models for referendum data the structure of discrete choice models for contingent valuation abstract in 1979 bishop and heberlein introduced an appealing variant of the contingent valuation method which required only yes or no responses hanemann developed a utility theoretic interpretation of the yes no responses which has helped popularize the approach recently cameron has offered another interpretation also utility theoretic which she argues is more general than the hanemann random utility model this paper compares the deterministic models suggested by hanemann and cameron showing them to be dual to each other it shows that correct specification of either function must exclude endogenous variables such as quantity demanded it also demonstrates that using utility theoretic models allows one to compare travel cost models and contigent valuation models on the basis of their implied behavior not on the unobservable surplus or variation measure

varying the intensity of competition in a multiple prize rent seeking experiment we experimentally test a rent seeking model under five levels of competition at one extreme a subject s probability of winning a prize is equal to her share of the total expenditures at lower levels of competition a subject s probability of winning is affected more by her own expenditures than by the expenditures of others predicted expenditure levels are positively associated with higher levels of competition consistent with previous rent seeking experiments we find that subjects spend significantly more than the nash equilibrium prediction at all levels of competition however expenditure patterns generally follow the nash prediction expenditures decrease as the level of competition decreases our experimental design also includes a lottery choice experiment to control for subjects risk preference we find that subjects who are more risk averse spend significantly less in the contest and this effect is particularly strong for female subjects

do too many cooks always spoil the stew an experimental analysis of rent seeking and the role of a strategic buyer laboratory methods are used to evaluate the effects of institutional arrangements and rent defending activity on rent seeking auction outcomes in part nash equilibrium predictions are a useful behavioral guide as predicted more rents are dissipated in perfectly discriminating auctions where the high bidder wins than in lotteries where relative bids determine the chance of winning also as predicted the introduction of a rent defending buyer reduces social costs nevertheless the social costs of rent seeking consistently exceed predicted levels moreover individual bidding especially by buyers deviates markedly from nash predictions

ten little treasures of game theory and ten intuitive contradictions this paper reports laboratory data for games that are played only once these games span the standard categories static and dynamic games with complete and incomplete information for each game the treasure is a treatment in which behavior conforms nicely to predictions of the nash equilibrium or relevant refinement in each case however a change in the payoff structure produces a large inconsistency between theoretical predictions and observed behavior these contradictions are generally consistent with simple intuition based on the interaction of payoff asymmetries and noisy introspection about others decisions

risk aversion in contests in a contest participants spend money or effort to increase their chances of winning a prize the authors examine primarily the following question could the timid the more risk averse have a better chance of winning in contests under limited liability the answer is always positive in the absence of limited liability there is no single answer whereas when the prize is shared as a function of effort the outcome is independent of the contestants risk aversion the authors also relate their results to self protection and examine some other implications of risk aversion copyright 1995 by royal economic society

an experimental investigation of asymmetric contests abstract contest theory has been used in industrial organization to describe phenomena like r d races or efforts to defend a monopoly position when pricing behavior is constrained by regulators competition can also take the form of a contest this paper reports on an experimental test of the effects of asymmetry in the tullock contest success function both the simultaneous move and sequential move frameworks are considered despite high levels of overbidding across the different conditions the introduction of asymmetries in the contest function generates experimental behavior on aggregate qualitatively consistent with the theoretical predictions at the individual level behavior seems divided into those subjects who bid very high amounts and those who bid very low amounts

impacts of exchange rate volatility and international oil price shock on china s regional economy a dynamic cge analysis abstract a multi regional dynamic computable general equilibrium model is constructed in this paper to explore the macroeconomic effects of international oil price shocks and rmb exchange rate changes on china the results show that 1 in terms of regional development differences the decrease in international oil prices and depreciation of rmb are both conducive to economic growth although the impact of rmb devaluation is more obvious increases in international oil prices will further widen the output gap between the rich and the poor regions whereas oil price decreases and rmb devaluation will narrow the regional development differences 2 in terms of employment the depreciation of the exchange rate and the decline in international oil prices will help increase the employment rate in most regions but oil price hikes will be most beneficial for improving oil industry employment in the northeast 3 the impact of oil price volatility is asymmetric compared with rising oil prices falling oil prices have significantly greater effects on gdp industrial output employment and other aspects furthermore the impacts of exchange rate fluctuations and oil price changes on the regional economy exhibit a time lag

