parametric rationing methods abstract in a rationing problem a single homogeneous good is allocated among agents with possibly complex characteristics or types when types are single positive numbers agents claims young s theorem says that in the presence of continuity a method of rationing is consistent and symmetric if and only if it can be represented by a continuous parametric function this theorem is generalized to all separable type spaces related results include a characterization of non continuous parametric methods and a simple criterion for deciding when a two agent method can be consistently extended to a multi agent method an application to the multi category bankruptcy problem is described

complementary approaches to discursive contestation on the effects of the ipr regime on technology transfer in the face of climate change the effects of intellectual property rights ipr on the transfer of environmentally sound technologies ests has resulted in discursive contestation on the one hand the ipr regime is regarded as a catalyst to ests transfer on the other hand the ipr regime itself is argued to work as a barrier to the transfer of ests to developing countries this contestation moved to another layer of discussion concerning what to do about the current ipr regime and the climate change regime that overlap on the subject matter of technology transfer the ipr as a catalyst approach prefers the ipr regime to remain as the status quo and that the climate change regime construct an enabling environment by lowering the transaction costs of technology transfer and enhancing the regulatory capacity of developing countries on the contrary skeptics of the role of the ipr regime in ests transfer prefer an active utilization of the flexible mechanisms of the ipr regime and more interventionist actions by the climate change regime for effective ipr sharing regarding this bi polar contestation this paper analyzes why and where this discursive contestation occurs based on the economic theories of market failure the benefits and difficulties of remedial institutional approaches to tackle market failures are explored then complementary institutional designs in compatibility with the ipr regime and in response to market failures are explored with exemplary cases under the climate change regime

consistent solutions in atomless economies we consider the problem of allocating a bundle of commodities among a group of agents who are collectively entitled to them we prove for an atomless economy with possibly satiated preferences any solution that is efficient equitable and consistent must select allocations that are supported by equal budget walrasian equilibria with slack we consider the problem of allocating a bundle of commodities among a group of agents who are collectively entitled to them we search for systematic methods or solutions of resolving this problem for a solution to be considered desirable we propose that it should satisfy several requirements first it should be efficient second it should be equitable a variety of distributional require ments have been proposed in the literature the requirement we will impose here is that it select allocations at which no agent would prefer the equal division of the social endowment to his own consumption in addition to these two basic efficiency and equity conditions we require that the solution be consistent the recommendations it makes for any economy are never contra dicted by the recommendations it makes for any reduced economy obtained by allowing some subgroup of agents to leave the scene with their allotted consumptions the requirement of consistency is very natural here is a motivation for it offered by thomson 1988 consider all the resources available on the planet earth one would like not only that they be distributed fairly when the planet is considered as a whole but also that whatever resources end up in each continent country city be fairly distributed among the members of that subpopulation when considered in isolation in this paper we study economies with a large number of agents modelled as a complete atomless measure space our main result is a characterization of the solutions that satisfy all three requirements of efficiency equity and con sistency it follows from our result that under standard assumptions on preferences any such solution must select allocations that are supported by equal income walrasian equilibria however our characterization holds for more general economies since it applies to economies in which preferences are possibly satiated mas colell 1988 extended traditional general equilibrium theory to the class of such economies by introducing the notion of walrasian

forms of trust and conditions for their stability of the three principal approaches to trust we decided to investigate in greater detail the one in which trust is regarded as a belief that the individuals involved hold about a relationship trust was defined as a delegatory relationship based on anticipation of the delegatee s behaviour we reached four main conclusions first the solution to the problem posed by the indeterminacy of trust lies in the differentiation and hierarchisation of the various forms of trust contractual organisational and tacit on the basis of their degree of irreversibility and stability second contractual trust is unstable because it comes up against the problem of guarantees of individual intentions this leads to the third conclusion rational evaluation by individuals cannot by itself establish trust which is based on collective beliefs practices and rules fourth we identified two conditions for the stability of trust the creation of irreversibilities through adherence to a rule and the creation of a confidence interval within which different interpretations of contradictory individual strategies are tolerated thus the viability of the various forms of trust depends on the ability of institutions and organisations to create rules that are likely when applied to produce an interval in which tolerance of mutual intentions is the norm these analyses of trust hence highlight the role of time and period of time in the notion of trust

