efficiency in the nfl betting market modifying and consolidating research methods modifying and consolidating previous research methods to generate more reliable estimates some fairly weak evidence is found of inefficiency in the nfl betting market resulting from a bias favouring home underdog against away favourite teams in contrast to previous research no evidence is found that momentum strategies generate significant returns in this market

on strong independence of allocative efficiency from distribution in the theory of public goods abstract we extend bergstrom and cornes 1983 to show that for strong independence of efficient allocations from distribution in a public goods economy the utility functions of all consumers must identically be of the form a y x i where y and x i are respectively the quantities of public good and private good for consumer i and a is some arbitrary function this implies that for an economy with heterogeneous consumer preferences it is impossible to ensure that any redistribution of private goods will remain efficient especially for boundary pareto optima

the late season bias explaining the nfl s home underdog effect this article examines price efficiency and out of sample predictability in the nfl point spread betting market our main contribution to the existing literature is the identification of a persistent increase in bias magnitude during the final few weeks of each season we demonstrate that this anomaly causes the much documented home underdog effect we also offer evidence that the limits of arbitrage have enabled this phenomenon to persist for decades finally we use several regression models to confirm our univariate analysis and show that these models can be used to implement profitable betting strategies the predictive models presented differ from those in the prior literature by taking into account both short term and aggregate biases

intergenerational human capital evolution local public good preferences and stratification abstract this paper considers heterogeneities in preferences over the local public good human capital formation and residential locations as primary underlying forces of economic stratification in an endogenously growing economy we construct a two period overlapping generations model with two regions and various forms of human capital externalities where altruistic agents determine intertemporal allocation of time investment in a child s education and residential location we fully characterize a balanced growth equilibrium with no migration across generations to elaborate on how changes in preference human capital accumulation production and interregional commuting parameters may affect the equilibrium stratification outcome in the long run

do regions benefit from active labour market policies a macroeconometric evaluation using spatial panel methods dauth w hujer r and wolf k do regions benefit from active labour market policies a macroeconometric evaluation using spatial panel methods regional studies the effect of active labour market policies on all job seekers in a region is assessed using the variation in the participation in these programmes across regions over time the starting point is an augmented regional matching function which is extended by allowing for a heterogeneous search effectiveness parameter for current participants and job seekers who finished a measure recently a spatial dynamic panel data model is estimated by using a quasi ml estimation procedure it is found that job schemes in the non profit sector wage subsidies and advancement of apprenticeships significantly increase the regional number of matches

rent seeking with bounded rationality an analysis of the all pay auction the winner take all nature of all pay auctions makes the outcome sensitive to decision errors which we introduce with a logit formulation the equilibrium bid distribution is a fixed point the belief distributions that determine expected payoffs equal the choice distributions determined by expected payoffs we prove existence uniqueness and symmetry properties in contrast to the nash equilibrium the comparative statics of the logit equilibrium are intuitive rent dissipation increases with the number of players and the bid cost overdissipation of rents is impossible under full rationality but is observed in laboratory experiments our model predicts this property

a theoretical analysis of altruism and decision error in public goods games abstract we formalize an equilibrium model in which altruism and decision error parameters determine the distribution of contributions for linear and quadratic public goods games the equilibrium density is exponential for linear games and normal for quadratic games our model implies i contributions increase with the marginal value of the public good ii total contributions increase with the number of participants iii mean contributions lie between the nash prediction and half the endowment these predictions which are not implied by a nash analysis are consistent with laboratory data maximum likelihood estimates of altruism and error parameters are significant and plausible

games with unique mixed strategy equilibria an experimental study abstract the results of an experiment studying the choices of subjects playing mixed extensions of three variants of simple 2 2 non constant sum strictly competitive games of the same form matching pennies are presented subjects exhibited a variety of behavioral adaptive learning strategies this heterogeneity of individual behavior produced aggregate dynamics whose estimated steady states are quite different from those predicted by the nash equilibria of those stage games with asymmetrical payoff functions the observed aggregative dynamics are well accounted for both by a quantal equilibrium model of mckelvey and palfrey and by a learning model of roth and erev journal of economic literature classification number c72

decentralisation of active labour market policy the case of swedish local employment service committees decentralisation of decision making in active labour market policy makes it possible to use local information to the fullest but may also impinge on the fulfilment of national objectives as suggested by principal agent theory the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of a swedish pilot programme in 1996 which strengthened the role of the local authorities in labour market policy in parts of the country survey evidence suggests a non negligible divergence between the objectives of the municipality representatives and the central government s goals regarding programme effects our econometric findings do not indicate any increase in geographical lock in of the unemployed but decentralisation seems to spur local initiatives in the form of labour market programmes organised by the municipalities in addition targeting on outsiders is to some extent more common in municipal projects than in others

