declining values and the afternoon effect evidence from art auctions we study the order of sale in art auctions the final bid relative to the auctioneer s estimated price declines throughout the course of an auction a theoretical model shows that in an auction ordered by declining valuation even in the presence of risk neutral strategic bidders the price received relative to the estimate for later items in an auction should be less than the price relative to the estimate for earlier items furthermore ordering heterogeneous items by value maximizes revenue for the auctioneer

the transition to market economies in an endogenous growth model with altruistic agents this paper considers an endogenous transition from a self sufficient traditional economy to a market economy and its consequences on fertility and growth the transition can occur if private intergenerational transfers are unable to secure old age consumption as adequately as savings on capital markets otherwise individuals stay in the traditional economy unless the mass production technology in the market economy is sufficiently more advanced than individually accessible technologies markets emerge only if per capita output exceeds a certain level given a fixed cost of forming markets the transition reduces fertility and promotes growth under plausible restrictions jel classification e20 j13 o10

sense and surprise in competitive trade theory 2010 weai presidential address i introduction the competitive theory of international trade is well known for its abundance of paradoxes perhaps the most widely known is the leontief paradox associated with the rather startling results presented by leontief 1953 that the trade pattern of the united states suggested that its export sectors were more labor intensive than factor proportions found in its import competing sectors this result stimulated decades of research but is not the focus of the present paper other so called paradoxes include the metzler 1949 result wherein a country levying a tariff on an imported item may end up with a lowering of its domestic price that is a tariff may not be protective 1 lerner 1936 who earlier hinted at the metzler outcome emphasized the possibility that a tariff might instead worsen a country s terms of trade which is at the opposite extreme to the metzler result both of these paradoxes are attributed to possible income effects in demand more recently income effects stemming from asymmetry in demand patterns among countries were shown to open the door to paradoxical results if one country makes a transfer to another in a world in which other countries are also engaged in trade in the same commodities the surprising results the giver in the transfer might end up better off i e it may pay to give rather than to receive and or the recipient of the transfer may end up worse off 2 finally a classic result that does not depend on asymmetries in taste patterns but rather upon the degree of elasticity in demand and the nature of growth is the question of whether a country that unequivocally grows transformation schedule shifts out can be made worse off as a consequence of growth the so called immiserizing growth paradox 3 this is an issue familiar to particular sectors of the economy for example agriculture can a good harvest yield lower returns because of the subsequent price fall instead of revisiting these familiar paradoxes here i wish to concentrate on the production side of competitive models used in international trade and to focus on the question involving ways of judging economic models clearly the question of realism often comes up whether it is in terms of assumptions made or of outcomes expected here i suggest a different criterion does the model conform in many ways to common sense that is would one be tempted to suggest that the model is not necessary because common sense would lead to the same results and if it does do the outcomes in certain scenarios seem to be paradoxical or surprising if so can the model reveal in simple terms why these somewhat surprising results make sense 4 i shall restrict myself to a pair of basic models of production used in competitive trade theory the specific factors model on the one hand and the heckscher ohlin model on the other i shall argue that in many ways both conform to common sense but in addition provide the very tools that expose the underlying rationale for surprise ii a preliminary question consider any economy that is characterized by competitive markets and constant returns to scale technology suppose for such an economy there is an increase in the factor endowment bundle to fix on an example suppose there is an increase in the economy s labor force the very general question i wish to ask is how does such an economy absorb this increased endowment to maintain full employment of all factors note that if this economy is not engaged in international trade there will likely result a change in commodity prices as they adjust in order to equilibrate local supply and demand given the points i wish to make later let me assume that the country is engaged in free trade with the rest of the world if this economy were particularly small world prices could be taken as given even if world prices are disturbed it is legitimate to ask how the economy absorbs the extra supplies before any change in commodity prices takes place

measuring returns on investments in collectibles this paper considers the question of how to measure and interpret the financial return to investing in collectibles we review various methodologies for creating priced indexes and then discuss studies that explicitly calculate a rate of return to some set of collectibles while most collectibles appear to yield positive real returns the majority embody more risk and yield lower financial returns than stocks other characteristics of collectibles prices such as covariance with other asset prices are also examined

