labor market discrimination in a poor urban economy labor market discrimination by sex and by race in a poor urban economy is analyzed using a survey of manufacturing employees in tanzania there are large differences in mean wages by both sex and race using techniques previously applied to developed countries it is found that whereas the sex difference in mean wages can be explained mainly in terms of sex differences in personal characteristics the race difference is mainly the result of wage and job discrimination an attempt is made to explain the results which run counter to common presuppositions about discrimination

the public private wage differential in a poor urban economy the occupational structure of wages is generally more compressed in high than in low income countries the role of non market forces in determining the structure of wages is of interest for reasons of allocative efficiency as well as for distributional concerns this paper considers how wage differentials may be generated between the public and private sectors of a developing economy data from a 1971 household survey of the tanzanian urban wage labor force are used to determine the pattern of wage differences across employer groups after standardizing by worker characteristics public sector employees are found to have earned a substantial wage premium over workers employed in the private sector the non market character of these differentials is examined in light of a number of hypotheses on public sector wage determination

collusion in second price auctions with heterogeneous bidders abstract we show that efficient collusion by any subset of bidders in second price private value auctions is possible even when the bidders are heterogeneous an important property of efficient collusion is that a bidder s net payoff from participating in collusion is independent of her valuation we show that the cooperative game whose characteristic function evaluated at a coalition is the ex ante collusive surplus of that coalition has a nonempty core a feature of more technical interest is the mechanism characterization when the private information of agents does not enter in a linear or even piecewise linear manner

collusion and signaling in auctions with interdependent values abstract the standard approach to collusion in auctions posits an uninformed disinterested third party who prior to the auction designs and implements a collusive mechanism in environments where collusion agreements are likely to be both proposed and executed by the involved parties this approach may neglect information leakages from simply a proposal to collude we consider a model of collusion where one informed bidder proposes to another as in es and schummer 2004 we allow for general interdependent values and affiliated signals in contrast to third party modeling approaches collusion is inefficient from both a social perspective except for the case of pure common values and from the perspective of the ring both bidders are better off than without colluding but the surplus extracted from the seller is distributed asymmetrically between the bidders the potential for information leakage from proposing is bad for low types who reveal that they are weak competitors but is advantageous for high types because they are able to signal their strength we identify a so called briber s curse whereby acceptance of a proposal causes the proposer to downgrade her expected value for the object when there is additional competition in the form of bidders outside of the cartel the briber s curse significantly harms cartel profits and raises seller revenues

collusive bidder behavior at single object second price and english auctions models of collusive bidder behavior at single object second price and english auctions are provided the ind ependent private values model is generalized to permit the formulatio n of coalitions and a strategic response by the auctioneer cooperati ve strategies are found to be dominant in these models coalitions of any size are viable and the payoff to each member increases with th e size of the coalition in addition the collusive strategies of the coalition represent a noncooperative equilibrium the optimal respon se of the auctioneer is to establish a reserve price that is a functi on of the coalition s size these and other features of the model are found to be consistent with the essential features of actual behavio r copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

the decline of discrimination against colored people in south africa 1970 to 1980 abstract the paper analyses the gap in earnings between white and colored people in south africa in 1970 and 1980 the gap is decomposed into its explained and discrimination components and from a model of occupational attainment into wage and job discrimination job discrimination decreased between 1970 and 1980 colored people in younger experience cohorts experienced a significant decline in discrimination between 1970 and 1980 most of which was due to a decline in job descrimination discrimination against those in older experience cohorts appears not to have declined

the scope of imf conditionality international organizations are governed by two parallel sets of rules formal rules which embody consensual procedures and informal rules which allow exceptional access for powerful countries a new data set drawn from the imf s records of conditionality provides an opportunity to study the bargaining process within an important international organization and answer questions about the institution s autonomy i find evidence of u s influence which operates to constrain condition ality but only in important countries that are vulnerable enough to be willing to draw on their influence with the united states in ordinary countries under ordinary circumstances broad authority is delegated to the imf which adjusts conditionality to accommodate local circumstances and domestic political opposition the imf has refrained from exploiting the vulnerability of particular countries to maximize the scope of conditionality international organizations have become increasingly important actors in inter national politics they have proliferated have expanded in membership have acquired new legal enforcement powers and have extended their reach into the details of domestic political economy in their member states af ew including the international monetary fund imf or simply the fund command significant resources and wield considerable authority some critics have argued that these international organizations are sufficiently autonomous to create a democratic def icit at the international level as they pursue a vision of undemocratic liberal ism 1 other critics have argued that international organizations are nothing more than instruments in the hands of powerful states 2 these critiques of course cannot simultaneously be true and both run into difficulties the puzzle that the rogue agency view cannot explain is why the principals have chosen to delegate so much authority in principal agent terms this view posits that both screening and monitoring have failed the principals are unable to select agents with preferences similar to their own and are unable

