an evolutionary analysis of the volunteer s dilemma abstract a public good is produced if and only if a volunteer provides it there are many pure strategy nash equilibria in each of which a single player volunteers noisy strategy revisions for instance quantal responses allow play to evolve equilibrium selection is achieved via the characterisation of long run play as revisions approximate best replies the volunteer need not be the lowest cost player relatively high cost but nonetheless reliable players may instead produce the public good more efficient players provide when higher values are associated with lower costs voluntary open source software provision offers a contemporary application

competitive storage rational expectations and short run food price determination this paper demonstrates that lags between retail and wholesale food prices can be explained by inventory behavior of retailers theoretical considerations indicate that the markup model should be modified to include a jorgenson type user cost variable which depends on expected future wholesale price the rational expectations hypothesis is used to derive price expectations the retail price specification therefore depends on the stochastic process generating expected wholesale price the econometric methodology employing both causality testing and nonlinear estimation is illustrated by estimating monthly price relationships for beef the results are consistent with the theory and indicate rejection of the markup model

collective action and group heterogeneity voluntary provision versus selective incentives several studies have concluded that heterogeneity within a group facilitates the initiation of collective action however a recent analysis found that heterogeneity can either facilitate or impede collective action depending on factors like the strength of the temptation to free ride reconciling these conclusions is difficult because the earlier studies assumed that public goods are provided voluntarily whereas the later analysis assumed that selective incentives like norms or laws can mandate cooperation i examine the link between group heterogeneity and collective action in three regimes voluntary systems in which actors make unrestricted decisions to participate in collective action compliance systems in which actors create and enforce norms that compel others to participate in public goods production and balanced systems in which actors can create and enforce compliance norms or oppose such norms the analysis reveals a complex link among group heterogeneity collective action and the type of regime by fostering the organization of previously atomized groups and weakening the cohesion of highsolidarity groups heterogeneity in contribution costs and valuation of the public good can reduce social power differentials

a multinomial probit model of stochastic evolution abstract a strategy revision process in symmetric normal form games is proposed following kandori et al econometrica 61 1993 29 members of a population periodically revise their strategy choice and choose a myopic best response to currently observed play their payoffs are perturbed by normally distributed harsanyian trembles so that strategies are chosen according to multinomial probit probabilities as the variance of payoffs is allowed to vanish the graph theoretic methods of the earlier literature continue to apply the distributional assumption enables a convenient closed form characterisation for the weights of the rooted trees an illustration of the approach is offered via a consideration of the role of dominated strategies in equilibrium selection

discrete equilibrium price dispersion an explicit solution of an equilibrium model with price setting firms and searching customers makes possible a number of comparativestatics predictions about how cost differences among firms search costs of customers and taxes will affect the mean and variance of the distribution of market prices another implication of the model is that a firm s demand depends on the difference between its price and the average price in the market

learning theory and the logic of critical mass the oliver marwell theory of critical mass is a prominent solution to the free rider problem that plagues collective action in large groups i reformulate the theory as a stochastic learning model in which cooperative responses are shaped by the social sanctions and cues generated by the responses of others this relaxes four assumptions in the original formulation that the actors are rational decisions are isolated events outcomes are deterministic and public goods have pure jointness of supply and collective profit computer simulations then show how adaptive actors become trapped in a suboptimal equilibrium and how they escape through attainment of critical mass start up problems arise from accommodation to social costs and not from low returns to early contributors as previously believed simulations also identify a new dilemma of group size and show why solidarity tends to emerge in response to crisis finally normative solidarity appears to be a consequence rather than cause of critical mass but may promote recovery from random deviance