models of currency crises with self fulfilling features the discomfort a government suffers from speculation against its currency determines the strategic incentives of speculators and the scope for multiple currency market equilibria after describing an illustrative model in which high unemployment may cause an exchange rate crisis with self fulfilling features the paper reviews some other self reinforcing mechanisms recent econometric evidence seems consistent with the practical importance of these mechanisms

hedonic price indexes for spreadsheets and an empirical test for network externalities in this article i first estimate hedonic price equations for computer spreadsheet programs and then use the analysis to empirically test whether network externalities exist in this industry the study shows that consumers are willing to pay a significant premium for spreadsheets that are compatible with the lotus platform and for spreadsheets that offer links to external databases and a similar premium for spreadsheets that offer local area network externalities finally the quality adjusted real price of computer spreadsheets declined by approximately 15 per year from 1986 to 1991

independence of irrelevant alternatives and revealed group preferences it is shown that a pareto optimal and continuous single valued choice function defined on the compact convex subsets of the positive orthant of the n dimensional euclidean space maximizes a real valued function if and only if it satisfies the independence of irrelevant alternatives condition if n 2 and the strong axiom of revealed preference otherwise the results can be applied to consumer demand theory to deal with nonlinear budget sets and to bargaining game theory to generalize the nash bargaining solution

technology diffusion and public policy a useful typology of technological change is provided by the schumpeterian trilogy invention the generation of new ideas innovation the development of those ideas through to the first marketing or use of a technology and diffusion the spread of new technology across its potential market until recently policy schemes in most oecd countries have tended to focus predominantly on the invention and innovation or science and r d end of this technology spectrum see e g limpens et al i 992 although it is generally realised that it is the process of diffusion or use of technology that creates productive potential and competitiveness policy initiatives have largely bypassed opportunities to improve the diffusion process if this may seem misplaced emphasis it does in fact reflect the state of the academic literature which is wide ranging and extensive as it relates to policies on r d but small and fragmented as regards policies on diffusion currently a gradual reorientation of policy direction toward diffusion seems to be taking place the us and uk governments for example have recently proposed major technology policy initiatives that despite differences in emphasis both stress the importance of creating an infrastructure conducive to a rapid spread of awareness and knowledge of innovations we argue that although sensible in themselves such policies may be too limited in scope and that a broader policy stance may be needed this paper has two main objectives the first is to provide an overview of why policy intervention in the diffusion process may be desirable and what form it might take this discussion is rather long since to the best of our knowledge there is no published systematic synthesis of the diffusion policy literature though see stoneman i987 for an earlier attempt the second aim is to look at actual diffusion policies and their impacts to make the task manageable we are restricting this paper to a discussion of the diffusion of new process technologies although similar issues apply to new consumer technologies these are not explicitly addressed we also consider diffusion policy only within the context of a given institutional and macroeconomic environment although it may well be that the supply of skilled manpower the nature of the capital market animal spirits and entrepreneurship fiscal and monetary policies will all impact upon the diffusion path improvements in these areas will also impact upon a whole host of other aspects of the economy s performance to use a plea for diffusion policy as a rationale for changes in such areas would be equivalent to the tail wagging the dog and thus they fall outside the remit of this paper

innovation diversity and diffusion a self organisation model a number of features of innovation diffusion are identified appropriability diversity expectations selection learning and spillover externalities a dynamic model is formul ated to embed the diffusion question into a more general framework of disequilibrium competition the model incorporates distinct vintage structures reflecting a change in technological trajectory learning by using a nd expectations driven investment rules of thumb simulation studies reveal robust quasi logistic curves but a complicated pattern of net market share gains and losses uncertainty regarding the rationality of early or late adoption it is argued ensures that the requisite behavioral variety is present to generate these diffusion patterns copyright 1988 by royal economic society

