Search results for "microeconomics"
showing 10 items of 442 documents
How significant is yardstick competition among governments? Three reasons to dig deeper
2013
22 pages; The significance of yardstick competition among governments is now confirmed with regard to fiscal variables. This is an important result but the significance of the mechanism must also be sought in a context broader than that of fiscal federalism and without limitation to relations and processes fully observable. Three points are made. Even in the case of governments trying to mimic each other over a single variable, additional variables are involved in an important way. Yardstick competition can be latent without being ineffective. Its major effect, then, is to set bounds to the choices that office-holders could think of making. Finally, the mechanism is a hidden albeit essentia…
Justice et inégalités: un amendement à la théorie de John Rawls
1992
National audience; On se demande si les principes de justice de Rawls ne sont pas exagérément inégalitaires, malgré leur côté "juste". On examine donc ce qu'il advient de l'optimum de Rawls, le maximin, quand de l'aversion pour l'inégalité" apparaît. Le maximin consiste à se placer sur un certain point de la courbe d'efficience, en admettant une certaine dose d'inégalité, pourvu que l'on donne le maximum possible aux plus défavorisés. On tient compte d'externalités en reprenant la notion d'envie sous la forme d'une aversion pour l'inégalité, essentiellement de la part des plus défavorisés. On ne peut plus raisonner sur la courbe frontière des rémunérations possibles et on démontre la validi…
On the Returns to Invention within Firms: Evidence from Finland
2018
International audience; In this paper we merge individual income data, firm-level data, patenting data, and IQ data in Finland over the period 1988–2012 to analyze the returns to invention for inventors and their coworkers or stakeholders within the same firm. We find that: (i) inventors collect only 8 percent of the total private return from invention; (ii) entrepreneurs get over 44 percent of the total gains; (iii) bluecollar workers get about 26 percent of the gains and the rest goes to white-collar workers. Moreover, entrepreneurs start with significant negative returns prior to the patent application, but their returns subsequently become highly positive.
Family time negotiations in the context of non-standard work schedules
2019
Present-day parenting is centred round the question of time, especially in the case of working parents. This study analysed negotiations over time in families where one or both parents work non-standard schedules, that is, during evenings, nights and weekends. We asked what aspects of time are negotiable and with whom, and who in the family bears the ultimate responsibility for these negotiations. The analysis was based on interviews with 47 people conducted in 2013 in Finland. The findings indicated that time negotiations within the family concerned everyday routines and schedules, social life and the family‗s philosophy. Family life and schedules in the context of non-standard schedules w…
Breakdown in Multilateral Negotiations
2015
Abstract We analyze a complete information multilateral bargaining model in which a buyer is to purchase two complementary goods from two sellers. Binding cash-offer contracts are used to govern transactions. In contrast to preexisting literature, we do not normalize the parties' reservation utilities to zero. We show that this assumption holds critical importance by demonstrating that a complete breakdown of negotiations may occur as the unique equilibrium outcome, even if only two sellers are present.
Credit market failures and policy
2009
In a simple model of the credit market, based on Stiglitz-Weiss (1981), equilibria are computed and optimal policies to correct market failures are characterized. Some widely applied policies, notably interest-rate subsidies and investment subsidies, are compared to theoretical optimum, and an alternative optimal policy is described which we argue is more robust to model misspecification. An insight on the trade-off between credit policy and infrastructural investment is also offered. A discussion of some aspects of regional policy in Italy's Mezzogiorno is finally presented as an application of the analysis.
The Molecular Genetic Architecture of Self-Employment
2013
Economic variables such as income, education, and occupation are known to affect mortality and morbidity, such as cardiovascular disease, and have also been shown to be partly heritable. However, very little is known about which genes influence economic variables, although these genes may have both a direct and an indirect effect on health. We report results from the first large-scale collaboration that studies the molecular genetic architecture of an economic variable-entrepreneurship-that was operationalized using self-employment, a widely-available proxy. Our results suggest that common SNPs when considered jointly explain about half of the narrow-sense heritability of self-employment es…
Rail access charges and internal competition in high speed trains
2016
Abstract This paper develops an ex ante analysis of the introduction of on-track competition in High Speed Rail (HSR) lines. The distinctive elements of our analysis are the consideration of: (i) the vertical structure of the rail sector, (ii) operators that compete in prices and number of services, and (iii) access charges for the use of the rail infrastructure that are endogenous. We provide simulation results for three Spanish HSR routes. The socio-economic viability of entry is found to depend on whether infrastructure and rail operations are integrated or separated, and also on the policy rule to set rail access charges. Firstly, separation without entry is not an appropriate good poli…
Allocating cost reducing investments over competing divisions
2007
This paper examines a three-stage model of divisionalization where, first, two parent firms create independent units, second, the parent firms allocate cost reduction levels over these units, and third, the resulting units compete in a Cournot market given their current costs of production. The introduction of the cost reduction phase is shown to reduce the incentives toward divisionalization severely, relative to other existing models. Namely, the scope for divisionalization in equilibrium reduces as the marginal cost of the cost reducing investment decreases, and eventually vanishes. A second-best welfare analysis shows that, for any given market structure, the equilibrium investment deci…
Strictly convex variable cost does not imply U-shaped average cost
2016
Abstract We show that strictly convex variable costs do not imply U-shaped average costs and provide a sufficient condition for U-shaped average costs. As an application we study endogenous entry when firms have market power and they have decreasing average cost but increasing marginal cost.