injecting rational bubbles this paper proves two theorems about economies with a finite number of infinitely lived agents who trade a complete set of one period arrow securities and several infinitely lived securities at each date subject to short sales constraints the first theorem in the paper considers an equilibrium to an economy of this kind it proves that there exists another economy with perturbed short sales constraints in which there is an allocation equivalent equilibrium in which asset prices have a bubble the second theorem extends to the result to the case in short sales constraints are endogenously determined in the sense of alvarez and jermann efficiency equilibrium and asset pricing with risk of default econometrica 68 2000 775 797

semi autonomous revenue authorities in sub saharan africa silver bullet or white elephant a major component of tax administration reform in sub saharan africa for the last 30 years has been the creation of semi autonomous revenue authorities saras the effects of their creation on rev

tax collection with agency costs private contracting or government bureaucrats historically governments contracted with private agents known as tax farmers to collect taxes this paper develops a theoretical framework for determining when a welfare maximizing government should choose tax farmers over bureaucratic tax collectors while bureaucratic collectors have an incentive to shirk and raise collection costs above least costs profit maximizing private collectors tend to reduce tax evasion below the optimal level generally the choice of collection methods depends on a comparison of the welfare loss associated with monitoring in the bureaucratic setting and the welfare loss associated with overdetection of evasion in the private setting copyright 1992 by the london school of economics and political science

limits of exact equilibria for capacity constrained sellers with costly search abstract this paper studies finite versions of competitive matching models in which sellers announce prices and buyers understand the relationship between price and probability of trade two equilibrium concepts are studied for finite games subgame perfect equilibrium and rational expectations equilibrium it is shown that the distribution of prices offered by sellers under both equilibrium concepts converges weakly to the same competitive equilibrium distribution of prices furthermore the payoffs that sellers face in both kinds of equilibrium have the market utility property in the limit journal of economic literature classification numbers c78 d41 d45

wage vacancy contracts and coordination frictions abstract we consider a directed search model with risk averse workers and risk neutral entrepreneurs who can set up firms that post wage vacancy contracts i e contracts where firms can make payments to more than one applicant and where the payments can be different for each applicant and be contingent on the number of applicants we establish that the type of contracts the literature focuses on are not offered if firms can post wage vacancy contracts we show that there exists an equilibrium satisfying a monotonic expected utility property which is efficient furthermore we investigate the role of wage vacancy contracts on welfare and competition

general equilibrium with nonconvexities and money in a general equilibrium economy with nonconvexities there are sunspot equilibria with good welfare properties sunspots can ameliorate the effects of the nonconvexities for these economies we show that agents act as if they have quasi linear utility functions we use this result to construct a new model of monetary exchange along the lines of lagos and wright where trade occurs in both centralized and decentralized markets but instead of quasi linear preferences we assume general preferences but with indivisible labor this suggests that modern monetary theory is more robust than one might have thought it also constitutes progress on the classic problem of integrating monetary economics and general equilibrium theory

competitive search equilibrium in this paper i construct an equilibrium for markets with frictions which is competitive in the sense that all agents are price takers and maximize utility subject to a set of market parameters i show that the equilibrium allocation is socially optimal i also show how the competitive search equilibrium can be achieved if employers with vacancies can advertise publicly the wages they pay

banking a new monetarist approach we develop a model where i banks take deposits and make investments ii their liabilities facilitate third party transactions other models have i or ii not both although we argue they are intimately connected we show that they both emerge from limited commitment we describe an environment characterize desirable allocations and interpret the outcomes as banking arrangements banks are essential without them the set of feasible allocations is inferior as a technical contribution we characterize dynamically optimal credit allocations with frictions show they involve backloading and analyse how this interacts with banking we also confront the theory with economic history copyright 2013 oxford university press

computing multi period information constrained optima this paper presents a detailed theoretical derivation and justification for methods used to compute solutions to a multi period including infinite period continuum agent unobservedeffort economy actual solutions are displayed illustrating cross sectional variability in consumption and labour effort in the population at a point in time and variability for a typical individual over time the optimal tradeoff between insurance and incentives is explored and the issue of excess variability is addressed by consideration of the analogue full information economy and various restricted contracting regimes

search theoretic models of the labor market a survey we survey the literature on search theoretic models of the labor market we show how this approach addresses many issues including the following why do workers sometimes choose to remain unemployed what determines the lengths of employment and unemployment spells how can there simultaneously exist unemployed workers and unfilled vacancies what determines aggregate unemployment and vacancies how can homogeneous workers earn different wages what are the tradeoffs firms face from different wages how do wages and turnover interact what determines efficient turnover we discuss various modeling choices concerning wage determination and the meeting process including recent models of directed search