the past decade s natural rate and the dynamics of german unemployment a case against demand policy this paper attempts to highlight some recent cyclical and structural aspects of the german labor market moreover whenever possible the results of our analysis are compared with findings for the u s labor market finally policy implications which may be inferred from our study are discussed at some length research on unemployment may draw attention to at least two different but not mutually exclusive problems the cyclical movement of unemployment gives rise to concern about the amount of the unemployment rate that can be reduced by aggregate demand policy only at the cost of an accelerating inflation rate the relevant question is whether this unemployment rate has been constant during the last decade or whether it has been subject to exogenous shocks such as the oil price explosion and the productivity slowdown with this knowledge the policy maker can be advised as to what extent an expansive demand policy is an appropriate tool for achieving lower rates of unemployment without facing an accelerating inflation rate and moreover why the reduction of inflation in the seventies by restrictive demand management might cost more unemployment than in the sixties the latter query calls in question some economic policy measures in the seventies macroeconomic policy may not be able to make oil cheaper but can try to mitigate adverse secondary effects on aggregate output and employment but a recovery will not make the problem of unemployment simply disappear evenly for everyone the analysis of aggregate unemployment is silent about which group of the labor force shoulders the main burden of unemployment and is more likely to suffer from extreme low escape probabilities from unemployment if the notion of a hard core of unemployed

normal costs and demand effects in price setting a study of retailing the study aims at contributing to the debate whether there are demand effects in models that seek to explain prices as mark ups on costs for costs it considers actual costs normal costs and an intermediate model with a partial adjustment to the deviation of actual from normal costs for demand effects it considers an effect on the price level of a change of demand with an allowance for asymmetry between demand growth and demand decline tests and estimates are conducted on the basis of data from retailing

price smoothing and inventory this paper explains the phenomenon of price rigidity or price smoothing as the outcome of the optimal inventory policy of a multi period profit maximizing firm under demand and output uncertainties price smoothing may be manifested in two forms first price changes may be moderated with respect to those implied by the demand function and second the firm may choose to restrict price fluctuations by establishing upper and or lower bounds on prices we show that the extent of the asymmetry in price smoothing depends on the relationship between the inventory holding cost and the backlog penalty cost our model accommodates a wide range

the impact of demand and price expectations on the behavior of prices the effects of demand and price expectations on price behavior are analyzed using data from the manufacturing sector and a model formulated to pinpoint the demand oriented factors affecting prices and to incorporate price expectations as a direct influence on price behavior the expected normal demand is seen to have a strong and systemic influence on price behavior the expected normal level of new orders is found to be an adequate measure with sector data in general although some industries require more specification the effects of inventories and unfilled orders on prices are sporadic and across sectors and industries demand oriented forces are concluded to perform as well statistically as cost push determinants expectations concerning the current normal industry price level have a significant and consistent impact on price behavior this supports the idea that firms setting prices take into account their estimates of competitor s prices future price expectations appear to have little effect on current price information 15 references

a theory of the critical mass i interdependence group heterogeneity and the production of collective action collective action usually depends on a critical mass that behaves differently from typical group members sometimes the critical mass provides some level of the good for others who do nothing wh

an evaluation of excess demand actual cost and normal cost pricing hypotheses using non nested tests this paper has emperically analyzed three versions zero lag geometric lag and almon lag of three price change hypotheses namely the excess demand actual cost and the normal cost hypothesis the goal being to select the hypothesis that describes the underlying price dynamics for manufactured goods the rival models are specified as non nested alternatives and each version is estimated by using an efficient estimator the traditional discrimination criteria which clearly reject the zero lag version are found to be impotent in discriminating between the dynamic versions of the models a sequential cross evaluation of the two dynamic versions using both pairwise and multiple non nested hypothesis tests proposed by davidson and mackinnon reveals a systematic domination by the almon version of normal cost pricing over both the excess demand and the actual cost pricing mechanisms in the canadian manufacturing sector during the period 1961 1 87 4 this result is robust under alternative specifications of th

adjustment lags economically rational expectations and price behavior source and the extent of lags in the response of prices to changes in various explanatory variables knowledge of the relevant lag patterns is of obvious importance for forecasting movements in prices and for formulating policies that are designed to reduce the rate of inflation in the recent empirical literature on prices the model most commonly used to specify price equations is the static neo classical model of price formation 1 this model presumes that the representative firm behaves as if it were a simple monopolist that faces competitive factor input markets the firm is assumed to set its price so as to maximize current profits the model yields the proposition that the firm s long run optimal price depends on expected normal factor input prices and variables e g expected real income that shift the firm s demand curve lags are introduced into the pricing process of this model in two ways some authors2 focus on expectation formation lags whereby normal factor input prices or variables that shift the firm s demand curve are related through distributed lags to past values of the variable being forecast often the distributed lag is assumed to be

