laboratory evidence on the effectiveness of corporate leniency programs the number of cartels detected in the united states and in europe has increased considerably since the introduction of corporate leniency programs in antitrust legislation it cannot however be ruled out that this apparent success results in part from increased cartel activity we explore the effects of corporate leniency programs on pricing and cartel activity by use of an experiment we find that in the lab i fewer cartels are established when a leniency program is in place and ii cartels that do exist are less successful in charging prices above the static nash equilibrium price and have lower survival rates

dreams of urbanization quantitative case studies on the local impacts of nuclear power facilities using the synthetic control method this paper uses the synthetic control sc method to examine how the establishment of nuclear power facilities npfs in japan in the 1970s and 1980s has affected local per capita income levels in the municipalities in which they were localted npf municipalities eight quantitative case studies using the sc method clarify that the effects of npf establishment on per capita taxable income levels are highly heterogeneous the estimated effects are often economically meaningful and in some cases huge the income level was 11 higher on average and 62 higher in one municipality in 2002 when compared with counterfactual units on the other hand a few of the npf municipalities have received only weak or negligible effects from npf establishment the post estimation comparisons of employment between the npf municipalities and the sc units suggest that the size of the direct labor demand shocks and subsequent indirect employment effects on nontradable service sectors have contributed to the increase in per capita income levels

on the design of leniency programs abstractleniency programs contribute to destabilizing collusion but can also be abused and generate perverse effects this paper develops a simple model capturing this trade off which we use to relate the optimal leniency policy the carrot to the effectiveness of investigations the stick we show that it is always desirable to offer some leniency before an investigation is launched it is also optimal to offer some leniency once an investigation is underway when investigations are unlikely to succeed in uncovering cartels absent self reporting our analysis also confirms the usefulness of restricting leniency to the first informant only in contrast it does not support prohibiting leniency for repeat offenders

reanalysis of nash equilibrium bidding strategies in a bilateral electricity market we reanalyze a bilateral electricity market model previously presented in where suppliers own multiple generators we clarify some implicit assumptions in the model and prove that under one detailed specification of the assumptions the previously suggested nash equilibria for the model are inconsistent with the definition of nash equilibrium we discuss the implications and comment on the relationship to multiple unit auction theory

fines leniency and rewards in antitrust this article reports results from an experiment studying how fines leniency and rewards for whistleblowers affect cartel formation and prices antitrust without leniency reduces cartel formation but increases cartel prices subjects use costly fines as punishments leniency improves antitrust by strengthening deterrence but stabilizes surviving cartels subjects appear to anticipate the lower postconviction prices after reports leniency with rewards prices fall at the competitive level overall our results suggest a strong cartel deterrence potential for well run leniency and reward schemes these findings may also be relevant for similar white collar organized crimes such as corruption and fraud

the labor supply response to mismeasured but predictable wage changes most panel data studies of intertemporal labor supply assume classical measurement error recent validation studies refute this assumption in this study i address nonclassical measurement error explicitly i use data on males from the panel study of income dynamics validation study to purge measurement error from the panel study of income dynamics i find a large amount of predictable wage variation in the data even after allowing for measurement error however there is almost no labor supply response to these predictable wage changes therefore failure to control for nonclassical measurement error cannot explain the low estimated labor supply elasticities in other papers

nash equilibrium bidding strategies in a bilateral electricity market this paper examines bidding strategies in a bilateral market in which generating companies submit bids to loads a load accepts electricity delivery from the generator with the lowest bid at its bid price as long as this price is not higher than the load s willingness to pay necessary and sufficient conditions of nash equilibrium ne bidding strategy are derived based on a generic generating cost matrix and the loads willingness to pay vector the study shows that in any ne efficient allocation is achieved furthermore all nash equilibria are revenue equivalent for the generators based on the necessary and sufficient conditions this problem is formulated as an optimal assignment problem network optimization techniques are applied to calculate ne bid prices for the generators

modeling the birth and death of cartels with an application to evaluating competition policy one of the primary challenges to measuring the impact of antitrust policy on collusion is that the cartel population is unobservable we observe only the population of discovered cartels to address this challenge a model of cartel creation and dissolution is developed to endogenously derive the populations of cartels and discovered cartels it is then shown how one can infer the impact of antitrust policy on the population of cartels by measuring its impact on the population of discovered cartels in particular the change in the distribution on the duration of discovered cartels could be informative in assessing whether a new antitrust policy is reducing the latent rate of cartels

minimum wages and spatial equilibrium theory and evidence this paper introduces a spatial equilibrium model that relates earnings employment and internal migration responses to minimum wage increases population moves to or away from regions that increa

