the public choice of superior sanctions this paper analyzes the public choice of specific forms of sanctions current sanctions are essentially quantity constraints q sanctions which are like quotas in that they might bestow benefits on certain special interest groups in the target country revenue sanctions r sanctions may be able to recapture such benefits in the form of sender government revenue which could either compensate for the costs of sanctions to the sending country or finance other sanction enhancing activities aimed at the target country hence r sanctions may be superior to q sanctions in general or on the basis of target efficiency however public choice analysis suggests that q sanctions will generally be chosen over r sanctions by democratic countries

political influence motives and the choice between tariffs and quotas abstract tariffs and quotas are not symmetric under a variety of circumstances this paper pursues the implications of one such circumstance domestic market power for the political choice of protectionist instrument in the context of a political support maximization model tariffs dominate quotas in the political model in the absence of revenue seeking motives in the presence of revenue seeking ambiguity arises but limits can be placed on the range of tariff or quota levels also some welfare implications emerge

truth effort and the legal battle in lawsuits relative success depends upon two main factors the true degree of fault and the efforts invested on eachside a proposed litigation success function displays thisdependence while satisfying other essential properties undertwo different protocols nash cournot and stackelberg solutions are obtained for the litigation efforts proportionate success and values of the lawsuit on each side outcomes are evaluated in terms of two normative criteria i achieving justice interpreted as equality between defendantfault and relative plaintiff success and ii minimizingaggregate litigation cost achievement of these aims isdetermined by the decisiveness of litigation effort relativeto true fault

why voluntary export restraints are voluntary the paper presents an analysis of the effect upon an oligopolistic equilibrium of introducing a voluntary export restraint ver upon an importing firm a ver set at the free trade level of imports is shown to raise the profits of all firms within the industry the result follows as the imposition of a ver upon a free trade nash price competition forces the domestic firm to become an industry price leader the ver raises industry prices by facilitating collusion and lowers consumer welfare pourquoi les restrictions volontaires d 1 exportation sont volontaires ce memoire presente une analyse des effets de l introduction de restrictions volontaires a l exportation rve sur une entreprise qui importe dans un monde en equilibre oligopolistique on montre que l introduction de rve approximant le niveau des importations en regime de libre echange devrait augmenter les profits de toutes les entreprises dans l industrie cela decoule du fait que l imposition de rve sur un univers de concurrence par les prix a la nash en regime de libre echange force l entreprise domestique a devenir le leader en prix l introduction de rve augmente le niveau des prix de l industrie en facilitant la collusion et de ce fait reduit le niveau de bien etre des consomrnateurs

protection lobbying and market structure abstract we look at a model of lobbying by oligopolistic industry where firms allocate resources between lobbying and internal cost reducing activities we ask the following questions i if firms differ with respect to comparative advantage in lobbying what is the equilibrium allocation of resources between lobbying and cost reducing activities ii can lobbying opportunities reverse the profitability ranking among firms iii under what condition is the conventional wisdom that highly concentrated industries tend to obtain more protection valid the answers depend on various measures of comparative advantage in lobbying and on the demand curve

specialized supplier networks as a source of competitive advantage evidence from the auto industry this study examines the relationship between interfirm asset specificity and performance in the auto industry more specifically i examine the extent to which differences in supplier automaker asset specialization may explain performance differences between japanese automakers nissan and toyota and u s automakers chrysler ford general motors the findings indicate a positive relationship between supplier automaker specialization and performance in particular the data suggest a positive relationship between interfirm human asset cospecialization and both quality and new model cycle time moreover site specialization is found to be positively associated with lower inventory costs the findings suggest that in the auto industry a tightly integrated production network characterized by proximity and a high level of human cospecialization will outperform a loosely integrated production network characterized by low levels of interfirm specialization

the creation of effective property rights traditionally general equilibrium models have taken effective property rights to be given and have been concerned only with analyzing the allocation of resources among productive uses and the distribution of the resulting product but this formulation of the economic problem is incomplete because it neglects that the appropriative activities by which people create the effective property rights that inform allocation and distribution are themselves an alternative use of scare resources this paper develops two canonical general equilibrium models of resource allocation and income distribution that allow for the allocation of time and effort to the creation of effective property rights to valuable resources in one model the valuable resources are initially in common pool in the other models the analysis reveals how the amount of time and effort that agents allocate to the creation of effective property rights on the technology of production and on the scale of the economy the paper also analyses the security of initial claims to valuable resources and speculates about why initial claims are perfectly secure