dynamic competition with network externalities why history matters we consider dynamic competition among platforms in a market with network exter nalities a platform that dominated the market in the previous period becomes focal in the current period in that agents play the equilibrium in which they adopt the focal platform whenever such equilibrium exists yet when faced with higher quality competition can a low quality platform remain focal in the finite horizon case the unique equilibrium is efficient for patient platforms with an infinite time horizon however there are multiple equilibria where either the lowor high quality platform dominates if qualities are stochastic the platform with a better average quality wins with a higher probability even when its realized quality is lower and this probability increases as platforms become more patient hence social welfare may decline as platforms become more forward looking

privatization in eastern europe irreversibility and critical mass effects abstract this paper proposes a model to shed light on two important policy features of privatization in central and eastern europe the idea of a necessary critical mass of privatization on one hand and the great difficulties encountered in the actual privatization process on the other the model incorporates a positive externality related to the size of the private sector multiple equilibria may arise for political and economic reasons policies of free distribution are analysed with the model they may eliminate the danger of policy reversals due to excess unemployment but may at the same time increase the relative cost of restructuring leading in some cases to pareto inferior outcomes

new economic policies and the diffusion of machine tools in latin america abstract this paper argues that both old and new economic regimes in latin america only partially ensured the successful diffusion of machine tools in the region import substitution policies focused on suppliers with resulting advances in domestic imitative adaptive and innovating capabilities but at high cost for users in expensive and technically inferior machine tools the new economic model nem focus on the user has provided wider availability and lower price of technologies with resulting increases in productivity and efficiency but domestic suppliers cannot establish themselves nor make the technologically crucial jump into the electronics era the paper suggests an approach focusing on the joint upgrading of users and suppliers and proposes policy initiatives aimed at addressing market failure and systemic issues

utilitarianism egalitarianism and the timing effect in social choice problems two theorems are derived about social choice functions which are defined on comprehensive convex subsets of utility allocation space theorem 1 asserts that a linearity condition together with pareto optimality implies that a social choice function must be utilitarian theorem 2 asserts that a concavity condition together with pareto optimality and independence of irrelevant alternatives implies that a social choice function must be either utilitarian or egalitarian these linearity and concavity conditions have natural interpretations in terms of the timing of social welfare analysis before or after the resolution of uncertainties and its impact on social choices

adoption and diffusion of an innovation of uncertain profitability the argument has frequently been made that the pattern of diffusion associated with most new innovations will typically have certain characteristics a diffusion curve for an innovation is usually defined as the proportion of its potential users who have already adopted as a function of time measured from the first adoption many empirical studies by both economists and other social scientists have shown that diffusion curves nearly always have two distinct characteristics i they are s shaped the proportion adopted is an increasing function of time which is initially convex but eventually becomes concave and ii they tend to be right hand skewed the inflection point occurs at a time corresponding to a proportion adopted which is less than one half so that the function is concave over the greatest amount of time in fact this skewing is occasionally severe enough to make the diffusion curve appear concave everywhere the focus of most empirical studies of innovation diffusion has centered on identification of either the major determinants of the speed of diffusion or the characteristics of firms which determine how long they delay adoption the seminal contributions are griliches 6 study of hybrid corn and mansfield s 121 study of 12 industrial innovations these studies and most of the similar ones following conclude that diffusion is faster for innovations with higher profitability and that large firms tend to be the earliest adopters some studies e g mansfield 121 herregat 71 have attempted to ascertain

a rational expectations critique of merger policy analysis abstract a stricter merger control policy increases the expectation of future price competition in response firms increase product differentiation to sustain higher prices failing to account for such policy variant prices may lead to overestimation of the increase in consumer surplus due to the stricter merger policy rendering the policy analysis subject to the lucas critique

competing technologies the learning curve and rational expectations abstract the problem of choice between several variants of a technology subject to dynamic learning economies is examined in a rational expectations model with overlapping adopters it is shown that even with rational expectations the long term market outcome depends sensitively on the pattern of early chance events and that only one variant of the technology will come to dominate the market in the long run this variant need not be the one which is socially optimal or most promising technically

proportional concessions and the leximin solution in this note we introduce a new axiom for bargaining solutions named proportional concession monotonicity pcm which imposes that no player benefits when all players collectively make proportional concessions with respect to their respective utopia values we reconsider the leximin solution imai 1983 and obtain an alternative characterization on the basis of pcm