women s urban labour market status in developing countries how well do they fare in khartoum sudan this article examines the insertion of women in the formal sector labour market in urban khartoum sudan in order to explain their inferior employment status in one particular developing country environment a number of hypotheses are tested drawing upon recent labour market theoretical developments and econometric techniques from the literature which have had limited previous applications in third world settings particularly in africa our findings indicate that occupational segregation rather than pay discrimination is primarily to blame for observed wage differentials suggesting that well intentioned equal pay laws will do little to reduce the earnings gap

optimal bidding in auctions from a game theory perspective abstract the game theoretic perspective in auction bidding has provided a powerful normative framework for the analysis of auctions and it has generated an impressive volume of research contributions tracing this research we review key recent advances which have greatly expanded our understanding of the operation of auctions and produced a more accurate analysis of mechanism design and optimal bidding we follow various experimental studies which have shown that the predictive power of auction theory remains in many cases limited for this reason we concentrate on research themes which enhance the applicability of auction theory leading to more realistic descriptions of bidding behaviors we identify important innovations which expand the environment of auction bidding and carry us beyond rational decision making we conclude providing directions of future research and discussing their implications

bribing and signaling in second price auctions abstract we examine whether a two bidder second price auction for a single good with private independent values is immune to a simple form of collusion where one bidder may bribe the other to commit to stay away from the auction i e submit a bid of zero in either of two cases where the potential bribe is fixed or allowed to vary the only robust equilibria involve bribing in the fixed bribe case there is a unique such equilibrium in the variable bribes case all robust equilibria involve low briber types revealing themselves through the amount they offer while all high types offer the same bribe only one such equilibrium is continuous bribing in all cases causes inefficiency

the ghost of financing gap testing the growth model used in the international financial institutions abstract the harrod domar growth model supposedly died long ago still today economists in the international financial institutions ifis apply the harrod domar model to calculate short run investment requirements for a target growth rate they then calculate a financing gap between the required investment and available resources and often fill the financing gap with foreign aid the financing gap model has two simple predictions 1 aid will go into investment one for one and 2 there will be a fixed linear relationship between growth and investment in the short run the data soundly reject these two predictions of the financing gap model

delegation to international organizations agency theory and world bank environmental reform current international relations theory struggles to explain both the autonomy and transformation of international organizations ios previous theories either fail to account for any io behavior that deviates from the interests of member states or neglect the role of member states in reforming io institutions and behavior we propose an agency theory of ios that can fill these gaps while also addressing two persistent problems in the study of ios common agency and long delegation chains our model explains slippage between member states interests and io behavior but also suggests institutional mechanisms staff selection monitoring procedural checks and contracts through which states can rein in errant ios we evaluate this argument by examining multiple institutional reforms and lending patterns at the world bank from 1980 to 2000

the economic and political determinants of imf and world bank lending in the middle east and north africa mena assumes both political and economic significance politically it is arguably the epicentre of world crisis chronically war prone and the site of the world s most protracted conflicts hinnebusch 2003 p 1 economically it owns the bulk of the world s oil reserves driving in particular the usa economic engine in light of the region s geopolitically and economically strategic position in the world economy it is clear that economic and political factors are inextricably linked when it comes to the manner in which the west particularly the usa responds to the region s needs

paying a visit the dalai lama effect on international trade is political compliance a precondition for healthy trade relations with china the chinese government frequently threatens that meetings between its trading partners officials and the dalai lama will be met with animosity and ultimately harm trade ties with china we run a gravity model of exports to china from 159 partner countries between 1991 and 2008 to test the extent to which bilateral tensions affect trade with autocratic china in particular we investigate empirically whether countries that receive the dalai lama despite china s opposition experience a significant reduction of their exports to china in order to account for the potential endogeneity of meetings with the dalai lama the number of tibet support groups and the travel pattern of the tibetan leader are used as instruments our empirical results support the idea that countries officially receiving the dalai lama at the highest political level are punished through a reduction of their exports to china however this dalai lama effect is only observed for the hu jintao era and not for earlier periods furthermore we find that this effect is mainly driven by reduced exports of machinery and transport equipment and that it disappears two years after a meeting took place

bribing in first price auctions abstract i study a symmetric 2 bidder ipv first price auction prior to which one bidder can offer his rival a bribe in exchange for the latter s abstention i focus on pure and undominated strategies and on continuous monotonic equilibria equilibria in which the bribing function is continuous and nondecreasing when types are distributed continuously on the unit interval such an equilibrium if it at all exists is necessarily trivial its bribing function is identically zero i provide a sufficient condition for its existence and sufficient conditions for its nonexistence when the minimum type is strictly positive a non trivial equilibrium may exist but it must be pooling i provide a sufficient condition for the existence of such an equilibrium when types are distributed continuously on the unit interval and dominated strategies are allowed a non trivial non pooling equilibrium exists at least under the uniform prior

