Changing threat perceptions and the efficient provisioning of international security

This paper proposes a mechanism for structuring international institutions to efficiently provision global security against the threat of a rogue nation, by an alliance of nations. This paper investigates how the evolution of public opinion, in the respective countries facing the rogue nation's threat, affects the mechanism. It also analyzes the impact of “fair‐weather friends” within the alliance, i.e., allies that increase support for security effort when the threat becomes less dangerous but withdraw support in more dangerous circumstances. Additionally, it explores how the possibility of sequential action by the allies, rather than simultaneous action, might affect joint security efforts.     

Mixed Duopoly and Environment

We show under general demand and cost conditions that in a mixed duopoly with pollution the government can implement the socially optimal outputs and abatements by a tax‐subsidy scheme and keeping the public firm fully public. The scheme requires taxing outputs and subsidizing abatements at different rates, unlike a pollution tax. Our result improves on the shortcoming of a pollution tax to implement the social optimum. We also show that when the private firm is partly foreign‐owned, the government will adopt some privatization and will not implement the social optimum, though the social optimum is implementable.     

Technology adoption in a differentiated duopoly: Cournot versus Bertrand

This paper shows that the cost as well as the effectiveness of technology has a differential impact on technology adoption under two alternative modes of competition. If the cost of the technology is high, Bertrand competition provides a stronger incentive to adopt technology than Cournot competition unless the effectiveness of the technology is very low. On the contrary, if the cost of the technology is low, Cournot competition fares better than Bertrand competition in terms of technology adoption by firms. This demonstrates that the commonly subscribed assumption of ‘positive primary outputs’ restricts (inflates) the scope of higher degree of technology adoption under Bertrand (Cournot) competition. Moreover, in contrast to standard welfare ranking, it shows that Cournot competition leads to higher social welfare than Bertrand competition under certain situations.     

Mixed duopoly, cross-ownership and partial privatization

This paper investigates the effects of cross-ownership on optimal privatization, and vice-versa, in mixed duopoly. It shows that cross-ownership is profitable to the private firm only if the level of privatization of the public firm is sufficiently high. In equilibrium, cross-ownership does not take place even if there is partial privatization. However, the possibility of cross-ownership significantly limits the socially optimal level of privatization in most of the situations. Moreover, it demonstrates that full nationalization is socially optimal, in case of sufficiently convex identical cost functions and homogeneous goods. These results have strong implications to both divestment and competition policies.     

Corruption Via Media Capture: The Effect of Competition

In this article, we compare a government's optimal choice of whether to engage in corruption by capturing the media outlets through bribery in two alternative media market structures: monopoly versus duopoly. While there is an extra bribe claimant in a media duopoly relative to monopoly, it may also be harder for each firm to individually expose corruption when the rival co‐opts with the government. We find that when the latter effect is stronger than the former, media is captured at lower bribes under duopoly relative to monopoly and in such instances media competition facilitates rather than hindering corruption.     

Will a matchmaker invite her potential rival in?

This paper analyzes optimal strategies of an incumbent intermediary, who matches agents on the two sides of a market, in the presence of entry threat under alternative scenarios. It shows that, when entry is free, strategic entry accommodation is the optimal choice of the incumbent—not entry deterrence, unless the variation in agents' types is small. Entry accommodation remains optimal for the incumbent for a wide range of parametric configurations even when there is a fixed cost of entry. These results are in sharp contrast to the predictions of existing models of entry.     

Union-oligopoly bargaining and entry deterrence: a reassessment of limit pricing

This paper introduces wage bargaining in the framework of Milgrom and Roberts (Econometrica 50(2):443–459, 1982) where the workers’ reservation wage is the private information parameter critical for entry. We show that entry threat significantly distorts the wage, which in some cases adversely affects the firm’s ability to signal through price. Consequently, the separating equilibrium (in price) does not always exist. If, however, wage agreements are made public, signalling occurs with or without distortions in wage depending on whether the union’s bargaining power is high or low. Pooling equilibrium also exists and it features similar distortions. We also examine which signal, wage or price, generates greater social welfare. We would like to thank two referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. This paper is partially based on a chapter of Pal’s PhD thesis done at Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), India. For remaining errors we are solely responsible.     

The impact of group incentives on performance of small firms: Hausman–Taylor estimates

This paper investigates the impact of group incentives on firms' performance. It shows that group incentive raises firms' performance. This result empirically validates the implication of the theoretical literature that performance‐related pay can potentially improve firms' performance, in the context of a developing country, and indicates the importance of group incentives in small firms. It also shows that partnership firms perform better than private limited companies and labour unions have a negative impact on firms' performance. It employs the Hausman–Taylor random effects estimator in order to isolate the effects of time‐invariant covariates and also to tackle potential endogeneity problem. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

COOPERATIVE MANAGERIAL DELEGATION,R&D AND COLLUSION

Existing literature on managerial delegation indicates that collusive outcomes can be obtained in an oligopoly game through cooperative managerial delegation. In contrast, this paper shows that, if managers are delegated to choose R&D, in addition to choosing production levels, full‐collusive outcomes cannot be achieved through cooperative delegation. Moreover, (i) under cooperative delegation, semi‐collusion always yields lower profit, higher R&D, higher price and lower social welfare than that in the case of competition and (ii) cooperative delegation leads to a higher profit lower R&D, higher price and lower social welfare than the no delegation case, irrespective of product market conduct.     

An Empirical Analysis Of Industrial Disputes: Evidence From Indian States

This paper investigates the determinants of industrial disputes using data for fourteen major states of India over fifteen years from 1981 to 1996. We document that other than purely economic factors (e.g. wages, provident fund and other benefits, and factory size); socio-economic, institutional, and political factors have significant impact on industrial disputes. This supports the political economic view of the trade union behavior. We also provide the evidence that liberalization of Indian economy has enhanced industrial peace. Region specific factors as well as the ideology and characteristics of political parties in power of the state governments influence industrial disputes. Fixed capital per employee and overall growth rate of per capita state domestic products has negligible impact on industrial disputes.