the hidden information content of price movements dynamic patterns of prices in different markets may motivate strategic consumers who could be monitoring price movements over time to game vendors do past price movements carry information about the probability and magnitude of future price drops conducting empirical work in the airline industry on near 1000 us domestic routes we find that some price metrics carry information about future price swings these variables can assist in predicting the likelihood and magnitude of price drops these price metrics yield significantly different signals which also vary as the prediction horizon changes

durable goods monopolists durable goods monopolists face special problems because the sale of their products creates a secondhand market not controlled by the monopolist to the extent the monopolist is able to rent his product rather than sell it or to make binding promises about his future production such problems are ameliorated given the inability to do the above the monopolist is led to producing goods less durable than those produced by either competitive firms or monopolist returns a reverse averch johnson result that monopolist sellers may invest less in fixed costs including plant modernization and research and development than would the renters is shown it is also shown that even though sellers have less monopoly power than renters and nondurable goods monopolists it is possible that the seller will cause a greater deadweight loss than the other types of monopolies

signalling in a dynamic labour market this paper analyzes a multiperiod version of the spence job market signalling model in which workers cannot commit to an education choice and firms make wage offers at any point in time the dynamic competition combined with the incomplete information yield a multiplicity of sequential equilibria including ones that sustain implicit collusion even though the length of the game is finite emphasis is placed on equilibria that satisfy the independence of never weak best response criterion of kohlberg and mertens 1986 it is shown that in the limit as the time between offers tends to zero any such equilibrium results in expectation in the unique stable outcome of the static spence model

foundations of dynamic monopoly and the coase conjecture subgame perfect equilibria are characterized for a market in which the seller quotes a price each period assume zero costs positive interest rate continuum of buyers and some technical conditions if buyers valuations are positive then equilibrium is unique buyers strategies are stationary and the price sequence is determinant along the equilibrium path but possibly randomized elsewhere otherwise a continuum of stationary equilibria can exist but at most one with analytic strategies coase s conjecture is verified for stationary strategies reducing the period length drives all prices to zero or the least valuation connections to bargaining models are described journal qf economic literature classification

on the foundations of dynamic monopoly theory in coase s 1972 model of dynamic monopoly the sole supplier of a durable good quotes a price sequence to buyers who at every date regard current and future prices as beyond their control studies of certain versions of the model have shown that when prices are quoted in a time consistent manner and when buyers accurately forecast future prices the seller would earn more by leasing her good bulow 1982 or by writing price protection contracts that make it prohibitively costly for the seller to cut future prices stokey 1981 butz 1990 bagnoli salant and swierzbinski s 1989 recent article in thisjournal has questioned coase s assumption that buyers view future prices as beyond their control the authors analyzed examples of dynamic monopoly in which a finite number of buyers do not ignore the effect of their current purchases on future prices in the examples selling without price commitment was found to yield higher profits than either leasing or selling with price commitment by contrast with the earlier work on dynamic monopoly bagnoli et al s examples do not

government introduced price distortions and growth evidence from twenty nine developing countries from the time adam smith s wealth of nations was published in 1776 until today the role of the state in the economic affairs of nations has been probably one of the most debated subject matters not only among economists but also among other social scientists a free competitive market and pricing system has since been recognized as a crucial factor in the allocation of resources indeed in the economic development of nations at the national as well as international levels there is a growing interest in the role of governmental policies in particular those policies that directly or indirectly influence the working of the market mechanism and the incentive system in the context of nations economic growth an example of the growing interest is the rather unequivocal focus placed in recent years by the world bank and the international monetary fund imf on the need for liberal competitive and outward looking policies in promoting economic growth in developing countries an area of particular concern has been that of the government introduced price distortions in several developing nations historically speaking such policies have grown over time as a part of the so called grand socialistic and planned economic policies and programs undertaken by several developing nations since they attained political independence these nations embarked upon such policies in pursuance of the promises that were made by their political leaders during their freedom movements against the colonial powers the imposition of controls by governments over domestic prices interest rates wages foreign trade and exchange rates for example has caused severe distortions in the economies of these nations and such distortions are not without bearing on economic growth according to the world bank 1983 2 coun

on the condition for export led growth in this paper the author explores the conditions under which favorable export shocks produce export led growth in a three sector three factor general equilibrium model that allows for endogenous capital accumulation the export shock takes the form of either a resource discovery or an increase in the world market price of the export good while surprisingly simple conditions define the outcome in many cases there is no general presumption that an export boom will act as an engine of growth much depends on the precise structural characteristics of the economy

