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.     

Disaster Risk Management Policies and the Measurement of Resilience for Philippine Regions

How can a government prioritize disaster risk management policies across regions and types of interventions? Using an economic model to assess welfare risk and resilience to disasters, this article systematically tackles the questions: (1) How much asset and welfare risks does each region in the Philippines face from riverine flood disasters? (2) How resilient is each region to riverine flood disasters? (3) What are, per region, the possible interventions to strengthen resilience to riverine flood disasters and what will be their measured benefit? We study the regions of the Philippines to demonstrate the channels through which macroeconomic asset and output losses from disasters translate to consumption and welfare losses at the micro-economic level. Apart from the regional prioritizations, we identify a menu of policy options ranked according to their level of effectiveness in increasing resilience and reducing welfare risk from riverine floods. The ranking of priorities varies for different regions when their level of expected value at risk is different. This suggests that there are region-specific conditions and drivers that need to be integrated into considerations and policy decisions, so that these are effectively addressed.     

DISTANCE TO FRONTIER,SELECTION, AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

We analyze an economy where firms undertake both innovation and adoption of technologies from the world technology frontier. The selection of high‐skill managers and firms is more important for innovation than for adoption. As the economy approaches the frontier, selection becomes more important. Countries at early stages of development pursue an investment‐based strategy, which relies on existing firms and managers to maximize investment but sacrifices selection. Closer to the world technology frontier, economies switch to an innovation‐based strategy with short‐term relationships, younger firms, less investment, and better selection of firms and managers. We show that relatively backward economies may switch out of the investment‐based strategy too soon, so certain policies such as limits on product market competition or investment subsidies, which encourage the investment‐based strategy, may be beneficial. However, these policies may have significant long‐run costs because they make it more likely that a society will be trapped in the investment‐based strategy and fail to converge to the world technology frontier. (JEL: O31, O33, O38, O40, L16)     

非流动性市场中的跨期最优消费和投资策略

本文在Merton跨期最优消费和资产组合的理论框架内引入非流动性资产,构造了一个三资产的连续时间经济模型,探讨流动性约束对投资者最优消费和投资决策的影响。本文用动态规划方法给出了跨期优化问题的解析解。数值分析表明对投资者而言,非流动性资产的真实价值低于其市值,必须引入影子价格来刻划这种流动性效应;流动性约束降低了投资者的福利,并且显著地影响到投资者的消费和投资策略。     

基于社会福利的专利研发投资策略评价

专利技术的研发投资策略不仅影响企业价值还会影响消费者剩余,两种影响通常会呈现出两种不同的效应,从而导致专利研发投资决策对社会福利的不同影响.针对旨在通过研发专利技术从而垄断新兴市场的两非对称企业,结合投资时机选择期权博弈模型和消费者剩余模型得到非合作博弈(即专利竞赛)和合作博弈两种模式下的总投资净现值和消费者剩余,分析社会福利与影响其变化的诸多因素间的动态变化特征并提出相应的创新政策建议.结果表明,若以社会福利最大化为目标,则两企业的研发能力差异越小、专利技术的成长性越好、无风险利率越小、专利产品质量越低时,社会计划者的政策越应有利于合作研发模式;反之,政策越应鼓励竞争.而专利研发投资成本及初始价值会对两种模式下的社会福利差异的影响表现出"非线性"特征,政策的倾向性不确定.     

Quantity Competition When Most Favored Customers are Strategic

Legal studies usually treat a policy of a manufacturer or retailer as socially harmful if it reduces product output and increases the price. We consider a two‐period model where the first‐period price is fixed and resellers endogenously decide to use meet‐the‐competition clause with a most‐favored‐customer clause (MFC) to counteract strategic customer behavior. As a result of MFC, the second‐period (reduced) price increases and resellers’ inventories decrease. However, customer surplus may increase and aggregate welfare increases in the majority of market situations. MFC can mitigate the losses in welfare and resellers’ profits due to strategic customers. Moreover, under reseller competition, MFC may even lead to higher levels of these values than with myopic customers, that is, to gain from increased strategic behavior. With growing competition, benefits or losses from MFC can be higher than losses from strategic customer behavior.     