political economy of public policies insights from distortions to agricultural and food markets the agricultural and food sector is an ideal case for investigating the political economy of public policies many of the policy developments in this sector since the 1950s have been sudden and transformational while others have been gradual but persistent this paper reviews and synthesizes the literature on trends and fluctuations in market distortions and the political economy explanations that have been advanced based on a rich global data set covering a half century of evidence on commodities countries and policy instruments the paper identifies hypotheses that have been explored in the literature on the extent of market distortions and the conditions under which reform may be feasible

the costs of conflict abstract violent conflict destroys resources it generates destruction costs these costs have an important effect on individuals decisions to cooperate or conflict we develop two models of conflict one in which conflict s destruction costs are independent of individuals investments in arms the tools of conflict and another in which conflict s destruction costs depend on those investments our models demonstrate that when conflict s destruction costs are arms dependent conflict is more costly making cooperation more likely we test this prediction with a laboratory experiment in which subjects first choose how heavily to invest in arms and then choose whether to cooperate or conflict in an environment where interaction is repeated in one set of treatments conflict s destruction costs are arms independent in another they are arms dependent our experimental results support our models predictions compared to when conflict s destruction costs are arms independent when those costs are arms dependent cooperation increases by nearly a third

more on the inflation tax and the value of equity a cash in advance macro model is presented in which dividends are distributed at the end of each p eriod but where all other money receipts may be spent immediately on output and labor markets if money grows at a constant rate only th e real price of equity will be inversely related to inflation in the steady state if the money supply is allowed to grow at an increasing rate however agent welfare will decline

price and quantity controls as facilitating devices abstract this letter examines three cases in which a regulation imposed on one of two duopolists can increase the profit levels of both firms the regulations examined include a price floor an output quota and a sales tax

anticipated inflation and the stock market the relation between fully anticipated inflation and stock prices is analysed in this paper the stock market is modelled within the construct of a choice theoretic intertemporal general equilibrium model where transactions are subject to a cash in advance constraint here a rise of the steady state inflation rate is shown to have a depressing effect on the stock market there are two reasons for this result first the consumption goods value of a given stream of dividends is reduced when inflation rises because the latter acts as a specific tax on dividends and secondly the firm s profits are lowered because the inflation rate distorts the labour leisure choice inflation anticipee et marche boursier l auteur analyse la relation entre l inflation pleinement anticip6e et le prix des actions en bourse a l int6rieur d un modele d 6quilibre g6n6ral de choix inter temporel on insere un march6 boursier dans lequel les transactions doivent etre r6gl6es comptant d avance on voit qu un accroissement du taux d inflation en regime permanent a un effet d6pressif sur le march6 boursier cela tient a deux raisons d abord quand l inflation monte la valeur en termes de biens de consommation d un flux donn6 de dividendes est r6duite parce que l inflation agit comme taxe sp6cifique sur les dividendes ensuite les profits de l entreprise sont r6duits parce que le taux d inflation introduit une distorsion dans la choix entre travail et loisir

contest with pre contest investment abstract in a standard noisy contest more competition more contestants leads to lower individual equilibrium effort we show that when contestants can make pre contest investment to enhance their competency neither equilibrium investment nor individual effort is monotonic in the number of contestants individual effort may increase with the level of participation

ec trade protection law produmping or antidumping this paper argues that the anticipation of protection can have astimulating effect on exports instead of the commonly claimed effect of harassment if protection serves market cartelization by fixing export quantities or prices exporters may have an incentive to increase their sales abroad in order to secure a large share of the expected rent which is brought about by the anticipated import restriction this may even result in sales below marginal costs or dumping the effect of the protectionist threat may then be the reverse of what is intended it can raise the speed of import penetration and it can provoke dumping a formal model and a supportive institutional analysis of ec trade protection is supplemented by preliminary empirical evidence

