Optimal Social Design: Estimating a Social Welfare Function from Questionnaire Data

A social design x evokes a response y from a set of individuals. The value of the design is expressed in terms of a social welfare function which is derived from Arrow’s formulation of social choice. Making certain simplifying assumptions the social welfare function can be expressed in terms of individuals’ ideal designs. A method for estimating the social welfare function from quite limited empirical evidence is developed. The method is applied to an educational case study. There was considerable variation in individuals’ ideal designs. The components of the social welfare were estimated: the welfare ideal, the population sensitivity, the population variation, the deviation from the ideal and the welfare ceiling. Methodological problems are discussed.     

企业集团内部资本市场最优规模设计

企业集团内部形成的资本市场具有降低交易成本、进行有效监督、优化资本配置、放松外部融资约束等方面的优势。但内部资本市场规模并非越大越好，超过一定规模会降低企业集团整体的运作效率。因此，探究企业集团内部资本市场的最优规模，以达到集团整体效用最大化有着十分重要的意义。     

Price stability through price-level targeting or inflation targeting? A tale of two experiments

Price stability can be attained through price-level or inflation targeting. This paper compares the two monetary policy strategies from both a historical and a theoretical perspective. The Swedish experiment with price-level targeting in the 1930 occurred within a framework that lacked the accountability characteristic of New Zealand's current policy framework for inflation-targeting. Using a simple forward-looking rational expectations framework, we show that price-level targeting offers a better output-inflation variability tradeoff than inflation targeting in the forward-looking New Keynesian framework.     

Optimal speed of transition with a shrinking labour force and under uncertainty*

In the 1990s – during the restructuring of large state enterprises – Central European economies experienced high unemployment. Social policy expenditures, particularly targeted to the non‐employed, grew faster than expected due to the need to finance the out‐of‐the‐labour categories. In 1992, after the Passive Labour Market Policies’ reforms, the pace of transition decelerated. Unemployment dynamics, speed of transition and non‐employment policies are modelled based on the assumption that the labour force is shrinking over time. Dismissed workers have the opportunity to choose an outside‐option alternative to labour force participation. Individual uncertainty is assumed in a first phase of transition, while aggregate uncertainty – generating opposition to restructuring – is modelled in a second phase. The model predicts a slowdown in the speed of transition.     

Robust row-column designs for complete diallel cross experiments

This paper investigates the robustness of variance-balanced row-column designs for complete diallel cross experiments for estimating the comparisons among the general combining ability parameters against the loss of observations. A necessary and sufficient condition of robustness as per connectedness criterion is obtained. The robustness of optimal row-column designs of Gupta and Choi (1998) has been investigated for the loss of any m(≥1) observations in a column and for the loss of any two observations in the design. The study of robustness has also been conducted as per A-efficiency criterion.     

Publicly Provided Private Goods and Redistribution: A General Equilibrium Analysis

Public provision of private goods is examined within a self-selection framework where production depends on labour supply of different households and the level of public provision. It is shown that productivity and wage-structure effects can create a role for public provision, even if preferences are weakly separable between goods and leisure. Public provision of education may offer an intuitively appealing case for the production-side impacts. We also address the reasons for public provision in a dynamic, overlapping generations economy, whereby public provision may affect efficiency and social costs of redistribution of future generations as well.
JEL classification : H 23; H 42     

Common Shocks and Relative Compensation

This paper studies qualitative properties of an optimal contract in a multi-agent setting in which agents are subject to a common shock. We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the optimal reward of an agent producing an output level y to be a decreasing (increasing) function of the outputs of the other agents, under the assumption that the agents’ outputs are informative signals of the value of the common shock. The condition is that the likelihood ratio p(y, e, η)/p(y, e′, η), where e is a higher effort level than e′ and η is the value of the common shock, be a decreasing (increasing) function of η. We give examples of applications of the result and examine its consequences for CEO compensation.     

Optimal financial crises: A note on Allen and Gale

This note provides an example of an optimal banking panic. We construct a model in which a banking panic is triggered by the banker, not the depositors. When the banker receives a pessimistic information on the return on the bank’s assets, he liquidates them prematurely in order to protect his capital. In the face of this liquidation, all depositors withdraw their funds prematurely. The premature liquidation of the bank’s assets strengthens the bank’s balance sheet. As a result, the banking panic does not cause bank failure and the government should not try to prevent the panic. Such a panic occured in 1857 in the United States. JEL Classification G21     

When ambush marketing is beneficial to sponsorship awareness: creating sponsor distinctiveness using exclusivity and brand juxtaposition

ABSTRACT

Ambush marketing is a contentious practice whereby brands communicate an association with an event without being an official sponsor. Those involved in sponsorship commonly try to limit it by restricting ambusher activity in event contexts. We introduce theoretical ideas around distinctiveness to explain that sponsors may actually fare better in terms of awareness outcomes when ambushers are present in the event context, if they strategically use ambusher presence to highlight their own distinctive sponsor status. Across two experiments we show that sponsor distinctiveness can be achieved by communicating sponsorship exclusivity in ambusher presence, and by facilitating juxtaposition of sponsor and ambusher messages. Results include increased recall to sponsor cues, and reduced recall to ambusher cues. The findings suggest ambusher restrictions may sometimes be counter-productive.     

Regulatory Optimal Bank Size

This paper presents a study of potential outcomes of bank growth. Banks grow by expanding market presence within the geographic region within which they are domiciled and by expanding presence into other regions via new implantations. Growth leads to improved diversification, but also results in an increase in the risk of catastrophe that a bank’s failure may engender. The conclusion is that there will exist a threshold size of bank at which the rate of growth in its systemic risk exceeds the rate of decline in its risk of insolvency. An empirical study of US bank call report data provides results that are consistent with the theory presented in the first part of the paper.