boundedly rational nash equilibrium a probabilistic choice approach we propose an equilibrium for n person finite games based on bounded rationality using the legit model of discrete choice theory at equilibrium each player uses appropriate choice probabilities given those used by the others rationality is parameterized on a continuum from complete rationality to uniform random choice results on the existence of equilibrium and on convergence to nash as rationality becomes perfect are similar to results due to mckelvey and palfrey we identify conditions such that for a given rationality parameter range the path of choices over time when the players use fictitious play converges to equilibrium c 1997 academic press

heterogeneity returns to scale and collective action i analyze the effects of resource inequality and valuation heterogeneity on the provision of public goods with increasing or decreasing returns to scale in production the existing literature typically takes the agents characteristics as given and known to the researcher in contrast this paper compares collective action provision across groups of agents with resources and valuations for the public good drawn from different known joint distributions specifically i characterize the expected equilibrium public good level as function of various distributional properties and moments a resource valuation distribution that first order stochastically dominates another distribution always results in higher expected public good provision level independent of the production technology with decreasing returns to scale in the public good production higher resource inequality results in higher expected provision with increasing returns the same result holds when the mean resource level is relatively low but expected provision decreases in inequality when the mean resource level is high a parallel result holds for agents valuations l auteur analyse les effets de l inegalite des ressources et de l heterogeneite dans l evaluation de biens publics dont la production se fait avec des rendements croissants et decroissants a l echelle la litterature specialisee suggere habituellement que les caracteristiques des agents sont donnees et connues du chercheur a contrario ce memoire compare l action collective de groupes d agents dont les ressources et les evaluations du bien public sont tirees de distributions conjointes connues specifiquement le niveau d equilibre anticipe du bien public est fonction de divers moments et proprietes de ces distributions une distribution conjointe ressources evaluations qui en domine une autre au sens stochastique de premier ordre resulte toujours en un niveau de bien public anticipe plus eleve quelle que soit la technologie de production quand les rendements a l echelle sont decroissants une inegalite de ressources plus grande resulte en un niveau de bien public anticipe plus eleve quand les rendements sont croissants le meme resultat s ensuit si le niveau moyen de la ressource est relativement bas mais le niveau de bien public anticipe decroit quand le niveau moyen de la ressource est eleve des resultats paralleles sont notes pour ce qui est des evaluations du bien public par les agents

the assessment decentralisation and the economics of local government by almost universal agreement local government in the uk and especially its finance is in a mess after the major layfield committee of inquiry in the 1970s into local government finance after numerous other reports green papers and white papers the conservative government embarked on a radical attempt at reform firstly it tightened central control on the level of local authority spending through changes to the block grant and more recently ratecapping secondly it abolished theglc and other upper tier authorities in metropolitan areas thirdly it forced through a much wider use of tendering and subcontracting for local government services and finally it launched into a wholesale reform of local government finance based on the programme outlined in the 1986 green paper this includes centralising control over non domestic rates and replacing domestic rates with a new household tax the community charge to be paid at a flat rate by all adults

the effect of group size on public good provision in a repeated game setting abstract the ability to cooperate in the provision of a pubic good is analyzed in a repeated game holding the level of provision fixed with quasi linear utility we find that the critical value of the discount parameter converges to 0 in the limit thus cooperation is feasible in a large market next we allow the level cooperation to be adjusted optimally as the group size increases both for a specific form of quasi linear utility and for cobb douglas utility in each case we find that there are admissible values of the discount parameter such that cooperation may be maintained in the limit

income and bargaining effects on education and health in brazil abstract this study examines the impacts of the 1991 reform of brazil s rural pension system on schooling and health indicators we conclude that the reform had significant positive effects on schooling especially on literacy for girls co residing with a male pensioner we were unable to find similar results for children living with a female pensioner we further investigated whether these results were driven by bargaining power differences within households our findings suggest that this explanation is plausible

why do people give testing pure and impure altruism abstract researchers measure crowd out around one level of charity output to identify whether giving is motivated by altruism and or warm glow however crowd out depends on output implying first that the power to reject pure altruism varies and second that a single measurement of incomplete crowd out can be rationalized by many different preferences by instead measuring crowd out at different output levels we allow both for identification and for a novel and direct test of impure altruism using a new experimental design we present the first empirical evidence that consistent with impure altruism crowd out decreases with output jel d64 l31

transfers among divorced couples evidence and interpretation we analyze divorce settlements made by a cohort of whites who graduated from high school in 1972 the effects of spouses incomes on the divorce transfer are estimated and used to simulate the welfare effects of divorce on husbands wives and children under alternative assumptions about marriage contracts and the ability of a couple to continue coordinating resources in the aftermath of divorce we find a positive negative relationship between divorce transfers and the growth of husband s wife s earnings during marriage the estimated expenditure on children in the divorce state is only half the accustomed level during marriage