accessing modern science policy and institutional options for agricultural biotechnology in developing countries the paper highlights the complexity of the challenge in developing forms of collaboration between a variety of actors in the biotechnology area in developing countries national research systems with diverse capacities in biotechnology international research centers local private research and development companies and advanced research institutes in both industrialized and developing countries case studies are provided from strong programs such as india china and brazil which will be tool developers as well as users programs that are developing an adaptive capacity in biotech to use tools and methods in a large number of countries whose research systems have virtually no capacity in molecular biology each type program presents challenges and opportunities for accessing new technologies based on facilitation of private investments public private partnerships and local capacity to design proprietary technologies working with the consultative group on international agricultural research centers as intermediaries and partners and with regional consortia policy and institutional issues for accessing modern science are then discussed and many of the challenges involve developing strategies in intellectual property management while pubic research organizations will need to develop innovative means of segmenting markets to complement private sector interests

a search theoretic approach to monetary economics the essential function of money is its role as a medium of exchange the authors formalize this idea using a search theoretic equilibrium model of the exchange process that captures the double coincidence of wants problem with pure barter one advantage of the framework described here is that it is very tractable the authors also show that the model can be used to addre ss some substantive issues in monetary economics including the potenti al welfare enhancing role of money the interaction between specializat ion and monetary exchange and the possibility of equilibria with multip le fiat currencies copyright 1993 by american economic association

the theory of taxation for developing countries tax policy has far reaching implications for economic development and public administration this book which presents a modern theory of public finance brings together many of the most distinguished economists who have written on the subject they provide coherent principles for tax design and a systematic framework for the analysis of practical questions of tax reform and pricing policy in developing countries the book is especially timely as countries experience increasing shortages of government revenue and the distortions brought about by poorly designed tax systems it pays particular attention to the special problems of developing countries such as the taxation of agriculture the aim throughout is to develop techniques that can be quantitatively applied given the data available and empirical case studies illustrate the methods in action the authors analyze the links between tax theory social cost benefit analysis and the pricing of publicly supplied goods and services they also explore the empirical and econometric problems of identifying the tradeoffs between equity and efficiency other topics treated include the analysis of labor markets the taxation of foreign private investment and of fuel and the pricing of education although the models used concentrate on developing countries most of the methods and discussion apply as well to the problems of more affluent countries

equilibrium using credit or money with indivisible goods this note studies the trade of indivisible goods using credit or money in a frictional market we show how indivisibility matters for monetary equilibrium under different assumptions about price determination bargaining generates a price and allocation that are independent of the nominal interest or inflation rate over some range this is not the case with price posting and directed search in either case we provide conditions the nominal rate cannot be too high under which stationary monetary equilibrium exists and we show it is unique or generically unique

types of bureaucratic interaction abstract a taxonomy of relationships between a public bureau and its sponsoring institution is modelled within a simple follower leader framework various assumptions are made with respect to who makes the decision about the bureaucratic activity level and with respect to cost information the role played by budgetary slack is emphasized deviations from the socially optimal bureau are identified but no general support is found for the view that bureaus tend to become too big

bank incentives contract design and bank runs abstract we study the diamond dybvig bank runs deposit insurance and liquidity j polit econ 91 1983 401 419 model as developed in green and lin implementing efficient allocations in a model of financial intermediation j econ theory 109 2003 1 23 and peck and shell equilibrium bank runs j polit econ 111 2003 103 123 we dispense with the notion of a bank as a coalition of depositors instead our bank is a self interested agent with a technological advantage in record keeping we examine the implications of the resulting agency problem for the design of bank contracts and the possibility of bank run equilibria for a special case we discover that the agency problem may or may not simplify the qualitative structure of bank liabilities we also find that the uniqueness result in green and lin implementing efficient allocations in a model of financial intermediation j econ theory 109 2003 1 23 is robust to our form of agency but that the non uniqueness result in peck and shell equilibrium bank runs j polit econ 111 2003 103 123 is not

inflation tax in the lab a theoretical and experimental study of competitive search equilibrium with inflation in this paper we measure the effect of the inflation tax on economic activity and welfare within a controlled setting to do so we develop a model of price posting and monetary exchange with inflation and finite populations the model which provides a game theoretic foundation to rocheteau and wright 2005 s competitive search monetary equilibrium is used to derive theoretical propositions regarding the effects of inflation in this environment which we test with a laboratory experiment that closely implements the theoretical framework we find that the inflation tax is harmful with cash holdings production and welfare all falling as inflation rises and that its effect is relatively larger at low inflation rates than at higher rates for instance for inflation rates between 0 and 5 welfare in the two markets we consider 2 seller 2 buyer and 3 2 falls by roughly 1 percent for each percentage point rise in inflation compared with 0 4 percent over the range from 5 to 30 our findings lead us to conclude that the impact of the inflation tax should not be underestimated even under low inflation

encouraging private sector research for tropical agriculture summary agricultural needs in poor tropical countries differ significantly from those in temperate rich countries yet little agricultural research is performed on products for the tropics private research is particularly concentrated in rich countries this is a result of significant failures in the market for research and development r d in particular the difficulty of preventing the resale of seed in developing countries to encourage private r d in tropical agriculture traditional funding of research may be usefully supplemented by a commitment to reward developers of specific new agricultural technologies rewards tied to adoption may be especially useful in increasing up take an illustration of how a commitment to reward developers of new agricultural technologies might work is provided

