duopoly supergames with product differentiation abstract when goods are complements or very close substitutes more tacit collusion is supported by trigger strategies in price setting supergames than in quantity setting supergames for moderate or poor substitutes the situation is reversed this contrasts with the static situation where price setting strategies always lead to higher welfare

competition under consumer loss aversion we address the effect of expectation based consumer loss aversion on firm strategy in imperfect competition consumers are fully informed about match value and price at the moment of purchase however some consumers are initially uninformed about their tastes and form a reference point consisting of an expected match value and price distribution whereas others are perfectly informed all the time we show that if firms have symmetric costs a larger share of informed consumers leads to a more competitive outcome the reverse holds if cost asymmetry in duopoly is sufficiently large

why does the combination of the european union emissions trading scheme and a renewable energy target makes economic sense abstract the european climate and energy mix of targets and policies has been criticised by many economists in particular it is often argued that the renewable energy targets do not make economic sense because they represent an expensive option to reduce co2 emissions within a cap and trade scheme such as the european union emissions trading scheme eu ets in addition it has also been claimed that support for renewable electricity deployment negatively interacts with the eu ets having a dampening effect on the co2 price which favours the dirtiest technologies and is detrimental for the greener ones in this article we argue that this mainstream economic view is short sighted and that a multidisciplinary economic analysis of the climate and energy policy mix is required mainstream economic analysis is based on a narrow approach for the assessment of instrument combinations and neglects relevant insights from several economic disciplines including innovation economics and political economy approaches in reality economic theory supports the combination of an ets and renewable energy targets the existence of different policy goals and market failures the demand pull influence of renewable energy policies on innovation a political economy approach and the different risk exposure of renewable energy technologies call for a policy mix although policy combinations are not a panacea and bring problems on their own the aforementioned negative interaction between renewable energy deployment and the carbon price in the eu ets can be mitigated through appropriate coordination and or instrument choice and design

two faces effects of business groups on innovation in emerging economies this paper shows that business groups in emerging economies exert dual effects on innovation while groups facilitate innovation by providing institutional infrastructure groups also discourage innovation by creating entry barriers for nongroup firms and thereby inhibit the proliferation of new ideas this pattern reflects an evolutionary process in which the interplay of the availability of innovation infrastructure and variety of ideas influences the level of innovation in an industry we show that group market share has an inverted u impact on innovation in industrial sectors of both korea and taiwan during the 1981 1995 period institutional differences between korea and taiwan in terms of market structure and industrial policies lead to different innovation thresholds the point at which the marginal costs of increasing group share begin to dominate the marginal benefits in the two countries

the impact of natural disaster on energy consumption international evidence abstract this research shows that natural disasters may hurt energy consumption by using data on 123 countries over the period 1990 2015 and classifying them according to their economic development level and region based on world development indicators we employ a two step system gmm method to examine the effect of natural disasters on energy consumption presenting findings that support our hypotheses in the models and show a strong negative effect for low income countries or those in the africa region after considering an alternative proxy for natural disaster we implement quantile regression methods their results find that natural disasters exhibit a negative and significant impact on oil renewable and nuclear energy consumptions the quantile regression models used in the robustness check present that the effects are stronger for low level energy consumption economies

on the simple economics of advertising marketing and product design we propose a framework for analyzing transformations of demand such transformations frequently stem from changes in the dispersion of consumers valuations which lead to rotations of the demand curve in many settings profits are a u shaped function of dispersion high dispersion is complemented by niche production and low dispersion is complemented by mass market supply we investigate numerous applications including product design advertising marketing and sales advice and the construction of quality differentiated product lines we also suggest a new taxonomy of advertising distinguishing between hype which shifts demand and real information which rotates demand

markets of concentration permits the case of manure policy abstract concentration permits are regarded as an interesting policy tool for regulating emissions where besides absolute amounts also local concentration is important however effects of governance structure trading system and possible policy interventions in the permits allocation are not yet well analysed and understood this paper explores in how far tradable fertilisation standards can be seen as a concentration permit trading cpt system which can be fine tuned for further policy intervention indeed fertilisation standards such as obliged by the eu nitrate directive can be regarded as local nitrate emissions limits and thus concentration permits a multi agent spatial allocation model is used to simulate the impact of defining the manure problem in terms of concentration permits rather than conventional emission permits impacts are simulated in terms of environmental performance and increased reallocation costs the model is applied on the flemish manure problem

competition and price variation when consumers are loss averse we modify the salop 1979 model of price competition with differentiated products by assuming that consumers are loss averse relative to a reference point given by their recent expectations about the purchase consumers sensitivity to losses in money increases the price responsiveness of demand and hence the intensity of competition at higher relative to lower market prices reducing or eliminating price variation both within and between products when firms face common stochastic costs in any symmetric equilibrium the markup is strictly decreasing in cost even when firms face different cost distributions we identify conditions under which a focal price equilibrium where firms always charge the same focal price exists and conditions under which any equilibrium is focal

storms and jobs the effect of hurricanes on individuals employment and earnings over the long term hurricanes katrina and rita devastated the us gulf coast in 2005 we use job level data to compare the evolution of earnings for affected workers in four states with workers from matched control co

yes in my backyard spatial differences in the valuation of forest services and local co benefits for carbon markets in mexico forests provide many and large benefits including cost efficient climate change mitigation however international carbon markets have not stimulated the demand for forestry offsets domestic market mechanisms are emerging in many countries and forests could be highly valued through these policies as most of the benefits produced by forests are enjoyed locally here a choice experiment explores drivers of valuation and willingness to pay for forest carbon services in voluntary markets in mexico by comparing the valuation of citizens from four regions to test geographical preference for projects n 645 findings from multinomial logit models show valuation of forest carbon services is transferable and citizens would pay more for offsets from projects closer to their homes proximate forests provide a range of co benefits to local users including environmental services and opportunities for recreation factors related to valuation include sense of responsibility previous knowledge of carbon emissions previous visits to the sites regional identification and the valuation of local environmental services e g improvements in local air quality knowledge of spatial heterogeneity in valuation of the use of forest services can help to design market based instruments by identifying highly valued areas for environmental services programs and carbon markets