the effectiveness of active labour market policies a meta analysis this paper provides a meta analysis of microeconometric evaluation studies on the effectiveness of active labor market policies the analysis is built upon a systematically assembled data set of causal impact estimates from 57 experimental and quasi experimental studies providing 654 estimates published between january 1990 and december 2017 we distinguish between the short and longer term impacts in our analysis at 6 12 24 and 36 months after program start after correcting for publication bias and country specific macroeconomic characteristics subsidized labor and public employment programs have negative short term impacts which gradually turn positive in the longer run schemes with enhanced services including job search assistance and training programs do not have these negative short term effects and stay positive from 6 until 36 months after program start

testing the efficiency of the national football league betting market this study presents three tests of efficiency of the nfl betting market for the years 1994 2000 first it tests for weak form informational efficiency of the betting market then it examines whether the market incorporates objective information such as power scores and stadium characteristics that might be useful for predicting game outcomes finally it determines whether alternative betting strategies would have yielded a profit although there is some indication that differences in the playing surfaces of home and visiting teams were not fully reflected in the betting lines it is found that there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that the market was inefficient over the period examined

an evaluation of active and passive labour market policy this paper reports results of an empirical study on the effectiveness of labour market policy data from austria france germany great britain sweden and the united states are used to apply a simultaneous equation model with wages and employment being the endogenous variables in order to explain employment the amount of unemployment benefits per unemployed passive labour market policy and payment for wage subsidies and training per employed and unemployed person active labour market policy are used in addition to real wages and output wages and output have their expected impact on total employment it turns out that passive labour market policy has a negative and active labour market measures a positive effect on the number of persons employed

gorman and musgrave are dual an antipodean theorem on public goods abstract this paper examines the conditions under which the allocation branch of the government can determine the optimum provision of public goods independently of the distribution of private goods we draw attention to the duality with the literature on aggregation over consumers private goods economies

macroeconomic effects of active labour market programmes in a union wage setting model the recent western european policy debate on unemployment has emphasized the benefits of active labor market programs the authors analyze the effects on wage pressure and equilibrium employment in a union wage setting framework programs are wage reducing to the extent that they help maintain effective labor force participation but they may also weaken insider incentives for wage restraint as the disutility of layoffs becomes smaller targeting the long term unemployed is crucial for the success of active labor market policy since the welfare effects on the laid off then are more heavily discounted and employment opportunities are redistributed from insiders to outsiders copyright 1995 by royal economic society

income splitting specialization and intra family distribution income splitting for tax purposes results in more specialization of wives but does this in turn generate more gender inequality in my dynamic bargaining model with a divorce threatpoint i find that who controls the couple s labour supply plays a crucial role in establishing this link if spouses choose their labour supply non cooperatively only the husband s increase but not her own decrease in labour supply introduces a negative term in the wife s change in welfare if the wife does not control her own labour supply a decrease in her own labour supply introduces an additional negative term la fragmentation du revenu aux fins d impot resulte en une plus grande specialisation des epouses mais est ce que cela engendre davantage d inegalite entre genres dans un modele de marchandage dynamique avec menace de divorce a la cle on decouvre que la personne qui controle l offre de travail du couple joue un role crucial dans la reponse a cette question si les epoux choisissent leurs offres de travail de maniere non cooperative seul l accroissement de l offre de travail de l epoux et non le declin de l offre de travail de l epouse introduit un terme negatif dans le changement de niveau de bien etre de l epouse si l epouse ne controle pas sa propre offre de travail un declin dans son offre de travail introduit un element negatif additionnel

rent seeking and tax competition abstract regional or local governments often appear to favour the interests of those who own land in the region here the implications of this sort of policy making are modelled formally people are assumed perfectly mobile between regions but are assumed to own land only in the region of their birth the nash equilibrium is shown to be efficient if and only if no migration of capital or labour is needed to achieve efficiency otherwise tax competition leads to too little migration voluntary inter regional transfers will never arise in equilibrium despite the inefficiency of the nash equilibrium when there is migration a higher level of government cannot alter the equilibrium if regional governments choose policies simultaneously after the federal government has committed to its policies

rotten kids purity and perfection bergstrom has shown that becker s rotten kid theorem holds in a world of two commodities if their utilities are transferable the present paper identifies a further circumstance in which the theorem is valid we show that it also holds in the absence of transferable utility if the externalities are assumed to take the form of a single pure public good

partner choice investment in children and the marital college premium abstract we construct a model of household decision making in which agents consume a private and a public good interpreted as children s welfare children s utility depends on their human capital