search bargaining money and prices the goal of this paper is to extend existing search theoretic models of fiat money which until now have assumed that the price level is exogenous by explicitly incorporating bilateral bargaining this allows us to determine the price level endogenously and leads to additional insights concerning the role of money for example we find that monetary equilibria are generally inefficient in the sense that output and prices differ from the solution to a social planner s problem although the difference can become small as the discount rate or search friction vanishes we also find that there exist nonstationary inflationary equilibria

on the welfare gains of price dispersion can price dispersion be associated with higher levels of welfare to answer we compare two economies that differ only in the way prices are formed in the first sellers post a unique price quantity pair with no price dispersion in the second sellers post a quantity only and let prices be determined ex post by realized demand resulting in price dispersion we show that while agents trade lower quantities when prices are dispersed an intensive margin effect they also trade more often an extensive margin effect at low inflation the extensive margin dominates making agents better off with price dispersion

can the public sector meet the challenge of private research commentary on falcon and fowler and pingali and traxler abstract the growth of private sector participation in agricultural research has serious implications for pro poor technology development but there are other factors that must be considered new plant varieties are not the only things standing between resource poor farmers and secure livelihoods and institutional strengthening is also necessary in addition the current state of public agricultural research is cause for concern it is not clear how many effective public private partnerships can be formed the public sector needs a much clearer definition of its targets and priorities and funding strategies for national and international agricultural research must be overhauled

a model of money with multilateral matching we develop a model of decentralized monetary exchange to examine the distributional effects of inflation across heterogeneous agents the agents have private information about their productivity preferences or money holdings matching is multilateral and each seller is visited by a stochastic number of buyers the good is allocated according to a second price auction in money in equilibrium homogeneous buyers hold different amounts of money leading to price dispersion we find the closed form solution for the distribution of money holdings entry of sellers is suboptimal except at the friedman rule inflation acts as a regressive tax

household consumption smoothing through ethnic ties evidence from cote d ivoire abstract this paper investigates the hypothesis that households in cote d ivoire take part in spatially diversified risk sharing arrangements with members of their own ethnic group empirical tests are presented using several estimation methods to deal with heteroscedasticity measurement error and extreme value problems to examine whether results are robust across estimation procedures the hypothesis of complete risk sharing within ethnic groups is rejected however there appears to be some partial insurance performed by individual households with other members of the same ethnic group particularly for the households residing in the regions least likely to have access to formal financial arrangements

pro poor agricultural biotechnology can the international research system deliver the goods abstract while global investment in agricultural research by the private sector is increasing with growth in developing country markets and the emergence of new technologies complementary public sector investment is stagnating or declining in many developing countries this review argues that the changing roles of the public and private sectors in generating new scientific knowledge may adversely affect the diffusion of explicitly pro poor technologies technologies that are simultaneously yield enhancing and poverty reducing comparing historical evidence from the green revolution with recent evidence from the emerging era of agricultural biotechnology this review argues that a more pluralistic international system for agricultural research will be more responsive to poverty only if the strategic leadership role of the public sector is strengthened certain research functions are reallocated to the private sector and new policy and organizational mechanisms are used to stimulate pro poor research in and for developing country agriculture

turnover externalities with marketplace trading this article considers equilibrium decentralized trade when there is a marketplace where buyers and sellers meet costlessly since buyers have idiosyncratic match payoffs for each seller s good some buyers rather than trade with the current stock of sellers wait for new sellers to enter the marketplace to obtain a good they like a turnover externality exists where all traders are better off with higher entry rates of new traders furthermore this turnover externality supports multiple pareto rankable equilibria this provides new insights into similar results obtained in the random matching literature

endogenous groups and dynamic selection in mechanism design abstract we create a dynamic theory of endogenous risk sharing groups with good internal information and their coexistence with relative performance individualistic regimes which are informationally more opaque inequality and organizational form are determined simultaneously numerical techniques and succinct reformulations of mechanism design problems with suitable choice of promised utilities allow the computation of a stochastic steady state and its transitions regions of low inequality and moderate to high wealth utility promises produce the relative performance regime while regions of high inequality and low wealth produce the risk sharing group regime if there is a cost to prevent coalitions risk sharing groups emerge at high wealth levels also transitions from the relative performance regime to the group regime tend to occur when rewards to observed outputs exacerbate inequality while transitions from the group regime to the relative performance regime tend to come with a decrease in utility promises some regions of inequality and wealth deliver long term persistence of organization form and inequality while other regions deliver high levels of volatility

dynamic auction markets with fiat money in this paper we consider various types of models where fiat money is used to facilitate trades and investigate whether models with fiat money have the same equilibrium allocations in particular we investigate whether or not such models have a continuum of stationary equilibria we first present a dynamic centralized auction market model with money which has not been investigated in the literature we compare its outcome with that of walrasian models with cash in advance constraints and show that the outcomes are very different the walrasian markets model has determinate stationary equilibria and the auction markets model has a continuum of stationary equilibria moreover we also build models on decentralized auction markets and on decentralized markets with bargaining and obtain results similar to those of the dynamic centralized auction markets model