the effects of petroleum product price regulation on macroeconomic stability in china abstract china has undertaken measures to regulate the prices of petroleum products since 1998 in order to deal with the world oil price shocks on its macro economy however the effects of price regulation are yet unknown especially when the world oil price fluctuates in different regimes the study first analyses the mechanisms of petroleum product price ppp regulation in the case of gasoline and the crude oil gasoline price fluctuation transmission followed by the identification of regimes and their time intervals using regime switching vector autoregressive model and then estimates the effects of gasoline price regulation in reducing macroeconomic volatility it is found that the world crude oil fluctuates in different regimes the mild fluctuation regime and the violent fluctuation regime the ppp regulation can reduce oil price volatility and then macroeconomic volatility but it is more effective in the mild fluctuation regime the findings present a deeper understanding of the stabilization effect of ppp regulation on the macroeconomy provide an evidence for sustaining china s ppp regulation for the purpose of macroeconomic stability and offer policymakers new information for petroleum product pricing reforms

forty years of oil price fluctuations why the price of oil may still surprise us it has been forty years since the oil crisis of 1973 74 this crisis has been one of the defining economic events of the 1970s and has shaped how many economists think about oil price shocks in recent years a large literature on the economic determinants of oil price fluctuations has emerged drawing on this literature we first provide an overview of the causes of all major oil price fluctuations between 1973 and 2014 we then discuss why oil price fluctuations remain difficult to predict despite economists improved understanding of oil markets unexpected oil price fluctuations are commonly referred to as oil price shocks we document that in practice consumers policymakers financial market participants and economists may have different oil price expectations and that what may be surprising to some need not be equally surprising to others

biophysical causality and environmental preference elicitation evaluating the validity of welfare analysis over intermediate outcomes stated preference scenarios often describe outcomes to be valued in terms of intermediate biophysical processes or ecosystem services with indirect utility effects rather than in terms of final directly welfare relevant consequences this article evaluates whether valid welfare estimates can emerge from this practice we begin with a theoretical model demonstrating conditions under which stated preference scenarios that include intermediate outcomes will elicit welfare estimates identical to those from parallel scenarios that include associated final outcomes i e convergent validity will hold the model demonstrates that a necessary condition for convergent validity is the ability of respondents to correctly predict biophysical production functions linking intermediate to final outcomes hypotheses from the theoretical model are then evaluated empirically using an application of choice experiments to migratory fish restoration in the u s state of rhode island empirical results are mixed but generally reject convergent validity welfare estimates are not robust to the use of an intermediate outcome in lieu of a related final outcome in stated preference scenarios as predicted by theory results of the analysis suggest that greater attention should be given to the reliability of welfare estimation when final outcomes cannot be quantified

oil shocks and subnational public investment the role of institutions in regional resource curse abstract theoretical and empirical studies on oil price shocks have mainly focused on measuring its relationship with national macroeconomic performance in developing countries nevertheless research is scarce on the effects of natural resource booms on local governments and even more on public investment using a difference in differences strategy this paper contributes to identifying the causal effects of the recent oil boom in colombia 2008 2016 on subnational public investment our results suggest that the rise in international oil prices had mostly positive and disproportionate effects on public investment in oil producing departments and municipalities although municipalities and departments prioritized different sectors both increased their investments in sectors with high social returns suggesting a lower likelihood of a resource curse we also found that an institutional reform in 2012 was a source of heterogeneity and the main driver of the causal effects on subnational public investments

oil prices and the global economy a general equilibrium analysis a global computable general equilibrium model is used to analyze the economic impacts of rising oil prices with endogenously determined availability of biofuels to mitigate those impacts the negative effects on the global economy are comparable to those found in other studies but the impacts are unevenly distributed across countries regions or sectors the agricultural sectors of high income countries which are relatively energy intensive will suffer more from a rising oil prices than that in lower income countries whereas the reverse is true for the impacts across manufacturing sectors the impacts are especially strong for oil importers with relatively energy intensive manufacturing and trade such as india and china while the availability of biofuels does mitigate some of the negative impacts of rising oil prices the benefit is small because capacity of biofuels to economically substitute for fossil fuels on a large scale remains limited