a note on market power in itq fisheries abstract individual transferable quotas itqs in fisheries are analogous to transferable pollution permits in environmental policy however they are different in that the right to produce is for the final product the fish whereas pollution permits are for a non market joint product i e sulfur dioxide of the good produced for sale in both cases the actual economic efficiency effects of creating the property rights depend upon the workings of the market for both the final product and the rights there has been considerable work on market failures for pollution permits and this paper extends the analysis to itqs it is shown that the difference between pollution permits and itqs can change the type and occurrence of failure in the market for the final product but it does not affect the potential for failure in the market for permits

how limiting deceptive practices harms consumers there are two competing sellers of an experience good one offers high quality one low the low quality seller can engage in deceptive advertising potentially fooling a buyer into thinking the product is better than it is although deceptive advertising might seem to harm the buyer we show that he could be better off when the low quality seller can engage in deceptive advertising than not we characterize the optimal deterrence rule that a regulatory agency seeking to punish deceptive practices should adopt we show that greater protection against deceptive practices does not necessarily improve the buyer welfare

libertarian paternalism information production and financial decision making we develop a theoretical model to analyze the effects of libertarian paternalism on information production and financial decision making individuals in our model appreciate the information content of the recommendations made by a social planner this affects their incentive to gather information and in turn the speed at which information spreads across market participants via social learning or formal advice channels we characterize situations in which libertarian paternalism improves welfare and contrast them with scenarios in which this policy is suboptimal because of its negative impact on the production and propagation of information the author 2013 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oup com oxford university press

modeling multiattribute utility risk and belief dynamics for new consumer durable brand choice this paper proposes a brand choice model to aid in the prelaunch management of a new consumer durable entry in an existing category the model contributes to theory by integrating the critical phenomena of multiattribute preference risk and dynamics in an individual level expected utility framework the integration is based on established theoretical constructs in utility bayesian decision analysis and discrete choice theory measurement and estimation procedures are presented an application is described and the managerial relevance of this work as a planning and forecasting tool is examined

demonstrations and price competition in new product release we incorporate product demonstrations into a game theoretic model of price competition demonstrations may include product samples trials return policies online review platforms or any other means by which a firm allows consumers to learn about their value for a new product in our model demonstrations help individual consumers to learn whether they prefer an innovative product over an established alternative the innovative firm controls demonstration informativeness when the innovative firm commits to demonstration policies and there is flexibility in prices the firm is best off offering fully informative demonstrations that divide the market and dampen price competition in contrast when a firm can adjust its demonstration strategy in response to prices the firm prefers only partially informative demonstrations designed to maximize its market share such a strategy can generate the monopoly profit for the innovative firm we contrast the strategic role of demonstrations in our framework with

inflation targeting as a shock absorber abstract we study the characteristics of inflation targeting as a shock absorber using quarterly data for a large panel of countries to overcome an endogeneity problem between monetary regimes and the likelihood of crises we propose to study large natural disasters we find that inflation targeting improves macroeconomic performance following such exogenous shocks it lowers inflation raises output growth and reduces inflation variability compared to alternative monetary regimes this performance is mostly due to a different response of monetary policy and fiscal policy under inflation targeting finally we show that only hard but not soft targeting reaps the rewards deeds not words matter for successful monetary stabilization

the design of fishing right systems the nsw experience abstract in 1994 the australian state of new south wales nsw passed legislation to introduce a fishery share system in some ways it is similar to the itq or individual transferable quota fishery management systems found in new zealand iceland australia canada and other countries the focus of the system however is on fisheries rather than species in most of these fisheries a combination of input and output controls are used special design features include allotment of shares in the fishery rather than in quotas and a structure that forces adaptive resource management the system is designed to maximise the probability that fishery use will remain both sustainable and consistent with social objectives as they change through time the system s conceptual framework is of relevance to other fisheries and also many other industries that use natural resources consistent with periodically revised management plans rights to harvest specific amounts of fish or to use certain classes of boats and gear are issued in proportion to the number of shares held in each fishery fishery being flexibly defined by region and habitat with or without further specification by gear type species group or single species the management plan might for example specify a relationship between number of shares and size of boat or net any quotas are allocated in proportion to the number of shares held subject to compliance with periodically reviewed share conditions rights are perpetual and give each fisher a direct financial interest in the future of the fishery shares are mortgageable and fully transferable driven by the management plan structural adjustment is delegated to the market and individual fishers a dual property right structure is used to minimise transfer costs encourage self enforcement and compliance

a study of the internal organization of a bidding cartel this paper examines bidding in over 1 700 knockout auctions used by a bidding cartel or ring of stamp dealers in the 1990s the knockout was conducted using a variant of the model studied by daniel graham robert marshall and jean francois richard 1990 following a reduced form examination of these data damages induced inefficiency and the ring s benefit from colluding are estimated using a structural model in the spirit of emmanuel guerre isabelle perrigne and quang vuong 2000 a notable finding is that nonring bidders suffered damages that were of the same order of magnitude as those of the sellers