altruism and charitable giving in a fully replicated economy abstract in this paper an economy is analyzed where one group of agents the altruists cares about the well being of another group of agents the recipients it is asked how changes in the size of these groups affect the altruists charitable giving in the nash equilibrium i show that a pure group size effect i e a proportional expansion of both subgroups can lead to less free riding and to a lower degree of underprovision relative to the efficient level of charitable giving

the ordinal efficiency of betting markets an exploded logit approach this article offers a new perspective on efficiency in betting markets by examining the degree to which finishing order in horse races corresponds to probabilities inherent in odds across different categories of horse race the application of an exploded logit procedure reveals a significantly greater degree of ordinal efficiency in higher relative to lower class races explanations for the phenomenon include differences in prize related incentives cross market distinctions in information markets and differential opportunity incentive for market manipulation

the logit equilibrium a perspective on intuitive behavioural anomalies costs associated with deviations from the nash equilibrium these payoff asymmetry effects are incorporated in an approach that introduces noisy behavior via a logit probabilistic choice function in the resulting logit equilibrium behavior is characterized by a probability distribution that satisfies a rational expectations consistency condition the beliefs that determine players expected payoffs match the decision distributions that arise from applying the logit rule to those expected payoffs we prove existence of a unique symmetric logit equilibrium and derive comparative statics results the paper provides a unified perspective on many recent laboratory studies of games in which nash equilibrium predictions are inconsistent with both intuition and experimental evidence

choosing tax rates and public expenditure levels using majority rule abstract a sufficient condition is presented for a policy to be a condorcet winner when voters differ only in a single characteristic the condition is that all voters utility gradients with respect to the n different policy dimensions lie in the same plane in r n if the policy is a set of commodity tax rates then the condition is implied by the linearity of voters common engel curves if the policy includes levels of public good provision then the vectors of marginal willingness to pay for the various public goods of the different voters must all lie on the same line

preseason bias in the nfl and nba betting markets abstractthis study extends research in the sports gaming literature by examining the efficiency of betting markets related to preseason professional sporting events using nfl 1995 2014 and nba 2005 2014 data from preseason games we examine the pricing efficiency of point spreads in these markets and consider evidence of systematic mispricing findings suggest point spreads are too large in these situations providing a profitable betting opportunity for those willing to systematically wager on underdogs similar findings are not seen within the context of nfl or nba regular seasons these findings are more pronounced as preseason point spreads become larger further stratification by week of the nfl preseason demonstrates that underdogs discontinue their superior performance for the one week week 3 in which clubs tend to expel a higher level of effort

testable implications of transferable utility although the transferable utility tu assumption is widely used in micro theory little is known about its testable consequences and in particular how one can from the observation of a group s demand test whether the tu assumption is satisfied within this group we derive a set of necessary and sufficient conditions on demand that characterize the tu context the conditions are of two types first tu requires the group to behave as a single decision maker secondly within the unitary setting the representative utility generated by a tu framework must be of the generalized quasi linear gql form we derive testable properties of the demand function that fully characterize gql utilities these additional restrictions only involve specifi cp rices namely those of the goods that are publicly consumed within the household

when is efficiency separable from distribution in the provision of club goods abstract using the homogeneous of degree zero inverse congestion quality function employed most frequently in the literature we characterise completely the families of utility functions which are then necessary and sufficient for break even utilitarian welfare maximising provision of club goods with self selection to be separable from distribution two types of separation involving alternatively a the price and quality b the price quality facility size and total utilisation are considered when separation is possible utility functions and optimal decisions take simple intuitive forms our results extend the scope of separation results previously obtained only for pure public goods journal of economic literature classification numbers d62 h23 h40

re examining the betting market on major league baseball games is there a reverse favourite longshot bias a recent study of the fixed odds betting market on baseball games while finding that the betting market is generally efficient also found evidence of an underbetting on underdog teams this article examines the evidence for this new anomaly it corrects woodland and woodland s estimates of the commission subjective win probabilities and test statistics the efficiency null hypothesis cannot be rejected for all of their tests when revised test statistics are calculated for their sample period however like them it was found that slight underdogs are underbet it is also shown that their bias is not simply a bias involving favourites and underdogs whether underdogs are playing at home or away also seems to matter in their sample period as well a positive relationship between returns and subjective probabilities was found for underdogs and favourites a relationship suggestive of a favourite longshot bias rather than its reverse it is concluded that there is insufficient evidence to claim that this

static and intertemporal household decisions we discuss the most popular static and dynamic models of household behavior our main objective is to explain which aspects of household decisions different models can account for using this insight we describe testable implications identification results and estimation findings obtained in the literature particular attention is given to the ability of different models to answer various types of policy questions