game theoretic analysis of a bankruptcy problem from the talmud abstract for three different bankruptcy problems the 2000 year old babylonian talmud prescribes solutions that equal precisely the nucleoli of the corresponding coalitional games a rationale for these solutions that is independent of game theory is given in terms of the talmudic principle of equal division of the contested amount this rationale leads to a unique solution for all bankruptcy problems which always coincides with the nucleolus two other rationales for the same rule are suggested in terms of other talmudic principles needless to say the rule in question is not proportional division

platform selection in the lab abstract emerging literature explores experimental platform selection games these games converge rapidly on the superior platform under a wide range of conditions we replicate the remarkable results of hossain and morgan 2009 in which such a game tips almost perfectly to the superior platform next we show that platform coordination fails when seemingly innocent increases in out of equilibrium payoffs are introduced the inflated payoffs keep the best reply structure unchanged and do not influence players security levels our design allows control for the explanatory force of risk dominance we find that equilibrium selection theory is unable to account for coordination failure while observed behavior is consistent with non rational learning furthermore and contrary to the literature we find that efficiency suffers when an inferior platform is granted initial monopoly

asymmetric parametric division rules we describe and characterize the family of asymmetric parametric division rules for the adjudication of conflicting claims on a divisible homogeneous good as part of the characterization we present two novel axioms which restrict how a division rule indirectly allocates between different versions of the same claimant we also show that such division rules can alternately be represented as the maximization of an additively separable social welfare function

stability and collective rationality the principle of pairwise comparisons is a well established one in social choice theory the idea of collective rationality that social decisions be made consistently with the maximization of some ordering of the alternatives is the most familiar application of this principle and indeed is a defining property of the social welfare functions of bergson 1938 and samuelson 1947 and of arrow 1951 as is well known the idea of collective rationality involves comparing every social state to every other social state in terms of the welfare assigned by those states to a given group of individuals and declaring a social state to be fair or good if it is good when considering all such pairwise comparisons with other social states alternatively one could imagine a social decision process based on comparing every individual to every other individual in terms of the welfare assigned to those individuals by a given social state and declaring a social state to be good or fair if it is fair when considering all such pairwise comparisons of individuals a social decision process in this spirit has been suggested by harsanyi 1959

beyond nash bargaining theory the nash set abstract we extend nash s bargaining theory to non convex and coalitional problems this paper investigates the implications of nash like axioms for bilateral problems and the properties of consistency and converse consistency over multilateral settings the result is a characterization of the nash set of ntu games defined as the solution concept where each pair of players is splitting the gains from trade at a point where the nash product of their utilities subject to efficiency is critical the intersection of the nash set and the core is also characterized with the same axioms for the class of games where the core is non empty journal of economic literatureclassification numbers c71 c78

biodiversity conservation in a dynamic world may lead to inefficiencies due to lock in effects and path dependence abstract although biodiversity is generally diminishing in some areas its conservation is expanding however the exact path of this expansion is uncertain this can lead to problems of path dependence and lock in effects path dependence describes situations where history strongly influences present decisions and lock in effects refer to situations where an earlier decision provides strong incentives to follow a particular path even if more efficient alternatives are available later on we develop a conceptual ecological economic model to investigate which ecological and economic parameters favour the appearance of efficiency losses in biodiversity conservation due to path dependence and lock in effects in a dynamic two period two region model generally we find that efficiency losses occur if there are signals that guide the first period budget into a region that later turns out to be suboptimal if both time periods had been considered right from the beginning to illustrate the conservation relevance of our findings we present potential efficiency losses through path dependence in the hypothetical case of applying offsets to conserving the endangered maculinea teleius butterfly near the city of landau in germany