labor market consequences of poor attitude and low self esteem in youth in a recent national survey that asked employers to rank the importance of particular applicant traits for nonsupervisory and production positions applicant s attitude was the only trait that was reported to be very important in fact academic performance years of schooling completed teachers recommendations and industry based credentials certifying applicant skills all ranked lower bowles et al 2000 a second independent survey of employers in holzer and wissoker 2000 also suggests that more weight is placed on a good attitude than on basic skills among new hires of low skilled workers in this article i assess the role of pre labor market attitude and self esteem in explaining disparities observed in the labor market experiences of a sample of high school graduates the apparent importance employers ascribe to attitude and self esteem gives clear reason to expect that such a relationship exists i demonstrate that such survey responses are corroborated by real economic consequences for those with poor attitude and self esteem using longitudinal data on a 1972 cohort of high school graduates i show that high school students who reveal negative attitudes and self esteem subsequently attain fewer years of postsecondary education relative to their high school cohort are less likely to be employed 14 years following high school and where working for pay earn less accounting directly for the labor force participation decision i also document a higher incidence of unemployment among these individuals furthermore i find evidence that negative attitudes and self esteem are associated with jobs later in life that require the individual to spend time working with things as opposed to people for example and that those who exhibit poor pre labor market attitude and self esteem are subsequently more closely supervised at work and given less discretion in their daily activities all told attitude and self esteem in youth are shown to have important and long lasting economic implications in the following section i briefly discuss related literatures specifically two areas of the literature are considered the effect of joblessness on self esteem and the relationship between other noncognitive skills or worker attributes and labor market outcomes section ii then introduces the data and methods used in investigating the relationships in question empirical results are reported in section iii and are followed by some discussion and concluding remarks i previous literature this article is closely related to two areas of existing literature first there exists a small body of literature that documents a relationship between labor market activity and self esteem however this literature has heretofore focused more on the damage of joblessness to an individual s perception of self worth than on the direction of causality considered here for example goldsmith et al 1995 1996a find relationships between contemporaneous joblessness and self esteem and historic joblessness and subsequent self esteem respectively arguably the causality between attitudes and jobless spells is not clearly in one direction or the other in this article i contribute clear evidence of the reverse causation causation running from attitude and self esteem to future labor market outcomes second there is a growing body of literature on the importance of noncognitive skills in wage determination this literature suggests that measures of aggression and withdrawal osborne 1999 individual motivation goldsmith et al 2000 behavioral problems in high school cawley et al 2001 one s locus of control or outlook on life goldsmith et al 1997b osborne 1999 bertrand and mullainathan 2001 coleman and deleire 2003 and mental health bartel and taubman 1979 1986 frank and gertler 1991 mullahy and sindelar 1993 each have predictive power with respect to wages that employer surveys suggest that attitude is highly valued alone leads one to anticipate that attitude be related to earnings

the failure of training in britain analysis and prescription in the last decade education and training et reform has become a major issue in many of the world s industrial powers one theme which runs throughout these reform initiatives is the need to adapt et systems to the changing economic environment these changes include the increasing integration of world markets the shift in mass manufacturing towards newly developed nations and the rapid development of new technologies most notably information technologies education and training are seen to play a crucial role in restoring or maintaining international competitiveness both on the macro level by easing the transition of the workforce into new industries and at the micro level where firms producing high quality specialized goods and services require a well qualified workforce capable of rapid adjustment in the work process and continual product innovation this paper will highlight the need for policy makers and academics to take account of the two way nature of the relationship between et and the economy

creating self sustaining high skill ecosystems geographic clusters of high technology companies are an increasingly important source of wealth and job creation in the advanced industrial countries this article provides a framework for understanding the conditions that give rise to these self sustaining high skill ecosystems hses that is based on the cases of the highly successful biomedical and computer hardware and software firms clustered in northern and southern california the framework identifies four requirements that hses share in common with natural ecosystems a catalyst to trigger the start of their development ongoing nourishment a supportive host environment and a high degree of interdependence among the actors in the system the framework is then applied to the uk identifying those policy options that are necessary for gaining greater returns from the uk s strong research base