a model of banknote discounts abstract prior to 1863 state chartered banks in the united states issued notes dollar denominated promises to pay specie to the bearer on demand although these notes circulated at par locally they usually were quoted at a discount outside the local area these discounts varied by both the location of the bank and the location where the discount was being quoted further these discounts were asymmetric across locations meaning that the discounts quoted in location a on the notes of banks in location b generally differed from the discounts quoted in location b on the notes of banks in location a also discounts generally increased when banks suspended payments on their notes in this paper we construct a random matching model to qualitatively match these facts about banknote discounts to attempt to account for locational differences the model has agents that come from two distinct locations each location also has bankers that can issue notes banknotes are accepted in exchange because banks are required to produce when a banknote is presented for redemption and their past actions are public information overall the model delivers predictions consistent with the behavior of discounts

bureaucratic discretion or congressional control regulatory policymaking by the federal trade commission this paper extends stigler and peltzman s approach to regulation by incorporating a legislature the model yields comparative statics results and hence testable implications the paper then tests between two opposing approaches about regulatory agency behavior the first assumes agencies operate independently of the legislature and hence exercise discretion the second assumes that congress controls agency decisions the recent behavior of the federal trade commission provides the empirical setting substantial evidence is found for the specific predictions of the model including the hypothesis of systematic congressional influence over ftc decisions

whither monetary economics i argue that monetary economics should be pursued by applying implementation theory to models which contain explicit frictions that make money essential the argument has two parts first i argue that models in which real balances are assumed to be productive models with money in utility or production functions or with cash in advance constraints contain hidden inconsistencies second i argue that the approach advocated is capable of providing new insights about some of the main issues in monetary economics the effects of monetary shocks the welfare cost of inflation and the roles of inside and outside money

generalized search theoretic models of monetary exchange abstract virtually all simple search models of money assume agents with money cannot produce and so everyone has either 0 or 1 units of money in steady state we alternatively assume agents can always produce and simply restrict money inventories to 0 or 1 this seems better for many issues for example in the standard model it is difficult to interpret increases in the money supply because increasing the fraction of agents holding money decreases the economy s productive capacity our model avoids these problems and thus delivers more natural and simpler implications in many contexts we compare results on existence multiplicity and welfare across models

money in search equilibrium in competitive equilibrium and in competitive search equilibrium we compare three market structures for monetary economies bargaining search equilibrium price taking competitive equilibrium and price posting competitive search equilibrium we also extend work on the microfoundations of money by allowing a general matching technology and entry we study how equilibrium and the effects of policy depend on market structure under bargaining trade and entry are both inefficient and inflation implies first order welfare losses under price taking the friedman rule solves the first inefficiency but not the second and inflation may actually improve welfare under posting the friedman rule yields the first best and inflation implies second order welfare losses

introduction to the symposium issue on money and liquidity abstract this symposium on money and liquidity follows a conference held in santa barbara in august 2014 under the sponsorship of the laboratory for aggregate economics and finance at ucsb the conference was a celebration of the twenty fifth anniversary of the publication of kiyotaki and wright s on money as a medium of exchange this symposium contains a selection of the papers presented at the conference and a selection of regular submissions that fit the theme all papers were peer reviewed according to the usual jet procedures

money and capital as competing media of exchange we construct a model where capital competes with fiat money as a medium of exchange and we establish conditions on fundamentals under which fiat money can be both valued and socially beneficial when the socially efficient stock of capital is too low to provide the liquidity agents need they overaccumulate productive assets to use as media of exchange when this is the case there exists a monetary equilibrium that dominates the nonmonetary one in terms of welfare under the friedman rule fiat money provides just enough liquidity so that agents choose to accumulate the same capital stock a social planner would

tax evasion and the marginal cost of public funds tax evasion and deadweight loss have similar implications for the rules of public finance the optimal mix of taxes can be derived from the minimization of the sum of aggregate deadweight loss and aggregate cost of tax evasion similarly the marginal cost of public funds includes allowances for marginal deadweight loss and marginal cost of tax evasion per dollar of public revenue acquired

the optimal size of a tax collection agency the condition that characterizes the optimal size of a tax collection agency is derived and then given a simple interpretation in terms of excess burden the paper clarifies an earlier finding of sandmo which suggests that the optimal degree of enforcement is higher than a simple cost benefit calculation would indicate the appropriate condition is that at the margin the resource cost of increasing enforcement should equal the saving of excess burden due to the decline in exposure to risk the increased revenue gained from stricter enforcement does not enter the expression because it merely represents a transfer among the economy s identical agents