optimal inflation contracts and inflation targets with uncertain central bank preferences accountability through independence this paper examines some problems which arise when monetary policy is delegated to an independent central bank and where the central bank s preferences are unknown two key conclusions emerge from the paper first even with optimal targets or contracts central bank independence may not always be desirable because central banks may have distorted preferences relative to society second if the delegation solution is preferable and the independent central bank responds to information about supply shocks the central bank may be made more accountable by allowing it to set its own inflation targets i e by making it goal independent

exports and growth critical minimum effort and diminishing returns abstract this paper provides some extensions and qualifications concerning the empirical evidence for the positive impact of exports on growth using a model of feder in particular the ideas of critical minimum effort and diminishing returns with respect to the export sector are given some empirical support

renegotiation and information revelation over time the case of optimal labor contracts the paper analyzes the issue of commitment in grossman and hart s model of optimal labor contracts under asymmetric information about firm profitability we extend their framework by allowing employment to vary over time at equidistant intervals when both parties can precommit ex ante not to renegotiate the contract this replicates the grossman hart outcome each subperiod when precommitment is not possible information revealed through the contract can create pareto improving renegotiation opportunities and the issue of optimal information revelation arises the paper analyzes the impact of ex post pareto improving renegotiations on the optimal contract

can trade liberalization stimulate economic growth in africa abstract this paper examines changes in economic growth that are likely to result from changes in trade policies exports and investment in 12 sub saharan african ssa countries using a vector error correction model vecm our results indicate that trade policies exports and investment rate shocks have a significant impact on economic growth in 10 of the 12 ssa countries this suggests that it is possible to stimulate economic growth in some african countries through an outward looking strategy of export expansion more significantly the results further suggest the importance as well as the need for african countries to embark on trade liberalization policies in order to enhance economic growth in the current world economy

durable goods monopoly with incomplete information this article reconsiders the durable goods monopoly problem when the monopolist s marginal cost is private information we show that the coase conjecture implies the no trade theorem in any equilibrium in which the lowest cost seller s initial offer approaches her marginal cost the aggregate probability of trade must vanish however we also construct non coasean equilibria which approximate the unique outcome of the rental version of the same model these stationary equilibria are comparatively efficient the results are equally applicable to the mathematically equivalent problem of sequential bargaining with two sided incomplete information where one party makes all the offers what are the consequences of monopoly in a market for a durable good present day understanding of this question divides into two strands of thought first the monopolist may effectively lack any ability to credibly precommit on her future output under this scenario the price will drop almost instantaneously to marginal cost apparently yielding the efficient outcome normally associated with perfect competition 1 second the monopolist may possess an explicit e g leasing the good rather than selling2 or implicit e g the maintenance of reputation3 device enabling her to adhere to an output restriction under such circumstances price will be maintained at a non competitively high level suggesting an outcome fraught with all the inefficiency of classical monopoly the conclusions of the first paragraph rest on analysis of a standard model in which the monopolist s payoff function is taken to be common knowledge a single firm with known constant marginal cost sells an infinitely durable good to consumers with a known distribution of valuations for the good 4 the firm has the ability to revise its posted price

imports and implementation neglected aspects of trade in the report of the commission for africa i i ntroduction the report of the commission for africa aims to provide a blueprint for what is needed to reverse decades of stagnation and decline in africa and enable the region to achieve sustained economic growth and poverty reduction the core argument is for a big push to improve governance reduce corruption invest in people especially health and education and infrastructure and create a favourable business climate an essential source of resources for the big push will be a doubling of aid flows to africa and the potential exists to absorb and spend these resources effectively trade has two functions in this as elaborated below export led growth and increased imports to absorb foreign exchange while the report is quite clear and often detailed in discussing how resources can be increased and spent and on how to address issues of governance there is very little discussion of the sequencing inherent in the trade context will import demand be increasing at the time aid inflows are greatest and over what timeframe should exports expand the report gives good coverage of trade issues and has many sensible things to say chapter 8 more trade and fairer trade is devoted to trade and other chapters cover related issues in particular section 7 3 on policies for growth including agriculture and infrastructure it has long been recognised that africa as a region has been marginalised in the process of globalisation especially regarding trade for many reasons africa has failed to benefit from the expansion of world trade over the past two decades morrissey and filatotchev 2001 the basic argument of the report is that more needs to be done globally and within african