conflict as a part of the bargaining process this paper investigates the use of conflict as a bargaining instrument it first revises the arguments explaining the role of confrontation as a source of information and its use during negotiations then it offers evidence illustrating this phenomenon by analyzing a sample of colonial and imperial wars the second part of the paper explores a bargaining model with one sided incomplete information parties can choose the scope of the confrontation they may want to engage in an absolute conflict that terminates the game or a limited conflict that only introduces delay and conveys information about the eventual outcome of the absolute one it is shown that confrontation has a double edged effect it may paradoxically open the door to agreement when the uninformed party is so optimistic that no agreement is feasible but it can also create inefficiency when agreement is possible but the informed agent has an incentive to improve her bargaining position by fighting

on the superneutrality of money in a stochastic dynamic macroeconomic model abstract this paper explores the robustness of the superneutrality of money result to the introduction of uncertainty while qualitatively superneutrality fails to obtain in our model quantitatively the observed tobin effect is insignificant the equilibrium time paths of real variables are nearly unaffected by changes in the money growth rule we argue that our conclusions reinforce the theoretical case for superneutrality

protectionist policies as the regulation of international industry the political feasibility of protectionist policies that regulate international industry derives from the absence of overt collusion among domestic import competing producers the regulation of international industry cannot be explicit since governments would thereby be perceived to be approving or instigating international collusion hence voluntary export restraints have been popularly presented with a focus on the difficulties confronted by domestic import competing producers and a de emphasis on the mutual gains to domestic and foreign producers from monitoring by a foreign government of a restrictive export cartel arrangement similarly trigger price mechanisms have popularly been explained in terms of the need for anti dumping measures to preserve fair competition likewise the involuntary export tax derived in the first instance from an administratively validated but as demonstrated by kalt s econometric analysis contentious complaint of unfair foreign competition voluntary export restraints trigger price mechanisms and involuntary export taxes are however protectionist devices the beneficiaries of which can transcend national jurisdictions and which have in common the characteristic that the gains to domestic industry interests derive from the regulation of foreign competitors

peace war and the balance of power every possible relation between the distribution of power and the likelihood of war has been defended somewhere in the literature on international politics war is least likely if power is distributed equally war is least likely if power is distributed unequally and the distribution of power has no effect on the likelihood of war i try to settle this dispute by examining the effect of expectations about the outcome of war on the choice between war and negotiation i argue that each of these mutually contradictory propositions can be derived from some plausible set of premises and thus that which one is correct depends on which set of premises best describes a situation the most important factors affecting the relation between the distribution of power and the likelihood of war are 1 whether the terms of a compromise agreement that might be accepted in lieu of war affect the distribution of power between the antagonists and therefore the probability that the agreement will be enforced and 2 how many states interests will be affected by the outcome

dynamic multi activity contests in many contests players can influence the outcome through efforts in multiple activities several of which can be chosen before others in this paper we develop a model of dynamic multi activity contests players simultaneously choose efforts in long run activities observe each other s efforts in these activities and then simultaneously choose efforts in short run activities a player s long run and short run efforts complement each other in determining the player s probability of winning we compare the outcomes of this two stage model to those of the corresponding model in which players do not observe each other s first stage efforts before the second stage and thus effectively choose efforts in all activities simultaneously interestingly effort expenditures are always lower in the sequential multi activity contest than in the simultaneous multi activity contest the implications of this result for the organization of military litigation innovation academic and sporting contests are highlighted

domestic politics foreign interests and international trade policy reply this paper incorporates the foreign interest in the determination of a country s international trade policy into a model of political competition between candidates contesting elective office we envisage foreign and domestic producer interests as expressing political support for a candidate via campaign contributions and candidates as making trade policy pronouncements to maximize political support from producer interests tariffs are divisive but vers are consistent with conciliatory policy positions yielding mutual gain to foreign and domestic interests no candidate has an interest in formulating a trade policy position using a tariff if a ver is a policy option protection in the developed countries has in recent years often taken the form of bilaterally negotiated voluntary export restraints vers rather than the more traditional unilaterally imposed import restrictions the use of voluntary export restraints has been paralleled by interest in the theoretical literature the effects of vers have been compared with tariffs and quotas and vers have been examined in a political economy framework with a view to identifying the gainers and losers from this form of restric

keiretsu and relationship specific investment a barrier to trade this article develops a model of informal procurement within japanese keiretsu so as to consider effects on intermediate good imports such as auto parts parts suppliers make relationship specific investments that benefit the automaker and prices are determined by bargaining after investment has been sunk although this investment raises efficiency it limits the range of imports to less important parts such as tailpipes and it is possible that no parts are imported despite lower foreign costs lack of information concerning investment rents combined with counterintuitive responses of imports to changes in output and costs could create unwarranted perceptions of a trade barrier

