premuneration values and investments in matching markets we analyze a model in which agents make investments and then match into pairs to create a surplus the agents can make transfers to reallocate their pretransfer ownership claims on the surplus mailath postlewaite and samuelson 2013 showed that when investments are unobservable equilibrium investments are generally inecient in this paper we work with a more structured model that is suciently tractable to analyze the nature of the investment ineciencies we provide conditions under which investment is ineciently high or low and conditions under which changes in the pretransfer ownership claims on the surplus will be pareto improving as well as examine how the degree of heterogeneity on either side of the market aects investment eciency

building the family nest premarital investments marriage markets and spousal allocations we develop a model of the household in which spousal incomes are determined by premarital investments the marriage market is characterized by assortative matching and endogenously determined sharing rules form the basis of intra household allocations by incorporating pre marital investments and spousal matching into the collective household model we are able to identify the fundamental determinants of endogenously determined and maritally sustainable intra marital sharing rules in particular we find that all sharing rules along the assortative order support unconditionally efficient outcomes where both pre marital investments and intra household allocations are efficient the efficiency of both pre marital choices and household allocations then enables us to show that for each couple the marriage market generates a unique and maritally sustainable sharing rule that is a function of the distribution of pre marital endowments and the sex ratios in the market

efficient non contractible investments in large economies abstract do investors making complementary investments face the correct incentives especially when they cannot contract with each other prior to their decisions we present a two sided matching model in which buyers and sellers make investments prior to matching once matched buyer and seller bargain over the price taking into account outside options efficient decisions can always be sustained in equilibrium we characterize the inefficiencies that can arise in equilibrium and show that equilibria will be constrained efficient we also show that the degree of diversity in a large market has implications for the extent of any inefficiency journal of economic literature classification numbers c78 d41 d51

endogenous inequality in integrated labor markets with two sided search we consider a market with red and green workers where labels are payoff irrelevant workers may acquire skills skilled workers search for vacancies while firms search for workers a unique symmetric equilibrium exists in which color is irrelevant there are also asymmetric equilibria in which firms search only for green workers more green than red workers acquire skills skilled green workers receive higher wages and the unemployment rate is higher among skilled red workers discrimination between ex ante identical individuals arises in equilibrium and yet firms have perfect information about their workers and strictly prefer to hire minority workers

the pre marital investment game abstract two sides of a finite marriage market engage in costly investment and are then matched assortatively the purpose of the investment is solely to improve the quality of the match that the trader can attain in the second stage the paper studies the limits of equilibrium of these finite matching games as the number of traders gets large it is shown that mixed nash equilibria in the finite games converge to degenerate pure strategy equilibria in the limit in which both sides of the market invest too much

pre matching gambles abstract this paper investigates pre matching gambles and provides a new reason to gamble matching concerns examples of pre matching gambles include occupational choices before the marriage market college major choices before the labor market and portfolio management before attracting future clients in the financial market i show that people make risky investments they would not have made if not for their subsequent participation in a competitive matching market a fundamental and unique feature of the competitive matching market which i call the competitive matching effect induces gambling the paper also illustrates the relationship between social efficiency and inequality in this setting and shows how progressive taxation eliminates social inefficiency reduces inequality and generates government revenue

energy transition towards economic and environmental sustainability feasible paths and policy implications this paper focuses on growth feasibility in an era of increasing scarcity of fossil fuels a stylised dynamic model illustrates the implications of investing in smooth technological progress in the field of renewable energy positive rates of gdp growth sustained by fossil fuels entail on the one hand more income available for r d in renewable energy sources and on the other an acceleration of the exhaustible resource depletion time our model explores such a trade off and highlights the danger of high growth rates policies should target low growth rates stimulate investment in alternative energy sources and discourage consumption growth

disappointment in decision making under uncertainty decision analysis requires that two equally desirable consequences should have the same utility and vice versa most analyses of financial decision making presume that two consequences with the same dollar outcome will be equally preferred however winning the top prize of 10 000 in a lottery may leave one much happier than receiving 10 000 as the lowest prize in a lottery this paper explores the implications of disappointment a psychological reaction caused by comparing the actual outcome of a lottery to one s prior expectations for decision making under uncertainty explicit recognition that decision makers may be paying a premium to avoid potential disappointment provides an interpretation for some known behavioral paradoxes and suggests that decision makers may be sensitive to the manner in which a lottery is resolved the concept of disappointment is integrated into utility theory in a prescriptive model