the optimal level of social security benefits the optimal level of social security benefits depends on balancing the protection that these benefits offer to those who lack the foresight to provide for their own old age against the welfare costs of distorting economic behavior the primary such cost is the distortion in private saving the present paper derives the level of social security benefits that is optimal in three basic cases in the first section the paper derives the optimal level of benefits for an economy in which all individuals do not anticipate retirement at all and therefore do no saving the second and third sections then derive optimal benefits for two different definitions of incomplete myopia

combining buy in penalties with commissions at auction houses most auction sellers consign property to auction houses rather than holding the auction themselves in addition to charging sellers a commission on property that sells in the auction many auction houses also specify buy in penalties in auction contracts this is an amount the seller must pay the auction house if the property fails to sell at auction an important managerial question for auction houses is whether and when buy in penalties can increase revenues of the auction house seller or both and what combinations of commission and buy in penalty to use we show that auctions which combine buy in penalties with lower commissions pareto dominate auctions that use only commissions this strategy motivates the seller to set a lower reserve which creates a surplus in auction revenues that can go to one or both parties this strategy is pareto dominant even if the auction house and the seller are uncertain about the number of bidders at the auction or the auction house is uncertain about the seller s own valuation for the property at the time the buy in penalty commission and reserve are contractually set we also discuss the incentive issues raised by this strategy

fdi and business internationalization of the unorganized sector evidence from indian manufacturing available evidence though limited to the organized sector only suggests that fdi flowing in with mne activities or direct fiis generate technological and market access spillovers for firms outside the core group in destination countries we investigate the organizational link between formal and informal sectors in india and argue that the spread of internationalization is more when production outsourcing prevails between such units higher wage in the organized sector is a factor that breaks standard institutional barriers leading to outsourcing of production to informal units the evidence is puzzling to the extent that foreign capital and better know how as drivers of international business to developing countries usually relax the credit constraint facing formal sector units at the destination and cause expansion of formal units using a measure of technology and a panel data for a large number of industrial units in india we show that fdi transmitted through technology spillover leads to significant increase in the gross value added for several industries located in the informal sector the paper points out that production re organization associated with international capital movements should provide additional insights for standard measures of internationalization of production and services

socially optimal social security and education subsidization in a dynastic model with human capital externalities fertility and endogenous growth abstract this paper considers socially optimal government policies in a dynastic family model with physical capital human capital endogenous fertility and positive spillovers from average human capital such spillovers reduce human capital investment but raise fertility from their social optimum we first characterize the social optimum with a non convex feasible set due to the quantity quality tradeoff concerning children we then show that social security and education subsidization together financed by labor income taxes can fully eliminate the efficiency losses of the spillovers and achieve the social optimum under plausible conditions however none of the policies can do so alone

the effects of social security on population and output growth in this paper we have considered two unfunded social security programs under the conventional system benefits are related to aggregate fertility under the hypothetical fertility related system benefits are directly linked to individual fertility the effects on fertility and per capita growth rates of the two social security systems are examined in the context of endogenous growth the relative merits of the two systems for developing and developed countries are considered the authors conclude that the conventional social security system existing in many developed nations may be desirable to developing countries in reducing population and promoting economic growth on the other hand the hypothetical fertility related system may be useful to developed countries as far as increasing fertility is concerned

estimating house price indexes in the presence of seller reservation prices we analyze a bias in transaction based price indexes due to the presence of seller reservation prices we develop a model in which the ratio of sellers reservation prices to the market value affects trading volume and biases of observed transaction prices when trading volume decreases increases index returns are estimated with an upward downward bias we propose a new econometric procedure to mitigate the bias and use simulations to demonstrate the effectiveness of the procedure we construct a reserve conditional unbiased index for the los angeles housing market which substantially differs from a traditional repeat sale index

one swallow doesn t make a summer new evidence on anchoring effects some researchers have argued that anchoring in economic valuations casts doubt on the assumption of consistent and stable preferences we present new evidence that explores the strength of certain anchoring results we then present a theoretical framework that provides insights into why we should be cautious of initial empirical findings in general the model importantly highlights that the rate of false positives depends not only on the observed significance level but also on statistical power research priors and the number of scholars exploring the question importantly a few independent replications dramatically increase the chances that the original finding is true

ex post the investment performance of collectible stamps this paper uses stamp catalogue prices to investigate the returns on british collectible postage stamps over the period 1900 2008 we find an annualized return on stamps of 7 0 in nominal terms or 2 9 in real terms these returns are higher than those on bonds but below those on equities the volatility of stamp prices approaches that of equities stamp returns are impacted by movements in the equity market but the systematic risk of stamps remains low stamps partially hedge against unanticipated inflation estimates of average after cost returns for individual investors show that stamps may rival equities in terms of realized performance