deep impact geo simulations as a policy toolkit for natural disasters adverse post natural disaster outcomes in low income regions like elevated internal migration levels and low consumption levels are the result of market failures poor mechanisms for stabilizing income and missing insurance markets which force the affected population to respond and adapt to the shock they face in a spatial environment with multiple locations with independent but inter connected markets these transitions quickly become complex and highly non linear due to the feedback loops between the micro individual level decisions and the meso location wise market decisions to capture these continuously evolving micro meso interactions this paper presents a spatially explicit bottom up agent based model to analyze natural disaster like shocks to low income regions the aim of the model is to temporally and spatially track how population distributions income and consumption levels evolve in order to identify low income workers that are food insecure the model is applied to the 2005 earthquake in northern pakistan which faced catastrophic losses and high levels of displacement in a short time span and with market disruptions resulted in high levels of food insecurity the model is calibrated to pre crisis trends and shocked using distance based output and labor loss functions to replicate the earthquake impact model results show how various factors like existing income and saving levels distance from the fault line and connectivity to other locations can give insights into the spatial and temporal emergence of vulnerabilities the simulation framework presented here leaps beyond existing modeling efforts which usually deals with macro long term loss estimates and allows policy makers to come up with informed short term policies in an environment where data is non existent policy response is time dependent and resources are limited

the shocking origins of political transitions evidence from earthquakes do earthquakes trigger political transitions using a rich panel dataset of 160 countries observed over 1950 2007 we find that earthquake shocks measured in terms of the effect of ground motion amplitude on death toll have two contradicting effects on political change on the one hand earthquakes drive transitions into democracy due to an affective shock which we interpret to be the reaction of citizens by which they hold the incumbent government responsible for earthquake damages on the other hand earthquakes indirectly hasten transitions into a less democratic regime because they increase the income level contemporaneously possibly due to short term emergency response and recovery expenditures and thus raising the opportunity cost of contesting the incumbent government overall we show that while not leading to a full fledged regime transition earthquake shocks open a new democratic window of opportunity but this window is narrowed by improved economic conditions

a simple auction mechanism for the optimal allocation of the commons efficient regulation of the commons requires information about the regulated firms that is rarely available to regulators e g cost of pollution abatement this paper proposes a simple mechanism that implements the first best for any number of firms a uniform price sealed bid auction of an endogenous number of transferable licenses with a fraction of the auction revenues given back to firms paybacks which rapidly decrease with the number of firms are such that truth telling is a dominant strategy regardless of whether firms behave non cooperatively or collusively the mechanism also provides firms with incentives to invest in socially optimal r d jel d44 d62 d82 q28 regulatory authorities generally find that part of the information they need for implementing an efficient regulation is in the hands of those who are to be regulated regulating externalities such as access to common resources e g clean air water streams fisheries etc is a good example environmental regulators for example know little about firms pollution abatement costs so without communicating with firms they would be unable to establish the efficient level of pollution a number of mechanisms have been proposed for inducing firms to reveal their private information but for different reasons

advertising information and product quality the case of butter this study examines the roles of cholesterol information and advertising in explaining consumption trends for fats and oils focusing on butter results suggest increased consumer awareness of the health effects of blood cholesterol has contributed to the secular decline in butter consumption in canada although consumers responses to negative information appear to outweigh their responses to positive information the industry advertising campaign launched in 1978 by the dairy bureau of canada has had a positive effect on butter demand

managing consumer returns in a competitive environment this paper investigates the pricing and restocking fee decisions of two competing firms selling horizontally differentiated products we model a duopoly facing consumers who have heterogeneous tastes for the products and who must experience a product before knowing how well it matches with their preferences the analysis yields several key insights restocking fees not only can be sustained in a competitive environment but also are more severe when consumers are less informed about product fit and when consumers place a greater importance on how well products attributes fit with their preferences we compare the competitive equilibrium prices to a scenario in which consumers are certain about their preferences and find conditions defining when consumer uncertainty results in higher equilibrium prices comparison to a monopoly setting yields a surprising result equilibrium restocking fees in a competitive environment can be higher than those charged by a monopolist this paper was accepted by jagmohan s raju marketing

customer return policies for experience goods this paper studies the economic rationale for customer return policies by focusing on the experience goods aspect of many products return policies allow consumers to defer their purchasing decisions until after they gain some experience with goods in so doing they insure consumers against ex post loss which allows a monopoly seller to charge more than otherwise it is shown that the seller adopts the return policy when consumers are highly risk averse or retail costs are high consumers are strictly better off under the return policy but there is too little adoption of the policy in equilibrium copyright 1996 by blackwell publishing ltd

on functions quality and timeliness of economic information economic decisions confront more uncertainty as they grow in scope and reach further into the future they are likely to do so increasingly in decentralized economies that expand and diversify the economic incentives to reduce uncertainty and improve predictions and decisions give rise to the demand for large amounts of diverse information this is not a new phenomenon of course but it is revealed more clearly than ever in the present era of great advances in informational technology for now the demand is to a large extent visibly satisfied the knowledge industries or services of inquiring comthe uncertainty about economic information increases with the probability of error in the underlying data and their processing and interpretation many errors cannot be promptly detected and eliminated but can be gradually reduced over time as attested by the revisions in economic statistics this paper presents substantial evidence on the accuracy of provisional estimates of quarterly and monthly changes in 18 important variables measures of several aspects of data quality and of average lags of data release and signal detection are provided for a collection of 110 widely used economic indicators these materials help identify the location of the more serious measurement errors by variables and period and they show that informational lags of 5 and more months are frequent this paper is part of the national bureau of economic research program on economic fluctuations it was presented at the first international symposium on forecasting in quebec city on may 27 1981 and at the ifo institute for economics research in munich on september 23 1981 financial support from the national science foundation and the aid of the graduate school of business of the university of chicago and nber are gratefully acknowledged i am indebted to louis lambros for helpful suggestions and efficient research and to john gould and geoffrey moore for useful comments 1 growth in the modem economy is motivated by the desire to accumulate human and physical resources capital in the most general sense and is accomplished by actions that necessarily have long term consequences the decisions to choose these particular courses of action strategies must therefore be based on similarly long expectations which are fallible as the risk is high so is the premium on any knowledge that might help the decision maker