effects of inflation on the pattern of international trade this paper integrates a transactions based model of money with a real trade model and examines how steady state inflation affects the direction and size of international trade the effects of inflation work through changes in supplies of labour and capital which are chosen jointly with production and consumption by utility maximizing households if production exhibits constant returns to scale in domestically mobile factors then it is unlikely that the economy will produce both of the two traded goods for certain rates of inflation small changes can have dramatic effects on the direction of trade for other rates of inflation the volume of trade is affected when money is held for transactions purposes and factor supplies are endogenous changes in inflation can cause changes in the pattern of trade that do not reflect real underlying changes in comparative advantage

commercial culture political culture and economic policy polarization the case of japan abstract in this paper we present a model of endogenous policy formation that captures crucial aspects of the japanese commercial and political culture we analyze the influence of certain cultural traits and show that cultural idiosyncrasies are important determinants of policy formation especially the complex interaction of the two types of cultures is shown to have significant consequences for the polarization of policy stances contrasting our model s behavior with the stylized facts of japanese politics we arrive at the conclusion that the model s behavior is compatible with the observed policy positions held by japanese politicians over the last 50 years

trade restrictions as facilitating practices abstract the effect of quantitative restrictions in oligopolistic markets is shown to depend on whether imports are substitutes or complements for domestic products in the former case they have profound effects even when set at free trade levels because they impede the ability of the foreign firm to compete in the domestic market thereby acting to facilitate collusion and raise prices and profits for this reason tariffs and quotas are fundamentally non equivalent with substitute goods when goods are complements a voluntary export restriction ver at the free trade level has no effect and tariffs and quotas are equivalent

determinants of trust in supplier relations evidence from the automotive industry in japan and the united states abstract this study examines the determinants of inter organizational trust by using survey data from over 1000 suppliers in the automotive industry drawing on transaction cost economics game theory and sociological exchange theory we define trust and derive a model of its determinants regression analysis results indicate that determinants of trust are different from determinants of opportunism us japanese differences are found in three respects i the way trust is conceptualised by suppliers is more complex in japan than in the us ii the level of trust is higher in japan than in the us and iii the factors facilitating trust and those attenuating opportunism differ in the us and japan

endogeneous protection factor returns and resource allocation we consider a heckscher ohlin samuelson trade model with two lobbies representing the interests of factor owners and two political parties the lobbies contribute resources to politics equating their returns to political and economic activity at the margin while the parties maximize their probability of election trading off general voter dissatisfaction with protection against the electioneering resources that favorable policies attract from the lobbies the equilibrium level of protection of a factor and its expected rate of return increase with its relative endowment if this relative endowment is high low then the factor will be better worse off than under free trade but at intermediate factor endowment ratios both factors will be worse off under parameter changes making lobbies more sensitive to the commodity price the lobbies contribute more resources to politics and can both be worse off even though the parties are proposing lower trade distortions

dynamic behavior of capital accumulation in a cash in advance model abstract this paper analyzes the dynamic behavior of capital accumulation in stockman s cash in advance model if the cash in advance constraint applies only to consumption then money is superneutral along the transition path as well as in the long run alternatively if the cash in advance constraint applies to gross investment as well as consumption then a permanent increase in the rate of monetary growth reduces the steady state capital stock the effect on the speed of adjustment depends on the sign of a certain simple function of the parameters of preferences and technology

anticipated monetary policy in a cash in advance economy this paper analyses the effects of perfectly foreseen monetary policy within the framework of a standard cash in advance economy anticipated monetary policy is shown to have real effects by influencing inflationary expectations in a cash in advance economy an increase in the anticipated rate of inflation reduces the return to labour supply and induces a substitution away from time spent in the labour market the paper analyses the implication of this substitution for the time paths of output prices interest rates real and nominal and stock market prices

money and asset prices in a cash in advance economy an asset pricing model with money introduced via a cash in advance constraint is presented the monetary velocity is variable hence money demand does not obey the trivial quantity equation the effects of disturbances in output and money growth on real balances the price level and interest rates are examined monetary policy has effects on real asset prices the fisher relation and the premium on nominal bonds are discussed the precise role of the timing of information and transactions for properties of price levels and interest rates are clarified