an evolutionary dynamic of revolutions it has been argued that rational choice theory is unable to explain the occurrence of social revolutions this paper argues that if social revolutions are modeled in an evolutionary setting it is possible to predict when revolutions occur it is shown that revolutions are expected to occur when regimes lose their determination to punish revolutionary activity early and severely in the process of constructing the model some results about public good provision are generalized

the output inflation relationship abstract this paper shows how the optimal pricing and production policy of a multiperiod profit maximizing firm under demand and output disturbances leads in the aggregate to a positive relationship between production and price deviations from the expected level as depicted by the lucas type supply function the pricing and production decisions are made simultaneously by market agents who base their decisions on the same rational expectations before the disturbances are realized here although the planned production is not affected by the price deviations there is still a contemporaneous positive relationship between them where both production and prices reflect the firm s adjustment to unexpected levels of inventory we show that this positive relationship prevails even when the production decisions are made ex ante based only on expectations before the realization of the random shocks a closed form linear approximation for the supply function is derived which captures the effect of both systematic and unsystematic economic disturbances finally we present an empirical test which supports our assertion that our inventory adjustment mechanism contributes to the creation of the positive relationship between production and price deviations

production smoothing in the japanese vehicle industry abstract physical data from the japanese vehicle industry covering monthly observations from 1985 1 to 1994 12 are investigated across nine goods ranging from bicycles to large buses smaller variance of production is found relative to sales across all goods for unadjusted data and in 17 out of 18 cases for seasonally adjusted data such evidence in favor of the production smoothing model psm is confirmed by full information maximum likelihood employed jointly on inventories and sales equations the estimates suggest the industry operates in the range of increasing marginal costs in six out of nine goods positive costs of being away from targeted inventory are also present in six out of these nine goods which make the psm a good description of this industry

applying theil s multinomial extension of the linear logit model to meat expenditure data one of the chief drawbacks of the multinomial extension of the linear logit model is that after the standard linearization the parameters which are directly estimated have no obvious economic meaning this paper presents alternative transformations which facilitate interpretation in one linearization the estimated coefficients will be elasticities at a selected data point such as the mean in another form the coefficients will be slutsky parameters the latter version is chosen for an empirical analysis of the demand for meat in great britain a number of issues concerning the model s error structure and dynamic specification are discussed

learning to cooperate stochastic and tacit collusion in social exchange the prisoner s dilemma formalizes the social trap that arises when individually rational choices aggregate with mutually undesirable consequences the game theoretic solution centers on the opportunity for tacit collusion in repeated play however not all actors grasp the strategic implications of future interaction accordingly this study reformulates the game as a stochastic learning model in which the behavior of interdependent actors is constinually shaped by sanctions and cues generated by their interaction computer simulations of a two person game show that adaptive actors are led into a social trap more readily than are fully rational actors but they are also better at finding their way out prosocial norms appear to be a consequence rather than cause of cooperation but useful in promoting forgiveness of random deviance the model is then elaborated as an n way prisoner s dilemma simulations show how the effects of network size density mobility and anonymity derive from a fundamental princi

singularity and autoregressive disturbances in linear logit models the implications of including autoregressive disturbances in linear logit models of demand systems are explored it is argued that the normality assumption of the error terms is more appropriate in the linear logit model than in a share equation model with additive disturbances commonly found in the literature autoregressive disturbances and their implications for model estimation are discussed in that context both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence are presented in favor of the logit specification given the presence of serial correlation