viewpoint a microfoundation of monetary economics in this lecture i explain what the microfoundations of money are about and why they are necessary for monetary economics then i review recent developments of a particular microfoundation of money commonly known as the search theory of money finally i outline some unresolved issues dans cette presentation l auteur explique ce que sont les microfondations de la monnaie et pourquoi elles sont necessaires a l economie monetaire ensuite il passe en revue certains developpements recents d une microfondation particuliere de la monnaie connue sous le nom de theorie de la recherche de la monnaie enfin l auteur fait le tour d un ensemble de problemes qui restent sans solution pour le moment

multiplicity in general financial equilibrium with portfolio constraints abstract this paper explores the role of portfolio constraints in generating multiplicity of equilibrium we present a simple financial market economy with two goods and two households households who face constraints on their ability to take unbounded positions in risky stocks absent such constraints equilibrium allocation is unique and is pareto efficient with one portfolio constraint in place the efficient equilibrium is still possible however additional inefficient equilibria in which the constraint is binding may emerge we show further that with portfolio constraints cum incomplete markets there may be a continuum of equilibria adding incomplete markets may lead to real indeterminacy

sample audit tax assessment for businesses what s fair how should a revenue agency assess a business taxpayer s income on the basis of a sample audit of transactions the agency would like to maximize revenue while minimizing the risk that the taxpayer will be assessed more than he really owes the taxpayer reasons that overassessment is worse than underassessment as far as he is concerned and therefore the taxpayer might reasonably argue that the lower bound of a one sided confidence interval should be used by the assessor the revenue agency might understandably take a different point of view the revenue agency might argue that overassessment is really no worse than underassessment from its point of view so the midpoint of such a confidence interval should be used in fact it is this latter position that is currently in use most commonly by state agencies but such practice is being challenged the courts will have to make a decision

on the efficiency of monetary exchange how divisibility of money matters abstract we use alternative assumptions about the divisibility of goods and money and the ability of agents to use lotteries on money to investigate to what extent the indivisibility of money is the cause for the typically inefficient production and consumption decisions in search theoretic models of money our framework potentially generates three types of inefficiencies the no trade inefficiency where no trade takes place even though it would be socially efficient to trade and the too much trade and too little trade inefficiencies where the quantities produced and exchanged are either larger or smaller than what the solution to a social planner s problem would mandate it is shown that while the no trade and the too much trade inefficiencies are caused by the indivisibility of money the too little trade inefficiency remains even when money is divisible unless it is sufficiently valued

endogenous supply of fiat money abstract we consider whether reputation concerns can discipline the behavior of a long lived self interested agent who has a monopoly over the provision of fiat money we obtain that when this agent can commit to a choice of money supply there is a monetary equilibrium where it never overissues we show however that monetary equilibria with no overissue do not exist when there is no commitment this happens because the incentives this agent has to maintain a reputation for providing valuable currency disappear once its reputation is high enough more generally we prove that in the absence of commitment overissue happens infinitely often in any monetary equilibrium we conclude by showing that imperfect memory can restore the positive result obtained with commitment

bidding for money we analyze monetary exchange in a model that allows for directed search and multilateral matches we consider environments with divisible goods and indivisible money and compare the results with those in models that use random matching and bilateral bargaining two different pricing mechanisms are used ex ante price posting and ex post bidding auctions also we consider settings both with and without lotteries we find that the model generates very simple and intuitive equilibrium allocations that are similar to those with random matching and bargaining but with different comparative static and welfare properties

consumer perceived risk model for the introduction of genetically modified food in spain abstract since the last part of the 20th century the search for new forms of cultivation and food has basically centred on the application of biotechnology giving rise to gm foods consumer acceptance is conditioned by the risk that they perceive from introducing food into their consumption habits processed through technology that they hardly understand besides information is insufficient in the consumer ambit and moreover it is influenced by ideological and ethical determining factors the factors were analysed that influence this consumer perceived risk through a structural equation model this study was conducted in spain concretely in the province of alicante located in the southeast of this country the main conclusion from this research is that the introduction of gm food into agro food markets should be accompanied by adequate policies to guarantee consumer safety these actions would allow a decrease in consumer perceived risk by taking special care of the information provided concretely relating to health for the most influential factor in consumer perceived risk from these foods is concern about health

on money as a medium of exchange we analyze economies in which individuals specialize in consumption and production and meet randomly over time in a way that implies that trade must be bilateral and quid pro quo nash equilibria in trading strategies are characterized certain goods emerge endogenously as media of exchange or commodity money depending both on their intrinsic properties and on extrinsic beliefs there are also equilibria with genuine fiat currency circulating as the general medium of exchange we find that equilibria are not generally pareto optimal and that introducing fiat currency into a commodity money economy may unambiguously improve welfare velocity acceptability and liquidity are discussed

