriate where monopoly power still remains.     

Scarcity and appropriative competition

This paper formalizes the commonsensical hypothesis that resource scarcity causes a large allocation of time and effort to appropriative competition. Our main innovation is to model explicitly the positive intertemporal effect of consumption on the probability of survival. The critical assumption is that this effect becomes stronger as resources become scarcer. We also show that anticipated future resource abundance increases the incremental value of survival and, consequently, amplifies the current allocation of time and effort to appropriative competition. Interestingly, if resources are currently scarce, then larger anticipated future abundance can cause a big enough increase in the time and effort allocated to appropriative competition to result in a decrease in the sum of current and expected future utility, a “paradox of anticipated abundance”.     

The causes and consequences of sector‐level job flows in Poland*

We look at the determinants and consequences of job reallocation in the 22 2‐digit sectors of the manufacturing industry in Poland over the period 1995–99. We find that import competition and a competitive market structure (weak concentration) have a positive and significant effect on job reallocation. Moreover, higher job reallocation is associated with higher labour productivity growth in some specifications. This confirms implications from neo‐Schumpeterian growth models: one channel through which competition might positively affect growth is through the reallocation of scarce resources from declining firms to rising ones. JEL Classifications: F16, J24, J6, O3, P3.     

How Far Can Chinese Motorcycles Roar？——A Study on Motorcycle Export of China

Export of Chinese motorcycles increased dramatically in the past few years. This growth, however, is encountered with many fatal problems, such as over-intensified export market, low value-added, overwhelming fake commodities, awkward technology innovation and intellectual property rights protection, bitter competition from foreign counterparts, and anti-dumping charges by foreign countries, etc. This paper sheds light on these problems and challenges and puts forward suggestion accordingly.     

Network neutrality and the nature of competition between network operators

The neutral architecture of the Internet is being challenged by various parties, such as network operators providing the connections to end-users, who are interested in gaining control of the information exchanged over the Internet. What are the effects on competition and welfare of such practices? Currently, there exists very little economic theory on network neutrality. This paper provides a preliminary analysis of the type of economic modeling that can address network neutrality, as well as of the type of results that can be expected.     

Understanding the Large Negative Impact of Oil Shocks

This paper offers a plausible explanation for the close link between oil prices and aggregate macroeconomic performance in the 1970s. Although this link has been well documented in the empirical literature, standard economic models are not able to replicate this link when actual oil prices are used to simulate the models. In particular, standard models cannot explain the depth of the recession in 1974–75 and the strong revival in 1976–78 based on the oil price movements in that period. This paper argues that a missing multiplier-accelerator mechanism from standard models may hold the key.     

Bureaucratic integration and regional specialization in China

Fiscal decentralization introduced as part of China's economic reform since 1979 has unleashed strong incentives for China's local governments to pursue economic development, but the same incentives have also led to local protectionist policies inhibiting the process of regional specialization. This paper focuses on the constraints or freedom with which local governments can implement their protectionist policies. Using a panel data of 29 China's regions over the time period of 1985–1997, we find that China's political system of bureaucratic integration (specifically, concurrent appointment of local government officials in the central government) imposes constraints on the local governments from practicing protectionism. We also find that the effectiveness of local protectionist policies is limited by market competition, specifically, competition from foreign-invested firms operating in China and foreign imports. Our results on the role of local protectionism remain robust to controls for the regional variations in the size of the economy and the stage of economic development.     

井下作业企业实施品牌战略探讨

针对目前井下作业企业在品牌建设中普遍存在的问题进行深入分析，着重剖析了制约品牌建设的各种不利因素．提出了在现有条件下井下作业企业如何实施品牌战略的设想，指出井下作业企业要实现成为世界级的公司目标，就必须走向世界，积极参与国际竞争，进一步加强品牌战略。