cooperation and distributive conflict if either property rights or institutions are weak agents who create wealth by cooperating will later have an incentive to fight over the distribution of it in this paper we investigate theoretically and experimentally the circumstances under which welfare losses from investment in distributional contests destroy welfare gains from voluntary cooperation we find that in situations where the return to cooperation is high subjects cooperate strongly and welfare exceeds the predicted non cooperation levels if returns to cooperation are low then subjects still cooperate but the resources wasted in the distributional conflict lead to lower welfare than if subjects had followed the theoretical prediction of not cooperating

intergroup conflict and intra group punishment in an experimental contest game we study how conflict in a contest game is influenced by rival parties being groups and by group members being able to punish each other our main motivation stems from the analysis of socio political conflict the relevant theoretical prediction in our setting is that conflict expenditures are independent of group size and independent of whether punishment is available or not we find first that our results contradict the independence of groupsize prediction conflict expenditures of groups are substantially larger than those of individuals and both are substantially above equilibrium towards the end of the experiment material losses in groups are 257 of the predicted level there is however substantial heterogeneity in the investment behaviour of individual group members second allowing group members to punish each other after individual contributions to the contest effort are revealed leads to even larger conflict expenditures now material losses are 869 of the equilibrium level and there is much less heterogeneity in individual group members investments these results contrast strongly with those from public goods experiments where punishment enhances efficiency and leads to higher material payoffs

heterogeneous preferences and aggregation in environmental policy analysis a landfill siting case in many studies of nonmarket resources economists have data to disaggregate results according to subpopulations within the full study population disaggregated results can increase the usefulness of economic analyses improve public confidence in the results and permit public officials to assess equity concerns we outline an approach to obtain disaggregated results when characteristics of individuals may identify distinct preferences the approach is applied to public preferences regarding landfill siting decisions the discussion explores the implications of disaggregated results for policy decisions for bias in aggregate willingness to pay estimates and for nonmarket research methodologies

measuring the difference in mean willingness to pay when dichotomous choice contingent valuation responses are not independent dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys frequently elicit multiple values in a single questionnaire if individual responses are correlated across scenarios the standard approach of estimating willingness to pay wtp functions independently for each scenario may result in biased estimates of the significance of the difference in mean wtp values this paper applies an alternative bivariate probit approach that explicitly accounts for correlation across errors in the estimation of wtp and mean wtp using data from three separate dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies this correlation is demonstrated to have an effect on the significance level of mean wtp difference tests

oil and the macroeconomy since world war ii all but one of the u s recessions since world war ii have been preceded typically with a lag of around three fourths of a year by a dramatic increase in the price of crude petroleum this does not mean that oil shocks caused these recessions evidence is presented however that even over the period 1948 72 this correlation is statistically significant and nonspurious supporting the proposition that oil shocks were a contributing factor in at least some of the u s recessions prior to 1972 by extension energy price increases may account for much of post opec macroeconomic performance

confidence intervals for evaluating benefits estimates from dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies i evaluate the potential usefulness of nonmarket valuation concepts and techniques from environmental economics for improving wildlife conservation the concepts include distinguishing between on site recreation use value and off site passive use or

the relationship between oil price shocks and china s macro economy an empirical analysis china postdoctoral science foundation 20090460751 ministry of education of the people s republic of china 09yjc790167 09yja820074 national social science funds 09zd050 08ajy031

the evolution of preferences for conflict we consider preference evolution in a class of conflict models with finite populations we show that whereas aggregate conflict effort is always the same in evolutionary equilibrium larger populations have greater individual subjective costs of conflict effort

simultaneous decision making in competitive and cooperative environments we experimentally investigate simultaneous decision making in two contrasting environments a competitive environment a contest and a cooperative environment a voluntary contribution mechanism we find that the cooperative nature of the voluntary contribution mechanism spills over to the contest decreasing sub optimal overbidding in the contest however contributions to the public good are not affected by simultaneous participation in the contest there is a significant negative correlation between decisions made in competitive and cooperative environments i e more cooperative subjects tend to be less competitive and vice versa this correlation can be rationalized by heterogeneous social preferences towards inequality but not by bounded rationality theory