factor bias and technical progress abstract the role of factor bias in technical progress has been a bone of contention between labor economists and international trade theorists by considering progress that results in finite changes in techniques these two views can be reconciled for example labor saving technical progress can result in lowered real wages even if it is concentrated in the more labor intensive of two commodities initially produced

productivity capital and labor in labor managed and conventional firms an investigation on french data using two new data sets from france the authors present the first study of the comparative productivity of labor managed and conventional firms involving large representative samples of firms in a

social security in a non altruistic model with uncertainty and endogenous fertility abstract the effect of social security on fertility and saving is analyzed within a nonaltruistic model of intergenerational transfers both in the absence and in the presence of a perfect capital market fertility is reduced by a budget balanced increase in social security if the individuals have a high degree of risk aversion savings are unambiguously increased by an expansion of social security while the effect of a deficit financed expansion of the social security system on saving and fertility depends on the characteristics of the policy package considered

the problem of population and growth a review of the literature from malthus to contemporary models of endogenous population and endogenous growth abstract this paper deals with the evolution of the literature on the problem of population and growth from the classical period to the recent literature on endogenous growth and development the problem concerns two distinct issues 1 how to explain the observed covariation of the levels and rates of growth of per capita income and population size over time and space and 2 how to improve the human condition represented by these variables through an accommodating social policy the evolution of the literature we survey is reflected by the progressive treatment of key variables as endogenous rather than exogenous to the growth process it is also reflected by a shift from the historical concern about population explosion and its implications for growth to the more recent concern about the association between growth and population implosion in many developed countries

long run implications of social security taxation for growth and fertility this paper compares long run implications for growth and fertility of four types of taxation for social security with positive bequests a tax rise under lump sum taxation enhances growth but lowers fertility while other types of taxation do so under additional restrictions a tax rise under consumption taxation is less likely to stimulate growth and to reduce fertility than under payroll taxation arise in an interest income tax raises fertility reduces both savings and human capital investment and hence is harmful for growth the case with zero bequests is also discussed

optimal taxation critical level utilitarianism and economic growth abstract we analyze tax policies in an intertemporal economy with endogenous fertility under critical level utilitarianism both from a positive and a normative standpoint on the positive side we analyze the effects of a change in the tax on capital income and on fertility both separately and combined so as to keep the per capita public debt constant on the normative side we characterize the first and second best optimal tax structures for both exogenous and endogenous labor supply

social security the family and economic growth we show that a defined benefits payg social security system distorts key family based choices that affect economic growth we identify human capital as the engine of growth and the motivating forces linking the family s overlapping generations as mutually productive intergenerational transfers and or altruism the payg system is shown to affect adversely at least one of three determinants of the economy s growth path fertility savings and investment in human capital the specific effects may vary over different stages of economic development the growth rate is expected to fall in advanced economies our analysis indicates that the effect may be sizeable jel 915 111 850

auctions and the price of art the value of most important works of art is established by public auction either directly by an actual sale or indirectly by reference to other sales how the auction system works is thus a critical determinant of how the public s preferences are translated into the evaluation of artistic work the auction system is central in the determination of the incentives for artistic work and the efficiency of the auction system is a key determinant of the cost of creating and distributing works of art this paper contains a review of the burgeoning new research of the last decade that has been designed to shed light on how the art auction system actually works what it indicates about price formation and how well it performs we begin our discussion in section 2 with a short description of the mechanics of the auction system and then organize the remainder of our discussion around two major topics the first topic concerns how auction prices can be used to determine and compare overall price movements within the art market and other markets and the second topic concerns how the auction mechanism influences prices we

vested interest and biased price estimates evidence from an auction market this study employs a new data set from art auctions to examine the relationship between auctioneer presale price estimates and the long term performance of artworks we find that the price estimates for expensive paintings have a consistent upward bias over a long period of 30 years high estimates at the time of purchase are associated with adverse subsequent abnormal returns moreover the estimation error for individual paintings tends to persist over time these results are consistent with the view that auction house price estimates are affected by agency problems and that