product differentiation and collusion sustainability when collusion is costly a widely debated question in recent years by both strategy theorists and antitrust practitioners is what role product differentiation between firms plays in their ability to sustain a collusive agreement in order to reduce the strength of competition and gain higher profits this paper addresses the following question what happens to the product differentiation collusion sustainability relationship when setting up and maintaining an agreement is costly we show that introducing collusion costs into the discussion has relevant implications indeed sufficiently high collusion costs modify the underlying market structure thus altering the product differentiation collusion sustainability relationship with respect to the case where collusion costs are absent or low in particular if the gains from collusion are increasing decreasing with the degree of product differentiation the relationship between product differentiation and collusion sustainability is always positive negative whereas if the gains from collusion are inverted u shaped the relationship is inverted u shaped too these results stress the importance of considering those markets where the coordination between firms is sufficiently costly as structurally different from those markets where coordination has no costs for firms

deciding when to quit reference dependence over slot machine outcomes abstract we conduct tests for reference dependent loss aversion using slot machine gamblers decisions on when to quit playing for a visit to a casino evidence for a lagged status quo reference po

natural disasters in a two sector model of endogenous growth using an endogenous growth model with physical and human capital accumulation this paper considers the sustainability of economic growth when the use of a polluting input e g fossil fuels intensifies the risk of capital destruction through natural disasters we find that growth is sustainable only if the tax rate on the polluting input increases over time the long term rate of economic growth follows an inverted v shaped curve relative to the growth rate of the environmental tax and it is maximized by the least aggressive tax policy of those that asymptotically eliminate the use of polluting inputs unavailability of insurance can accelerate or decelerate the growth maximizing speed of the tax increase depending on the relative significance of the risk premium and precautionary savings effects welfare is maximized under a milder environmental tax policy especially when the pollutants accumulate gradually

u s interest groups prefer emission trading a new perspective if there is to be environmental regulation what kind of regulation would the main interest groups then prefer this political distortion must be taken into account when designing future environmental regulation such as co2 regulation the three main interest groups in the u s private business environmentalist groups and the electricity sector prefer a grandfathered permit market business is attracted by this solution because free initial distribution of permits both favours existing sources financially and furthermore creates a barrier to entry for new firms environmentalist groups have changed attitudes and promote the idea too as a way of negotiating higher target reduction levels with industry to maintain voluntary contributions from their members finally electric utilities prefer a grandfathered permit market and this step towards less planned economy may be explained by the rise of competition in the u s electricity sector therefore it is suggested that a grandfathered permit market is a more effective policy than a tax in relation to organized interests such as industry electric utilities and environmental organizations in perspective the grandfathered permit market may be mixed with the use of taxes in the case of co2 regulation for example taxes may be applied to badly organized polluters such as households and the transport sector because their lobbying power is weak

delivered pricing and the impact of spatial differentiation on cartel stability abstract this paper analyzes the impact of spatial differentiation on the sustainability of collusion on delivered prices it shows that the choice of the punishment mechanism that enforces collusion is crucial for determining whether differentiation facilitates cartel pricing or not if punishments are optimal then differentiation tends to facilitate collusion optimal punishments impose minmax profits on deviators independently of the degree of differentiation a high degree of differentiation then renders deviations less profitable since it makes business stealing more costly but does not affect the deviator s punishment profits depending on the transport cost technology excessive differentiation may have a countervailing effect however because it also implies high transport costs for the cartel if collusion is sustained by standard grim trigger punishments instead then collusion may be easiest for minimal differentiation the reason is that competitive and thus grim trigger punishment profits are higher the higher the degree of differentiation

using tradable water permits in irrigated agriculture the present paper examines both theoretically and empirically the environmental and economic benefits of introducing a policy to optimally manage groundwater used in irrigated agriculture and the efficiency potential of allowing trading of water permits we confirm the results appearing separately in the literature on optimal resource management and tradable permits that both tradable water permits and non tradable quotas provide the basic mechanism for sustainable water use and yield substantial economic benefits and that allowing trading of water permits improves efficiency in order to derive the above results we develop a discrete time model to realistically describe farmer s myopic behavior while using a continuous time model to describe optimal management we also incorporate into the analysis the economic effect of sea water intrusion in the aquifer and we estimate the cost of water overexploitation under myopic behavior the empirical part of the paper is based on simulations using data from an agricultural region in northern greece the main contribution of the paper is the introduction of heterogeneity in crops production and market characteristics we show that the more diverse are the crops in technology and market prices and the stricter is the water constraint the higher are the benefits from using a tradable water permit system

learning and forgetting modeling optimal product sampling over time firms use samples to increase the sales of almost all consumable goods including food health and cleaning products despite its importance sampling remains one of the most under researched areas there are no theoretical quantitative models of sampling behavior other than the pioneering work of jain et al 1995 who modeled sampling as an important factor in the diffusion of new products in this paper we characterize sampling as having two effects the first is the change in the probability of a consumer purchasing a product immediately after having sampled the product the second is an increase in the consumer s cumulative goodwill formation which results from sampling the product this distinction differentiates our model from other models of goodwill in which firm sales are only a function of the existing goodwill level we determine the optimal dynamic sampling effort of a firm and examine the factors that affect the sampling decision we find that although the sampling effort will decline over a product s life cycle it may continue in mature products another finding is that when we have a positive change in the factors that increase sampling productivity steady state goodwill stock and sales will increase but equilibrium sampling can either increase or decrease the change in the sampling level is indeterminate because while increased sampling productivity means that firms have incentives to increase sampling the increase in the equilibrium goodwill level indirectly reduces the marginal productivity of sampling thus reducing the incentives to sample we discuss managerial implications and how the model can be used to address various circumstances

evolution of subjective hurricane risk perceptions a bayesian approach abstract how do decision makers weight private and official information sources which are correlated and differ in accuracy and bias this paper studies how traders update subjective risk perceptions after receiving expert opinions using a unique data set from a prediction market the hurricane futures market hfm we derive a theoretical bayesian framework which predicts how traders update the probability of a hurricane making landfall in a certain range of coastline after receiving correlated track forecast information from official and unofficial sources our results suggest that traders behave in a way not inconsistent with bayesian updating but this behavior is based on the perceived quality of the information received official information sources are discounted when a perception of bias and credible alternatives exist