overbidding and overspreading in rent seeking experiments cost structure and prize allocation rules we study experimentally the effects of cost structure and prize allocation rules on the performance of rent seeking contests most previous studies use a lottery prize rule and linear cost and find both overbidding relative to the nash equilibrium prediction and significant variation of efforts which we term overspreading we investigate the effects of allocating the prize by a lottery versus sharing it proportionally and of convex versus linear costs of effort while holding fixed the nash equilibrium prediction for effort we find the share rule results in average effort closer to the nash prediction and lower variation of effort combining the share rule with a convex cost function further enhances these results we can explain a significant amount of non equilibrium behavior by features of the experimental design these results contribute towards design guidelines for contests based on behavioral principles that take into account implementation features of a contest

the effects of oil price shocks on output and inflation in china crude oil price shocks derive from many sources each of which may bring about different effects on macro economy variables and require completely different designs in macro economic policy thus distinguishing the sources of oil price fluctuations is crucial when evaluating these effects this paper establishes an open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model with two economies china and the rest of the world to assess the effects of oil price shocks the ces production function is extended by adding oil as an input based on the model the effects of four types of oil price fluctuations are evaluated the four types of oil price shocks are supply shocks driven by political events in opec countries other oil supply shocks aggregate shocks to the demand for industrial commodities and demand shocks that are specific to the crude oil market simulation results indicate the following oil supply shocks driven by political events mainly produce short term effects on china s output and inflation while the other three shocks produce relatively long term effects in addition demand shocks that are specific to the crude oil market contribute the most to the fluctuations in china s output and inflation

best of three contest experiments strategic versus psychological momentum abstract we conduct an experimental analysis of a best of three tullock contest intermediate prizes lead to higher efforts while increasing the role of luck as opposed to effort leads to lower efforts both intermediate prizes and luck reduce the probability of the contest ending in two rounds the patterns of players efforts and the probability that a contest ends in two rounds are consistent with strategic momentum i e a momentum generated due to strategic incentives inherent in the contest we do not find evidence for psychological momentum i e a momentum which emerges when winning affects players confidence similar to the previous studies of contests we find significantly higher efforts than predicted and strong heterogeneity in effort between the subjects

a theory of anticipated utility abstract a new theory of cardinal utility with an associated set of axioms is presented it is a generalization of the von neumann morgenstern expected utility theory which permits the analysis of phenomena associated with the distortion of subjective probability

experimental comparison of multi stage and one stage contests this article experimentally studies a two stage elimination contest and compares its performance with a one stage contest contrary to the theory the two stage contest generates higher revenue than the equivalent one stage contest there is significant over dissipation in both stages of the two stage contest and experience diminishes over dissipation in the first stage but not in the second stage our experiment provides evidence that winning is a component in a subject s utility a simple behavioral model that accounts for a non monetary utility of winning can explain significant over dissipation in both contests it can also explain why the two stage contest generates higher revenue than the equivalent one stage contest

when less is more rationing and rent dissipation in stochastic contests this paper shows how to maximize revenue when a contest is noisy we consider a case where two or more contestants bid for a prize in a stochastic contest where all bidders value the prize equally we show that whenever a tullock contest yields under dissipation the auctioneer s revenue can be increased by optimally fixing the number of tickets in particular in a stochastic contest with proportional probabilities it is possible to obtain almost full rent dissipation we test this hypothesis with a laboratory experiment the results indicate that as predicted revenue is significantly higher in a lottery with rationing than in a standard lottery on the other hand an alternative rationing mechanism that does not limit total expenditures fails to increase revenue relative to a standard lottery

effects and mechanism of influence of china s resource tax reform a regional perspective abstract china s resource tax reform beginning with xinjiang as a pilot area in june 2010 marked a new stage in the progression of china s resource tax system based on the 2007 social accounting matrix sam for xinjiang constructed by ourselves this paper takes a regional perspective on china s resource tax reform to quantitatively calculate its degree of influence and qualitatively analyze its mechanism of influence by adopting an energy computable general equilibrium cge model and a sam price model the results show that the main significance of the reform lies in bolstering local government finances rather than energy conservation or carbon reduction this is because revenue will be transferred from resource enterprises and the central government to the local government while simultaneously the low tax rate narrow tax scope and unreasonable price mechanism will combine to prevent the reform from reaching its environmental goals promoting resource price mechanism reform and deepening resource tax reform will be two key elements of china s future energy strategies because resource enterprises will bear the increased burden caused by the reform the degree of sectoral price increases will be limited therefore the fear that resource tax reform will push up inflation is unnecessary and should not be a barrier to reform