technology adoption in the presence of network externalities we analyze technology adoption in industries where network externalities are significant the pattern of adoption depends on whether technologies are sponsored a sponsor is an entity that has property rights to the technology and hence is willing to make investments to promote it key findings include the following 1 compatibility tends to be undersupplied by the market but excessive standardization can occur 2 in the absence of sponsors the technology superior today has a strategic advantage and is likely to dominate the market 3 when one of two rival technologies is sponsored that technology has a strategic advantage and may be adopted even if it is inferior 4 when two competing technologies both are sponsored the technology that will be superior tomorrow has a strategic advantage

financial flows financial crises and global imbalances abstract in this lecture i document the proliferation of gross international asset and liability positions and discuss some consequences for individual countries external adjustment processes and for global financial stability in light of the rapid growth of gross global financial flows and the serious risks associated with them one might wonder about the continuing relevance of the net financial flow measured by the current account balance i argue that global current account imbalances remain an essential target for policy scrutiny for financial as well as macroeconomic reasons nonetheless it is critically important for policymakers to monitor as well the rapidly evolving structure of global gross assets and liabilities

learning from a piece of pie we investigate the empirical content of the nash solution to two player bargaining games the bargaining environment is described by a set of variables that may affect agents preferences over the agreement sharing the status quo outcome or both the outcomes i e whether an agreement is reached and if so the individual shares and the environment including the size of the pie are known but neither are the agents utilities nor their threat points we consider both a deterministic version of the model in which the econometrician observes the shares as deterministic functions of the variables under consideration and a stochastic one in which because of latent disturbances only the joint distribution of incomes and outcomes is recorded we show that in the most general framework any outcome can be rationalized as a nash solution however even mild exclusion restrictions generate strong implications that can be used to test the nash bargaining assumption stronger conditions further allow to recover the underlying structure of the bargaining and in particular the cardinal representation of individual preferences in the absence of uncertainty an implication of this finding is that empirical works entailing nash bargaining could and should use much more general and robust versions than they usually do copyright 2012 oxford university press

the choquet bargaining solutions abstract we axiomatically investigate the problem of rationalizing bargaining solutions by social welfare functions that are linear in every rank ordered subset of r n such functions the so called choquet integrals have been widely used in the theories of collective and individual choice we refer to bargaining solutions that can be rationalized by choquet integrals as choquet bargaining solutions our main result is a complete characterization of choquet bargaining solutions as a corollary of our main result we also obtain a characterization of the generalized gini bargaining solutions introduced by blackorby et al 1994 econometrica 62 1161 1178 journal of economic literature classification numbers d71 c78

wheels within wheels within wheels the importance of capital inflows in the origin of the spanish financial crisis with the creation of the euro the spanish economy established an exchange rate regime similar to that adopted by many emerging economies during the 1990s at the same time the eurozone as a whole adopted a currency system with features similar to the us currency regime in emerging economies as in the us economy the adoption of these models was accompanied by strong growth in capital inflows as well as severe financial mostly banking and or macroeconomic mostly trade imbalances several authors have linked capital inflows with imbalances as cause and effect this work uses some of those arguments along with statistical data on the characteristics and evolution of capital inflows registered by the spanish economy and by the eurozone as a whole in order to propose a causal link between post euro exchange rate regimes adopted in spain capital inflows and the imbalances that preceded the financial crisis of 2008

reference functions and balanced concessions in bargaining in bargaining agents expect their concessions to be reciprocated using the reference function concept of thomson 1981 this paper constructs a class of solutions the outcomes of which lead to balanced concessions by agents as prescribed by the reference function adopted the kalai smorodinsky solution arises as a special case another solution in this class which depends on the entire feasible set is generated by using the centre of gravity as the reference function

innovation and diffusion of environmental technology industrial nox abatement in sweden under refunded emission payments we study the actual process of technical change in the case of nox abatement from large stationary sources that have been regulated by very forceful policies in sweden considerable progress has been made in lowering aggregate emissions and this paper seeks to disaggregate average industry improvements to study how much of it is due to innovations by first movers and how much is achieved by adoption and diffusion of technology we find both factors very important innovation has been rapid the best firms have cut emissions on the order of 70 in spite of this reductions have actually been even more rapid for the majority of firms so that the median firms have caught up with best practice we analyze various characteristics of the technological change observed