betting market inefficiencies are short lived in german professional football abstractin this article we argue that potential inefficiencies on betting markets are more likely to exist at the very beginning of a season when the available information on the teams playing strength is difficult to evaluate this lack of reliable information should be particularly large in the case of recently promoted teams that have typically undergone major changes in the composition of their roster following their promotion without any information on the latter teams potential performance they are particularly difficult to evaluate which may eventually lead to inefficiencies and positive returns on investment in the betting market we analyse odds from german first division bundesliga soccer for the seasons from 2002 03 to 2015 16 to find betting market inefficiencies at the start of the season as expected betting on recently promoted team wins generates temporarily positive returns especially for away games these results suggest bookmakers to underestimate promoted teams ability to fam

necessary and sufficient conditions for single peakedness in public economic models abstract median voter results have played a central role in public economic analyses where there is a linearly ordered set of policy alternatives that is to be voted on in these analyses the median voter results themselves have been based on voters preferences being single peaked with respect to the ordering for this set in this paper we derive conditions that are both necessary and sufficient for such single peakedness to occur whenever we have economic decision makers this leads to certain new median voter results in addition it also reveals some important limitations on median voter analyses

the degree of inefficiency in the football betting market statistical tests abstract this paper tests the hypothesis that the football betting market is efficient our statistical tests are stronger than those in previous studies and we examine both nfl and college data over a sample period of fifteen years our statistical tests detect two specific biases in the nfl market and an unspecified bias in the college market we examine the year to year consistency and magnitudes of the biases and find that the nfl bias against home teams has been nearly eliminated while the bias against underdogs has increased profitable exploitation of the biases depends upon transaction costs

optimal climate policies in a dynamic multi country equilibrium model abstract this paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model with an arbitrary number of different regions to study the economic consequences of climate change under alternative climate policies regions differ with respect to their state of economic development factor endowments and climate damages and trade on global markets for capital output and exhaustible resources our main result derives an optimal climate policy consisting of an emissions tax and a transfer policy the optimal tax can be determined explicitly in our framework and is independent of any weights attached to the interests of different countries such weights only determine optimal transfers which distribute tax revenues across countries we infer that the real political issue is not the tax policy required to reduce global warming but rather how the burden of climate change should be shared via transfer payments between different countries we propose a simple transfer policy which induces a pareto improvement relative to the laissez faire solution a calibrated example quantifies pareto improving transfers between rich and poor countries

boundary optima and the theory of public goods supply abstract this paper derives a generalized optimality condition that is valid for all boundary optima in an economy with many public goods and one private good this condition is then used to show that there is an open subset of pareto optima where samuelson s condition does not hold finally it is shown that allocation and distribution are inextricable at these optima even under conditions that guarantee independence of allocation and distribution at interior optima

market rationality tests based on cross equation restrictions abstract the information used by researchers in cross equation tests of rational expectations may be a small subset of the information available to the market such tests produce consistent estimates but have low power we develop a mechanism for dealing with this problem and use the procedure to perform cross equation tests on predictions from the football betting market the tests fail to reject rationality we provide evidence that market predictions from betting markets are not formed rationally it appears therefore that cross equation tests have low power even if the information sets used by the researcher and the market are approximately the same

the political economy of public employment programs abstract what are the welfare implications of a political equilibrium where the choice of active labor market programs almps have to please the employed majority this issue is examined in an equilibrium model featuring matching frictions and worker firm wage bargaining it turns out that the welfare consequences depend on the nature of almps and the political weight attributed to firm interests if firm values carry little political weight and programs contribute to wage pressure the employed will opt for excessive program activity

successful leadership in global public good provision incorporating behavioural approaches in the standard model of voluntary public good provision and other game theoretic models climate friendly leadership of a country is not successful a unilateral increase of this country s greenhouse gas abatement measures i e contributions to the global public good of climate protection will not lead to a positive reaction by the other countries but instead trigger a reduction of their abatement efforts and thus a crowding out effect in this paper it is shown how this undesired consequence need no longer occur when elements of behavioral economics are incorporated in the otherwise standard model of public good provision in particular strategic complementarities between the public good contribution of the leading country and those of the follower may result either if the follower has specific non egoistic or other regarding preferences or if the leader s contribution positively affects the follower s beliefs i e his conjectural variations about the leader s behaviour

efficiency and formation of expectations evidence from the european investment survey the european commission conducts an annual survey regarding planned and realized business fixed investment across various manufacturing sectors in euroland in this study we investigate the predictive content of survey based expectations on investment in addition we empirically test the rationality of respondents both in a time series as well as in a panel context according to our results based on pooling the data efficiency is rejected since expectations are biased predictors of actual outcomes furthermore expectations revisions are found to be correlated with components of the information set known at the time of decision making finally our results qualify regressive expectations as the mechanism that more adequately describes the formation of expectations