toward a more complete model of individual transferable fishing quotas implications of incorporating the processing sector abstract economic analyses of individual transferable quota itq fisheries management traditionally have focused on the harvesting sector however harvester decisions impact the economic performance of co dependent processing firms this paper incorporates both sectors in an analysis of the effect of itqs on commercial fisheries results show that as a consequence of season elongation under a harvester only allocation of fishing rights capital nonmalleability implies that processor quasi rents will be redistributed to harvesters these losses could promote political gridlock and jeopardize adoption of an itq policy unless they are fully compensated or unless redistribution is avoided by a policy superior initial allocation of rights to both harvesters and processors

a model of intertemporal emission trading banking and borrowing abstract this paper provides a general treatment of emission trading banking and borrowing in an intertemporal continuous time model using optimal control theory the decentralized behavior of firms is shown to lead to the least cost solution attainable under joint cost minimization explicit solutions for the time paths of emissions and permit prices are derived when firms are allowed to both bank and borrow and when firms are only allowed to bank emission permits the policy implications of emission banking and borrowing are discussed

greenhouse gas emissions trading among pacific rim countries an analysis of policies to bring developing countries to the bargaining table this paper examines the aggregate net costs and individual country cost savings of greenhouse gas emissions trading among pacific rim countries we propose emission permit allocation rules designed to entice developing countries to participate absence of developing country involvement has served as an excuse for the lack by participation by the united states in the first compliance period of the kyoto protocol and may serve as a disincentive to even more countries in subsequent periods our analysis specifies permit allocation rules that could result in no net costs and even cost savings to developing countries for their involvement in the emissions trading market while at the same time providing extensive benefits to industrialized countries through access to lower cost mitigation alternatives

social value of public information re examined abstract as an extension of hirshleifer s horse race example into a competitive exchange market framework this paper quantitatively re examines the condition under which social value of public information can be positive for a prototype economy of two risk averse traders we prove that their discordance of beliefs makes the social value of a certain class of inconclusive information either positive or negative depending on whether their endowments are or are not predominantly associated with states they regard as more probable whereas it has been known that information acquisition is always socially wasteful under concordant beliefs

why economic dynamics matter in assessing climate change damages illustration on extreme events extreme events are one of the main channels through which climate and socioeconomic systems interact and it is likely that climate change will modify the probability distribution of the losses they generate the long term growth models used in climate change assessments however cannot capture the eects of such shortterm shocks to investigate this issue a non equilibrium dynamic model nedym is used to assess the macroeconomic consequences of extreme events this exercise allowed us to dene the economic amplic ation ratio as the ratio of the overall production loss due to an event to its direct costs this ratio could be used to improve the cost benet analysis of prevention measures we found also that unlike a solow like model nedym exhibits a bifurcation in gdp losses for each value of the capacity to fund reconstruction gdp losses remain moderate if the intensity and frequency of extremes remain under a threshold value beyond which gdp losses increase sharply this bifurcation may partly explain why some poor countries that experience repeated natural disasters cannot develop applied to the specic issue of climate change this model suggests that changes in the distribution of extremes may entail signican t gdp losses in absence of specic adaptation it suggests therefore that to avoid inaccurately low assessments of damages researchers must take into account the distribution of extremes instead of their average cost and make explicit assumptions on the organization of future economies

tacit collusion in differentiated cournot games abstract in a simple oligopoly with quantity setting firms we analyze the conditions under which more product differentiation makes tacit collusion easier it is found that the net effect can go either way

the virtual aquarium commodity fiction and cod fishing abstract this article deals with the commoditization and pricing of environmental goods in particular the practice and social theory of individual transferable quotas itqs in fisheries emphasizing ethnographic material related to the management system introduced in iceland in 1984 icelandic fisheries discourse i argue is increasingly textual and hegemonic dominated by marine scientists resource economists and state officials at the same time the allocation and exchange of quotas are matters of an ongoing moral debate this debate i suggest reflects the politics of independence and equity in icelandic history as well as a deeper concern in western society with the status of money and monetary exchange a concern that has a number of parallels in other parts of the world

designing a climate change policy for the international maritime transport sector market based measures and technological options for global and regional policy actions abstract the international maritime transport sector has a significant abatement potential and some technical improvements that reduce ghg emissions would already be profitable without any policy in place this paper analyses in depth the limits and opportunities of policy options currently under consideration at the international level to stimulate the sector to reduce its ghg emissions in particular in order for the maritime transport sector to become more environmentally friendly the flexible nature of international market based measures and the european union emission trading scheme provide a definite window of opportunity without placing unnecessary high burden on the sector however the development of a regional policy such as at european level for the international maritime transport sector faces several obstacles allocation of emissions carbon leakage permit allocation treatment of the great variety in ship type size and usage and transaction cost global market based policies could overcome most of these challenges this paper provides an in depth analysis of the policy instruments currently under discussion to reduce the sector s burden on the environment and focuses on economic theory legal principles technological options and the political framework that together make up the basis of decision making regarding the international maritime transport sector s climate change policies

the global configuration of a speculative trading operation an empirical study of foreign exchange trading this paper proposes a theory of firm boundaries based on fore knowledge development and exploitation in speculative or informed trading foreign exchange trading provides this study s empirical context from research on information economics we suggest optimal speculative trading operations are multiunit and globally dispersed alternatively transaction cost economics suggests atomistic actors prevail in the market for fungible commodities like currencies we also develop competing hypotheses about information technology s effects on foreign exchange trading operations speculation arguments predict that the global scope of trading operations will expand after the introduction of generic information technologies transaction cost economics proposes that when atomistic actors do not prevail trading operations will contract after this introduction we test competing predictions with models of the expansion contraction and net change in a firm s global dispersion we estimate these models with data from the population of banks worldwide engaged in interbank foreign exchange currency fx trading from 1974 to 1993 our results uncover two types of firms those that approach the atomistic actor of transaction cost economics and those that resemble the globally dispersed multiunit configuration from our speculation discussion these results encourage reflection on how the theory of the firm differs when firms trade to produce versus speculate