Large Risks,Limited Liability,and Dynamic Moral Hazard

We study a continuous‐time principal–agent model in which a risk‐neutral agent with limited liability must exert unobservable effort to reduce the likelihood of large but relatively infrequent losses. Firm size can be decreased at no cost or increased subject to adjustment costs. In the optimal contract, investment takes place only if a long enough period of time elapses with no losses occurring. Then, if good performance continues, the agent is paid. As soon as a loss occurs, payments to the agent are suspended, and so is investment if further losses occur. Accumulated bad performance leads to downsizing. We derive explicit formulae for the dynamics of firm size and its asymptotic growth rate, and we provide conditions under which firm size eventually goes to zero or grows without bounds.     

From Welfare to Work: Evaluating a Tax and Benefit Reform Targeted at Single Mothers in Sweden

Abstract. In this paper we evaluate a hypothetical tax and benefit reform to increase the working hours and to decrease welfare participation of single mothers in Sweden. We formulate and estimate simultaneously a structural static model of labor supply and welfare participation. The results suggest that labor supply among single mother households in Sweden is quite elastic, and that there is self‐selection into welfare. We also find that the proposed reform would generate welfare gains for virtually everyone in the sample, benefit low‐income households, and would at the same time generate a small revenue surplus.     

OPTIMAL EXCHANGE RATES: A MARKET MICROSTRUCTURE APPROACH

Motivated by the observation that exchange‐rate management resembles market‐making, we use microstructure theory to conduct a welfare analysis of exchange‐rate management, including the “corner solutions” of a free float and a fixed peg. We show that a policy that smoothes out exchange‐rate fluctuations needs to trade off the welfare gain due to lower risk exposure of local producers against the trading losses that the policy would generate due to speculation. We identify the conditions under which exchange‐rate management can increase welfare and argue that these conditions are more likely to be satisfied in illiquid markets, mainly small economies and emerging markets. We also explore the role of a Tobin tax (assuming enforceability) in facilitating exchange‐rate management. (JEL: E58, F31, G14, O24)     

THE ROLE OF INFORMATION IN INNOVATION AND COMPETITION

Innovation is typically a trial‐and‐error process. While some research paths lead to the innovation sought, others result in dead ends. Because firms benefit from their competitors working in the wrong direction, they do not reveal their dead‐end findings. Time and resources are wasted on projects that other firms have already found to be fruitless. We offer a simple model with two firms and two research lines to study this prevalent problem. We characterize the equilibrium in a decentralized environment that necessarily entails significant efficiency losses due to wasteful dead‐end replication and an information externality that leads to an early abandonment of the risky project. We show that different types of firms follow different innovation strategies and create different kinds of welfare losses. In an extension of the core model, we also study a centralized mechanism whereby firms are incentivized to disclose their actions and share their private information in a timely manner. (JEL: O31, D92)     

Equilibria in Health Exchanges: Adverse Selection versus Reclassification Risk

This paper studies regulated health insurance markets known as exchanges, motivated by the increasingly important role they play in both public and private insurance provision. We develop a framework that combines data on health outcomes and insurance plan choices for a population of insured individuals with a model of a competitive insurance exchange to predict outcomes under different exchange designs. We apply this framework to examine the effects of regulations that govern insurers' ability to use health status information in pricing. We investigate the welfare implications of these regulations with an emphasis on two potential sources of inefficiency: (i) adverse selection and (ii) premium reclassification risk. We find substantial adverse selection leading to full unraveling of our simulated exchange, even when age can be priced. While the welfare cost of adverse selection is substantial when health status cannot be priced, that of reclassification risk is five times larger when insurers can price based on some health status information. We investigate several extensions including (i) contract design regulation, (ii) self‐insurance through saving and borrowing, and (iii) insurer risk adjustment transfers.     