honesty is sometimes the best policy this paper examines two central points in the economics of tax evasion if the taxation authorities have reason to believe that tax is being illegally evaded how far should they go in pursuit of the missing income and what roles should thoroughness of investigation and severity of penalties play in the pursuit of that income previous contributions have examined the positive economics of various control instruments on tax payers behaviouri the degree of threat or the level of policing required to enforce truthful reporting and the desirability of different types of policy in terms of tax payers expected utility some writers have investigated the design of sophisticated investigation schemes to maximise expected government receipts or to enforce truthful reporting at low resource cost the approach adopted here is to examine the desirability of various combinations of policy instruments in the context of an explicit model of social welfare it is not self evident that honesty is desirable from the point of view of the government if honesty is desirable it is not obvious that people should be forced to be completely honest and it is not obvious how they ought to be forced the desirability of an economic policy depends on two major issues which are sometimes left submerged the objectives of the government or its agents and the constraints under which such objectives must be pursued the objective is often assumed to be a simple form of ex ante expected utility this is surprising since value systems other than utilitarianism are frequently invoked in the design of tax systems and so it seems reasonable to

efficient propagation of shocks and the optimal return on money abstract we study optimal allocations in an environment in which money is essential due to lack of commitment and anonymity of individuals because the economy features aggregate preference shocks we apply a notion of implementability that allows for allocations with non trivial business cycle dynamics for the propagation of shocks we show that history dependence is predicted by the theory of second best and becomes necessary for optimality when the degree of patience is neither too low nor too high our analysis concludes with a discussion of whether there is a role for the propagation of shocks in alternative economic environments

the congressional bureaucratic system a principal agent perspective with applications to the sec this paper provides the theoretical perspective and empirical support for congressional dominance of agency decisions my thesis is twofold first because much of the previous evidence on this question is not evidence at all many scholars intuition and conclusions are based on a logically flawed foundation second i have provided here and in previous work a look at a variety of different agencies and in each case have shown how the events can plausibly be interpreted as involving congress agency problems within the congressional bureaucratic system are real and substantial just as they are within corporations however as in the latter institutional forms develop within the congressional system to partially if not wholly mitigate these problems the logical perspective together with the evidence provide a strong case against the agency dominance hypothesis as typified by the early sections of niskanen 1971 and wilson 1980

production subsidies and redistribution abstract who gains from stimulating output we explore a dynamic model with production subsidies where the population is heterogeneous in one dimension wealth there are two channels through which production subsidies redistribute resources across the population first poorer agents gain from a rise in wages since to the extent there is an operative wealth effect in labor supply they work harder second because a current output boost will raise consumption today relative to the future thus lowering real interest rates poor agents gain in relative terms since their income is based less on interest income we examine optimal redistribution from the perspective of an arbitrary consumer in the population we show that if this consumer has commitment at time zero to set all present and future subsidy rates and for a class of preferences that admits aggregation in wealth then output stimulation and hence redistribution will only occur at time zero after that subsidies are zero a byproduct of our analysis of this environment is a median voter theorem with direct voting over subsidy sequences at time zero the sequence preferred by the median wealth consumer is the unique outcome we also study lack of commitment since interest rate manipulation is associated with time inconsistency we analyze this case formally by looking at the markov perfect time consistent equilibrium in a game between successive identical decision makers e g the median agent here subsidies persist they are constant over time and are more distortionary than under commitment moreover whereas under commitment asset inequality changes initially in favor of the consumer who decides on policy it does not under lack of commitment

income tax compliance in a principal agent framework previous analyses have modeled income tax evasion as a portfolio problem deriving the optimal consumption of the risky asset unreported income under the assumption of a fixed probability of detection the purpose of this paper is to examine some of these issues in tax compliance starting from a different set of assumptions in particular we compare alternative audit policies to the standard random audit policy we focus on an audit cutoff policy in which an agent triggers an audit if his or her reported income is too low and is not audited if reported income is sufficiently high this paper establishes two major results first random audit rules are weakly dominated by audit cutoff rules it can be shown given lump sum taxes and fines that these audit cutoff rules are the least cost policies which induce truthful reporting of income second the dominance of audit cutoff rules over random audit rules holds for lump sum as well as proportional taxation in fact the equilibrium consequences of the two are equivalent

estimating the adoption of bt eggplant in india who benefits from public private partnership the study analyzes ex ante the adoption of insect resistant bt eggplant technology in india farmers willingness to pay wtp is estimated using the contingent valuation method given the economic importance of insect pests in eggplant cultivation the average wtp for bt hybrids is more than four times the current price of conventional hybrid seeds since the private innovating firm has also shared its technology with the public sector proprietary hybrids will likely get competition through public open pollinated bt varieties after a small time lag this will reduce farmers wtp for bt hybrids by about 35 thus decreasing the scope for corporate pricing policies nonetheless ample private profit potential remains analysis of factors influencing farmers adoption decisions demonstrates that public bt varieties will particularly improve technology access for resource poor eggplant producers the results suggest that public private partnership can be beneficial for all parties involved 2006 published by elsevier ltd