what is the value of agricultural economics research the output of agricultural economics research is information much of it aimed at designing or improving institutions bayesian decision theory and economic surplus analysis have been suggested as possible approaches to evaluate that information this article takes a critical look at the strengths and weaknesses of combining those approaches for empirical evaluation of agricultural economics research it presents three case studies utilizing prior and posterior probabilities elicited from key decision makers direct application of the probabilities to a simple set of states and actions is best suited to situations involving a single policy making center or a consensus decision making process most economists feel their work has value but few can say how much economists have made significant contributions to our understanding of the value of technology oriented research but have devoted little attention to assessing the benefits of social science research ssr including agricultural economics research aer as accountability concerns have increased federal and state officials increasingly ask for evidence of research impacts many professional associations in the production sciences have drawn on quantitative estimates provided by economists to bolster their claims that research in their areas is a good investment social sciences make do with anecdotal evidence a nascent literature on evaluating social science research including agricultural economics includes studies by gardner

the tradable permits approach to protecting the commons lessons for climate change tradable permit approaches for rationing access to the commons have been applied to many different types of resources in many different countries this essay reviews the experience with three main applications of tradable permit systems air pollution control water supply and fisheries management as well as some unique related programmes the purpose of the review is to draw together what we have learned about tradable permits in practice that might offer some useful insights for the implementation of the three tradable permit mechanisms that are part of the kyoto protocol copyright 2003 oxford university press

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

quality disclosure and competition we analyze costly quality disclosure with horizontally differentiated products under duopoly and a cartel and characterize the effect of competition on disclosure and welfare we show that expected disclosure is higher under a cartel than under duopoly and the welfare comparison depends on the level of disclosure cost when the disclosure cost is low welfare is higher under a cartel than duopoly but when the disclosure cost is high welfare is higher under duopoly in either market structure disclosure is excessive in terms of total surplus but insufficient in terms of consumer surplus

exclusionary manipulation of markets for pollution rights abstract strategic price manipulation can affect the distribution of transferable pollution rights across polluters and the efficiency of pollution control efforts prior research has concentrated on market manipulation by firms seeking only to minimize the sum of pollution rights costs and pollution abatement costs in this paper we explore the potential for the exclusionary manipulation of pollution permit markets intended to drive up the costs of one s rivals and we distinguish between the resource allocation effects of exclusionary manipulation and cost minimizing manipulation we find that exclusionary manipulation can sometimes worsen and sometimes ameliorate the abatement inefficiency which occurs under cost minimizing manipulation and that an overbuying rule can obviate or at least limit damages from this form of strategic behavior

consumer loss aversion product experimentation and tacit collusion abstract two firms compete to attract loss averse consumers that are uncertain about how well the goods on sale fit their needs to resolve valuation uncertainty firms can allow prospective customers to test experiment their products before purchase we investigate firms dynamic incentives to allow experimentation and analyze the resulting effects on the profitability and the stability of tacit collusion depending on the regulatory regime in place i e whether experimentation is forbidden mandated or simply allowed but not imposed laissez faire the degree of loss aversion has ambiguous effects both on the profits that firms can achieve through tacit collusion and on the stability of these agreements while in static environments consumer welfare is always maximized by a policy that forbids experimentation the opposite happens in a dynamic environment

reconsidering the initial allocation of itqs the search for a pareto safe allocation between fishing and processing sectors advancement of rights based fishing is stymied by industry and congressional concern over distributional issues arising out of traditional itq design this paper examines the existence and policy feasibility of two alternative initial allocations intended to leave the two principal industry participants the fishers and processors no worse off while maximizing efficiency market structure is shown to be a critical consideration not only to avoid unintended wealth redistribution but also to achieve efficiency

natural disasters and macroeconomic performance recent empirical research has shown that output and gdp per capita in the aftermath of natural disasters are not necessarily lower than before the event in many cases both are not significantly affected and surprisingly sometimes they are found to respond positively to natural disasters here we propose a novel economic theory that explains these observations specifically we show that gdp is driven above its pre shock level when natural disasters destroy predominantly durable consumption goods cars furniture etc disasters destroying mainly productive capital in contrast are predicted to reduce gdp insignificant responses of gdp can be expected when disasters destroy both durable goods and productive capital we extend the model by a residential housing sector and show that disasters may also have an insignificant impact on gdp when they destroy residential houses and durable goods we show that disasters irrespective of whether their impact on gdp is positive negative or insignificant entail considerable losses of aggregate welfare

when does a firm disclose product information a firm chooses a price and the product information it discloses to a consumer whose tastes are privately known we provide a necessary and sufficient condition on the match function for full disclosure to be the unique equilibrium outcome whatever the costs and prior beliefs about product and consumer types it allows for products with different qualities as well as some horizontal match heterogeneity with independently distributed product and consumer types full disclosure is always an equilibrium and a necessary and sufficient equilibrium condition is that all firm types earn at least the full disclosure profit