does green consumerism increase the acceptance of wind power abstract in this paper we discuss what might be termed an action based learning approach to promoting important pro environmental actions such as support for or acceptance of environmental policy such an approach involves promoting simple and easy behaviours as entry points for more radical steps towards sustainability referred to as catalytic or wedge behaviours despite the obvious need for innovative approaches to promote important pro environmental behaviour and sound theoretical backing for such concepts there is a lack of research testing the key propositions of this approach in a survey study based on a random sample of residents of the state of maine usa we find that both everyday green behaviour and the acceptance of an expansion of wind power are rooted in environmental concern and that everyday green behaviour gives a significant contribution to predicting acceptance of wind power when controlling for environmental concern hence the promotion of everyday green behaviours may prepare the grounds for increasing acceptance of more far reaching changes in the population such as an expansion of wind power

implications of a long term increase in oil prices for tourism it is expected that global oil prices will increase in the future assessing the overall economic impacts on tourism is difficult as oil price rises will be concomitant with global changes in other commodity prices exchange rates and incomes a general equilibrium perspective is therefore presented in this paper the model couples a global general equilibrium model with a purpose built cge model of new zealand which focuses on describing tourism supply and demand in some detail the results indicate a decrease in real gross national disposable income of 1 7 for a doubling of oil price and a 9 reduction in the real value of tourism exports as a result of segment specific price increases and differing income and exchange rate effects and elasticities the reduction in demand for tourism in new zealand by 18 segments differs substantially the greatest reduction in demand is observed for tourists from the united kingdom

risk averse rent seekers and the social cost of monopoly power there is now quite general recognition that the social cost of monopoly power encompasses the resources expended by individuals seeking to become the beneficiaries of monopoly rents however since the activity of rent seeking is generally not observable direct estimates of resources expended in quests to acquire monopoly power are usually impossible to come by 1 as a consequence the indirect approach of taking the observed value of monopoly rents as indicative of the unobserved value of the resources expended in rent seeking is quite generally adopted in approaches to evaluation of the social cost of such activity

expanding contingent value sample estimates to aggregate benefit estimates current practices and proposed solutions a mail survey was administered to a panel of colorado consumers to obtain estimates of willingness to pay wtp for preserving union park detailed socioeconomic data for all surveyed individuals was available a priori we develop and employ the multiple

rent dissipation when rent seekers are budget constrained in the original tullock 1975 1980 game an individual bidder s probability of winning with a bid b is proportional to br where the exponent reflects economies of scale in rent seeking different interpretations can be given to these probabilities first one may view r as a reflection of the political culture alternatively one may view r as a choice variable for a politician intuition suggests that a society with a high tolerance for the selling of political favors and politicians who are receptive to rent seeking would both induce greater rent seeking expenditures than other societies all else equal this paper shows that a lower value of r can actually lead to more rent dissipation than a higher value this paper also reinforces two points concerning rent seeking first the analysis confirms the robustness of under dissipation of rents even in the face of entry second it points out the importance of distinguishing between rent seeking expenditures and rent dissipation when bidders must borrow for example total expenditure may understate rent dissipation

an experimental investigation of efficient rent seeking the debate about the measurement of the amount of rent dissipated in rent seeking activities is unable to be answered by observations from the naturally occurring environment current theoretical investigations have indicated that a number of factors will affect the amount of rent that can be assumed to be dissipated by rent seeking the theory of efficient rent seeking predicts that the number of rent seekers their risk posture their ability to enter and exit the rent seeking process and the manner in which the probability of receiving a rent is determined will affect the amount of rent that is dissipated

risk aversion heterogeneity and contests we introduce a novel method of modellingcontests that avoids the complexitiesencountered by the best response function approach we analyse contests in which i there are many risk averse players ii attitudes to risk may differ acrossindividuals and iii the technology thattransforms rent seeking effort intoprobability of winning may also differacross individuals we establish that ifevery player has a constant degree ofabsolute risk aversion a uniqueequilibrium exists we also establishcomparative static results and examine howthe level of rent dissipation is affectedby the heterogeneity of attitudes towardsrisk and the precise nature of the technology

