lobbying by capital and labor over trade and labor market policies abstract this paper uses the common agency approach to analyze the joint determination of product and labor market distortions in a small open economy capital owners and union members lobby the government on both tariffs and minimum wages while other factors of production are not organized the paper shows that product and labor market distortions always move in the same direction and that their level is not modified by social pacts between capital and labor it also shows that labor market distortions are second best hence conditionality by foreign organizations should target distortions in product markets but not in labor markets

common agency and coordination general theory and application to government policy making we develop a model of common agency with complete information and general preferences with nontransferable utility and we prove that the principals nash equilibrium in truthful strategies implements an efficient action we apply this theory to the construction of a positive model of public finance where organized special interests can lobby the government for consumer and producer taxes or subsidies and targeted lump sum taxes or transfers the lobbies use only the nondistorting transfers in their noncooperative equilibrium but their intergroup competition for transfers turns into a prisoners dilemma in which the government captures all the gain that is potentially available to the parties

bargaining foundations of shapley value1 a transferable utility economy in which each agent holds a resource which can be used in combination with the resources of other agents to generate value according to the characteristic function v is studied using a dynamic model of bargaining the main theorem establishes that the payoffs associated with efficient equilibria converge to the agents shapley values as the time between periods of the dynamic game goes to zero in addition it is demonstrated that an efficient equilibrium exists and is unique when an additivity condition is satisfied to demonstrate the sensitivity of the solution to the institutional detail we modify the model to allow for partnerships and show that the shapley value is no longer achieved

political internalization of economic externalities and environmental policy abstract this paper derives the characteristics of endogenous environmental policy in a common agency model of politics and proceeds to show that competition between lobby groups is an important source of internalization of economic externalities our analysis generalizes bhagwati s principle of targeting to the case of distorted political markets moreover we show that the politically optimal structure of environmental taxes incorporates a pigouvian adjustment however since lobby groups care about the distribution of income as well as about efficiency the equilibrium structure of taxes differs considerably from the pigouvian rule

does centralization increase the size of government abstract are fiscal programs larger or smaller if they are run centrally rather than locally in a prospective federation we abstract completely from well understood economic issues and focus instead on the political effects of centralization for fiscal programs with benefits broadly spread in the population such as redistributive transfer schemes social insurance and general government consumption centralization changes the coalition of voters who favor a large program in a direction that depends on the nature of the redistributive instrument for fiscal programs with localized benefits such as provision of local public goods centralization creates opportunities for rent seeking which increases the size of government

a framework for understanding differences in labor turnover and human capital investment abstract we analyze the causes and the welfare consequences of international differences in labor turnover and human capital investment the framework incorporates different views as special cases conditions are identified under which multiple equilibria or differences in deep economic parameters explain the observed differences in labor practices we show that when there is an informational problem regarding job changing workers quality general human capital like firm specific human capital can also affect labor turnover and that better job matching is obtained at the expense of lower human capital investment given multiple equilibria a high turnover equilibrium is found superior in the pareto sense to a low turnover equilibrium if matching uncertainty is large the reverse is true when matching uncertainty is small

gaps and triangles we derive principles of optimal short run monetary policy in a real business cycles model with money and prices set in advance the optimal allocation is achieved under the friedman rule however given that policy the allocation is indeterminate we move away from the friedman rule take the interest rate path as exogenous and characterize the optimal money supply policy we identify the conditions under which it is optimal to replicate the allocation under exible prices in general sticky prices provide the planner with tools to improve upon a distorted exible prices allocation

decentralization duplication and delay we argue that although decentralization has advantages in finding low cost solutions these advantages are accompanied by coordination problems which lead to delay or duplication of effort or both consequently decentralization is desirable when there is little urgency or a great deal of private information but it is strictly undesirable in urgent problems when private information is less important we also examine the effect of large numbers and find that coordination problems disappear in the limit if distributions are common knowledge

lobbying and welfare in a representative democracy this paper studies the impact of lobbying on political competition and policy outcomes in a framework which integrates the citizen candidate model of representative democracy with the menu auction model of lobbying positive and normative issues are analysed on the positive side lobbying need have little or no effect on policy outcomes because voters can restrict the influence of lobbyists by supporting candidates with offsetting policy preferences on the normative side coordination failure among lobbyists can result in pareto inefficient policy choices in addition by creating rents to holding office lobbying can lead to excessive entry into electoral competition