comparing bargaining solutions in the shadow of conflict how norms against threats can have real effects abstract in many economic environments agents make costly and irreversible investments in guns that may enhance their respective threat payoffs but also shrink the utility possibilities set in such settings with variable threats and a variable utility possibilities set it becomes possible to rank different bargaining solutions in terms of efficiency we compare bargaining solutions within a class in which the influence of the threat point on the bargaining outcome varies across solutions under symmetry we find that the solution in which the threat point is least influential the equal sacrifice solution pareto dominates the other solutions since the equal sacrifice solution puts the least weight on the threat point norms against threats that can be seen in many seemingly rhetorical pronouncements in adversarial relations can mitigate some of the costs of conflict and therefore have efficiency enhancing effects journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 c78 d30 d70 d72 k42

europe 1992 and the western pacific economies the main stimulus to completing the integration of the economies of the european community under the i992 programme has been the ec s relatively slow economic growth during the past two or three decades while japan s share of world gdp has trebled since the early i96os to about one sixth the eci 2 s share has fallen slightly to around one quarter many expect or at least hope that the removal of remaining barriers to movements of goods services people and capital within the ec not only will provide a one off boost to ec output cecchini et al i988 but will set ec incomes on a permanently higher growth path baldwin i989 numerous non europeans worry however that the trade diverting consequences of the ec reforms together with possible enlargements of ec membership and changes in ec preferential trading arrangements will be much more significant than any external trade creation and may make some excluded economies worse off this paper seeks to assess the effects of the ec92 programme and related changes currently underway in europe on the trade and growth prospects of a particularly vulnerable group namely the western pacific economies the next section of the paper explains why the western pacific region defined to include northeast and southeast asia plus australia and new zealand is a natural grouping of economies for considering external effects of european policy changes 2 the subsequent section summarizes the likely effects of those changes on the volume and commodity composition of europe s external trade and hence on the trade and welfare of different western pacific economies the fourth section examines possible responses by that region to these developments and their likely repercussions for europe the paper concludes that while the western pacific economies are likely to respond positively to whatever changes take place in europe welfare there in europe

the dynamics of a small open economy in response to monetary fiscal and productivity shocks abstract this paper evaluates empirically the relative importance of monetary and fiscal versus technology shocks in an open economy characterized by perfect international capital mobility the variance covariance matrix of these shocks is estimated a stochastic model is used to perform numerical simulations the results show that persistent shocks to productivity can reproduce several empirical regularities including the puzzling high correlation between national saving and investment remarkably well and that monetary and fiscal shocks play a minor role

the demand and liquidity effects of monetary shocks abstract this paper examines the effect of a monetary shock in a stochastic growth model with a cash in advance constraint and a financial intermediary it explores the differences between the results of restrictions on nominal price adjustment the demand effect and restrictions on savings behavior the liquidity effect it is found that the model that produces the appropriate response to a temporary monetary shock includes both demand and liquidity effects

a further exploration in the theory of exchange rate regimes in an interesting paper in this journal elhanan helpman 1981 develops a simple two country model to compare the welfare levels that are achieved under different exchange rate regimes in a world characterized by perfect foresight his basic finding is that equilibrium consumption allocations and hence welfare levels are identical under a floating exchange rate system and a one sided peg fixed exchange rate regime this result is due to helpman s assumption that output is determined exogenously which allows a separation of the real and monetary sides of the economy the purpose of this paper is to extend helpman s model by making two alterations in his setup 1 to allow production to be endogenously determined as a function of labor force participation and 2 to allow welfare levels to be dependent on labor service as well as on consumption the main conclusion then obtained is that a country may achieve a higher welfare level under a flexible exchange rate regime than under a fixed exchange rate regime since it is able to choose an optimal rate of inflation or currency depreciation

rationalist explanations for war realist and other scholars commonly hold that rationally led states can and sometimes do fight when no peaceful bargains exist that both would prefer to war against this view i show that under very broad conditions there will exist negotiated settlements that genuinely rational states would mutually prefer to a risky and costly fight popular rationalist and realist explanations for war fail either to address or to explain adequately what would prevent leaders from locating a less costly bargain essentially just two mechanisms can resolve this puzzle on strictly rationalist terms the first turns on the fact that states have both private information about capabilities and resolve and the incentive to misrepresent it the second turns on the fact that in specific strategic contexts states may be unable credibly to commit to uphold a mutually preferable bargain historical examples suggest that both mechanisms are empirically plausible