household income strategies and natural disasters dynamic livelihoods in rural nicaragua this paper assesses the impact of hurricane mitch on livelihood strategies of rural households in nicaragua through destruction or distress sales of productive assets a hurricane or another natural hazard could induce people with relatively remunerative livelihoods to choose more defensive strategies which allow them to survive but at a permanently lower welfare level than before using panel data from before and after hurricane mitch we find that livelihood strategies can be grouped into three welfare categories annual farming and farm employment generate low incomes whereas nonfarm wage employment and livestock farming result in relatively high incomes perennial farming nonfarm self employment and annual cropping with nonfarm employment take an intermediate position high welfare strategies were associated with high levels of capital and the number of people involved was very similar between different years suggesting that households following low welfare strategies were trapped in poverty however many households moved actively between strategies of different welfare levels this indicates that there was no absolute poverty threshold but also that being able to initiate a relatively profitable livelihood strategy was no guarantee that this strategy could be maintained there is no evidence that hurricane mitch affected livelihood strategy transitions livelihood mobility was similar for households inside and outside mitch affected areas

marketable permits market power and cheating abstract in this paper we present a model of a noncompliant firm operating in a marketable pollution permit market in the main result of the paper we show how compliance is related to the initial distribution of permits a firm with market power will cheat less the larger its endowment of permits is from a fixed stock of permits the competitive fringe however will cheat more as its endowment of permits is reduced generating an ambiguous global impact on cheating

on the sustainability of collusion in differentiated duopolies abstract we consider a rule designed to maintain collusion in a duopoly made up of firms producing differentiated products we analyse both price setting and quantity setting models and show that product differentiation plays a crucial role in determining the effectiveness of this rule our results contrast with those obtained by earlier writers

evolutionary modelling of the macro economic impacts of catastrophic flood events this paper examines the possible contribution of evolutionary economics to macro economic modelling of flood impacts to provide guidance for future economic risk modelling most macro economic models start from a neoclassical economic perspective and focus on equilibrium outcomes either in a static or dynamic way and describe economic processes at a high level of aggregation as a consequence they typically fail to account for the complexity of social interactions and other behavioural responses of consumers and producers to disasters which may affect the macroeconomic impacts of floods employing evolutionary principles and methods such as agent based modelling may help to address some of the shortcomings of current macro economic models we explore and discuss the implications of applying consumer and producer heterogeneity bounded rationality network effects social and technological learning co evolution and adaptive policy making concepts into existing economic frameworks for the assessment of macro economic impacts of floods authors abstract

market power and transferable property rights the appeal of using markets as a means of allocating scarce resources stems in large part from the assumption that a market will approximate the competitive ideal when competition is not a foregone conclusion the question naturally arises as to how a firm might manipulate the market to its own advantage this paper analyzes the issue of market power in the context of markets for transferable property rights first a model is developed that explains how a single firm with market power might exercise its influence this is followed by an examination of the model in the context of a particular policy problem the control of particulate sulfates in the los angeles region

can natural disasters have positive consequences investigating the role of embodied technical change it has been suggested that disasters might have positive economic consequences through the accelerated replacement of capital this possibility is referred to as the productivity effect this effect is investigated using a model with embodied technical change in this framework disasters can influence the production level but cannot influence the growth rate in the same way than the saving ratio in a solow like model depending on reconstruction quality indeed accounting for embodied technical change can either decrease or increase disaster costs but is never able to turn disasters into positive events moreover a better but slower reconstruction amplifies the short term consequences of disasters but pays off over the long term regardless the productivity effect cannot prevent the existence of a bifurcation when disaster damages exceed the reconstruction capacity potentially leading to poverty traps c 2008 elsevier b v all rights reserved

differential environmental regulation effects on electric utility capital turnover and emissions this paper tests the hypothesis that differential regulations reduced the rate of capital turnover in the electric utility industry resulting in increased emissions of sulfur dioxide based on a sample of forty four privately owned electric utilities operating over the period 1969 83 the authors results indicate that 1 regulation increased the age of capital by an average of 3 29 years 24 6 percent 2 increases in the age of capital have no statistically significant impact on emissions and 3 in the absence of regulation emissions would have increased by 3 79 tons per million kwhs 34 6 percent copyright 1993 by mit press

impact of cap and trade policies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions on u s households abstract proposals being considered by the u s congress would establish a cap and trade system to cut greenhouse gas ghg emissions approximately 2 annually through 2050 past cap and trade policies for other pollutants have distributed allowances free to the regulated companies leaving consumers uncompensated for passed through costs needed to achieve the required reductions social equity concerns were not a major issue because the total costs were relatively small however americans currently spend about 1 trillion year on energy directly and indirectly via the goods and services they consume if a cap on carbon emissions results in significant increases in energy prices social equity concerns could quickly dominate the debate over climate policy this paper confirms earlier studies that a traditional cap and trade policy is regressive and would cause the cost of reducing ghg emissions to fall disproportionately on low income households this paper explores ways to ameliorate those effects using highly disaggregated data available on consumer expenditures and energy input output analyses of the u s economy emissions are estimated based on direct and embodied energy use at the household level social equity concerns are taken into account and the consequences of cap and trade policies are assessed by quantifying the extent to which the expenditure patterns of the poor are significantly more energy intensive than those of the rich

optimal design of a phase in emissions trading program abstract this paper studies a phase in emissions trading program with voluntary opt in possibilities for non affected firms and derives optimal permits allocations to affected and opt in firms when the environmental regulator has incomplete information on individual unrestricted emissions and control costs the regulator faces a trade off between production efficiency minimization of control costs and information rent extraction reduction of excess permits allocated to opt in firms the first best equilibrium can be attained if the regulator can freely allocate permits to affected and opt in firms otherwise a second best equilibrium is implemented the latter is sensitive to uncertainty in control costs and benefits

long run implications of investment specific technological change an attempt is made to disentangle its effects from the more traditional hicksneutral form of technological progress the balanced growth path for the model is characterized and calibrated to u s national income and product account nipa data the quantitative analysis suggests that investment specific technological change accounts for the major part of growth jel e13 030 041 047

