Knowledge that Transforms

We propose a specification test of a parametrically specified nonlinear model against a weakly specified non-nested alternative. We estimate the alternative model by using nonparametric regression (nearest neighbours). The test is based on the t-statistic of an artificial regression. Monte-Carlo simulations suggest that the test has good power and size characteristics.

Available from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:3597.1206(LSE-CEP-DP--74) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply Centre

This paper examines the contract between a risk-neutral firm and its risk-averse employees, assuming that worker ability is privately learned by the firm after a period of employment. Employers in an external spot labor market attempt to infer worker quality from the observable actions taken by the firm. The threat of spot market raids distorts the optimal contract. Layoffs may be involuntary and can exceed efficient levels. A seniority layoff rule may be included in the contract to avoid the adverse selection problems that arise if layoffs are conducted on the basis of ability. Copyright 1994 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.

This paper shows that if demand is unknown and continuously changing and if investment is costly, then output and investment are cyclical. The cycles are generated by changes in information over time, as investors increase production and thus accumulate more information about demand. These are, therefore, informational cycles. The paper also shows that the frequency of cycles depends positively on profitability and negatively on the rate of interest.

In a signal-extraction model of consumer behaviour, higher prices signal higher-quality products for a new product monopoly, even without cost asymmetries across different qualities. Moreover, higher-quality products earn greater expected profits, and the monopolist has an incentive to provide even transient improvements in quality. Finally, the monopolist has a positive incentive to conduct market research about quality, and produces more information than is socially optimal.

Without assuming rational expectations, the author examines the implications of a stationarity assumption in a standard bargaining model with one-sided incomplete information, where the seller makes an offer in each period. Instead of computing a weakly stationary equilibrium, the author invokes rationalizability combined with the restriction that the buyer's acceptance rule be weakly stationary. There exists a pair of rationalizable sets of pure strategies for the seller and the buyer that are weakly stationary. The author demonstrates that any initial offer from the seller induced by a strategy rationalized by a weakly stationary acceptance rule for the buyer must entail the Coase property. Copyright 1994 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.

This paper analyses a new estimator for the structural parameters of dynamic models of discrete choice. Based on an inversion theorem due to Hotz and Miller (1993), which establishes the existence of a one-to-one mapping between the conditional valuation functions for the dynamic problem and their associated conditional choice probabilities, we exploit simulation techniques to estimate models which do not possess terminal states. In this way our Conditional Choice Simulation (CCS) estimator complements the Conditional Choice Probability (CCP) estimator of Hotz and Miller (1993). Drawing on work in empirical process theory by Pakes and Pollard (1989), we establish its large sample properties, and then conduct a Monte Carlo study of Rust's (1987) model of bus engine replacement to compare its small sample properties with those of Maximum Likelihood (ML).

Credit contracts play a direct role in pooling risk between households in northern Nigeria. Repayments owed by borrowers depend on realizations of random shocks by both borrowers and lenders. The paper develops two models of state-contingent loans. The first is a competitive equilibrium in perfectly enforceable contracts. The second permits imperfect information and equilibrium default. Estimates of both models indicate that quantitatively important state-contingent payments are embedded in these loan transactions but that a fully efficient risk-pooling equilibrium is not achieved. The research is based on a year-long survey in Zaria, Nigeria, conducted by the author. Copyright 1994 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.

When an investor, for example a transnational corporation, invests abroad it runs the risk that its investment will be expropriated for the simple reason that international contracts are practically impossible to enforce. Any agreements or contracts then undertaken by the transnational company and the host country must be designed to be self-enforcing. It could be possible for the host country and the transnational corporation to find such self-enforcing agreements if there are future gains from trade. Thus although the host country might have a short-term incentive to expropriate, it has a long-term incentive to foster good relations with potential investors to attract more investment in the future. This conflict between short-term and long-term incentives determines the type of investment contracts agreed. This paper extends previous work on the general underprovision of investment when contracts are incomplete or only partially enforceable (see e.g. Grout (1984)) to a dynamic context. It is likewise shown that investment is initially underprovided but it increases over time and for certain parameter values it tends to the efficient level. The expected future discounted returns to the transnational company decline over time, extending Vernon's observation of the obsolescing bargain (Vernon (1971)). The model is also extended to allow for capital accumulation and consideration is given to renegotiation-proof contracts.

An experiment was conducted to test whether discounted repeated play leads to greater cooperation and coordination than one-shot play, in a public good environment with incomplete information. The experiment was designed so that, theoretically repeated play can sustain equilibria with higher group earnings than result in the one-shot Bayesian Nash equilibrium. The design varied a number of environment al parameters, including the size of the group, the marginal rate of transformation between the public and private good, and the statistical distribution of marginal rates of substitution between the public and private good. Marginal rates of substitution were private information but the statistical distribution was common knowledge. The results indicate that repetition leads to greater cooperation, and that the magnitude of these gains depends both on the ability of players to monitor each other's strategy and on the underlying environmental parameters.