jointly determined saving and fertility behaviour theory and estimates for germany italy uk and usa abstract the comparative statics predictions of models of the joint determination of household saving and fertility are derived under various hypotheses self interest altruism of parents towards children altruism of children towards parents etc and compared with those of models which determine saving under the assumption of exogenous fertility country specific saving and fertility equations are then estimated using time series data for germany italy uk and usa for each of the countries considered the estimates are consistent with the hypothesis that saving and fertility are jointly determined by self interested parents and reject the alternative hypotheses the data also show that a self financing expansion of social security discourages fertility and generally raises household saving

technology differences in empirical studies of international trade we show that the specification of technology differences in recent empirical studies of trade is not supported by basic growth theory and may lead to biased estimates of the pattern of specialization and trade

anchoring effects evidence from art auctions in order to separate anchoring where an irrelevant message has an effect on the outcome from rational learning where past prices are not irrelevant because they may be used to estimate unobservable quality we use the following strategy we first develop a hedonic prediction of price for both the current sale e g the 2006 sale and the previous sale these hedonic predic tions are based on observable characteristics of each painting and an index of overall prices we then regress actual sale price on our hedonic prediction on the difference between the actual price in the previous sale and our hedonic prediction this expression tests for anchoring and on the difference between the actual price in the previous sale and our hedonic prediction of price in the previous sale this expression controls for unobservable characteristics the test for anchor ing is the extent to which the actual price in the previous sale affects the current sale price we can identify anchoring from other effects because the demand for art which is captured by the average overall price index changes over time whereas the unobservable component of qual ity is assumed to remain constant between auctions this allows us to control for unobserved quality characteristics as long as something drastic has not happened between sales such as a painting has been deemed a fake which is a very rare occurrence the assumption of constant quality is a realistic one

trade in goods and trade in tasks an integrating framework abstract we introduce a simple but flexible analytical framework in which both trade in goods and trade in tasks arise we use this framework to provide versions of the gains from trade and the famous four ho theorems heckscher ohlin factor price equalisation stolper samuelson and rybczynski that apply to this environment we extend our framework to accommodate monopolistic competition and two way offshoring and to integrate theoretical results of the early offshoring literature

the old age security hypothesis revisited abstract children s altruism toward parents is allowed in a two overlapping generations model with endogenous fertility parents raise children because when retired they expect gifts from their children who are essentially a capital good individuals behavior between generations is examined by analyzing a nash equilibrium which is then compared with a social planner s optimal allocation the pay as you go public pension program is viewed as the optimal gifts from the optimal allocation when the latter is implemented the effect on fertility of the introduction of a capital market is also analyzed the validity of the old age security hypothesis is shown to depend on the parameters of utility and cost functions

optimal intergenerational redistribution in a two country model with endogenous fertility we analyze a model with two countries that are linked by anintegrated capital market fertility and thus population growth isendogenously determined by households our analysis proceeds inthree steps first we characterize an optimal intertemporal andinterregional allocation in a model with endogenous fertility andtwo countries second we look for an institution supporting theoptimal allocation it turns out that in general a decentralizedequilibrium is inefficient national public pension systems withbenefits that are related to the number of children implements theoptimal allocation this provides a justification for governmentinterventions beyond its role as a night watchman third weanalyze whether national governments have the right incentives toimplement the optimal system it turns out that every nationalgovernment has an incentive to deviate from the optimal structureand to shift part of the burden to the other country policyimplications for the institutional arrangements within the europeanunion are discussed

social security and endogenous growth abstract this paper examines the effects of social security on the steady state growth of per capita income in an endogenous growth model in which agents care about their own consumption the number of children and the welfare of each child it shows that an unfunded program may simulate growth by reducing fertility and increasing the ratio of human capital investment per child to per family income when bequests are positive also it may cause faster growth than funded programs especially when receipts from funded programs are independent of contributions when voluntary saving is positive funded social security is neutral if receipts are linked to contributions and most likely depresses growth if receipts are independent of contributions

endogenous fertility and the old age security hypothesis a note abstract many of the results in nishimura and zhang 1992 and in zhang and nishimura 1993 are incorrect since the authors assume interior solutions to many of the utility maximization problems when corner solutions yield higher utility this note proves inter alia that fertility and saving cannot both be positive in the optimal steady state

pay as you go public pensions with endogenous fertility abstract veall s 1986 model of public pensions is generalized to allow for endogenous fertility we show that gifts to the old which can be viewed as social security contributions are always positive in the steady state an optimal stationary allocation is sustainable if savings are zero and fertility is exogenous however the optimal allocation is in general not sustainable in particular if a government enforces a social security plan setting the pension level at the optimal gifts and individuals optimize under the pension constraint the resulting sustainable outcome is in general different from either the optimal or nash outcome