sticky goods prices flexible asset prices monopolistic competition and monetary policy a monetary general equilibrium asset pricing model with sticky goods prices is developed goods prices are set by monopolistically competitive firms that maximize stock market value equilibria with underutilization of resources excess capacity in some states result in contrast to previous monetary asset pricing models the degree of competition affects capacity utilization monetary policy can affect output and resource utilization in addition to real asset prices depending upon the amount of information available to the monetary authority

in defense of the finance constraint simple models of monetary trade commonly impose a finance constraint on expenditure it is often suggested that this finance constraint is artificial a result of money s being the only asset of the absence of credit and of the special time structure of such models this paper shows that the finance constraint on aggregate expenditure remains in force when other assets and credit are introduced and when the time structure is generalized to allow overlapping income periods of differing lengths most of the objections to the finance constraint are shown to involve fallacies of composition there are economists to whom a constraint of the form pc m in units t must appear unthinkable r e lucas jr 1980

conflict settlement and the shadow of the future abstract we examine a conflictual setting in which adversaries cannot contract on an enforcement variable arms and where the future strategic positions of adversaries are very different when there is open conflict than when there is settlement we show that as the future becomes more important in this setting open conflict becomes more likely than settlement we demonstrate the theoretical robustness of this finding and test it in a laboratory experiment as predicted we find that subjects are more likely to engage in destructive conflict as the future becomes more important

money and interest in a cash in advance economy the authors analyze an aggregative general equilibrium model in which the use of money is motivated by a cash in advance constraint applied to purchases of a subset of consumption goods the system is subject to both real and monetary shocks which are economy wide and observed by all they develop methods for verifying the existence of characterizing and explicitly calculating equilibria copyright 1987 by the econometric society

bargaining and conflict with up front investments how power asymmetries matter abstract we examine settings such as litigation labor relations or arming and war in which players first make non contractible up front investments to improve their bargaining position and gain advantage for possible future conflict bargaining is efficient ex post but we show that a player may prefer conflict ex ante if there are sufficient asymmetries in strength there are two sources of this finding first up front investments are more dissimilar between players under conflict and they are lower than under bargaining when one player is much stronger than the other second the probability of the stronger player winning in conflict is higher than the share received under nash bargaining we thus provide a rationale for conflict to occur under complete information that does not depend on long term commitment problems greater balance in institutional support for different sides is more likely to maintain peace and settlements

anticipated inflation and the capital stock in a cash in advance economy abstract an economy is constructed in which the steady state capital stock is inversely related to the rate of inflation as a result that is directly opposite the usual conclusion

striking for a bargain between two completely informed agents this paper models the wage contract negotiation procedure between a union and a firm as a sequential bargaining process in which the union must decide in each period whether or not to strike for the duration of that period we show that there exist subgame perfect equilibria in which the union engages in several periods of strikes prior to reaching a final agreement although both parties are completely rational and fully informed this has implications for other inefficient phenomena such as tariff wars debt negotiations and wars in general we characterize the set of equilibria show that strikes can occur in real time and discuss extensions of the model such as lockouts and the possibility of multiple recontracting opportunities copyright 1991 by american economic association

risk averse rent seekers and the social cost of monopoly power there is now quite general recognition that the social cost of monopoly power encompasses the resources expended by individuals seeking to become the beneficiaries of monopoly rents however since the activity of rent seeking is generally not observable direct estimates of resources expended in quests to acquire monopoly power are usually impossible to come by 1 as a consequence the indirect approach of taking the observed value of monopoly rents as indicative of the unobserved value of the resources expended in rent seeking is quite generally adopted in approaches to evaluation of the social cost of such activity

money and growth revisited abstract conventional wisdom is that if public policy can affect the growth rate of the economy the welfare implications of alternative policies will be large in this paper a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous growth and money is examined in this setting inflation lowers growth through its effect on the return to work however the welfare costs of higher inflation are modest the endogenous labor supply is important in producing this result

