Much of the development of economic theory has been based on assumptions that credit economic agents with perfect discriminating power and perfect consistency in their choice behavior, but recently a range of less restrictive psychological choice theories has been introduced into economic analysis. These theories may be classed into two typesthose that treat preference (and hence choice) as a probabilistic phenomenon, and those that retain the deterministic structure of the traditional analysis but relax in some way the assumption that individual preferences be transitive. in previous work others have examined the implications for economic equilibrium of assuming preferences to be random; our purpose in this paper is to examine the equilibrium implications of a particularly attractive deterministic choice theory, that of semiordered preferences. We first examine an exchange ec such an economy is shown to have an equilibrium, and further, for interior equilibria, it is shown that a range of allocations to consumers is consistent with equilibrium. Finally, we show that in a semiorder market economy the set of price equilibria has a non-empty interior relative to the price simplex.
[This paper surveys various econometric issues that arise in estimating a relation between the logarithm of earnings, schooling, and other variables and focuses on the problem of "ability" as a left-out variable and the various solutions to it. It points out that in optimizing models the "ability bias" need not be positive and shows, using recent analyses of NLS data, that when schooling is treated symmetrically, allowing it too to be subject to errors of measurement and correlated to the disturbance in the earnings function, the usual conclusion of a significantly positive "ability bias" in the estimated schooling coefficients is not only not supported but possibly even reversed.]
This paper shows that no nondictatorial voting procedure exists that induces each voter to choose his voting strategy solely on the basis of his preferences and independently of his beliefs concerning other voters' preferences. This necessary dependence between a voter's beliefs and his choice of strategy means that a voter can manipulate another voter's choice of strategy by misleading him into adopting inaccurate beliefs concerning other voters' beliefs. CONSIDER A VOTING SITUATION, as in a committee. Each rational member has preferences over the alternatives being considered and beliefs concerning the other members' preferences. The question we consider in this short paper is: can a voting procedure be constructed such that each member's vote depends only on his preferences, not on his beliefs concerning other individual preferences. We show, by an application of Gibbard [6] and Satterthwaite's [11] impossibility theorem for strategy-proof voting procedures, that such a voting procedure does not exist. Moreover, we show that this necessary lack of independence between a member's beliefs and his choice of voting strategy makes him vulnerable to possible manipulation by other members. Specifically, consider members one and two. Since member one partially bases his vote on what he believes member two is seeking, member two may deliberately mislead member one into adopting a false belief concerning member two's preferences. As a consequence of this inaccurate belief, member one may decide to vote in a manner that is, in fact, unfavorable to himself and favorable to member two. Derivation of these results depends critically on the possibility that members may be uncertain concerning other members' preferences. This assumption is reasonable because the purpose of legislative bodies is to reconcile conflicting preferences. If preferences were generally known with certainty, then, as Wilson [14, p. 310] has pointed out, the need for a legislative body would vanish because preferences could be aggregated directly. Therefore, a realistic analysis of voting behavior must accept that a member's true preferences are private. Our results are consistent with the work that other researchers have reported. Dummett and Farquharson [3, pp. 34-35] and, to a lesser extent, NVilson [14] assumed the validity of our results. Harsanyi [7] in discussing bargaining situations where the two opponents are uncertain concerning the other's preferences argued that the decisive element may not be the actual preferences of the two individuals involved, but rather the societal stereotypes (beliefs) concerning their preferences. Schelling (12, e.g., Ch. 3] in his insightful discussion of bargaining strategy dwells extensively on the same theme.
[Conditions under which a single iteration approximation to the maximum likelihood estimator dominates ordinary least squares are approximated analytically for the class of linear models for which the eigenvectors of the error covariance matrix are known.]
This paper examines conditions for the uniqueness of an equilibrium price distribution in stochastic macroeconomic models with rational expectations. A model is developed in which many price distributions, each with a finite variance, satisfy the equilibrium requirements of rationality. Hence, the condition that the variance of the equilibrium price distribution be finite, or equivalently, that the conditionally expected price path be stable, does not guarantee uniqueness. In such cases it is shown that an arbitrary random quantity which is widely publicized can become a leading indicator of prices and, consequently, influence the behavior of actual prices. However, by extending the finite variance (stability) condition to a minimum variance condition, these nonuniqueness problems can be avoided. Such stability or minimum variance conditions suggest a kind of collective rationality which, although not unreasonable, has not yet been fully analyzed in rational expectations models. 1.
[Social decision mechanisms that admit dominant strategies and result in Pareto optima are characterized by the class of mechanisms proposed by Groves. The concept of decision mechanisms is generalized and the characterization is shown to extend to these cases.]
This paper surveys alternative testing criteria in the linear multivariate regression model, and investigates the possibility of conflict among them. We consider the asymptotic Wald, likelihood ratio (LR), and Lagrange multiplier (LM) tests. These three test statistics have identical limiting chi-square distributions; thus their critical regions coincide. A strong result we obtain is that a systematic numerical inequality relationship exists; specifically, Wald , LRa LM. Since the equality relationship holds only if the null hypothesis is exactly true in the sample, in practice there will always exist a significance level for which the asymptotic Wald, LR, and LM tests will yield conflicting inference. However, when the null hypothesis is true, the dispersion among the teststatistics will tend to decrease as the sample size increases. We illustrate relationships among the alternative testing criteria with an empirical example based on the three reduced form equations of Klein's Model I of the United States economy, 1921-1941.
Grayham E. Mizon, Inferential Procedures in Nonlinear Models: An Application in a UK Industrial Cross Section Study of Factor Substitution and Returns to Scale, Econometrica, Vol. 45, No. 5 (Jul., 1977), pp. 1221-1242