emerging ways to address the reemerging conflict between patenting and technological standardization the relationship between standards and intellectual property rights iprs is a complementary but troubled one the way it is managed affects the way stakeholders contribute to standards and may ultimately affect the way some technologies and even industries evolve a spate of recent legal controversies has been accompanied by the emergence of new mechanisms to help govern the risk of conflict here this article provides an empirical analysis of these attempts to reconcile the aims of these regimes

optimal fiscal and monetary policy some recent results this paper studies the quantitative properties of fiscal and monetary policy in business cycle models in terms of fiscal policy optimal labor tax rates are virtually constant and optimal capital income tax rates are close to zero on average in terms of monetary policy the friedman rule is optimal nominal interest rates are zero and optimal monetary policy is activist in the sense that it responds to shocks to the economy

the monetary transmission mechanism is it relevant for policy we study environments with sticky prices wages or portfolios where it is feasible and optimal to use monetary policy to replicate the allocation under full flexibility in these environments the optimal policy does not depend on the scope of the frictions in this sense the strength of the monetary transmission mechanism is irrelevant for the conduct of monetary policy so asymmetries in the strength of the transmission mechanisms do not impose a cost on a common policy jel e31 e41 e58 e62

liquidity loanable funds and real activity abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium model of two traditional explanations of the monetary black box linking money and real activity the liquidity effect and the loanable funds effect these effects are modeled with a monetary production economy in which central bank injections of cash are funnelled into the economy through the credit market since only borrowers have direct access to the newly injected cash monetary injections cause nominal interest rates to fall if firms are borrowers then monetary injections also increase current and future real activity

optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital abstract this paper is concerned with the structure and time consistency of optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital in a dynamic context optimal taxation means distributing tax distortions over time in a welfare maximizing way for a barter economy our main finding is that with debt commitments of sufficiently rich maturity structure an optimal policy if one exists is time consistent in a monetary economy the idea of optimal taxation must be broadened to include an inflation tax and we find that time consistency does not carry over an optimal inflation tax requires commitment by rules in a sense that has no counterpart in the dynamic theory of ordinary excise taxes the reason time consistency fails in a monetary economy is that nominal assets should from a welfare maximizing point of view always be taxed away via an immediate inflation in a kind of capital levy this emerges as a new possibility when money is introduced into an economy without capital

trade wars and trade talks when governments meet in the international arena their actions reflect the political situations at home previous studies of trade relations have focused on governments that are immune from political pressures and that act as benevolent servants of the public interest here we introduce domestic politics into the analysis of international economic relations we study the interactions between national leaders who are concerned both with providing a high standard of living to the general electorate and collecting campaign contributions from special interest groups our analysis sheds light on the determinants of the structure of protection in non cooperative and cooperative policy equilibria

human capital investment under asymmetric information the pigovian conjecture revisited this article investigates how human capital investment labor turnover and wages are jointly determined when the current employer knows more about a worker s productivity than potential employers results derived are quite different from or unexplored by the standard human capital theory we show that the information asymmetry can cause an externality distortion in human capital investment because higher productivity due to the investment may not be recognized by the market the investment level increases in the degree of firm specificity of human capital the underinvestment problem is more severe when human capital is general than when it is firm specific

essential patents frand royalties and technological standards in this paper we abandon the usual assumption that patents bring known benefits to the industry or that their benefits are known to all parties when royalty payments are increasing in one s patent portfolio private information about the quality of patents leads to a variety of distortions in particular the incentives of firms to pad by contributing weak patents three main results that emerge from the analysis are that i the threat of court disputes reduces incentives to pad but at the cost of lower production of strong patents ii mitigating this undesirable side effect calls for a simultaneous increase in the cost of padding that is a better filtering of patent applications iii upstream firms have more incentives to pad than vertically integrated firms which internalize the fact that patent proliferation raises the share of profits going to the upstream segment of the industry but at the expense of its downstream segment this seems consistent with recent evidence concerning padding

investment in general training the role of information and labour mobility following the seminal work of becker i964 it is widely accepted in the literature that firms will be unwilling to finance training which workers may use in other firms this paper takes issue with this prediction and suggests that firms will frequently share in the cost of such general training 1 becker argues that a firm which pays for the training of workers in skills of potential use to other firms will lose these workers since other firms bear none of the costs of general training they can attract a worker with such training by outbidding the firm which trained him recognising this absence of property rights over an investment in general training firms will refuse to provide it hence if general training is to take place the trainee will have to pay for it if potential trainees are unwilling or unable to pay general training will not take place a shortage in general training is likely to emerge this may be especially pronounced in developing countries 2 in contrast the outlook for