trade liberalization and industrial growth in pakistan a cointegration analysis using the framework of an endogenous growth model this study empirically analyses the relationship between trade policies and industrial growth in pakistan during the period 1973 1995 the cointegration and error correction modelling approaches have been applied the empirical results suggest that there exists a unique long run relationship among the aggregate growth function of industrial value added and its major determinants of the real capital stock the labour force real exports the import tariff collection rate and the secondary school enrolment ratio the short term dynamic behaviour of pakistan s growth function of industrial value added has been investigated by estimating an error correction model in which the error correction term has been found to be correctly signed and statistically significant

intercourse across economic growth trade and renewable energy consumption in developing and developed countries abstract this article exploits a dynamic simultaneous equation panel data approach to research the bond across economic growth renewable sort of energy and trade for information of 72 countries since 1990 until 2012 we likewise analyze this relationship by separating all countries into three groups as per the level of development whole developing high income developing upper middle income developing lower middle income developing lower income developing developed major developed and others developed countries the outcomes demonstrate a feedback linkage between income and renewable energy consumption between trade and renewable energy consumption and between trade and income this implies that the three variables considered are interdependent

gambling reputation repeated bargaining with outside options we study the role of incomplete information and outside options in determining bargaining postures and surplus division in repeated bargaining between a long run player and a sequence of short run players the outside option is not only a disagreement point but reveals information privately held by the long run player in equilibrium the uninformed short run players offers do not always respond to changes in reputation and the informed long run player s payoffs are discontinuous the long run player invokes inefficient random outside options repeatedly to build reputation to a level where the subsequent short run players succumb to his extraction of a larger payoff but he also runs the risk of losing reputation and relinquishing bargaining power we investigate equilibrium properties when the discount factor goes to 1 and when the informativeness of outside options diffuses in both cases bargaining outcomes become more inefficient and the limit reputation building probabilities are interior publication abstract

dynamic monopoly with nondurable goods abstract a nondurable good monopolist who posts a single price will generally achieve an inefficient outcome but is it possible that the monopolist would achieve efficiency by repeatedly posting prices before delivery if buyers recognize the effect of current purchases on future prices then under complementary ideal conditions the answer is yes on the other hand traditional concerns about monopoly are viable if the seller bears a small cost per buyer of market reopening journal of economic literature classification numbers d42 l12

causality between exports and economic growth abstract this paper utilizes granger causality tests in investigating the relationship between exports and national income from a consistent data set for 47 developing countries in africa new empirical results as well as suggestions for future research are presented

government and economic growth in the less developed countries an empirical study for 1960 1980 adam smith founded modern economics with a powerful argument that free markets are the best route to prosperity and economic growth his conclusion has been studied and debated by economists ever since including nobel prize winners friedman hayek kuznets lewis myrdal and schultz whatever economists have concluded since world war ii the majority of the less developed countries seem to have opted for extensive government regulation of the private sector and for a large public sector has the large government role slowed or accelerated the growth of ldcs obviously this is an important issue this study looks at government expenditure revenue raising and regulation greater emphasis is put on expenditure because 1 the revenue raised is presumably a function of the level of expenditure and 2 there are few internationally comparable measures of regulation there are virtually no empirical studies of the general impact of government on economic growth an extensive literature search turned up only three papers gemmell analyzed the impact of nonmarket sector growth on various measures of macroeconomic performance for 27 ldcs and developed countries for 1960 and 1970 he drew no general conclusions about the relation between the size of the nonmarket sector and economic growth marsden found a negative relation between tax gdp ratios and economic growth for a cross section of 20 ldcs and developed countries for the 1970 79 period 2 i found a negative relationship between the share of government consumption expenditure in gdp and the growth of per capita gdp for a cross section of 96 ldcs and developed countries over various time periods between 1961 and 1976 3 this paper extends the approach used in my 1983 article

a bargaining model with incomplete information about time preferences etude d un jeu de negociation strategique sequentiel avec information incomplete caracterisation d une classe d equilibres sequentiels appeles equilibres sequentiels de negociation et demonstration de l unicite de cet equilibre

multiplicative uncertainty in a model without inflationary bias abstract this paper shows that an increase in the degree of multiplicative uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of monetary policy will reduce social loss when policymaker s preferences are highly uncertain this result is still valid even when there is no distortion in the market