Dynamic Economic Resilience and Economic Recovery from Disasters: A Quantitative Assessment

This article analyzes the role of dynamic economic resilience in relation to recovery from disasters in general and illustrates its potential to reduce disaster losses in a case study of the Wenchuan earthquake of 2008. We first offer operational definitions of the concept linked to policies to promote increased levels and speed of investment in repair and reconstruction to implement this resilience. We then develop a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model that incorporates major features of investment and traces the time‐path of the economy as it recovers with and without dynamic economic resilience. The results indicate that resilience strategies could have significantly reduced GDP losses from the Wenchuan earthquake by 47.4% during 2008–2011 by accelerating the pace of recovery and could have further reduced losses slightly by shortening the recovery by one year. The results can be generalized to conclude that shortening the recovery period is not nearly as effective as increasing reconstruction investment levels and steepening the time‐path of recovery. This is an important distinction that should be made in the typically vague and singular reference to increasing the speed of recovery in many definitions of dynamic resilience.     

企业报酬机制与人力资本投资

由于企业与员工双方都以自己的收益最大化为目标函数,所以当企业采取对产出按比例分成的报酬机制时,会导致双边道德风险,从而使员工实际的人力资本投资力度和工作努力程度以及企业的实际相关投入力度都低于整个社会福利最大化时的力度.如果企业能够采取另外一种报酬机制,使员工拥有完全剩余索取权,就能够使企业与员工都选择社会福利最大化时人力资本投资力度和工作努力程度以及相关投入力度.     

寡头竞争模型下的非对称R&D分析

本文考虑的是Stackelberg寡头竞争模型下的产品市场合作对研发投入,利润,消费者剩余和福利的影响.我们发现在非时称R&D情况下,产品市场合作的产业利润总是高于产品市场竞争的情形.产品市场合作对R&D投入、消费者剩余以及福利的影响取决于知识溢出程度和R&D效率参数的大小.假如知识溢出程度足够大,R&D的效率参数足够小,产品市场的合作对生产商,消费者和社会来说比在非合作状态下更有利.     

基于绿色投资效率的港航供应链投资策略研究

在IMO环境政策约束日趋严格的背景下，绿色投资成为港航企业提升自身竞争优势的方式之一。本文以港口主导的供应链为研究对象，分析三种投资场景与不同成员投资的利益关系，即从绿色技术投资效率对港航供应链的成本效应、绿色技术投入效应、经济效应和市场效应等方面展开分析，最后分析不同投资策略对消费者剩余和社会福利的影响。研究表明：港口绿色技术投资在一定程度上会增加整体供应链的成本投入；当绿色技术投资效率逐步提高时，绿色投入水平不断下降，降低了绿色投入的成本，从而达到“投入高效率，投入水平低增长，整体收益高增长”的投资效果；无论是承运人或是港口进行绿色技术投入，均会增加市场的服务价格，相较于非绿色技术投入，绿色技术投入时会增加整体市场的需求数量；从消费者剩余的角度考虑，承运人绿色技术投入相较于港口绿色技术投入产生的消费者剩余大，也会在一定程度上减少因价格“传递效应”带来的不利影响；从社会福利的角度考虑，虽然绿色投资可能会降低社会福利，但承运人投资产生的社会福利优于港口绿色投资时产生的社会福利；从保护环境的角度，政府的政策制定具有较高的优先级，有助于提升环境收益。研究结果进一步丰富了港航企业绿色投资的研究成果，可为合理权衡绿色技术投资效率，为港口供应链成员的绿色投资决策提供一定的参考，对绿色港口供应链的良性发展具有一定的指导意义。     

Affective reactions influence investment decisions: evidence from a laboratory experiment with taxation

We experimentally investigate the effect of taxation of gains and losses on investment behavior. Based on the insights of economic research and psychological concepts, we expect subjects to react to taxation with behavioral and affective changes. Our main results are threefold: first, we show that taxation on gains and the possibility to deduct losses bias investment behavior, but in different directions. Since net payoffs are identical across all tax scenarios and therefore the same investment behavior is to be expected, these differences are in contrast to what a standard theory would predict. Second, we observe that different tax regulations have different effects on the affective and cognitive perception of our subjects. Third, with respect to possible connections of the affective and cognitive ratings, tax regulations, and investment decisions, we are able to show that arousal and risk perception fail to influence the decision making of participants, while there is a highly significant influence of valence perception on choice patterns.     