public pensions as optimal social contracts abstract a simple overlapping generations model is modified to allow for an externality experienced by the young from consumption by the elderly this sets up a game between generations in which one generation s strategy may be to save too little and rely on gifts from the young e g public assistance for retirement income social security can therefore be viewed as a pareto optimal contract to restore efficient intertemporal allocation a funded public pension plan corresponds to forced saving but is vulnerable in that the next young generation may stop contributing rely on its children for retirement assistance and meanwhile reap the consumption externality from the current elderly s social security benefits this suggests a forced giving or pay as you go type of compulsory pension plan such as exists in most nations which also has the advantage of aiding the initial old generation and therefore generating an immediate consumption externality for the initial young the approach can also be used to explain other aspects of existing social security

the impact of reference price effects on the profitability of price promotions this paper investigates the impact of reference price effects on retailer price promotions and describes why these effects can make promoting profitable first we analyze the profit impact of reference price effects generated by a single period of promotion the promotion can increase profit if the gain that these effects create in the promotion period outweighs the loss they create in future periods we then describe how retailers can estimate the optimal strategy of recurring promotions that maximizes profits from reference price effects over a time horizon examples of such strategies are presented for a retailer selling a national brand of peanut butter we obtain insights into how promotion prices timing and profits are affected by changes in costs interest rates consumers reactions to reference price effects and error in estimates used in the model the retailer s optimal reaction to a trade deal is also examined this strategy involves a phase of increased promotion activity sandwiched between phases of decreased activity we explain these results using the effects described in the single period model

explaining pay as you go financed public pension systems abstract the existence of pay as you go payg financed public pension plans is usually explained by median voter models or by strategic non saving behavior by young generations here it is claimed that both types of models are neither sufficient nor necessary for explaining payg systems

social security and savings plans in overlapping generations models abstract this paper examines the impact of social security and saving plans on a simple overlapping generations model with no uncertainty the model is related to and provides a reconciliation of the diamond and samuelson gale models of public debt and public capital savings plans and pay as you go social security are seen to have quite different effects depending on the assumptions governing the growth rates of public debt and capital and it is also shown that the social security program proposed by feldstein is infeasible in the steady state he adopts as a starting point

social security as trade among living generations we model u s social security that is legislated endogeneously by living generations specifically we consider the effects of social security on resource allocation and pareto optimality examining which generations gain from social security and whether some generations lose because saving and transfer decisions are made sequentially in the real world we use an infinite horizon overlapping generations framework in which life cycle saving and transfers to the old are determined by living agents we focus on the case in which agents are altruistic but place sufficiently greater weight on own comsumption than on the consumption of agents in other generations so that starting from a steady state without social security living agents would gain utility if consumption were shifted marginally to them from later generations excerpt

government debt in an overlapping generations model with bequests and gifts in 1974 robert barro argued that if individuals in successive generations were linked by bequests changes in the stock of government debt or in social security programs would have no effect on the steady state capital stock barro assumed that individuals held static expectations and that the size of the population was constant martin feldstein 1974 1977 had concluded that social security would reduce the capital labor ratio in models that did not admit a bequest motive and in his 1976 comment on barro argued that the introduction of government debt or social security into a perfect foresight dynamic growth model with bequests would still reduce the capital labor ratio barro replied that feldstein s criticisms were invalid if the steady state capital labor ratio were smaller than the golden rule level but would be correct if the opposite were true barro did suggest however that the latter possibility with overaccumulation of capital might be ruled out in his model as it was in miguel sidrauski 1967 but he was unable to demonstrate that the required behavior would be consistent with utility maximization by finite lived individuals 1976 p 345 although recent work by willem buiter 1979 jeffrey carmichael 1979 1982 truman bewley 1981 a b and others has helped to elucidate the nature of overlapping generations models with bequests and gifts and the issues in the barro feldstein debate they remain far from clear the purpose of this paper is to shed a little more light on the subject in what follows i contend that some of the authors cited above either have specified the individual s optimization problem in an asymmetric way or have failed to impose necessary conditions for a sensible optimization problem or both there is a natural specification of the barro model 1 that emphasizes the similarity between this model and optimal growth models see for example david cass 1965 peter diamond 1973 here in steady state equilibrium the aftertax interest rate r must equal the rate at which individuals discount the utility of their heirs p r p has become known as the modified golden rule and a meaningful individual optimization problem requires that p exceed n the natural growth rate of the economy my results confirm barro s hunch about his model in a barro model r must exceed n much of the barro feldstein 1976 interchange which assumed that r could have any relation to n is wrong headed barro and feldstein reach different conclusions about the effects of government debt and social security because they assume different individual utility functions also my results contrast sharply with those of buiter and carmichael for example carmichael concluded that with intergenerational transfers from parents to children bequests r must exceed n but with transfers in the opposite direction n must exceed r 1982 pp 205 06 indeed i believe that the buiter carmichael representation of the barro model is logically faulty see section ii in section i i outline an overlapping generations model with gifts and bequests and derive its steady state properties in the next section i discuss the shortand long run effects of introducing government debt into the model and contrast my results with those