global policy developments towards industrial policy and skills skills for competitiveness and growth there is a rising interest in both skills policy and industrial policy in oecd countries following the economic downturn but how can skills policy best support industrial growth in the uk the coalition government is arguing for an industrial policy which is bottom up supporting networks of employers and helping to build productive local supply chains there is simultaneous investment in a more employer led skills policy in order to better tackle skills shortages and gaps but is an employer led skills policy the best way of boosting industrial growth in all uk regions are there potential market failures in employer led policies of which the public sector should be aware this article warns against taking an overly simplistic approach to skills development arguing that while skills policies should be flexible to the needs of employers there is still justification for investing in a broad educational curriculum at the local level further policy makers may need proactively to help employers to better use skills in some regions in order to boost productivity and growth

measuring the consumer welfare effects of carbon penalties theory and applications to household energy demand abstract this study implements a money metric approximation to the hicksian equivalent variation hev based on observable demand functions this approach is a less restrictive approximation to the hev than the marshallian consumer surplus mcs in situations where mcs is misleading this study also implements a generalized logit demand system that conforms better to the theory of consumer behaviour than standard flexible functional forms eg translog the almost ideal demand system aids generalized leontief and minflex laurent models the generalized logit model was estimated using new york state level and company level data on residential consumption of electricity natural gas and fuel oil the demand model and money metric were combined to measure the consumer welfare effects of carbon penalties on electricity and fuels while the application is specific the generalized logit model of demand and the money metric measure of welfare change can encompass a wider range of applications than conventional methods of analysis

chains of cooperation threshold effects in collective action granovetter s threshold model of collective action shows how each new participant triggers others until the chain reaction reaches a gap in the distribution of thresholds hence outcomes depend on the network of social ties that channel the chain reactions however structural analysis is encumbered by the assumption that thresholds derive from changing marginal returns on investments in public goods a learning theoretic specification imposes less stringent assumptions about the rationality of the actors and is much better suited to a structural analysis computer simulations suggest that threshold effects may be the key to solving the coordination problem when individual choices are contingent on participation by others this interdependence facilitates the coordination of contributions needed to shift the bistable system from a noncooperative equilibrium to a cooperative one further simulations with low density networks show that these chain reactions require bridges that link socially distant actors supporting granovetter s case for the strength of weak ties

continuity and evolution in an old industrial region the labour market dynamics of the rise and fall of northern rock dawley s marshall n pike a pollard j and tomaney j continuity and evolution in an old industrial region the labour market dynamics of the rise and fall of northern rock regional studies the northern rock mortgage bank was a high profile casualty of the credit crunch in 2007 an evolutionary geographical political economy approach demonstrates that northern rock s growth and decline was shaped by its location in an old industrial region and echoes the historical position of the peripheral region in the spatial division of labour a longitudinal investigation focuses on the labour market dynamics of northern rock s rapid growth and decline on the north east of england the northern rock case highlights the enduring occupational structure of the region s labour market and shows how older industrial regions suffer from a process of occupational disadvantage that restricts their ability to adapt to economic change

output response to prices and public investment in agriculture indonesian food crops abstract this paper analyzes dynamic food crop supply response in indonesia the effects of technology prices and investments on output growth for rice corn soybean and cassava are examined the analysis generates crop wise area yield and input demand parameters suitable for the evaluation of price and investment policies and shows the large impact of public investment in agricultural research extension and irrigation on long run output growth in indonesia elimination of the fertilizer subsidy and reinvestment of the resulting fiscal savings in research extension and irrigation would produce large benefits

voter participation and strategic uncertainty the paradox of not voting is examined in a model where voters have uncertainty about the preferences and costs of other voters in game theoretic models of voter participation under complete information equilibrium outcomes can have substantial turnout even when voting costs are relatively high in contrast when uncertainty about preferences and costs is present only voters with negligible or negative net voting costs participate when the electorate is large

collective action cascades an informational rationale for the power in numbers self interested individuals pursue their goals rationally taking into account the constraints imposed by their environment and best responding to the strategic behavior of other individuals when applied to collective action economic theory predicts undersupply meanwhile the behavior of masses of people is described as excitable emotional irrational suggestible hypnotic disorderly and unpredictable in practice it seems collective action is oversupplied and erratically so the contagious and volatile dynamics of collective action appear to defy rationalization i conceptualize a social movement as a dynamic informational cascade turbulencies emerge endogenously from rational individual behavior disorderly mass behavior is a by product of a powerful decentralized mechanism of information aggregation