dynamic governance of clean energy markets how technical innovation could accelerate climate policies abstract this article explores the governmental means to accelerate technical progress in climate protection it is based on selected best practice cases in which the diffusion of low carbon technologies has been accelerated by ambitious policies the empirical cases involve not just renewable energies but also energy efficiency the latter being considered more difficult in terms of governance the examples are taken from advanced oecd countries as well as from emerging economies this article will explore which factors have caused this dynamic development the conclusion reached will show that the interaction of positive feedback mechanisms which has already been described as virtuous cycle provides only a plausible theoretical explanation if the policy cycle is added to the market cycle and the innovation cycle climate policy should not only define ambitious targets but also address all three feedback mechanisms

efficient investments in the implementation problem abstract this paper identifies a condition for an efficient social choice rule to be fully implementable when we take into account investment efficiency to do so we extend the standard implementation problem to include endogenous ex ante and ex post investments in our problem the social planner aims to achieve efficiency in every equilibrium of a dynamic game in which agents strategically make investments before and after playing the mechanism our main theorem shows that a novel condition commitment proofness is sufficient and necessary for an efficient social choice rule to be implementable in subgame perfect equilibria the availability of ex post investments is crucial in our model there is no social choice rule that is efficient and implementable in subgame perfect equilibria without ex post investments we also show that our positive result continues to hold in the incomplete information setting

sorting through search and matching models in economics toward understanding assortative matching this is a self contained introduction to research on search and matching we first explore the nontransferable and perfectly transferable utility matching paradigms and then a unifying imperfectly transferable utility matching model motivated by some unrealistic predictions of frictionless matching we flesh out the foundational economics of search theory we then revisit the original matching paradigms with search frictions we finally allow informational frictions that often arise such as in college student sorting

perfect competition in the continuous assignment model abstract this paper provides a rigorous formalization in the context of the transferable utility assignment model of perfect competition as the inability of individuals to favorably influence prices the central tool for the analysis is the social gains function the central issue is differentiability of the gains function with respect to the population seven conditions are shown to be equivalent to perfect competition perfect competition and imperfect competition are possible for both finite and continuum assignment economies but most finite economies are imperfectly competitive while most continuum economies are perfectly competitive however most large finite assignment economies are approximately perfectly competitive journal of economic literature classification numbers c61 c62 c78

disappointment and dynamic consistency in choice under uncertainty the central proposition of disappointment theory is that an individual forms expectations about uncertain prospects and that if the actual consequence turns out to be worse than or better than that expectation the individual experiences a sensation of disappointment or elation generating a decrement or increment of utility which modifies the basic utility derived from the consequence by incorporating a simple disappointment elation function into a model of individual choice many observed violations of conventional expected utility axioms including violations of savage s sure thing principle and the isolation effect can be predicted and defended as rational and dynamically consistent behaviour

optimal consumption and portfolio policies when asset prices follow a diffusion process abstract we consider a consumption portfolio problem in continuous time under uncertainty a martingale technique is employed to characterize optimal consumption portfolio policies when there exist nonnegativity constraints on consumption and on final wealth we also provide a way to compute and verify optimal policies our verification theorem for optimal policies involves a linear partial differential equation unlike the nonlinear partial differential equation of dynamic programming the relationship between our approach and dynamic programming is discussed we demonstrate our technique by explicitly computing optimal policies in a series of examples in particular we solve the optimal consumption portfolio problem for hyperbolic absolute risk aversion utility functions when the asset prices follow a geometric brownian motion the optimal policies in this case are no longer linear when nonnegativity constraints on consumption and on final wealth are included by these examples one can see that our approach is much easier than the dynamic programming approach

competing premarital investments this paper studies premarital parental investments in children s wealth where spousal wealth is a public good in marriage by investing in their children s wealth parents increase the wealth of their children and the quality of the spouses that their children can marry in large marriage markets the hedonic return to investment internalizes all the external benefits of premarital investment in wealth so that the competitive equilibrium is efficient marriage market competition also increases investments in small marriage markets relative to no competition but equilibrium investments are not efficient

the feedback effect in two sided markets with bilateral investments abstract agents in a finite two sided market are matched assortatively based on costly investments besides signaling privately known complementary types the investments also directly benefit the match partner the bilateral external benefits induce a complex feedback cycle that amplifies the agents signaling investments our main results quantify how the feedback effect depends on the numbers of competitors on both sides of the market this yields detailed insights into the equilibria of two sided matching contests with incomplete information in particular for markets of small or intermediate size it also allows us to shed some new light on the relationship between finite and continuum models of pre match investment