the estimation of quality adjusted rates of return in stamp auctions the stamp auction market exemplifies markets in which a dominant feature is the quality variation in the traded assets the observed price changes are a mixture of the true price change and the quality variation this paper applies the time series signal extraction method to obtain estimates of quality adjusted rates of return and qualityadjusted price indexes for stamp auction price series the method is applicable to other areas in which there is quality variation or in which values are observed with error some features of stamps as an investment are also examined empirical research in finance during the last 20 years has greatly increased our understanding of risk and returns for members of the important class of capital assets that are regularly and frequently traded on organized exchanges this class includes assets such as stocks bonds bills commodity futures and currencies however for assets not so traded such as urban and agricultural land houses paintings and other consumer durables our knowledge is comparatively meager in part this difference in knowledge is due to the amount of data that are available price and quantity data that are available for infrequently traded assets are not easily analyzed by standard or well known techniques because repeated observations of prices over time are not generally available for the same asset or a perfect substitute for it the best that can usually be done is to construct a series from any similar items that happen to come to market during the period the price changes that are observed will be a mixture of the true price change and the effect of quality variation the purpose of this paper is to estimate quality adjusted rates of return in the stamp auction market in which quality variation among the items offered for sale is a dominant feature the need to quality adjust return data is particularly important for nonfinancial assets however it is also of use in financial return series which may be observed with error for example weinstein 27 who examined returns on newly issued corporate bonds was forced to use returns on portfolios of bonds with the same ratings because new bond issues are not available each period from a given corporation the changing membership of the

the estimation of quality adjusted auction returns with varying transaction intervals previous research has separately addressed the problem of estimating risk in the presence of infrequent trading and the problem of estimating quality adjusted returns in markets with quality variation in the observed price series this paper simultaneously addresses both problems by applying a signal extraction method for unequally spaced data to decompose the observed price series with varying times between transactions into a quality adjusted permanent component which would be observable in the absence of quality variation plus a stationary transitory quality variation component stamp auction transaction prices provide an application auction quality grading is treated in a manner analogous to bond ratings almost all of the observed variance is attributed to the auction quality variation the observed auction returns and stock index returns are not well related

social security intergenerational transfers and endogenous growth in this paper the effects of social security in a simple model of endogenous growth with alternative motives of having children are analyzed it shows how the effects of social security depend on the size of the social security tax the motive to have children and the pattern of intergenerational transfers the pattern of intergenerational transfers itself however is shown to change with the social security tax rate when the social security tax is not too high social security increases per capita income growth and tends to enhance welfare

public pensions with endogenous fertility comment on nishimura and zhang abstract the analysis in nishimura and zhang journal of public economics 1992 48 239 258 n z relies on an unstated assumption that either individuals are able to coordinate their fertility decisions or individual pensions are conditional on individual fertility the present note criticizes this assumption and shows what happens if it is dropped introducing a social security system with a rate of tax equal to the socially optimal transfer from the young to the old will have no effect on fertility but will raise lifetime consumption and welfare rather than reduce fertility and raise transfers as n z predict the implications of reversing the direction of altruism from parents to children rather than children to parents as in n z or doing away with altruism altogether are also discussed

asymmetric participation in china s stamp market hobbyists and investors china s stamp market has expanded rapidly in the last two decades stamp trading has become very profitable both hobbyists and investors are more interested in newly released stamps this study shows that the value of newly issued stamps appreciates faster than the value of older issued stamps this effect is caused by the asymmetric participation in stamp collection between hobbyists and investors