a nonlinear expenditure system using a linear logit specification recent literature on the estimation of models of consumer expenditure patterns indicates that engel curves are nonlinear and demographic variables are important determinants of demand a linear logit household expenditures model is presented which automatically displays adding up properties derived from the budget constraint while permitting great flexibility in the engel curves in addition homogeneity and symmetry can be imposed and tested and by a simple transformation the coefficients can be estimated by linear regression another advantage of the model is that demographic variables such as household size and composition can be introduced without sacrificing the adding up properties

the paradox of group size in collective action a theory of the critical mass ii many sociologists incorrectly believe that larger groups are less likely to support collective action than smaller ones the effect of group size infact depends on costs if the costs of collective goods rise with the number who share in them larger groups act less frequently than smaller ones if the costs vary little with group size larger groups should exhibit more collective action than smaller ones because larger groups have more resources and are more likely to have a critical mass of highly interested and resourceful actors the positive effects of group size increase with group heterogeneity and nonrandom social ties paradoxically when groups are hetero geneous fewer contributors may be needed to provide a good to larger groups making collective action less complex and less expensive

spatial price transmission and asymmetry in the ghanaian maize market abstract this paper utilizes recently developed threshold cointegration tests that allow for asymmetric adjustment toward a long run equilibrium relationship to examine price linkages between principal maize markets in ghana unlike previous studies the approach employed here assumes that economic agents only act to move the system back to equilibrium when the deviation from equilibrium exceeds a critical threshold whereby the benefits of this adjustment exceed the costs the findings indicate that major maize markets in ghana are well integrated both the threshold cointegration and asymmetric error correction models reveal that wholesale maize prices in local markets accra and bolgatanga respond more swiftly to increases than to decreases in central market techiman prices accra prices are found to react faster than bolgatanga prices to changes in techiman market prices

investment in finished goods inventories an analysis of adjustment speeds it is well known that fluctuations in inventory investment are a major source of fluctuations in gross national product this has stimulated numerous empirical studies designed to understand the causes of changes in inventory investment these studies include those for example michael lovell that utilize a flexible accelerator model of inventory behavior as well as those for example david belsley that utilize the linear decision rule approach to optimal inventory holding the latter approach however can be interpreted in terms of a flexible accelerator model see j c r rowley and p k trivedi for a survey of the literature recently several authors for example martin feldstein and alan auerbach observed that these studies yield very implausible empirical results the basic difficulty is that the estimates of the speed with which firms close gaps between desired and actual inventory stocks are very low often the estimated speed of adjustment is less than 10 percent per quarter as feldstein and auerbach stress this is extremely implausible when even the largest swings in inventories in a given quarter amount to less than one day s production the purpose of this paper is to undertake an analysis of adjustment speeds for finished goods inventory investment in our empirical work we utilize a modified flexible accelerator model of inventory investment 1 like the conventional flexible accelerator the model permits firms to close a fraction of the gap between desired and actual inventories in any period the relevant fraction is of course the adjustment coefficient and it may vary in principle between zero and unity our model differs from the conventional model in assuming that the desired stock of finished goods inventories depends on the normal levels of exogenous variables that firms must forecast to make decisions on inventory holdings these include not only the normal level or orders or demand which is a standard explanatory variable in the empirical literature but also the normal levels of real factor input prices and real interest rates in addition we permit the normal levels to change relatively slowly in response to changes in past levels of orders real factor input prices and real interest rates our objective is to investigate whether the slow adjustment speeds that have been estimated in the literature are due to the use of models which contain an incomplete menu of exogenous variables to determine desired inventories and pay inadequate attention to lags in the adjustment of normal levels of exogenous variables

determinants of price adjustment this paper reports results of an empirical study investigating the adjustment speed of prices to change in costs and demand particular emphasis is laid on the impact of concentration on the adjustment speed in addition the effects of the business cycle and capital intensity are considered it shows that concentrated industries tend to adjust prices faster while capital intensity has a negative impact prices are more flexible during an upswing than in times of a recession