investment in schooling and the marriage market we present a model in which investment in schooling generates two kinds of returns the labor market return resulting from higher wages and a marriagemarket return defined as the impact of schooling on the marital surplus share one can extract men and women may have different incentives to invest in schooling because of different market wages or household roles this asymmetry can yield a mixed equilibrium with some educated individuals marrying uneducated spouses when the labor market returns to schooling rises home production demands less time and the traditional spousal labor division norms weaken more women may invest in schooling than men

asset pricing with a forward backward stochastic differential utility abstract in an intertemporal setting we model the anticipation disappointment effect through a habit formation process which is a function of past consumption and of past expected utility we show that in equilibrium the anticipation effect reduces the risk premium whereas the disappointment effect induces a higher risk premium

can we meet targets for biofuels and renewable energy in transport given the constraints imposed by policy in agriculture and energy abstract the deployment of biofuels is significantly affected by policy in energy and agriculture in the energy arena concerns regarding the sustainability of biofuel systems and their impact on food prices led to a set of sustainability criteria in eu directive 2009 28 ec on renewable energy in addition the 10 biofuels target by 2020 was replaced with a 10 renewable energy in transport target this allows the share of renewable electricity used by electric vehicles to contribute to the mix in achieving the 2020 target furthermore only biofuel systems that effect a 60 reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with the fuel they replace are allowed to contribute to meeting the target in the agricultural arena cross compliance which is part of eu common agricultural policy dictates the allowable ratio of grassland to total agricultural land and has a significant impact on which biofuels may be supported this paper outlines the impact of these policy areas and their implications for the production and use of biofuels in terms of the 2020 target for 10 renewable transport energy focusing on ireland the policies effectively impose constraints on many conventional energy crop biofuels and reinforce the merits of using biomethane a gaseous biofuel the analysis shows that ireland can potentially satisfy 15 of renewable energy in transport by 2020 allowing for double credit for biofuels from residues and ligno cellulosic materials as per directive 2009 28 ec through the use of indigenous biofuels grass biomethane waste and residue derived biofuels electric vehicles and rapeseed biodiesel

transplants and implants the economics of self improvement this article examines equilibrium self improvement and marriage proposal strategies in a two sided search model with nontransferable utility singles are vertically differentiated some make better marriage partners than others a complete characterization of equilibrium is provided it is shown there are two externalities to self improvement decisions further these externalities may support multiple pareto rankable equilibria by encouraging everybody to self improve society can create a situation where everybody is forced to improve to remain acceptable but a preferred equilibrium may exist where there is less costly self improvement

holdups and efficiency with search frictions a natural holdup problem arises in a market with search frictions firms have to make a range of investments before finding their employees and larger investments translate into higher wages in particular when wages are determined by ex post bargaining the equilibrium is always inefficient recognizing that capital intensive production relations have to pay higher wages firms reduce their investments this can only be prevented by removing all the bargaining power from the workers but this in turn depresses wages below their social product and creates excessive entry of firms in contrast to this benchmark we show that efficiency is achieved when firms post wages and workers can direct their search toward more attractive offers this efficiency result generalizes to an environment with imperfect information where workers only observe a few of the equilibrium wage offers we show that the underlying reason for efficiency is not wage posting per se but the ability of workers to direct their search toward more capital intensive jobs

too much investment a problem of endogenous outside options this paper shows that when agents on both sides of the market are heterogeneous varying in their costs of investment ex ante investments by firms and workers or buyers and sellers more generally may be too high when followed by stochastic matching and bargaining over quasi rents the overinvestment is caused by the fact that low cost agents by investing more can increase the value of their outside option and thus shift rent away from high cost investors numerical simulations show that overinvestment can occur given parameter values calibrated to oecd labour markets

investment and competitive matching we study markets in which agents first make investments and are then matched into potentially productive partnerships equilibrium investments and the equilibrium matching will be efficient if agents can simultaneously negotiate investments and matches but we focus on markets in which agents must first sink their investments before matching additional equilibria may arise in this sunk investment setting even though our matching market is competitive these equilibria exhibit inefficiencies that we can interpret as coordination failures all allocations satisfying a constrained efficiency property are equilibria and the converse holds if preferences satisfy a separability condition we identify sufficient conditions most notably quasiconcave utilities for the investments of matched agents to satisfy an exchange efficiency property as well as sufficient conditions most notably a single crossing property for agents to be matched positive assortatively with these conditions then forming the core of sufficient conditions for the efficiency of equilibrium allocations