sticky price and limited participation models of money a comparison abstract we provide new evidence that models of the monetary transmission mechanism should be consistent with at least the following facts after a contractionary monetary policy shock the aggregate price level responds very little aggregate output falls interest rates initially rise real wages decline by a modest amount and profits fall we compare the ability of sticky price and limited participation models with frictionless labor markets to account for these facts the key failing of the sticky price model lies in its counterfactual implications for profits the limited participation model can account for all the above facts but only if one is willing to assume a high labor supply elasticity 2 percent and a high markup 40 percent the shortcomings of both models reflect the absence of labor market frictions such as wage contracts or factor hoarding which dampen movements in the marginal cost of production after a monetary policy shock 1997 elsevier science b v

pioneering inventors or thicket builders which u s firms use continuations in patenting why do firms use continuations in the prosecution of their patents motivated by the widespread use of continuations by u s firms and the prominence of this procedure in u s patent policy debates we investigate the influence of corporate and patent characteristics on the use of continuations we employ novel data on applicants and their filings of three types of continuations the continuation application cap the continuations in part cip and divisions during 1981 2000 to distinguish among the motives for continuing patents we find that cips are disproportionately filed by research and development intensive firms that patent heavily and that these continuations are more common in chemical and biological technologies patents issuing from cips cover relatively important inventions and their use appears consistent with a strategy of protecting pioneering inventions in contrast caps and divisions are associated with less important patents assigned to capital intensive firms particularly in computer and semiconductor fields and appear to be used in defensive patenting strategies we analyze the effects of the 1995 change in patent term and find that the act reduced continuations overall and shifted the output of continuations toward less important patents

how strong are weak patents economists usually conceive of patents as property rights that prevent others from practicing the patenting technology unless they first obtain a license from the patent holder even for ironclad patents i e for patents that are certain to be valid the existing literature has shown that the analysis of equilibrium licensing contracts is surprising subtle and complex 1 for example the analysis is quite different depending upon whether one firm s licensing contract is observable to the other firms likewise equilibrium outcomes are quite different if royalties must be linear than in the case where two part tariffs and other non linear royalties are permitted in that literature a downstream firm that refuses to sign a contract with the upstream supplier either exits the industry in the case that the upstream supplier controls an essential input or must rely on more costly inputs in the case of a non essential input in other words the downstream firm s threat point is to use some backstop technology in practice however patents are issued after a brief examination by the patent office to see if they meet the statutory requirements for novelty and non obviousness mounting evidence indicates that many weak patents i e patents unlikely to be found valid if challenged in court are issued by the u s patent and trademark office uspto 2 some observers view this with great alarm arguing that uspto is handing out undeserved monopolies others by contrast have suggested that these weak patents are of little concern because they will have little commercial impact because they will be licensed at commensurately low royalty rates or not enforced at all we study the commercial impact of weak patents more precisely we define a patent s strength as the probability that it will be found valid if challenged in court and we examine the relationship between a patent s strength and the royalties that it can command the distinctive

is firm sponsored training a palliative a common agency approach we analyse the issue of firm sponsored training under product market imperfections in this setting qualification becomes a public good for firms when their profits are increasing in the stock of skilled workers but remains a private good to students workers students have to pay a tuition fee but at the same time firms sponsor education universities sell training to both we prove that the proportion of skilled workers is larger in more competitive economies industries while the share of firms in the financing of training is a monotonically decreasing function of the degree of competition an increase of the latter indeed increases the equilibrium skilled wage while reducing its sensitivity to an increase of the supply of skilled workers the firms aggregate expenditures on training per worker are nevertheless a nonmonotonic function of the competitiveness of the economy

why do temporary help firms provide free general skills training the majority of u s temporary help supply ths firms offer nominally free unrestricted computer skills training a practice inconsistent with the competitive model of training i propose and test a model in which firms offer general training to induce self selection and perform screening of worker ability the model implies and the data confirm that firms providing training attract higher ability workers yet pay them lower wages after training thus beyond providing spot market labor ths firms sell information about worker quality to their clients the rapid growth of ths employment suggests that demand for worker screening is rising