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

a unified framework for monetary theory and policy analysis search theoretic models of monetary exchange are based on explicit descriptions of the frictions that make money essential however tractable versions of these models typically make strong assumptions that render them ill suited for monetary policy analysis we propose a new framework based on explicit micro foundations within which macro policy can be studied the framework is analytically tractable and easily quantifiable we calibrate the model to standard observations and use it to measure the cost of inflation we find that going from 10 percent to 0 percent inflation is worth between 3 and 5 percent of consumption much higher than previous estimates

ex ante price offers in matching games non steady states a matching problem is considered in which sellers can publicly commit to a trading price that differs from the price at which buyers expect to trade elsewhere in the market when demand and supply are nearly equal the equilibrium ex ante price offer lies below the price associated with the nash bargaining split this relationship reverses when the level of excess demand is large sellers always have an incentive to make ex ante offers when prices elsewhere are determined by nash bargaining this can be interpreted to mean that nash bargaining is an unstable pricing institution copyright 1991 by the econometric society

incentive efficient risk sharing in a settlement mechanism abstract the purpose of this paper is to address a question concerning risk management in continuing multi party contractual clearing and settlement arrangements through which large value payments are typically made we are particularly interested in the issues of incentive compatibility when a third party possesses a private information concerning the riskiness of transfers being made if a third party possesses private information that would be of value in determining how best to settle a payment how does the exposure of that party to the settlement risk affect the quality of information that the party chooses to provide in this paper we address this question by analyzing a specific class of parametric environments of a schematic formal model of a settlement arrangement or a payment network

on efficient distribution with private information this paper is a study of the dynamics of the efficient distribution of consumption in an exchange economy with many consumers each of whom is subject to private idiosyncratic taste shocks we propose a recursive method for finding feasible allocations that are incentivecompatible and that are pareto optimal within this set the method is applied to several parametric examples we find that in an efficient allocation the degree of inequality continually increases with a diminishing fraction of the population receiving an increasing fraction of the resources we discuss the extent to which these allocations can be decentralized via market arrangements this paper is a study of the dynamics of the efficient distribution of consumption in an exchange economy with private information the economy we study has a constant endowment flow of a single non storable consumption good which is to be allocated each period among a large number of consumers each period these consumers experience unpredictable idiosyncratic privately observed taste shocks affecting their marginal utility of current consumption efficiency dictates that more resources be allocated to those consumers who in any given period have a high marginal utility of current consumption

income tax evasion labour supply and the equity efficiency tradeoff abstract this paper is an attempt to incorporate tax evasion into the analysis of optimum income taxation a model of variable labour supply with tax evasion is used to derive supply functions for labour in regular and irregular markets given taxpayer behaviour the government chooses tax rates penalties and the probability of detection to maximize a utilitarian social welfare function the results consist in the derivation of a formula for the optimum marginal tax rate and a characterization of the factors determining the choice between the penalty rate and the probability of detection as instruments for the control of tax evasion

fees versus royalties and the private value of a patent we compare how much profit an owner of a patented cost reducing invention can realize by licensing it to an oligopolistic industry producing a homogeneous product by means of a fixed fee or a per unit royalty our analysis is conducted in terms of a noncooperative game involving n 1 players the inventor and the n firms in this game the inventor acts as a stackelberg leader and it has a unique subgame perfect equilibrium in pure strategies it is shown that licensing by means of a fixed fee is superior to licensing by means of a royalty for both the inventor and consumers only a drastic innovation is licensed to a single producer

money and prices a model of search and bargaining abstract this paper makes commodities divisible and incorporates bargaining into the search theoretic model of money to determine the purchasing power of money or price it is shown that two monetary equilibria always coexist where fiat money is universally accepted the two equilibria differ in price output welfare and the velocity of money sunspot monetary equilibria exist in which money is universally accepted in all states of the economy multiplicity has novel implications on the effectiveness of currency substitution and exchange market intervention journal of economic literature classification numbers c78 e40

pricing and matching with frictions suppose that n buyers each want one unit and m sellers each have one or more units of a good sellers post prices and then buyers choose sellers in symmetric equilibrium similar sellers all post one price and buyers randomize hence more or fewer buyers may arrive than a seller can accommodate we call this frictions we solve for prices and the endogenous matching function for finite n and m and consider the limit as n and m grow the matching function displays decreasing returns but converges to constant returns we argue that the standard matching function in the literature is misspecified and discuss implications for the beveridge curve

how to license intangible property we examine the optimal licensing strategy of a research lab selling to firms who are product market competitors we consider an independent lab as well as a research joint venture we show that 1 demands are interdependent and hence the standard price mechanism is not the profit maximizing licensing strategy 2 the seller s incentives to develop the innovation may be excessive 3 the seller s incentives to disseminate the innovation typically are too low 4 larger ventures are less likely to develop the innovation and more likely to restrict its dissemination in those cases where development occurs and 5 a downstream firm that is not a member of the research venture is worse off as a result of the innovation