us politics and world bank ida lending this paper studies the role of us political factors in the allocation of world bank concessional lending where us political interests are proxied by voting similarity in the united nations general assembly on issues identified as important by the us department of state in contrast to previous studies we find that the us exerted a significant influence on ida lending during the period 1993 2000 we demonstrate that the influence was both statistically as well as economically significant finally we demonstrate that our result is robust with respect to the omission of the ida country performance rating index

private monitoring in auctions abstract we study infinitely repeated first price auctions in which a bidder only learns whether or not he won the object while repetition of the stage game equilibrium is the unique nash equilibrium in public strategies with patient bidders there are simple nash equilibria in private strategies that improve on bid rotation sequential rationality is appropriately captured by essentially perfect bayesian equilibrium epbe which ignores behavior after irrelevant histories our main result is the construction of epbea that improve upon bid rotation assuming symmetry the exclusionary schemes of skrzypacz and hopenhayn tacit collusion in repeated auctions j econ theory 114 2004 153 169 including asymptotically efficient ones are supported as epbea

can poor countries lobby for more us bilateral aid summary this article explores if countries can lobby the us government for the allocation of us bilateral foreign aid we consider an informational lobby model where lobbying has two effects first a direct effect by informing us policymakers about their countries needs second an indirect effect on policymakers by informing them about common interests in economic or geopolitical terms the lobbyist thus influences the decisions about the allocation of aid resources we estimate the effect of the recipient country s lobbying agents in obtaining foreign aid the econometric results show that lobbying positively affects the amount of bilateral aid received

always vote for principle though you may vote alone explaining united states political support for multilateral development loans summary what motivates the u s when casting votes and to what degree does its formal influence matter in final outcomes in multilateral development banks we first assess the formal influence of the u s on final decisions and find that 64 of projects lacking u s support were nevertheless approved suggesting u s influence is not as strong as previously thought we then test several hypotheses explaining how the u s votes on projects in mdbs we find recipient need is strongly related to u s support and some evidence for both economic and political factors such as trade relations and human rights

bidder collusion at forest service timber sales allegations of bidder collusion at forest service timber sales in the pacific northwest were common in the 1970s of course prices may be low for reasons other than collusion we formulate an empirical model that allows for both bidder collusion and supply effects and in which we control for demand conditions noncooperative behavior in which a single unit is sold the standard auction model is a special case it is found to be definitively outperformed by a model of collusion we also find that supply effects are dominated by collusion in determining the winning bids in the market

equilibria of the sealed bid mechanism for bargaining with incomplete information we study the nash equilibria of the sealed bid bargaining mechanism with incomplete information a nonzero sum game for the case of uniform priors we describe two uncountably numerous families of equilibria the first has differentiable strategies in the second the strategies are step functions the efficiencies of these equilibria range from second best to zero for independent nonuniform priors we show that a similar situation obtains these results seem discouraging with regard to using the sealed bid mechanism in practice the mechanism might be salvaged however if bargainers turn out to confine themselves to linear strategy equilibria

migration amongst the batswana the present study undertakes analysis of the effects of employment probabilities and wage alternatives on migration decisions in the context of botswana adopting micro level data both to estimate a multinomial migration function and to develop prediction equations for wages and likelihood of employment data are from the 1978 1979 national migration survey the factors that influence rural batswana adults to remain at home migrate to town on a short or long term basis move to another rural area or emigrate to south africa are examined consideration is given to the effects of employment alternatives on the rate of internal migration and the selectivity of movements with respect to personal household and locational factors excerpt

women work and weil being in the middle east an outline of the relevant literature there is now an extensive literature on the role of women in economic development and the impact of development on their lives this article concentrates on the economic literature and discusses its importance for policies aimed at working women in the middle east it identifies the important strands and places the discussion within the wider context of women in the labour market in both developing and developed countries the general conclusion is that we are very far from having sufficient knowledge to implement effective policy or even to evaluate existing policies

sex differences in earnings an analysis of malaysian wage data the conventional human capital earnings function is applied to a rich set of malaysian wage data in an attempt to determine the origins of sex differences in average earnings several findings are of interest the first being that the relationships estimated from the earnings function are similar to those typically reported for non ldcs second less than a third of the average monthly wage difference between the sexes of about 34 per cent appears to be the consequence of either females having lower measured productivity than males or females receiving lower rates of return to human capital than males the major part of the earnings difference is apparently a consequence of employment distributions females are much more likely to be in the low paying occupations