balance of power and the propensity of conflict we study the role of an imbalance in fighting strengths when players bargain in the shadow of conflict our experimental results suggest in a simple bargaining game with an exogenous mediation proposal the likelihood of conflict is independent of the balance of power if bargaining involves endogenous demand choices however the likelihood of conflict is higher if power is more imbalanced even though endogenous bargaining outcomes reflect the players unequal fighting strengths strategic uncertainty causes outcomes to be most efficient when power is balanced in turn the importance of exogenous mediation proposals depends on the balance of power

endogenous lobby formation and endogenous protection a long run model of trade policy determination this paper provides a theory of lobby formation within a framework in which trade policy is determined through political contributions under certain conditions free trade turns out to be an equilibrium outcome either when the government has a high affinity for political contributions or when it cares a great deal about social welfare moreover greater inequality in asset distribution results in a greater number of lobbies and in most cases more protection for each of these lobbies furthermore industries with higher levels of capital stock fewer capitalists more inelastic demand and smaller geographical dispersion are the ones that get organized

endogenous choice of trade policy instruments abstract recently developed theories of endogenous trade policy formation have attempted to explain tariffs as the result of economic interest seeking by individuals or groups this note demonstrates that tariffs will not emerge as a policy choice if income is redistributed solely through trade policy induced factor price changes a production tax cum subsidy will be adopted as both gainers and losers are better off than with a tariff

transitional politics emerging incentive based instruments in environmental regulation abstract this paper proposes a positive theory of environmental instrument choice we study a democratic society that seeks to lower the level of pollution from industrial sources to a pre specified target the target can be implemented by one of three instruments s uniform emission standards p tradeable permits and t emission taxes the conflict of interest between special interests representing polluters and the electorate is resolved by an elected politician we characterize when each of the three policy instruments is chosen in political equilibrium and show that the transition observed in many countries from s to either p or t can be understood as a natural consequence of increasingly ambitious environmental targets

regional free trade and social integration this paper analyzes recent free trade arrangements from a positive political economy perspective in contrast to most other literature which fails to take into account geographical factors it is argued here that proximity and transportation costs play an important role in trade arrangements another important also largely neglected factor is the degree of social cohesion in terms of labor standards among potential trading partners a political support maximizing government will consider these factors when balancing political support from free traders and protectionists

dynamics of a floating exchange rate regime we study the full equilibrium dynamics of a two country world economy with a floating exchange rate traded and nontraded goods and explicit modeling of the use of money the resulting exchange rate equation depends on several details of the economic structure such as the supply structure and propensities to spend on various goods although real exchange rate movements have the usual association with the current account the ordinary exchange rate may appreciate or depreciate when there are deficits on current account even when the quantities of money do not change deviations from purchasing power parity and the fisher equation are shown to be the rule rather than the exception

national institutional structures transaction cost economizing and competitive advantage the case of japan japan s economic success since world war ii has been striking modern japan was the first major industrial economy to emerge from outside the western tradition economically devastated in 1945 by 1990 japan had the world s second largest economy and a gdp per head 20 percent greater than that of the united states in this paper it is argued that one reason for japan s success is that the costs of achieving cooperation and specialization are lower in japan than in the west cooperation and specialization have been acknowledged to have a beneficial impact upon productivity ever since adam smith wrote about cooperative specialization in the context of the division of labor modern economic theory however suggest that in a world of self interested individuals the costs of achieving cooperation and specialization are substantial in this paper it is argued that the cultural value system that japan has inherited from its preindustrial past and particularly the tokugawa period helps facilitate cooperation b

service induced campaign contributions and the electoral equilibrium candidates for office are modeled as promising services such as support for legislation and intervention in the bureaucracy to interest groups in exchange for campaign contributions an electoral equilibrium is characterized in which candidates choose service contribution offers and interest groups choose whether to contribute the model provides several explanations of congressional incumbents success in over 90 percent of their reelection contests a recognition advantage a high personal valuation of the office a lower cost of providing services and policy alignment with high demand interest groups the model yields predictions that are consistent with empirical findings on the relation between campaign contributions and election outcomes

tariffs subsidies and welfare with endogenous policy abstract it is a well established proposition of trade theory that in the absence of directly trade related distortions or policy goals subsidies are superior to tariffs for achieving any economic or non economic objective this paper shows that once the endogeneity of the distortion or non economic objective is allowed for the welfare ranking of various policies can be reversed the particular model analyzed is one where the level of non economic objectives that have to be fulfilled itself depends on the policy tools considered to fulfill them with this arises from the public good nature of tariffs compared to subsidies