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作者：Kirschsteiger, G; Prat, A
作者单位：Tilburg University; University of Vienna; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
摘要：Lobbying is often represented as a common agency game. Common agency games typically have multiple equilibria. One class of equilibria, called truthful, has been identified by Bernheim and Whinston [Quarterly Journal of Economics 1986;101(1):1-31]. In this paper, we identify another class of equilibria, which we call natural, in which each principal offers a positive contribution on at most one alternative. We run an experiment on a common agency game for which the two equilibria predict a dif...
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作者：Ottaviani, M; Sorensen, P
作者单位：University of London; University College London; University of London; University College London; University of Copenhagen
摘要：Privately informed individuals speak openly in front of other members of a committee about the desirability of a public decision. Each individual wishes to appear well informed. For any given order of speech, committee members may herd by suppressing their true information. With individuals of heterogeneous expertise, optimizing over the order of speech can improve the extraction of information, but not perfectly so. It is not always optimal to use the common anti-seniority rule whereby expert...
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作者：Anderson, SP; de Palma, A; Kreider, B
作者单位：University of Virginia; CY Cergy Paris Universite
摘要：This paper considers the relative efficiency of ad valorem and unit taxes in imperfectly competitive markets. We provide a simple proof that ad valorem taxes are welfare-superior to unit taxes in the short run when production costs are identical across firms. The proof covers differentiated products and a wide range of market conduct. Cost asymmetries strengthen the case for ad valorem taxation under Cournot competition, but unit taxation may be welfare-superior under Bertrand competition with...
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作者：Hess, GD; Orphanides, A
作者单位：University System of Ohio; Oberlin College; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve System Board of Governors
摘要：This paper investigates the relationship between the business cycle, the election cycle, and the timing and magnitude of foreign conflict. We propose a theoretical model which suggests that in the presence of a reelection motive, the frequency of war will be greater following recessions than otherwise. However, if partially benevolent leaders can influence the size of conflicts, then the consequences may be limited to conflicts of relatively small magnitude. We test the predictions of the theo...
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作者：Blackorby, C; Bossert, W; Donaldson, D
作者单位：University of British Columbia; Universite de Montreal
摘要：This note provides a corrected version of a representation theorem in population ethics. While it is true that the fixed-population axioms continuity and weak Pareto are sufficient for the existence of an ordering of population-size - representative-utility pairs that can be used to rank social alternatives, we show that, in order to obtain the existence of a real-valued representation, continuity must be strengthened. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
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作者：Bernheim, BD; Garrett, DM; Maki, DM
作者单位：Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Federal Reserve System - USA
摘要：Over the last 40 years, a majority of stares have adopted consumer education policies, and a sizable minority have mandated that high school students receive instruction on topics related to household financial decision-making. In this paper, we attempt to determine whether these mandates have had any effect on subsequent decisions. We exploit the variation in requirements both across states and over time to identify the effects of interest. The evidence indicates that mandates have raised bot...
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作者：Picard, PM
作者单位：University of Manchester
摘要：This paper links the old literature on employment subsidies with the current theories of contract and regulation. One important source of inefficiency of employment subsidies is non-additional employment and deadweight spending which occur when private firms receive a subsidy for jobs that would have been created without the subsidy. We identify the asymmetry of information between the government and the private firm as the source of these problems. When the government proposes optimal incenti...
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作者：Khalil, F; Lawarrée, J
作者单位：University of Washington; University of Washington Seattle
摘要：In a principal-agent model with multiple performance measures, we show that the principal benefits by choosing ex post which variables will be monitored. If it is too costly for one type of agent to mimic all performance measures expected from another type, the principal can hope to catch the agent on the wrong foot if the agent tries to misrepresent his type. For cases of small asymmetry of information, the principal can implement the first best contract. For more serious asymmetries of infor...
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作者：Kramarz, F; Philippon, T
作者单位：Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Institut Polytechnique de Paris; ENSAE Paris; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要：In this article, we study the impact of changes of total labor costs on employment of low-wage workers in France in a period, 1990 to 1998, that saw sudden and large changes in these costs. We use longitudinal data from the French Labor Force survey (much less than enquete emploi much greater than) in order to understand the consequences of real decreases and real increases of the labor cost. We examine the transition probabilities from employment to non-employment and from non-employment to e...
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作者：Anderson, SP; de Palma, A; Kreider, B
作者单位：University of Virginia; CY Cergy Paris Universite
摘要：We analyze the incidence of ad valorem and unit excise taxes in an oligopolistic industry with differentiated products and price-setting (Bertrand) firms. Both taxes may be passed on to consumers by more than 100 percent, and an increase in the tax rate can increase short run firm profits (and hence the long run number of firms). We provide summary conditions for these effects to arise. The conditions depend on demand curvatures and are written in elasticity form. Surprisingly, the analysis la...