the separability axiom and equal sharing methods a quasi linear social choice problem is defined as selecting one among finitely many indivisible public decision and a vector of monetary transfers among agents to cover the cost of this decision this decision is based upon individual preferences which are assumed to be additively separable and linear in money the separability axiom is a consistency property for choice methods on societies with variable size the decision is not affected if we remove an arbitrary agent under the condition that he be guaranteed his original utility level and the cost to the remaining agents is modified accordingly thus the utility level assigned by the social choice function to agent i is the price at which the other agents are unanimously willing to buy agent is share of the decision power a general characterization of choice methods satisfying this axiom is provided three subclasses of particular interest are characterized by additional milder axioms those are i equal sharing of the surplus left over some reference utility e g the utility at a status quo decision ii utilitarian methods that merely select the efficient public decision and perform no monetary transfers and iii equal allocation of nonseparable costs which divides equally the surplus left over from the utility derived from the pivotal mechanism also known as the vickrey clarke groves mechanism

theorizing path dependence a review of positive feedback mechanisms in technology markets regional clusters and organizations the concept of path dependence has often been criticized as vague and only narrowly applicable although we can find some very refined definitions of the concept we also find a wide range of empirical phenomena being described as path dependent we argue that more detailed accounts of the positive feedback mechanisms that form paths can take path dependence beyond this state of being overdetermined but under specified reviewing three well described cases of path dependent dynamics in technology markets regional clustering and organizations we define a core set of positive feedback mechanisms that constitute path dependence at different analysis levels and clarify the relationship between positive feedback and increasing returns we show that path dependent processes that is processes driven by positive feedback that veer toward rigidity or lock in can be but do not have to be found under many labels including structural inertia coevolution or institutional persistence we conclude that a precise definition of path dependence does not need to be at odds with the concept s widespread use in understanding organizational and industrial development processes copyright 2013 the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

inefficient standard adoption inertia and momentum revisited i introduction since the establishment of the theory of network effects economists have been concerned with the question of whether a market with network effects will tend to settle on the socially optimal standard it has been postulated that markets may exhibit excess inertia once a technological standard is in place a new superior standard may not displace it because of installed base effects alternatively markets may exhibit excess momentum consumers may adopt a new standard too quickly ignoring the stranding effect they are having on previous users similar issues arise in the adoption of language and social norms the literature has investigated various conditions under which one of these inefficiencies arises such inefficiencies are of particular concern for open technologies such as the qwerty and dvorak keyboards 1 the situation is somewhat different when individual firms own standards in that case a simple argument seems to indicate that there is no possibility that an inefficient standard will persist if a new standard is superior in any objective sense there are gains to be made from switching to it once the standard has been adopted the firm can appropriate these gains therefore the firm has incentive to lower the initial price enough to induce adoption of the standard the preceding argument is made in liebowitz and margolis 1999 and repeated in spulber 2002 spulber expresses a general skepticism about the likelihood of inefficiencies when property rights are defined and markets exist critics might claim that previous models that imply inefficient standard adoption are unrealistic in some way and that if such models were modified slightly the inefficiency would disappear i reconsider the issue of inefficient standard adoption using a parsimonious yet compelling model assuming only that there are successive generations of finitely lived consumers that preferences are heterogeneous and that there are network effects among users adoption decisions can be inefficient this is true even if consumers can coordinate efficiently within a generation and a firm can act as a coordinating device across generations the model presented here generates some of the same results found in other papers collectively but in a more general setting and with more robust results if there is an established standard and a superior alternative emerges no single generation of consumers will be willing to switch to the new standard if the switching cost the loss of network benefit from breaking with past users is too high it may be that the benefits to future generations of consumers are large enough that from a social standpoint it would be efficient for one generation to adopt the new standard even if it is privately optimal for that generation to retain the old standard on the other hand the current generation considers only its own switching cost and not the cost it imposes on the previous generation leading to potential overadoption of new technology even for proprietary standards it is not clear that the incentive of the firm to induce adoption matches the social incentive in particular if consumer preferences are heterogeneous the firm will not be able to price in such a way to extract all of the additional surplus gained from the new standard on the other hand the firm will be able to appropriate some of the surplus generated by the network effect itself which is present for any standard and thus does not affect the social incentive to change standards it is not possible to address this issue with a two period model as in some of the previous literature see for example choi 1994 choi and thum 1998 katz and shapiro 1986 if a new technology is introduced in the second period but then the game ends the welfare of future generations of consumers is neglected 2 this article also differs from previous infinite horizon models of technology adoption