trade orientation and macroeconomic performance in ldcs an empirical study there exist several cross country studies that seek to establish the superiority of export oriented policies eops over import substitution policies isps with few exceptions these studies use growth rates of exports as proxies for trade policies on the assumption that eops lead to higher rates of export growth 2 a positive correlation between export growth and output growth is then interpreted as evidence of the superiority of eops over isps in studies using a production function framework a positive association between export growth sometimes weighted by export shares and output growth is taken to imply a positive contribution of eops to growth of total factor productivity 3 while results of these studies are frequently cited in the literature j bhagwati has pointed out that they do not bear directly on the question whether the ep export promotion strategy is productive of more growth because the incentive related ep strategy is not the one used to examine the question of income or growth performance it is necessary to identify whether the superior export growth rates or higher export magnitudes belong to the ep countries 4 it should be pointed out here that cross country studies occasionally do refer to evidence in support of their use of export growth rates as proxies for trade policies one such study by j b donges and j riedel based on a time series analysis of 12 countries found partial support for such a relationship in four of the countries the shift toward eop was attended by a decline in the trend rate of export growth and for a fifth country the positive shift in export growth was statistically insignificant 5 similar results were obtained by b balassa for an overlapping group of countries 6 while these studies suggest a connection between trade policies and export growth over time for individual countries they do not constitute evidence of such a connection across

on the role of outside options in bargaining with obstinate parties the presence of obstinate types in bargaining has been shown to alter dramatically the bargaining equilibrium strategies and outcomes this paper shows that outside options may cancel out the effect of obstinacy in bargaining when parties have access to stationary outside options we show that when opting out is preferable to accepting the inflexible demand of the other party there is a unique perfect bayesian equilibrium in which each party reveals himself as rational as soon as possible a similar conclusion holds when outside options may only be available at a later date or when only one party has access to an outside option

trade policy and growth of developing countries some new data abstract the present study provides empirical evidence on trade policy and economic growth of developing countries our data indicate that adverse changes in world demand carried greater weight in determining export performance than changes in trade policy the results presented confirm that high growth rates of export earnings occur only when external demand to strong low income countries are shown to fare worse across all time periods though there are regional variations these are not due solely to differences in trade policy thus an outward oriented policy is not necessarily a valid policy recommendation for all conditions and all countries

revisiting the role of multiplicative uncertainty in a model without inflationary bias kobayashi 2003 aims to show that in a model without inflationary bias an increase in the degree of multiplicative uncertainty on the transmission mechanism of monetary policy improves social welfare when central bank s preferences are highly uncertain we demonstrate that this result applies only to the case in which society is strictly conservative i e when the weight attached to output in the social welfare function is lower than one

durable goods monopoly with discrete demand we analyze a dynamic game between consumers and the sole seller of a durable good unlike previous analyses we assume that there exists a finite collection of buyers rather than a continuum none of the main conclusions of the literature on durable goods monopoly survives this change in assumption coase s conjecture that a durable goods monopolist cannot earn supracompetitive profits in the continuous time limit bulow s proposition that renting a durable is always more profitable than selling it and stokey s proposition that precommitting to a time path of prices is always optimal are all false when the set of buyers is finite thus the assumption of a continuum of consumers so innocuous and useful a simplification in other contexts has proved misleading in the context of durable goods monopoly

exports as a factor of production a consistency test abstract for more than a decade economists have routinely introduced an export growth variable into a crosscountry production function framework as a way of examining various aspects of the growth process in developing countries the export promotion hypothesis in particular while the authors of these studies have rejected the argument that their results are biased by the accounting relationship between exports and gdp some recent studies offer evidence supporting this contention here a simple procedure is proposed to test for this bias the procedure consists of testing directly for the implied lower productivity in the nonexport sector of the economy

a multistage model of bargaining this paper presents a simple multistage model of bargaining wherein a seller makes an offer that can be either accepted or refused if rejected the process continues how the seller s ability to make commitments affects bargaining outcomes is analysed by comparing the commitment equilibria to those arising when commitment is impossible the effects of increasing uncertainty about preferences and varying the length of the bargaining horizon are analysed the ways in which the bargaining environment can be changed to improve outcomes are discussed

optimal linear contracts under common agency and uncertain central bank preferences we analyze the effects of imperfectly known central banker s preferences on optimal linear contracts offered by the government and an interest group these effects depend on the type of uncertainty faced by the principals when the central bank s output target is uncertain the results by campoy and negrete public choice 137 197 206 2008 under perfectly known preferences obtain uncertainty about the central banker s degree of conservatism or about its degree of selfishness has a multiplicative impact on the principals instruments in the agent s best response function this may generate an inflation bias independently of the type of contract offered by the interest group