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作者：JOVANOVIC, B; MACDONALD, GM
作者单位：University of Rochester
摘要：This paper studies the evolution of a competitive industry in which a fixed number of firms reduce costs by innovating and by imitating their rivals' technologies. As the firms' technologies gradually improve, industry output expands and price falls. Technological leaders tend to rely on innovations to reduce their costs, whereas the laggards rely more on imitation. Imitation causes technology to spread from the leaders to the followers and forces some convergence of technology among firms as ...
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作者：SUEN, W; MO, PH
作者单位：Hong Kong Baptist University
摘要：Productive consumption adds to utility and income at the same time. The shadow price of a productive good is equal to its money price less its marginal product. As more of the good is consumed, its shadow price rises because of diminishing productivity, and the consumer's full income also rises because the marginal product is positive. This paper uses a simple method to derive the comparative statics of the demand system when shadow prices and full income are endogenous. The direction of the o...
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作者：LANG, LHP; STULZ, RM
作者单位：National Bureau of Economic Research; University System of Ohio; Ohio State University
摘要：In this paper, we show that Tobin's q and firm diversification are negatively related throughout the 1980s. This negative relation holds for different diversification measures and when we control for other known determinants of q. Further, diversified firms have lower q's than comparable portfolios of pure-play firms. Firms that choose to diversify are poor performers relative to firms that do not, but there is only weak evidence that they have lower q's than the average firm in their industry...
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作者：BRONARS, SG; DEERE, DR
作者单位：Texas A&M University System; Texas A&M University College Station
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作者：GREIF, A
摘要：Lacking an appropriate theoretical framework, economists and economic historians have paid little attention to the relations between culture and institutional structure. This limits the ability to address a question that seems to be at the heart of development failures: Why do societies fail to adopt the institutional structure of more economically successful ones? This paper integrates game-theoretical and sociological concepts to conduct a comparative historical analysis of the relations bet...
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作者：EHRLICH, I; GALLAISHAMONNO, G; LIU, ZQ; LUTTER, R
作者单位：Universite de Orleans; Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
摘要：We focus on the effect of state versus private ownership on the rates of firm-specific productivity growth and cost decline by developing a model of endogenous, firm-specific productivity growth and testing its implications against panel data on 23 international airlines of varying levels of state ownership over the period 1973-83. Our model and empirical results show that state ownership can lower the long-run annual rate of productivity growth or cost decline, but not necessarily their level...
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作者：ZHANG, J
作者单位：Chinese University of Hong Kong
摘要：Bequest to and marriage of children can lead to a Pareto-inefficient allocation. The inefficiency (or market failure) arises because one family, making a bequest to its own child, ignores the contribution to the utility of the other family whose child enters the marriage. This note shows that an assortative mating rule based on bequests can improve or even restore Pareto efficiency when parents take account of the rule in deciding the amount of bequests to their own children.
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作者：PUELZ, R; SNOW, A
作者单位：University System of Georgia; University of Georgia
摘要：The configuration of equilibrium in the market for automobile collision insurance is examined empirically by representing the premium-deductible menu and the demand function as a standard hedonic system. Using contractual data from a representative insurer, we estimate a reduced-form hedonic premium equation and the inverse of the marginal bid equation for insurance coverage. The data reveal an equilibrium with adverse selection and market signaling but lead us to reject the hypothesis that hi...
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作者：CONSTANTINE, JH; ALSTON, JM; SMITH, VH
作者单位：Montana State University System; Montana State University Bozeman
摘要：The California One-Variety Cotton Law is an important example of technological regulation, in this case intended to serve as a de facto quality control and to mitigate externalities in production that can arise from the mixing of cottonseed at the gin. This paper describes and interprets the economic history of the law, presents a theoretical model of its economic effects, and provides quantitative estimates of the impacts on output, prices, and economic welfare, following a partial deregulati...
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作者：MOOKHERJEE, D; PNG, IPL
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
摘要：We characterize optimal enforcement in a setting in which individuals can select among various levels of some activity, all of which are monitored at the same rate but may be prosecuted and punished at varying rates. For less harmful acts, marginal expected penalties ought to fall short of marginal harms caused. Indeed, some range of very minor acts should be legalized. For more harmful acts, whether marginal expected penalties should fall short of, or exceed, marginal harms depends on the bal...