demand dynamics with socially evolving preferences in this work we first identify a few stylized facts concerning microconsumption acts second building on them we develop a simple model of boundedly rational consumers who endogenously evolve their preferences via both innovation and social imitation third we explore some statistical properties of the demand patterns generated by the model which despite its simplicity are surprisingly in line with the empirical evidence these results we suggest bring encouraging support to microfoundations of demand theory based on cognitive and behavioral foundations more in tune with the psychological and sociological evidence based on heterogeneous agents who are much less rational and much more social than in standard theory and who collectively discover along the way what they like within a growing universe of available commodities

on multiple discount rates we propose a theory of intertemporal choice that is robust to specific assumptions on the discount rate one class of models requires that one utility stream be chosen over another if and only if its discounted value is higher for all discount factors in a set another model focuses on an average discount factor yet another model is pessimistic and evaluates a flow by the lowest available discounted value

second mover advantages in the strategic adoption of new technology under uncertainty abstract this paper introduces technological uncertainty into a timing game of new technology adoption it is shown that the timing neither necessarily involves first mover advantages in precommitment equilibria reinganum review of economic studies xlviii 1981 395 405 nor rent equalization due to the threat of preemption fudenberg and tirole review of economic studies lii 1985 383 401 rather there may be second mover advantages because of informational spillovers furthermore the model predicts that the equilibrium payoffs will typically be discontinuous and non monotonic in the probability that the new technology is profitable a welfare analysis reveals several market failures and suggests that policy intervention should adequately depend on the nature of uncertainty and the rate of technological progress

models of technology diffusion abstract the literature on new technology diffusion is vast and it spills over many conventional disciplinary boundaries this paper surveys the literature by focusing on alternative explanations of the dominant stylized fact that the usage of new technologies over time typically follows an s curve the most commonly found model which is used to account for this model is the so called epidemic model which builds on the premise that what limits the speed of usage is the lack of information available about the new technology how to use it and what it does the leading alternate model is often called the probit model which follows from the premise that different firms with different goals and abilities are likely to want to adopt the new technology at different times in this model diffusion occurs as firms of different types gradually adopt it there are actually many ways to generate an s curve and the third class of models which we examine are models of density dependence popularized by population ecologists in these models the twin forces of legitimation and competition help to establish new technologies and then ultimately limit their take up finally we look at models in which the initial choice between different variants of the new technology affect the subsequent diffusion speed of the chosen technology such models often rely on information cascades which drive herd like adoption behaviour when a particular variant is finally selected

capital flows to developing countries long and short term determinants this article focuses on the determinants of the large portfolio flows from the united states to latin american and asian countries during 1988 92 cointegration techniques reveal that both domestic and global factors explain bond and equity flows to developing countries and represent significant long run determinants of portfolio flows the article also investigates the dynamics of portfolio flows by estimating seemingly unrelated error correction models global and country specific factors are equally important in determining the long run movements in equity flows for both asian and latin american countries while global factors are much more important than domestic factors in explaining the dynamics of bond flows u s interest rates are a particularly important determinant of the short run dynamics of portfolio especially bond flows to developing countries copyright 1997 by oxford university press

axiomatic bargaining theory on economic environments abstract axiomatic bargaining theory is reexamined by focusing upon the economic exhange environment instead of the traditional utility possibility set it is argued that the axioms of the traditional theory impose stronger restrictions than can be supported by their motivating economic intuitions weaker alternative axioms making explicit use of economic information are used to characterize the standard bargaining solutions a key idea is to impose consistency of the solution with respect to changes in the dimension of the commodity space even these weaker economic axioms however may be unrealistic restrictions to impose on the bargaining solution in the context of many economic bargaining problems