returns to scale market power and the nature of price rigidity in new keynesian models with self fulfilling expectations increasing returns to scale and firms market power are two potential sources of sunspot expectations in neoclassical models we show that in new keynesian models returns to scale and market power can have fundamentally different implications for broad macroeconomic issues including self fulfilling expectations depending on the nature of price rigidity our findings suggest that the design of stabilization monetary policy can depend on precise knowledge about the economy s real and nominal features therefore a clear understanding of the specific economic environment and its relevance to monetary policymaking for ensuring macroeconomic stability can be an integrated part of monetary policy practice

financial bilateral contract negotiation in wholesale electricity markets using nash bargaining theory bilateral contracts are important risk hedging instruments constituting a major component in the portfolios held by many electric power market participants however bilateral contract negotiation is a complicated process as it involves risk management strategic bargaining and multi market participation this study analyzes a financial bilateral contract negotiation process between a generation company and a load serving entity in a wholesale electric power market with congestion managed by locational marginal pricing nash bargaining theory is used to model a pareto efficient settlement point the model predicts negotiation outcomes under various conditions and identifies circumstances in which the two parties might fail to reach an agreement both analysis and simulation are used to gain insight regarding how these negotiation outcomes systematically vary in response to changes in the participants risk preferences and price biases

the economic impact of the coal boom and bust in this paper we examine the impact of the coal boom in the 1970s and the subsequent coal bust in the 1980s on local labour markets in kentucky ohio pennsylvania and west virginia we address two main questions in our analysis how were non mining sectors affected by the shocks to the mining sector how did these effects differ between sectors producing local goods and those producing traded goods we find evidence of modest employment spillovers into sectors with locally traded goods but not into sectors with nationally traded goods

the alaskan labor market during the pipeline era built between 1974 and 1977 the trans alaska pipeline was the largest privately financed construction project in world history the alaskan labor market during the pipeline era provides an ideal opportunity to view labor market responses to a large anticipated and temporary shock to labor demand the paper presents several theoretical models of market responses to temporary demand shocks and then assesses the ability of each model to explain the alaskan data among the findings are that alaskan wages were very flexible labor supply was quite elastic on both the intensive hours per worker and extensive number of workers margins and even a major short run demand shock need not have a long run impact

strategic leniency and cartel enforcement the cornerstone of cartel enforcement in the united states and elsewhere is a commitment to the lenient prosecution of early confessors a burgeoning game theoretical literature is ambiguous regarding the impacts of leniency i develop a theoretical model of cartel behavior that provides empirical predictions and moment conditions and apply the model to the complete set of indictments and information reports issued over a 20 year span statistical tests are consistent with the notion that leniency enhances deterrence and detection capabilities the results have implications for market efficiency and enforcement efforts against cartels and other forms of organized crime jel d43 l12 l13 k21 in 1993 the department of justice doj introduced a new leniency program with the intent of destabilizing existing cartels and deterring new cartels the program commits the doj to the lenient prosecution of early confessors in particular it guarantees complete amnesty from federal prosecution to the first confessor from each cartel provided that an investigation into the confes sor s cartel is not already underway it also offers discretionary penalty reductions to conspirators who confess when an investigation is already ongoing the new leniency program has become the cornerstone of cartel enforcement efforts in the united states e g scott d hammond 2004 and recently has inspired antitrust authorities in australia canada the european union japan south korea and elsewhere to introduce similar programs oecd 2002 2003 this paper tests the efficacy of the new leniency program the results have implications for market efficiency and enforcement efforts against cartels and other forms of organized crime a burgeoning game theoretical literature is ambiguous regarding the impacts of leniency a common finding is that leniency may destabilize cartels because conspirators can simultane

the impact of the 2002 reform of the eu leniency program on cartel outcomes abstract the objective of this study is to empirically assess whether the 2002 reform of the eu leniency program which brought the eu leniency policy much closer to the us policy has increased the european commission s capability to destabilize cartels while making prosecution more efficient more specifically relying on a difference in difference approach we estimate the impact of the 2002 reform on cartel duration fines before and after applying leniency reductions and duration of investigation we find that the 2002 reform decreased cartel duration by about 87 percent but did not significantly affect the other outcome variables thus our findings seem to suggest that the 2002 reform has improved the cartel destabilizing effect of the eu leniency program without enhancing however its effectiveness in prosecuting cartels

increasing returns and unsynchronized wage adjustment in sunspot models of the business cycle a challenge to models of equilibrium indeterminacy based on increasing returns is that required increasing returns for generating indeterminacy can be implausibly large and rise quickly with the relative risk aversion in labor we show that unsynchronized wage adjustment via a relative wage effect can both lower the required degree of increasing returns for indeterminacy to a plausible level and make it invariant to the relative risk aversion in labor consequently indeterminacy and sunspot driven fluctuations can emerge for plausible increasing returns regardless of the relative risk aversion in labor our model generates reasonable dynamics in terms of matching the business cycle and sunspot shocks become more important with labor market friction