welfarism in economic domains abstract in economies with public goods and agents with quasi linear preferences we give a characterization of the welfare egalitarian correspondence in terms of three axioms pareto optimality symmetry and solidarity this last property requires that an increase in the willingness to pay for the public goods of some of the agents should not decrease the welfare of any of them journal of economic literature classification numbers d63 h41

reciprocity and wage undercutting it is well documented that employers refuse to hire workers who o er their services at less than the prevailing wage the received explanation is that workers are motivated by reciprocity they desire to reward kindness and punish hostility to refuse an outsider s underbid is viewed as a kind choice that is met with good e ort a low wage is viewed as an insult that is met with shirking we have developed a general theory of reciprocity which in this paper is applied to a wage setting game played by an employer and two workers we show that when workers are motivated by reciprocity equilibrium behaviour accords well with the aforementioned stylized facts 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classixcation d63 e24 j41

sorting by foot travel for local public goods and equilibrium stratification we re examine tiebout s hypothesis of endogenous sorting in a competitive spatial equilibrium framework by considering both income and preference heterogeneity and by allowing agents to decide endogenously the number of visits to a travel for local public good the equilibrium configuration may be completely segregated incompletely segregated or completely integrated depending on relative market rents and income preference local tax parameters a segregated equilibrium may feature endogenous sorting purely by income or by both income and preferences while the rich need not be closer to the local public facility site multiple equilibria may arise when the equilibrium configuration is incompletely segregated jel classification d50 h41 classification par deplacement biens publics locaux accessibles par deplacement et stratification d equilibre les auteurs reexaminent l hypothese de tiebout de classification endogene dans un cadre d equilibre spatial concurrentiel en tenant compte a la fois de l heterogeneite des revenus et des preferences ainsi qu en permettant aux agents de decider de maniere endogene du nombre de visites pour se procurer un bien public local par deplacement il peut s ensuivre des equilibres de segregation complete de segregation incomplete ou d integration complete selon les rentes relatives et les parametres de revenus de preferences ou de fiscalite locale un equilibre de segregation peut entrainer une classification endogene sur la base seulement des revenus ou sur la base des revenus et des preferences alors que les riches n ont pas besoin d etre plus proches du site du bien public local des equilibres multiples peuvent surgir quand la configuration d equilibre en est une de segregation incomplete

public employment and labour market performance public employment does it increase unemployment we explore the consequences of public employment for labour market performance theory suggests that public employment may not only crowd out private employment but also increase overall unemployment if by offering attractive working conditions it draws additional individuals into the labour force empirical evidence from a sample of oecd countries in the 1960 2000 period suggests that on average creation of 100 public jobs may have eliminated about 150 private sector jobs slightly decreased labour market participation and increased by about 33 the number of unemployed workers theoretical considerations and empirical evidence however suggest that the crowding out effect of public jobs on private jobs is only significant in countries where public production is highly substitutable to private activities and the public sector offers more attractive wages and or other benefits than the private labour market

uniqueness of nash equilibrium in private provision of public goods an improved proof our 1986 paper private provision of public goods presents a theorem on the uniqueness of nash equilibrium in the private provision of public goods richard hirth of the university of pennsylvania and clive fraser of warwick have independently suggested that although our theorem is correct our proof is incorrect each writer proposes an alternative method of proof for the theorem with characteristic charity to our own deficiencies we prefer to view our earlier proof as unduly opaque rather than wrong whichever view one takes a more transparent proof is called for the proof presented here follows the same outline as our 1986 proof but explains a step of the argument that was far from obvious in the original proof this proof uses the notation of the 1986 paper and refers to facts that are proved there

equity as a prerequisite for stability of cooperation on global public good provision analysing cooperative provision of a global public good such as climate protection we explore the relationship between equitable burden sharing on the one hand and core stability on the other to assess the size of the burden which a public good contribution entails for a country we make use of a specific measure based on moulin econometrica 55 963 977 1987 in particular we show that a pareto optimal allocation which is not in the core can always be blocked by a group of countries with the highest moulin sacrifices in this sense it is the overburdening and thus unfair treatment of some countries that provides the reason for core instability by contrast a pareto optimal allocation is in the core if the public good contributions are fairly equally distributed according to their moulin sacrifices the potential implications of our theoretical analysis for global climate policy are also discussed

marital transfer and intra household allocation a nash bargaining analysis this paper explores the implications of inter generational marital transfers on the allocation of resources within a conjugal household adopting a nash bargaining framework with alternative models of the threat points it is argued that parents have greater incentive to make transfers to a married child than to a single child because of the efficiency gains from joint consumption and production of family public goods and because of the increase in bargaining power of the child in the allocation of private consumption such transfers also enhance marital stability by increasing the efficiency gains from marriage