monotonic solutions to general cooperative games etude de jeux cooperatifs qui sont des jeux a plusieurs joueurs mis sous la forme de coalition dans lesquels l utilite n est pas supposee etre transferable

appeals immune bargaining solution with variable alternative sets a bargaining solution based on the rubinstein safra thomson ordinal nash outcome is investigated in the peters wakker revealed group preferences framework assuming non expected utility preferences necessary and sufficient conditions are stated on preference pairs in order for the solution to be well defined and axiomatized uniquely

no envy and consistency in economies with indivisible goods we consider the problem of fair allocation in economies with indivisible goods our main objective is to identify appealing subsolutions of the no envy solution we formulate desirable properties of solutions and look for solutions satisfying them given an allocation chosen by a solution for some economy and given a subgroup of the agents consider the problem of fairly distributing among its members the resources that this group has collectively received the solution is consistent if it recommends that the same bundle be attributed to each of these agents as initially we show that there is no proper subsolution of the no envy solution that satisfies consistency however many subsolutions satisfy bilateral consistency or the converse of consistency but again there is no proper subsolution satisfying these two properties together

the economics of convention c onventions regulate much of economic and social life yet they have received surprisingly little attention from economists by a convention we mean a pattern of behavior that is customary expected and self enforcing everyone conforms everyone expects others to conform and everyone has good reason to conform because conforming is in each person s best interest when everyone else plans to conform lewis 1969 familiar examples include following rules of the road adhering to conventional codes of dress and using words with their conventional meanings conventions with direct economic implications include species of money and credit industrial and technological standards accounting rules and forms of economic contracts indeed it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that almost all economic and social institutions are governed to some extent by convention the main feature of a convention is that out of a host of conceivable choices only one is actually used this fact also explains why conventions are needed they resolve problems of indeterminacy in interactions that have multiple equilibria indeed from a formal point of view we may define a convention as an equilibrium that everyone expects in interactions that have more than one equilibrium the economic significance of conventions is that they reduce transaction costs imagine the inconvenience if whenever two vehicles approached one another the important exceptions are sugden 1986 and ullman margalit 1977 the interested reader might also refer to the symposium on social norms that appeared in the fall 1989 issue of this journal with articles by sugden 1989 and elster 1989

bad eggs learning by doing and the choice of technology we model long run economic development through technology adoption under scientific uncertainty about environmental effects there are four possible long run equilibria in a socially planned economy high growth adopt rapidly but abandon damaging technologies once revealed ddt cfcs cautious brake the introduction of new technologies to avoid mistakes genetically modified organisms no growth halt technological progress to preserve secondary knowledge and collapse adopt rapidly without ever abandoning damaging technologies in the base parameterization a short sighted social planner chooses the cautious strategy a far sighted planner chooses the high growth strategy unless damages are irreversible in which case the cautious strategy again dominates regulatory options in the market economy are investigated pollution taxes do not affect the firm s level of precaution if they can only be applied after the adopting firm has reaped the benefits however they do encourage the abandonment of damaging technologies liability rules do affect precaution but may lead to excessive caution or even a no growth trap

structures investment and economic growth a long term international comparison interest has grown again in recent years about the long term and cyclical nature of building investment and its effect on the macroeconomy this paper investigates the nature of building trends and cycles from the 19th century to the present day for eight major oecd economies focusing predominantly on non housing structures the kalman filter is used to decompose the series into trends and cycles it was found that building cycles exist in all countries though with considerable variation comparisons of volatility between countries and between the different types of fixed investment are made the long run share of fixed investment in structures as a proportion of national income is investigated consideration is given to whether international building investment trends are coincident and an analysis made of the long term correlation between structures investment cycles

the surge in capital inflows to developing countries an analytical overview after being excluded from world capital markets during the debt crisis many developing countries have experienced large capital inflows during the past five years the challenges that these inflows pose for domestic policy in recipient countries have generated a substantial literature this article presents an overview of that literature describing the characteristics of the new inflows analyzing the policy issues they raise assessing their causes and likely sustainability and evaluating potential policy responses the desirable policy response is tied to characteristics of the flows themselves as well as to the characteristics of the recipient economy