economic and environmental impact marginal analysis of biorefinery products for policy targets a simple biofuel production system can be first examined for its policy compliance in terms of ghg emission reduction target relative to fossil based counterparts more integrated and optimised biorefinery systems with polygeneration can then be evolved with the aid of graphical analysis of marginal emission savings vs additional economic margins this bottom up approach helps to achieve greater ghg emission cut by integrated systems design and thereby setting a more stringent benchmark to support policies towards achieving climate change mitigation goals the combined economic value and environmental impact analysis is a multi level methodology that can be used to represent biorefinery system performances as an aggregate of differential economic and environmental impact margins of biorefinery products the methodology is extended in this paper to support process integration strategies that allow achieving policy compliance of biorefinery products in terms of ghg emission savings an economic and environmental impact profile of the products is introduced for a graphical visualisation of economic costs and values as well as deficits and surpluses in environmental impact savings the effectiveness of the extended methodology has been demonstrated using a jatropha based biorefinery system converting jatropha seed into biodiesel glycerol and cake as a case study the biodiesel produced can achieve 53 emission cut while glycerol and cake can achieve an emission cut by 57 by displacing similar functionality fossil based products

pre match investment with frictions the paper explores an environment in which agents are motivated to make unproductive investments with the sole aim of improving their matching opportunities in contrast to existing work i add frictions by allowing the investment to be imperfectly observed the analysis allows for a deeper understanding of the trade off inherent in related models investments waste resources but facilitates more efficient matching patterns i show that greater frictions i do not always lead to inferior matching patterns and ii can force the economy into to a pareto preferred equilibrium

anticipation and the valuation of delayed consumption this paper presents a model of intertemporal choice that incorporates savoring and dread i e utility from anticipat ion of delayed consumption the model explains why an individual with positive time preference may delay desirable outcomes or get unpleas ant outcomes over with quickly contrary to the prediction of convent ional formulations of intertemporal choice implications of savoring and dread for savings behavior empirical estimation of discount rate s and public policy efforts to combat myopic behavior are explored the model provides an explanation for common violations of the indepe ndence axiom as applied to intertemporal choice copyright 1987 by royal economic society

marriage as a rat race noisy premarital investments with assortative matching we study the efficiency of premarital investments when parents care about their child s marriage prospects in a large frictionless marriage market with nontransferable utility stochastic returns to investment ensure that equilibrium is unique we find that generically investments exceed the pareto efficient level unless the sexes are symmetric in all respects girls will invest more than boys if their quality shocks are less variable than shocks for boys or if they are the abundant sex the unique equilibrium in our continuum agent model is the limit of the equilibria of finite models as the number of agents tends to infinity

does competition solve the hold up problem in an environment in which heterogeneous buyers and sellers undertake ex ante investments the presence of market competition for matches provides incentives for investment but may leave inefficiencies namely hold up and coordination problems this paper shows using an explicitly non cooperative model that when matching is assortative and investments precede market competition buyers investments are constrained efficient while sellers marginally underinvest with respect to what would be constrained efficient however the overall extent of this inefficiency may be large multiple equilibria may arise one equilibrium is characterized by efficient matches but there can be additional equilibria with coordination failures

the growth discourse growth policy and sustainable development two thought experiments abstract this paper addresses three aspects of growth the discourse the policy and the impacts the growth discourse claims that the central factor for social economic political and environmental progress is economic growth it is assumed to create wealth and provide the necessary means for social and environmental purposes on the basis of the growth discourse different growth policies can be derived based on different economic and political ideologies in order to reveal the implications of de facto degrowth two thought experiments are conducted for physical and economic end to growth strategies the latter is capable of meeting environmental objectives but implies significant social tensions and hardships and calls for transition strategies consisting of carefully designed steps

why do people care about social status abstract this paper shows that complementary interaction can induce people to care about social status because it serves as a signal of non observable abilities there is a unique separating equilibrium in which everyone cares about social status in this equilibrium a person s social status perfectly reveals his abilities and everyone matches with a person of like ability the analysis shows that people s instrumental concern for social status has important welfare and policy implications indeed peoples efforts to keep up with the joneses may be welfare enhancing

a coordination model of the sexual division of labor abstract the difference of natural talents in different men is in reality much less than we are aware of and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions when grown up to maturity is not upon occasions so much the cause as the effect of the division of labor adam smith 1976 the wealth of nations the sexual division of labor is a ubiquitous feature of human society this paper presents a model demonstrating that the sexual division of labor can be explained by the incentive to coordinate human capital investments among males and females seeking to enter the marriage market and make compatible matches the model assumes no inherent biological differences between men and women in productive abilities but rather demonstrates that differences between men and women may be a consequence of economic incentives in an economy based on household production the model also provides a possible explanation for how ideological beliefs about gender differences may develop and persist