local labor market impacts of energy boom bust boom in western canada abstract the impacts of energy price boom and bust are analyzed through the differential growth in employment and earnings between local labor markets with and without energy resources in western canada the estimated differentials attributed to the boom induced labor demand shocks show significant direct and indirect impacts on the earnings and employment within the energy extraction and other non energy local sectors respectively the local job multipliers indicate that job creation within the energy extraction sector leads to modest job creation within the non energy local sectors during boom periods for every ten energy extraction jobs created during a boom period approximately three construction jobs two retail jobs and four and a half service jobs are created

consistent high frequency calibration abstract economic models are meant to provide a framework to describe real world economic activities in principle how well a model performs this task can be evaluated by how close the model s simulated activities track the observed ones a necessary first step in simulating a model is to choose values for the model s parameters in accordance with actual economic data a fundamental problem in economic modelling however is that actual economic data are sampled at time intervals that are typically longer than the decision intervals of actual economic agents one popular resolution of this problem is to constrain the length of the decision intervals of theoretical economic agents to be equal to the length of the actual data sampling intervals this widely adopted approach makes it feasible to directly calibrate theoretical models to the observed data but it can introduce substantial biases in the models empirical performance as demonstrated by recent research that has allowed the decision intervals to be shorter than the data sampling intervals this alternative high frequency modelling approach however has brought with itself a fundamental issue that direct calibration of the models parameters is no longer feasible in response researchers have employed an ad hoc rule to transform commonly chosen lower frequency parameter values which can be calibrated directly from the available data to their high frequency counterparts we show in this paper that this standard transformation rule has three major drawbacks first it produces internal inconsistencies in steady state equilibrium conditions second it is sometimes at odds with microeconomic evidence and third it can result in inaccurate log linear approximations to the models true equilibrium solutions by worsening the fit of both the transition dynamic coefficients and the point of approximation itself we present here an alternative coherent transformation rule for calibrating high frequency models that directly addresses these three shortcomings we then use our consistent transformation rule to calibrate high frequency versions of two well known economic models and show how it improves these models empirical performance

the impact of leniency and whistle blowing programs on cartels antitrust authorities have set up leniency programs for cartel members that denounce their collusive agreements these programs help prosecute participants and can thereby deter collusion we compare the impact of reduced fines and positive rewards and argue that rewarding individuals including firm employees can deter collusion in a more effective way we discuss possible adverse effects of whistle blowing programs on firms behavior and particularly on turnover incentives to innovate and cooperation we also explore explanations for the puzzling fact that managers keep incriminating evidence and argue reward programs actually provide additional incentives for keeping such evidence

natural disasters and labor markets abstract while it is clear that natural disasters have serious welfare consequences for affected populations less is known about how local labor markets in low income countries adjust to such large shocks combining data from the indonesia family life survey the desinventar database the u s geological survey and district level employment indicators this paper explores how a large earthquake in indonesia affected labor market outcomes in particular the evolution of wages across sectors i find that the earthquake had a positive effect on wage growth for workers who were employed in the agricultural sector at baseline i propose two mechanisms for this result a higher growth rate of the price of rice and a downward shift in the supply of workers in the agricultural sector i show that evidence mainly supports the latter labor shifted out of the agricultural sector into the construction sector raising the marginal product of labor in agriculture

identifying the local economic development effects of million dollar facilities presented on february 22 2013 from 12 35 pm 2 00 pm in the architecture east building room 217 on the georgia tech campus

money transfer and birth weight evidence from the alaska permanent fund dividend the positive relationship between income and health is well established however the direction of causality remains unclear do economic resources influence health or vice versa exploiting a new source of exogenous income variation this study examines the impact of the alaska permanent fund dividend apfd on newborns health outcomes the results show that income has a significantly positive but modest effect on birth weight we find that an additional 1 000 2 331 in 2011 dollars increases birth weight by 17 7 g and substantially decreases the likelihood of a low birth weight a decrease of around 14 of the sample mean furthermore the income effect is higher for less educated mothers based on a gestation weight profile in the sample increased gestation owing to the apfd could explain a maximum of 34 57 of the measured weight increase although we are unable to examine all the potential mechanisms jel i10 i18 i12

the economic aftermath of resource booms evidence from boomtowns in the american west the current us oil and gas boom is injecting labour capital and revenue into communities near reserves will these communities be cursed with lower long run incomes in the wake of the boom we study the oil boom and bust cycle of the 1970s and 1980s to gain insights using annual data on drilling to identify western boom and bust counties we find substantial positive local employment and income effects during the boom in the aftermath of the bust however we find that incomes per capita decreased and unemployment compensation payments increased relative to what they would have been if the boom had not occurred

optimal corporate leniency programs this study characterizes the corporate leniency policy that minimizes the frequency with which collusion occurs though it can be optimal to provide only partial leniency plausible sufficient conditions are provided whereby the antitrust authority should waive all penalties for the first firm to come forward it is also shown that restrictions should be placed on when amnesty is awarded though it can be optimal to award amnesty even when the antitrust authority is very likely to win the case without insider testimony