information feedback and contest structure in rent seeking games we investigate the effects of information feedback in rent seeking games with two different contest structures in the share contest a contestant receives a share of the rent equal to her share of rent seeking expenditures while in the lottery contest a contestant wins the entire rent with probability equal to her share of rent seeking expenditures in share contests average expenditures converge to equilibrium levels when subjects only get feedback about own earnings and additional feedback about rivals choices and earnings raises average expenditures in lottery contests information feedback has an opposite and even stronger effect when subjects only get feedback on own earnings we observe high levels of rent dissipation usually exceeding the value of the rent and additional feedback about rivals choices and earnings has a significant moderating influence on expenditures in a follow up treatment we make information feedback endogenous by allowing contestants in a lottery contest to make public or private expenditures subjects make the vast majority of expenditures privately and overall excess expenditures are similar to the lottery contest with own feedback

a test of policy labels in environmental choice modelling studies abstract a question that arises in the application of environmental choice modelling cm studies is whether to present the choice sets in a generic or labelled form the former involves labelling the policy options to be presented to respondents in a generic way for example as option a option b etc the labelled approach assigns alternative specific descriptors to each option these may relate to the names of proposed policies different locations or any other policy relevant details both approaches have their advantages a potential advantage of using alternative specific labels is that respondents may be better able to base their choices on the true policy context this can increase predictive validity whilst at the same time reducing the cognitive burden of the cm exercise a potential advantage of the generic labelling approach is that respondents may be less inclined to base their choices wholly or largely on the labels and as a consequence may provide better information regarding trade offs among attributes the two approaches to choice set design are compared in the context of a cm study of the values of remnant vegetation in the desert uplands of central queensland results indicate a difference in the cognitive processes generated by choice models using the different approaches this difference is reflected in both the alternative specific constants and the taste parameters and cannot be accounted for by differences in error variance across the two treatments the implications for environmental valuation are discussed

contest efforts in light of behavioural considerations this study shows that distortion of probabilities is a possible reason for rent under dissipation incontests with relatively small number of participants such distortion may also result however inover dissipation of the contested rent focusing on contests with homogeneous contestants and thecommonly studied contest success function our main results clarify under what circumstances i rents are more under dissipated relative to the standard situation where probabilities are notdistorted ii rents are under dissipated yet less intensely relative to the standard situation whereprobabilities are not distorted iii rents are over dissipated and iv the contest does not possess asymmetric interior equilibrium in pure strategies

risk aversion in rent seeking and rent augmenting games the effects of risk aversion are examined for two types of expenditures in rent seeking contests a rent seeking expenditures which improve the probability that the rent is obtained and b rent augmenting expenditures which increase the size of the rent to be awarded risk aversion is shown to reduce expenditures of type b unambiguously while having an indeterminate effect on those of type a these two contrasting results are shown to derive from the very different effects rent seeking and rent augmenting expenditures have on the riskiness of a player s position

oil price dynamics and speculation a multivariate financial approach abstract this paper assesses empirically whether speculation affects oil price dynamics the growing presence of financial operators in the oil markets has led to the diffusion of trading techniques based on extrapolative expectations strategies of this kind foster feedback trading that may cause considerable departures of prices from their fundamental values we investigate this hypothesis using a modified capm following shiller 1984 and sentana and wadhwani 1992 first a univariate garch 1 1 m is estimated assuming the risk premium to be a function of the conditional oil price volatility the single factor model however is outperformed by the multifactor icapm merton 1973 which takes into account a larger investment opportunity set analysis is then carried out using a trivariate ccc garch m model with complex nonlinear conditional mean equations where oil price dynamics are associated with both stock market and exchange rate behavior we find strong evidence that oil price shifts are negatively related to stock price and exchange rate changes and that a complex web of time varying first and second order conditional moment interactions affects both the capm and feedback trading components of the model despite the difficulties we identify a significant role played by speculation in the oil market which is consistent with the observed large daily upward and downward shifts in prices a clear evidence that it is not a fundamental driven market thus from a policy point of view given the impact of volatile oil prices on global inflation and growth actions that monitor speculative activities on commodity markets more effectively are to be welcomed

risk aversion and rent seeking an extension and some experimental evidence theoretical investigations indicate that the risk attitudes of individuals will effect the amount of rent that can be assumed to be dissipated by rent seeking activities following this line of investigation we extend hillman and katz s work to a small numbers case and demonstrate that the degree to which a monopoly rent is dissipated is dependent upon the structure of the risk attitudes of two risk averse individuals