the effects of changing input costs on food prices the relationships between changes in food sector input costs and retail food prices are examined results indicate that increases in factor prices pass quickly to consumers within two quarters for most foods in addition rising farm level prices and substantial increases in nonfarm resource prices appear to explain why food prices rose more rapidly than nonfood prices in the 1970s the analysis is based on a twenty equation econometric model of the food price determination process specified following popkin s stage of processing approach causality and validation test statistics for the model are presented

monopolistic competition aggregation of competitive information and the amount of product differentiation consider an industry with a large number of homogeneous firms each firm s profits are a function of its own strategy and the strategies the other firms select suppose other firms strategies enter into each firm s profit function only through one or more statistics for example average price in the market may parameterize every firm s profit function we prove that as a general rule the industry s firms will in equilibrium follow at most m 1 distinct strategies where m is the number of statistics by which competitors strategies affect each firm s profits

a theory of consumer boycotts under symmetric information and imperfect competition this article models strategic interactions between non identical duopolistic firms and a public interest environmental organisation eo that promotes green production practices by threatening consumer boycotts against brown producers the article describes when boycotts are deterred by prior firm commitments to be green and also when a boycott arises in equilibrium despite symmetric information when a boycott arises it is either a small persistent boycott against the small firm in the industry or a large transitory boycott against the large firm in the industry that prompts the target firm to accede to the boycott demands quickly

social networks and collective action a theory of the critical mass iii most analyses of collective action agree that overcoming the freerider problem requires organizing potential contributors thus making their decisions interdependent the potential for organizing depends on the social ties in the group particularly on the overall density or frequency of ties on the extent to which they are centralized in a few individuals and on the costs of communicating and coordinating actions through these ties mathematical analysis and computer simulations extend a formal microsocial theory of interdependent collective action to treat social networks and organization costs as expected the overall density of social ties in a group improves its prospects for collective action more significant because less expected are the findings that show that the centralization of network ties always has a positive effect on collective action and that the negative effect of costs on collective action declines as the group s resource or interest heterogeneity increases these nonobvious resu

the as if approach to game theory three positive results and four obstacles abstract the usual justifications of non cooperative solution criteria are rationalistic in nature building on individual rationality and expectation coordination postulates in contrast the as if approach to game theoretic rationality is evolutionary arguing that even if strategically interacting agents do not meet these epistemic conditions their long run aggregate behavior will nevertheless conform with them because of the workings of biological or social selection processes the present essay discusses three implications of evolutionary selection dynamics in favour of the as if paradigm and four potential obstacles to the general validity of these implications

do low paid workers benefit from the urban escalator evidence from british cities cities are characterised as places of increased human capital accumulation dynamic labour markets and faster wage growth in short places where workers can get ahead studies suggest that urban w

long run selection and the work ethic abstract that individuals contribute in social dilemma interactions even when contributing is costly is a well established observation in the experimental literature since a contributor is always strictly worse off than a non contributor the question is raised if an intrinsic motivation to contribute can survive in an evolutionary setting applying stochastic evolutionary dynamics we give conditions for equilibria with a positive number of contributors to be selected in the long run

the generalized war of attrition abstract we model a war of attrition with n k firms competing for n prizes in a natural oligopoly context the k 1 lowest value firms drop out instantaneously even though each firm s value is private information to itself in a standard setting context in which every competitor suffers losses until a standard is chosen even after giving up on its own preferred alternative each firm s exit time is independent both of k and of other players actions our results explain how long it takes to form a winning coalition in politics solving the model is facilitated by the revenue equivalence theorem jel d43 d44 l13 o30

inventory adjustment and dynamic winery behavior this paper develops a dynamic model of processor behavior which is applied to the california wine industry price production and input demand functions are derived from an optimal control model which takes into account inventory growth from aging and the linkage between product inventories and input purchases an important feature of the model is that expected future market conditions and beginning inventories influence current behavior through changes in the inventory shadow price the empirical results generally conform to the theoretical specification and emphasize the role of demand expectations on winery behavior