a new suggestion for simplifying the theory of money we propose a new search theoretic model of monetary exchange with indivisible assets based on price posting instead of bargaining and incorporating noisy search this yields some familiar results plus a lot more the model admits multiple steady states due to the self referential nature of liquidity it admits cyclic chaotic and stochastic equilibria and compared to bargaining versions the dynamics are more general and have better microfoundations it generates price dispersion with interesting efficiency implications plus sticky prices and rational inattention parametric examples yield closed form solutions based on these results we suggest this should become a benchmark model in monetary economics

search based models of money and finance an integrated approach many applications in monetary economics of search and bargaining theory use shi trejos wright hereafter stw many applications in finance use duffie g rleanu pedersen hereafter dgp these models share several features and both concern liquidity yet they also differ in stw agents use assets as payment instruments when trading goods in dgp they pay with goods or transferable utility when trading assets we integrate the two this clarifies connections between the literatures and generates novel insights several new results are provided for the baseline stw and dgp models while the integrated structure generates even more interesting outcomes including endogenous transactions patterns and belief based dynamics

public private alliances in biotechnology can they narrow the knowledge gaps between rich and poor abstract in the area of science and technology the knowledge gap between rich and poor countries is wide and increasing in the area of biotechnology research a second gap has recently emerged between private life science companies and public research institutions as a result a gap is rapidly widening between cutting edge research in the developed world and publicly sponsored research being undertaken in the developing world an obvious strategy for narrowing this gap is to form public private research alliances to overcome intervening obstacles public research institutions in the developing world need to adopt creative new approaches to the process of negotiating with their potential private partners these approaches must focus on leveraging the complementarities and potential synergies between their knowledge assets and those of the private sector concurrently institutional arrangements must be set in place that are geared toward managing the risks and dangers of greatest concern to their constituencies

an overlapping generations model with search abstract search is embedded in an overlapping generations model the young participate in a centralized market and then are matched in pairs in a decentralized market the old only participate in the centralized market if the buyer s bargaining power in pairwise trade is close to unity and if the old are risk averse then the golden rule rate of money transfer is positive such risk aversion the pairwise meetings and dependence of the young s saving on the rate of return are necessary for this result

liquidity a new monetarist perspective this essay surveys the new monetarist approach to liquidity work in this literature strives for empirical and policy relevance plus rigorous foundations questions include what is liquidity is money essential in achieving desirable outcomes which objects can or should serve in this capacity when can asset prices differ from fundamentals what are the functions of commitment and collateral in credit markets how does money interact with credit and intermediation what can and should monetary policy do the research summarized emphasizes the micro structure of frictional transactions and studies how institutions like monetary exchange credit arrangements or intermediation facilitate the exchange process

price setting price dispersion and the value of money or the law of two prices abstract we study models combining search money price posting and preference shocks we show how these features interact to influence the price level and price dispersion first price posting equilibria exist with valued fiat currency second although both are possible price dispersion is more common than a single price third we prove that generically there cannot be more than two prices we provide intuition for this law of two prices show it also holds in some nonmonetary search models and discuss variations of the assumptions under which it may not hold

coalitions incentives and risk sharing abstract this paper analyzes the effects of coalitional behavior in principal multiagent relationships with moral hazard and identifies cases where the principal prefers agents to form a coalition via side contracting it is shown that the principal can implement given efforts via non individualistic incentive contracts at a lower cost when the agents can monitor each other s efforts perfectly and hence coordinate their effort choice than when the agents behave independently permitting the principal to utilize more complex communication mechanisms does not alter the result for there is no coalition proof revelation mechanism improving the principal s welfare journal of economic literature classification number d82

a positive model of reserve requirements and interest on reserves a clearinghouse interpretation of the federal reserve system this paper develops a positive model of reserve requirements and interest on reserves based on the observation that congress exempted the fed from a legal restriction that had prevented private clearinghouses from issuing their own currency eliminating the restriction provided the fed with a source of revenue that could be used to finance general government outlays and to pay implicit interest on reserves the model implies that the government s financing requirements help explain reserve requirement movements and that interest rates on reserves vary with market loan rates cointegration error correction and granger causality tests provide supporting evidence

indivisibilities lotteries and monetary exchange we introduce lotteries randomized trading into search theoretic models of money in a model with indivisible goods and fiat money we show goods trade with probability 1 and money trades with probability where 1 iff buyers have sufficient bargaining power with divisible goods a nonrandom quantity q trades with probability 1 and again money trades with probability where 1 iff buyers have sufficient bargaining power moreover q never exceeds the efficient quantity not true without lotteries we consider several extensions designed to get commodities as well as money to trade with probability less than 1 and to illuminate the efficiency role of lotteries

on the long run implications of repeated moral hazard abstract this paper analyzes the effects of moral hazard on long run consumption or utility given exponential utility it is shown that the utility of those with unobservable endowments becomes arbitrarily negative as long as any positive fraction of otherwise identical agents have observable endowments next it is shown that assuming a finite number of agents results in essentially the same outcomes as with a continuum of agents finally it is shown that the key characteristic determining whether the utility of almost all agents becomes arbitrarily low is whether lim c u c is bounded away from zero journal of economic literature classification numbers d30 d31 d80 d82