on coalition proof nash equilibria in common agency games abstract in this paper we consider two notions of a coalitional deviation strict deviation where each of member of a deviating group is better off and weak deviation where at least one member of a deviating group is better off while all other members are at least as well off we then examine for the class of common agency games introduced in bernheim and whinston quart j econ 101 1986 1 31 the structure and properties of two notions of a coalition proof nash equilibrium generated by strict and weak deviation we also study a relationship between coalition proof equilibria strong equilibria and pareto undominated nash equilibria journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d79

endogenous lobby formation and endogenous protection a long run model of trade policy determination this paper provides a theory of lobby formation within a framework in which trade policy is determined through political contributions under certain conditions free trade turns out to be an equilibrium outcome either when the government has a high affinity for political contributions or when it cares a great deal about social welfare moreover greater inequality in asset distribution results in a greater number of lobbies and in most cases more protection for each of these lobbies furthermore industries with higher levels of capital stock fewer capitalists more inelastic demand and smaller geographical dispersion are the ones that get organized

networks versus vertical integration we construct a theory to compare vertically integrated firms to networks of manufacturers and suppliers vertically integrated firms make their own specialized inputs in networks manufacturers procure specialized inputs from suppliers that in turn sell to several manufacturers the analysis shows that networks can yield greater social welfare when manufacturers experience large idiosyncratic demand shocks individual firms may also have the incentive to form networks despite the lack of long term contracts the analysis is supported by existing evidence and provides predictions as to the shape of different industries

the pluralistic view of politics asymmetric lobbyists ideological uncertainty and political entry abstract the decision maker chooses a policy on behalf of two principals and has private information about his ideology the decision maker s expected rent can be fully extracted by congruent principals but not when principals objectives are too conflicting

patent litigation as an information transmission mechanism patent litigation reveals important information about the validity of the contested patent to other potential entrants this paper explores the implications of such informational externalities for entry dynamics in the presence of multiple potential entrants the nature of the entry game can be one of either waiting or preemption depending on the degree of patent protection therefore the payoffs for the patentee and the initial imitator are discontinuous in the degree of patent protection furthermore strengthening intellectual property rights is not necessarily desirable for the patentee the analysis may also help explain the apparently puzzling practice of delaying patent suits copyright 1998 by american economic association

conflict and cooperation the structure of equilibrium payoffs in common agency abstract this paper is a contribution to the theory of common agency initiated by b d bernheim and m d whinston 1986 quart j econ 101 1 31 by common agency we mean the following an agent decides upon an action which affects its well being as well as the well being of n other individuals the principals each of whom offers a menu of payments contingent on the action chosen under complete information bernheim and whinston prove the existence of an interesting subset of nash equilibria they call truthful provide arguments in defense of this refinement and characterize the set of equilibrium payoffs this paper provides a set of theoretical results to identify the structure of equilibrium payoffs with special attention to the payoff of the agent by focusing on complete information we are in a position to evaluate the effects of competition per se on the magnitude of the rent obtained by the agent we illustrate this user guide on a wide and diverse family of applications including auctions competition for an input economic influence and private production of public goods journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d72

economic policy and special interest politics a great deal of research has been done on the boundary between economics and political science in the last five to ten years this research in political economics spans many subfields such as macroeconomics trade public finance regulation rational choice politics and game theory a common denominator has been to study structural models of the political process agents behave rationally within well specified economic and political institutions where the policymaking process is formulated as an extensive form game methodologically much progress has been made relative to traditional approaches which were often based on inconsistent or irrational political and economic behaviour relying on non derived influence functions political support functions or vote functions yet the modem work has largely developed separately in each subfield without much contact with other subfields and each of the resulting literatures tends to focus on a distinct but partial aspect of the political process in this lecture i shall argue that even though the progress to date has been substantial we can gain a better understanding of policymaking in democracies by combining the insights from different strands of thinking on some economic policy issues the conflicting views both among citizens and politicians basically reduce to a single left to right dimension examples may include the politics of inflation vs unemployment capital taxation or the size of government we can think about policy issues within this domain of general interest politics as being resolved via traditional downsian electoral competition at least to a first approximation but the economic policy process also allows narrow interest groups ample opportunities to concentrate benefits to their own group at the expense of the population as a whole the resulting policy conflict is generically multi dimensional resolving it by voting alone would thus result in condorcet cycles we therefore need to go beyond the simplest electoral models to understand policy determination within this domain of special interest politics this lecture deals with special interest politics to make my point about fruitful analytical arbitrage i will stick to the same underlying policy example throughout this will be a simple model of a society where the government uses