基于社会福利的可再生能源R&D激励政策评价

可再生能源发电新技术的R&D投资策略通常对企业价值和消费者剩余起到作用相反的不同影响,从而对基于社会福利的可再生能源电力R&D激励政策的科学制定带来挑战。针对旨在通过研发可再生能源发电新技术从而垄断清洁能源新兴市场的两非对称企业,结合投资时机选择期权博弈和社会福利模型,通过数值模拟以分析社会福利与影响其变化的补贴政策及其它诸多因素间的动态变化特征并提出相应的可再生能源电力R&D激励政策建议。结果表明:若以社会福利最大化为目标,在发电新技术R&D补贴和上网电价补贴政策的各组合应用中,企业间的R&D能力差距越大、可再生能源发电新技术的初始价值越大以及R&D成本越高,政府越应该鼓励可再生能源企业进行合作研发,反之则应鼓励竞争;随着电价补贴的提高,企业间的R&D竞争应受到鼓励;一定范围内,R&D补贴和电价补贴均能提高社会福利。论文创新性地揭示出可再生能源电力R&D投资的最优投资时机选择、电价补贴政策组合与社会福利三者间应有的内在联动关系,为政府对可再生能源电力的有效激励和管理提供富有价值的决策参考。     

Environmental Taxes and the Choice of Green Technology

We study several important aspects of using environmental taxes to motivate the choice of innovative and “green" emissions‐reducing technologies as well as the role of fixed cost subsidies and consumer rebates in this process. In our model, a profit‐maximizing monopolistic firm facing price‐dependent demand selects emissions control technology, production quantity, and price in response to the tax, subsidy, and rebate levels set by the regulator. The available technologies vary in environmental efficiency as well as in the fixed and variable costs. Both the optimal policy for the firm and the social‐welfare maximizing policy for the regulator are analyzed. We find that the firm's reaction to an increase in taxes may be non‐monotone: while an initial increase in taxes may motivate a switch to a greener technology, further tax increases may motivate a reverse switch. For the regulator, we compare the social welfare achievable in the centralized system (which serves as an upper bound) to the highest level achievable under different classes of environmental policies. If the regulator is limited to a tax‐only policy, then when the regulator is moderately concerned with environmental impacts, the tax level that maximizes social welfare simultaneously motivates the choice of clean technology and closes the gap to the upper bound; however, both low and high levels of societal environmental concerns may lead to the choice of dirty technology and significant welfare losses as compared to the centralized case. Supplementing the environmental taxation with fixed cost subsidies and consumer rebates can eliminate this effect, expanding the range of parameters over which the green technology is chosen and often closing the welfare gap to the centralized solution.     

光滑暧昧模型下的不透明交易和管制措施研究

本文假定透明交易者对额外投资机会回报率的标准差(方差,投资风险)存在暧昧,这种认知暧昧性抑制了透明交易者的投资行为,会导致风险资产溢价过高及社会福利损失.透明交易者是暧昧厌恶的投资者,其投资决策依据光滑暧昧厌恶模型,需求函数呈现连续且光滑的特征.而不透明交易者,通过支付一定的信息获取成本获得私有信息而具有信息优势,他们是标准的风险厌恶的投资者.通过构建理性预期均衡,本文的研究发现:初始资产严格为正的透明交易者将获得严格为正的超额收益;提高信息获取成本将减少不透明交易者的比例,从而增加风险资产溢价,降低福利水平,因而不是一项好的管制措施;而旨在提高市场透明度降低交易者暧昧性的举措总有利于提高福利水平.     

受限制投资组合机会成本的实证研究

通过对只能投资于股票和只能投资于债券2种情况下的投资组合的机会成本的计算,研究了受限制情况下所产生效用损失和风险厌恶程度对机会成本的影响。计算中选用上证综合指数、深圳成分指数、中信国债指数、中信企债指数和银行间7日债券回购利率的5年期月度数据,运用向量自回归的方法估计下期组合的期望收益和收益的联合概率分布,并运用Quasi-Newton最优化方法来求得最优投资组合,从而求出机会成本。