labour market discrimination against migrant workers in an indian state the case of punjab based on an extended human capital model some earnings functions have been estimated for punjab in the first part of the article later on we investigate the earnings differentials between natives and migrants based on their productivity related charac teristics and labour market discrimination since a majority of migrants come from the neighbouring state of uttar pradesh and lag behind the rest of migrants in most productivity characteristics the two groups of workers are analysed separately the study finds that while migrants in each group face discrimination its extent is greater for workers from uttar pradesh the important factors that favour natives and contribute to the native migrant earnings gap include schooling experience and the number of days worked the factors that favour migrants and tend to reduce the gap include overtime single multi earner family member and gifts bonus received variables

does foreign aid increase foreign direct investment summary we examine the idea that aid and foreign direct investment fdi are complementary sources of foreign capital we argue that the relationship between aid and fdi is theoretically ambiguous aid raises the marginal productivity of capital when used to finance complementary inputs like public infrastructure and human capital investments but aid may crowd out private investments when it comes in the shape of pure physical capital transfers empirically we find that aid invested in complementary inputs draws in fdi while aid invested in physical capital crowds it out the paper shows that the composition of aid matters for its overall level of efficiency

simple collusive agreements in one shot first price auctions abstract the paper demonstrates that collusion in a private value first price auction is likely to occur even in a one shot interaction the strategies of the colluding parties must be mixed since agreeing to submit a bid equal to the reservation price of the seller provides the incentive for that bidder to cheat on the designated winner we deal with a complete information environment with arbitrary number of bidders we characterize the sensible equilibrium outcome where the two bidders with the highest valuations collude we show that the equilibrium outcome is unique and that the probability of collusion exceeds 1 2

first price auctions in the asymmetric n bidder case i consider the first price auction when the bidders valuations may be differently distributed i show that every bayesian equilibrium is an essentially pure equilibrium formed by bid functions whose inverses are solutions of a system of differential equations with boundary conditions i then prove the existence of an equilibrium i prove its uniqueness when the valuation distributions have a mass point at the lower extremity of the support i give sufficient conditions for uniqueness when every valuation distribution is one of two atomless distributions i establish inequalities between equilibrium strategies when relations of stochastic dominance exist between valuation distributions

collusion and information revelation in auctions abstract the theoretical literature on collusion in auctions suggests that the first price mechanism can deter the formation of bidding rings however such analyses neglect to consider the effects of failed collusion attempts wherein information revealed in the negotiation process may affect bidding behaviour we experimentally test a setup in which theory predicts no collusion and no information revelation in first price auctions the results reveal a hitherto overlooked failing of the first price mechanism failed collusion attempts distort bidding behaviour resulting in a loss of seller revenue and efficiency moreover the first price mechanism does not result in less collusion than the second price mechanism we conclude that while the features of the first price mechanism may have the potential to deter bidder collusion the role of beliefs in guiding bidding behaviour make it highly susceptible to distortions arising from the informational properties of collusive negotiation auction designers should take this phenomenon into account when choosing the auction mechanism

global horse trading imf loans for votes in the united nations security council we investigate whether temporary members of the united nations security council receive favorable treatment from the international monetary fund imf using panel data for 197 countries over the period from 1951 to 2004 our results indicate a robust positive relationship between temporary security council membership and participation in imf programs even after accounting for economic political and country specific factors there is also evidence that security council membership reduces the number of conditions included in imf programs imf loans seem to be a mechanism by which the major shareholders of the fund can win favor with voting members of the security council

bribing in first price auctions corrigendum abstract we clarify the sufficient condition for a trivial equilibrium to exist in the model of rachmilevitch 2013

shopping for development multilateral lending shareholder composition and borrower preferences this paper proposes two theoretical considerations regarding multilateral development banks mdbs the first is that mdb activities are increasingly driven by the growing economic strength of many developing countries the second is that categorizing mdbs according to the balance of power among shareholders helps explain why countries might prefer one or another mdb we compare three different mdbs operating in latin america one dominated by nonborrowers world bank another controlled by borrowing countries andean development corporation caf and a third more evenly split between borrowers and nonborrowers inter american development bank iadb qualitative and statistical analysis suggests that demand factors play an important role in mdb lending

bribing in second price auctions an ipv 2 bidder second price auction is preceded by two rounds of bribing prior to the auction each bidder can try to bribe his rival to depart from the auction so that he the briber will become the sole participant bribes are offered sequentially according to an exogenously given order restricting attention to pure strategies and imposing a certain refinement i study the efficient equilibria of this game in any such equilibrium whenever the first mover offers a strictly positive bribe this bribe is given by his surplus his valuation minus the payoff that he would have received in the dominant strategy equilibrium of the auction i derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of such an equilibrium i also extend this equilibrium s construction to a model with general valuations not necessarily ipv