using taxes to deter illegal fishing in itq systems we study the effects of different tax schemes used in fisheries management in combination with an individual transferable quota system we focus on the effects of taxes on equilibrium quota prices and on violations under the assumption that enforcement to induce compliance is imperfect and costly the use of taxes is motivated by the regulator s need to recover costs for enforcement activities we propose the use of a tax on the price of the processed products based on its impact on violations and the information that is required to implement it we also show that this tax has a double pay off for enforcement because it reduces the demand for illegal fishing and increases revenue for enforcement activities without producing a deadweight loss in the quota market we present an application of our model to the case of the red shrimp fishery in chile in our simulation example a tax of 7 on the price of fish exports could sufficiently reduce harvest demand and generate enough funding to completely eliminate quota violations which in the absence of taxes can be more than 100 of the total allowable catch at the same time this tax could increase the equilibrium quota price by 19

economic instruments for environmental regulation our knowledge about economic incentive approaches to pollution control has grown rapidly in the two decades in which they have received serious analytical attention not only have the theoretical models become more focused and the empirical work more detailed but we have now had over a decade of experience with emissions trading in the u s and emission charges in europe as the world community becomes increasingly conscious of both the need to tighten environmental controls and the local economic perils associated with tighter controls in a highly competitive global marketplace it seems a propitious time to stand back and to organize what we have learned about this practical and promising approach to pollution control that may be especially relevant to current circumstances this paper draws upon economic theory empirical studies and actual experience with implementation to provide a brief overview of some of the major lessons we have learned about two economic incentive approaches emissions tradi copyright 1990 by oxford university press

naturally negative the growth effects of natural disasters abstract growth theory predicts that natural disasters should on impact lower gdp per capita however the empirical literature does not offer conclusive evidence most existing studies use disaster data drawn from damage records of insurance companies we argue that this may lead to estimation bias as damage data and the selection into the database may correlate with gdp we build a comprehensive database of disaster events and their intensities from primary geophysical and meteorological information in contrast to insurance data our geomet data reveal a substantial negative and robust average impact effect of disasters on growth the worst 5 disaster years come with a growth damage of at least 0 46 percentage points that average effect is driven mainly by very large earthquakes and some meteorological disasters poor countries are more strongly affected by geophysical disasters rich more by meteorological events international openness and democratic institutions reduce the adverse effect of disasters

comparative advertising disclosing horizontal match information improved consumer information about horizontal aspects of products of similar quality leads to better consumer matching but also to higher prices so consumer surplus can go up or down while profits rise with enough quality asymmetry though the higher quality and hence larger firm s price falls with more information so both effects benefit consumers this occurs when comparative advertising is used against a large firm by a small one comparative advertising as it imparts more information therefore helps consumers although it also improves the profitability of the small firm overall welfare goes down because of the large loss to the attacked firm

consumer choice between hedonic and utilitarian goods abstract in this article the authors examine how consumer choice between hedonic and utilitarian goods is influenced by the nature of the decision task building on research on elaboration the authors propose that the relative salience of hedonic dimensions is greater when consumers decide which of several items to give up forfeiture choices than when they decide which item to acquire acquisition choices the resulting hypothesis that a hedonic item is relatively preferred over the same utilitarian item in forfeiture choices than in acquisition choices was supported in two choice experiments in a subsequent experiment these findings were extended to hypothetical choices in which the acquisition and forfeiture conditions were created by manipulating initial attribute level reference states instead of ownership finally consistent with the experimental findings a field survey showed that relative to market prices owners of relatively hedonic cars value their vehicles more than do owners of relat

young workers and quit behaviour a model is set up to explain the quit behaviour of new entrants to the labour market it uses an incentive opportunity approach to integrate existing relevant arguments from search and information theory and human capital analysis it also provides for impetuous quits the model is tested by an examination of a disaggregated data set concerning a single cohort of 16 year old school leavers in the first year after gaining full time work the theory received strong support for example in the main model seven out of the ten coefficients were highly significant interestingly even in a time of deepening recession the existence of the job shopper seemed to be apparent

tradeable permits for pollution control when emission location matters what have we learned our knowledge about tradeable permit approaches to pollution control has grown rapidly in the two decades in which they have received serious analytical attention not only have the theoretical models become more focused and the empirical work more detailed but we have now had over a decade of experience with them in the u s this article draws upon economic theory empirical studies and actual experience with implementation to summarize what we have learned about applying tradeable permits to air pollution control in the special circumstance where the spatial aspects of the problem are a prime consideration

reference dependent risk attitudes we use koszegi and rabin s 2006 model of reference dependent utility and an extension of it that applies to decisions with delayed consequences to study preferences over monetary risk because our theory equates the reference point with recent probabilistic beliefs about outcomes it predicts specific ways in which the environment influences attitudes toward modest scale risk it replicates classical prospect theory including the prediction of distaste for insuring losses when exposure to risk is a surprise but implies first order risk aversion when a risk and the possibility of insuring it are anticipated a prior expectation to take on risk decreases aversion to both the anticipated and additional risk for large scale risk the model allows for standard consumption utility to dominate reference dependent gain loss utility generating nearly identical risk aversion across situations

the effects of product differentiation on collusive pricing abstract using the spatial competition framework of hotelling 1929 this paper explores the relationship between the degree of product differentiation and the ability of firms to collude with respect to price we show that the minimum discount factor required to support the joint profit maximum as an equilibrium outcome monotonically increases as products become better substitutes when the joint profit maximum cannot be supported the optimal collusive price is shown to decline as products become more substitutable these findings suggest that firms producing stronger substitutes tend to find it tougher to collude in terms of their product price

cartel stability and product differentiation abstract this paper employs a supergame theoretic model of collusion to analyze the effects of different levels of product differentiation on cartel stability in contrast to earlier work the ability of the parties to reach an agreement is assumed here the focus is on how greater product homogeneity increases both the gain to cheating on a collusive agreement and the magnitude of the punishments that follow a defection the total effect on the likelihood a cartel is stable is therefore unclear two particular differentiated products models are then used to demonstrate that contrary to the conventional view greater homogeneity can reduce cartel stability