target buffer stocks the behaviour of a buffer stock holding firm facing stationary demand shocks is considered from the viewpoint of recent evidence on inventories and price setting attention is focussed on the responses of price and supply to changes in autonomous demand and compared with those of a nondurable producer the results conflict with recent theoretical work in providing support for a keynesian interpretation of inventory series

on the theory of the firm underlying empirical models of aggregate price behavior recent empirical work on aggregate and industrial price behavior has been conducted within the framework of a static neo classical theory of price formation 2 the purpose of this paper is to propose a more general theoretical framework for analyzing price behavior the proposed framework is neo classical in its basic characteristics but unlike the recent literature it is based on a dynamic theory of firm behavior in which decisions on price inventories and the capital stock are integrated to serve as a basis for comparison with the model developed here it is useful to state briefly the main propositions of the static neo classical model the model presumes that the typical firm behaves as if it were a simple monopolist that faces competitive factor input markets and sets its price so as to maximize current profits assuming a log linear demand function and production function the model yields the result that the firm s long run optimal price policy in general is

a behavioral model of turnout the so called paradox of voting is a major anomaly for rational choice theories of elections if voting is costly and citizens are rational then in large electrorates the expected turnout would be small for if many people voted the chance of anyone being pivotal would be too small to make the act worthwhile yet many people do vote even in large national elections to address this puzzle we construct a model of adaptive rationality citizens learn by simple trial and error repeating satisfactory actions and avoiding unsatisfactory ones their aspiration levels which code current payoffs as satisfactory or unsatisfactory are also endogenous themselves adjusting to experience our main result is that agents who adapt in this manner turn out in substantial numbers even in large electorates and even if voting is costly for everyone standard conceptions of rational behavior do not explain why anyone bothers to vote in a mass election turnout is the paradox that ate rational choice theory fiorina 1990 334 we would like to thank stephen ansolabehere sorin antohi glenn ellison dedre gentner sunil kumar david laitin tze lai arthur lupia elijah millgram lincoln moses scott page tom palfrey john patty paul pfleiderer adam simon joel sobel carole uhlaner three anonymous referees and the participants in the political economics seminar at the gsb the stanford caltech workshop the unc american politics research group the ucla conference on cognition emotion and rational choice panels at the annual meetings of the mpsa and the apsa the agent 2000 workshop the seventh annual wallis conference the cmu pitt colloquium series and the center for advanced study in the behavioral sciences seminar series for their helpful comments this paper was written while ting was at the university of north carolina at chapel hill and he thanks unc s department of political science for its support it was revised while bendor was a fellow at the casbs and he is grateful for the center s financial and intellectual support

the local low skills equilibrium moving from concept to policy utility it is more than three decades since the publication of finegold and soskice s 1988 influential article the failure of training in britain analysis and prescription this widely cited publicati

are labour markets necessarily local spatiality segmentation and scale this paper draws on recent debates about scale to approach the geography of labour markets from a dynamic perspective sensitive to the spatiality and scale of labour market restructuring its explo

when does one bad apple spoil the barrel an evolutionary analysis of collective action this paper studies collective action games in which the production of a public good requires teamwork a leading example is a threshold game in which provision requires the voluntary participation of m out of n players quantal response strategy revisions allow play to move between equilibria in which a team successfully provides and an equilibrium in which the collective action fails a full characterization of long run play reveals the determinants of success these include the correlation between players costs of provision and their valuations for the good the addition of an extra bad apple player can spoil the barrel by destabilizing successful teams and so offers a rationale for limiting the pool of possible contributors copyright 2008 wiley blackwell

price and output adjustment in a model with inventories econometric evidence from categorical in this paper we investigate the role of inventories in the adjustment process of prices and output in response to demand and cost shocks using the qualitative information contained in business surveys of u k firms the discussion is organized around a model based on the assumption of monopolistic competition and which permits a production smoothing role for inventories the econometric results suggest that the stock of inventories has no impact on output decisions the effect on pricing decisions is weak at best anticipated demands shocks are the main factor accounting for output changes while both cost and demand shocks are important determinants of prices coauthors are fabio schiantarelli jon breslaw and william low copyright 1993 by mit press