swords or plowshares a theory of the security of claims to property this paper develops a general equilibrium model of the allocation of resources among appropriative and productive activities the model emphasizes the distinction between offensive weapons which are the instruments of predation and fortifications which provide defense against predation the analysis of this model shows how the equilibrium security of claims to property is determined the analysis focuses on the possibility of a nonaggressive equilibrium in which no resources are allocated to offensive weapons and claims to property are fully secure we also analyze the complex relation between economic welfare and the security of claims to property we find for example that a relatively poor agent could be better off in an equilibrium with less secure claims to property

choice experiments site similarity and benefits transfer choice experiments are designed to account for variations in environmental resources and site characteristics as well as potential implications of these variations for willingness to pay as a result choice experiment results may be well suited for benefits transfer it is unclear however whether the flexibility of choice experiments renders the similarity of study and transfer sites less critical for transfer validity drawing from identical choice experiments conducted in different rhode island communities this model assesses the extent to which error in function based benefits transfer is related to the similarity of communities across a variety of observable dimensions results suggest that site similarity at least across some dimensions influences the validity of choice experiment benefits transfers however the use of some measures of similarity as indicators of transfer error may provide misleading results

time varying macroeconomic effects of energy price shocks a new measure for china abstract in this paper we examine the effects of world energy price shocks on china s macroeconomy over the past two decades we begin by showing that the use of oil prices as a proxy for more general energy price dynamics is not appropriate for the case of china having established this fact we propose a new energy price index which accurately reflects the structure of china s energy expenditure shares and intertemporal fluctuations in international energy prices we then employ a sufficiently rich set of time varying vars identified through a new set of agnostic sign restrictions to estimate the effects of energy price shocks on china s macroeconomy our main result is that positive energy price shocks generate statistically significant reductions in real gdp growth and increases in inflation interestingly both the sets of responses have consistently declined over the sample period next the interest rate responses are found to be consistently positive over the sample period given the aforementioned stagflation result this suggests that the pboc is more focused on inflation stabilization as compared to facilitating output growth all presented results are shown to be robust under both official national data and those developed by chang et al 2015 thus strengthening our conclusion that energy price shocks have significant time varying effects on china s macroeconomy

the excess burden of tax evasion an experimental detection concealment contest abstract tax evasion may cause social welfare losses due to the incentives of taxpayers to invest in the concealment and of tax authorities to invest in the detection of tax evasion reducing the investment of both parties at the same time would then lead to a pareto improvement given that concealment and detection costs are hardly measurable in reality we show in a controlled laboratory experiment that the welfare losses from a concealment detection contest depend positively on the prevailing tax rate but not on the penalty which is imposed in case of detected tax evasion hence policy makers who are concerned about socially inefficient concealment and enforcement costs should focus on tax rates rather than penalty rates

theory and misbehavior of first price auctions recent experimental evidence appears to reject simple nash equilibrium models of bidding behavior in first price auctions the author presents a methodological critique of this evidence existing tests have concentrated on deviations of subjects from predictions in the message space of the action bid deviations the author suggests that it is more natural to evaluate subject behavior in expected payoff space he concludes that the evidence against the simple models is not significant enough to warrant their rejection copyright 1989 by american economic association

fiscal sustainability the impact of real exchange rate shocks on debt valuation interest rates and gdp growth summary this paper discusses the way in which the existence of foreign currency debt affects debt sustainability analysis we show that a devaluation of the local currency can significantly change the path of a sustainable fiscal policy our model expands previous research as the adjustment comes not only through changes in the value of the foreign currency denominated debt but also through the effects of the devaluation on interest rates and economic growth we find that the fiscal adjustment required after a devaluation increases with the size of the devaluation the length of the adjustment period the effect on interest rates and growth and the share of public debt denominated in foreign currency

rural amenity values and length of residency new residents of rural communities are often assumed to have preferences for development and conservation that differ from those of longer term residents however the literature offers little to quantify presumed preference heterogeneity this article assesses whether stated preferences differ according to length of residency results are based on a conjoint choice experiment survey of rhode island rural residents heterogeneity according to length of town residency is modeled using dummy variables multiplicative interactions and lagrangian interpolation polynomials results are compared across the three models and identify a range of attributes for which willingness to pay depends on length of residency