a fresh look at the rotten kid theorem and other household mysteries gary becker s rotten kid theorem asserts that if all family members receive gifts of money income from a benevolent household member then even if the household head does not precommit to an incentive plan for family members it will be in the interest of selfish family members to maximize total family income i show by examples that the rotten kid theorem is not true without assuming transferable utility i find a simple condition on utility functions that is necessary and sufficient for there to be the kind of transferable utility needed for a rotten kid theorem while restrictive these conditions still allow one to apply the strong conclusions of the rotten kid theorem in an interesting class of examples

the voluntary provision of a pure public good with diminishing marginal returns in experiments investigating the voluntary provision of a pure public good participants consistently allocate resources to this good when the nash prediction is to allocate nothing this paper explores the robustness of this result when the nash prediction calls for a division of resources between the private and public goods we consider how a change in individual resource endowments and supplemental earnings information affect allocations to the public good results indicate that under both the high and low endowment conditions groups continue to allocate more resources than the nash prediction however providing participants with detailed instructions that describe the declining marginal benefit to the public good leads to a significant decrease in allocations to the public good

an explanation of anomalous behavior in models of political participation this paper characterizes behavior with noisy decision making for models of political interaction characterized by simultaneous binary decisions applications include voting participation games candidate entry the volunteer s dilemma and collective action problems with a contribution threshold a simple graphical device is used to derive comparative statics and other theoretical properties of a quantal response equilibrium and the resulting predictions are compared with nash equilibria that arise in the limiting case of no noise many anomalous data patterns in laboratory experiments based on these games can be explained in this manner

yes one day international cricket in play trading strategies can be profitable abstract in this study we employ a monte carlo simulation technique for estimating the conditional probability of victory at any stage in the first or second innings of a one day international odi cricket match this model is then used to test market efficiency in the betfair in play market for large sample of odi matches we find strong evidence of overreaction in the first innings a trading strategy of betting on the batting team after the fall of a wicket produces a significant profit of 20 we also find some evidence of underreaction in the second innings although it is less economically and statistically significant than the first innings overreaction we also implement trades when the discrepancy between the probability of victory implied by current market odds differs substantially from the odds estimated by our monte carlo simulation model we document a number of trading strategies that yield large statistically significant positive returns in both the first and second innings

household bargaining over fertility theory and evidence from malaysia we develop and test a model of household bargaining over fertility when transfers between spouses are possible the model makes precise how the fertility preferences of each spouse translate into fertility outcomes we show this depends on whether or not spouses can commit to their future actions within marriage if couples bargain with commitment fertility outcomes take account of both spouses fertility preferences and do not depend on the threat point in marital bargaining if couples bargain without commitment the influence of each spouse s fertility preference on fertility outcomes depends on the relevant threat point in marital bargaining and the distribution of bargaining power we test the models using household data from the malaysia family life survey this data set contains information on each spouse s desired fertility level as well as fertility outcomes we exploit differences in threat points in marital bargaining across ethnic groups to help identify the underlying bargaining model the evidence suggests couples bargain without commitment

labour market policy and unemployment the paper discusses three aspects of the system for unemployment support first active labour market programmes as a means of re allocating labour from high unemployment to low unemployment sectors are analysed and it is concluded that wage raising accommodation effects may be a serious problem second the possibility of strengthening incentives for wage moderation by differentiating employee and or employer contributions to unemployment insurance are discussed third the question is raised whether there may exist other institutional set ups for providing unemployment support that are more efficient in terms of returning the unemployed to work than government run systems

an experimental study of jury decision rules we present experimental results on groups facing a decision problem analogous to that faced by a jury we consider three treatment variables group size three or six number of votes needed for conviction majority or unanimity and pre vote deliberation we find evidence of strategic voting under the unanimity rule a large fraction of our subjects vote for a decision analogous to conviction even when their private information indicates a state analogous to innocence this is roughly consistent with the game theoretic predictions of feddersen and pesendorfer although individual behavior is explained well by the game theoretic model there are discrepancies at the level of the group decision contrary to feddersen and pesendorfer in our experiments there are fewer outcomes analogous to incorrect convictions under unanimity rule than under majority rule in the case of no deliberation we simultaneously account for the individual and group data using quantal response equilibrium

active labour market programmes in latin america and the caribbean evidence from a meta analysis abstractwe present a systematic review and meta analysis of impact evaluations of active labour market programmes almps in latin america and the caribbean lac we extract 296 impact estimates f

marriage markets and assortative mating with household public goods theoretical results and empirical implications this paper analyzes marriage market equilibria when the gains from marriage result from joint consumption of household public goods assuming transferable utility within marriage the paper proves that marriage markets will be characterized by positive assortative mating on wealth when spouses differ only in endowments and the gains to marriage result only from public goods when spouses differ in wages and household public goods are produced at home the results imply offsetting effects with public good economies creating an incentive for positive assortative mating on wages and gains from specialization creating an incentive for negative assortative mating on wages the results help explain the persistent lack of empirical support for becker s prediction of negative assortative mating on wages and have implications for empirical analysis of all joint living arrangement decisions

a framework for analyzing the political support for active labor market policy abstract we develop a general equilibrium analysis of the impact of active labor market policy on unemployment wages and the welfare of the employed this framework is used to assess the political support in favour of such policies and to relate it to the working of such policies and other parameters characterizing the economic environment the main finding is that if the employed have little exposure to unemployment and if the demand for unskilled labour is inelastic then there may be political support for policies which actually raise the equilibrium level of total unemployment

independence of allocative efficiency from distribution in the theory of public goods when is the pareto optimal amount of public goods independent of income distribution subject to some regularity conditions the answer is when preferences of every individual i can be represented by a utility function of the form u x i y a y x i b i y where x i is i s consumption of private goods and y is the amount of public goods

an innovative approach to national football league standings using bonus points we investigate the inclusion of bonus points in the national football league nfl using a prediction model built on league points both touchdown based and narrow loss bonuses are shown to be significant determinants of match outcomes this implies that including bonus points in league standings generates a more accurate ranking of teams from best to worst than a system that only rewards wins and ties our preferred system awards four points for a win two for a tie one point for scoring three or more touchdowns and one point for losing by seven or fewer points such a system would also make it easier for supporters to identify playoff contenders and place importance on otherwise meaningless end of game plays in some matches which would increase spectator interest

altruism spillovers are behaviors in context free experiments predictive of altruism toward a naturally occurring public good abstract this paper addresses the external validity of experiments investigating the characteristics of altruism in the voluntary provision of public goods we conduct two related experiments that allow us to examine whether individuals who act more altruistically in the context free environment are also more likely to act altruistically toward a naturally occurring public good we find that laboratory behavior can be predictive of contributions toward naturally occurring goods but not in a uniform way in fact parametric measures of altruism do a poor job of predicting which subjects are most likely to contribute to a naturally occurring public good

market efficiency and the favorite longshot bias the baseball betting market this paper examines the efficiency of the legal gambling market for major league baseball weak form tests of market efficiency within and across odds lines are performed surprisingly the consistently observed favorite longshot bias in racetrack betting is shown to exist in reverse for baseball bettors however these and other deviations from efficiency are shown to be insufficient to allow for profitable betting strategies when commissions are considered

modelling cognitively bounded rationality an evaluative taxonomy abstract since its origins in the 1950s the notion of bounded rationality has been incorporated into economic theory using an array of methodological approaches this paper presents a taxonomy by which these approaches can be categorized and understood evaluating each approach against a range of important criteria at a time when the foundations of economic theory are being re examined this paper should be viewed as a first step towards an assessment of the appropriate role that this more realistic view of cognition should take in different areas of economic theory and also of the desirable characteristics of models that incorporate it

the samuelson condition and the lindahl scheme in networks abstract we study optimal provision of public goods in the network showing that the samuelson condition and the lindahl scheme can both be substantially extended to characterize the expenditure on such public goods couched in terms of the structure of the network the extended samuelson condition and lindahl scheme formulate precisely how the local publicness of a local public good fundamentally determines its optimal provision and the personalized price that the lindahl tax payer faces independence of the optimal allocation from the distribution of resources at interior samuelsonian solutions in the network generally fails to hold even for the bergstrom cornes preferences

group size and free riding when private and public goods are gross substitutes abstract using the traditional model of voluntary public good provision it is shown that an expansion of group size exacerbates free riding tendencies as long as private consumption and the public good are strictly normal and weak gross substitutes this result generalizes a previous cobb douglas example with respect to preferences and asymmetric equilibria

optimal production of transplant care services most organ transplants are from dead donors national transplant organizations exhibit considerable differences in terms of their donor population rates spain s organization is by far the most efficient in this respect we argue that much of the productivity advantage of spain s transplant organization proceeds from an efficient organization of the production chain from organ procurement to transplantation transplants from dead donors are analogous to a common resource for the transplant community their circulation through the national transplant organization creates public good externalities between the care units in charge of organ retrieval and those in charge of transplantation a socially efficient production of transplant care services obtains through an optimal control by the national transplant agency of both the circulation and the production of transplants in particular transplant shortage makes the rotten kid theorem fail in this context the analysis also produces a natural measure of public good externalities evaluated from the standpoint of care units

matching as a cure for underprovision of voluntary public good supply abstract matching mechanisms are widely regarded as providing a promising way to cure the public good underprovision problem but the pareto optimal interior matching equilibrium emerges only under very special conditions however we show that public good underprovision is normally avoided