Knowledge that Transforms

In this paper, we examine the impact of political constraints on economic reform plans, with special reference to the transition from centrally planned to market economies. We analyse the problem of an agenda-setting reform-minded Government facing a bureaucracy or industrial sector for which allocative efficiency requires redundancies and an increase in work intensity. The Government also tries to minimize the rents conceded to its heterogeneous workforce. We examine two types of political constraints: unanimity rule and majority rule, both in a one-period and a two-period horizon. The main results are the following. First of all, we show how adverse selection and time-consistency may generate the widely-observed feature of gradualism as an ingredient of an optimal reform. Second, under a majority rule, it is shown to be possible for the Government to obtain a majority vote for a reform scheme that intertemporally hurts majority interests. Indeed, the Government can improve rent extraction through the strategic use of the threat of future proposals: the group which expects to be in the minority tomorrow may accept concessions, while its votes can be used to extract rents from another group. These results suggest that, in a dynamic context, democratic constraints should not be overestimated as an obstacle against efficiency-enhancing economic reforms. The results of this paper may throw some light on the political economy of current reforms in Eastern Europe.

The role of strategic delay is analyzed in an infinite-horizon alternating-offer model of bargaining. A buyer and seller are engaged in the trade of a single object. Both bargainers have private information about their own preferences and are impatient in that delaying agreement is costly. An equilibrium is constructed in which the bargainers signal the strength of their bargaining positions by delaying prior to making an offer. A bargainer expecting large gains from trade is more impatient than one expecting small gains, and hence makes concessions earlier on. Trade occurs whever gains from trade exist, but due to the private information, only after costly delay. Panmunjom, Korea—(UPI)—The American general and the North Korean general glared at each other across the table and the only sound was the wind howling across the barren hills outside their hut. Maj. Gen. James B. Knapp, negotiator for the United Nations Command (UNC), was waiting for Maj. Gen. Ri Choonsun of the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea to propose a recess. They sat there, arms folded, for 4| hours. Not a word. Finally, Gen. Ri got up, walked out and drove away. —Evening Bulletin, Philadelphia (11 April 1969)

This paper presents a general model of the demand for differentiated products which has as special cases two popular models used to analyse welfare and competition in monopolistically competitive markets: the model of spatial competition and the symmetric aggregate benefit function approach. Our model is especially attractive because it starts from economic primitives: a specification of the set of possible individual preference patterns. It shows how specific properties of the distribution of preferences translate into properties of aggregate demand. This allows us to understand the relationship between the distribution of preferences and the degree to which the market introduces biases in product selection.

The cost of gathering information about unfamiliar securities may lead to gains from standardization: firms issue a particular security because it is used by other firms. To support standardization as an equilibrium phenomenon, information must be non-transferable (otherwise it might be revealed by prices or the observation of other agents' decisions) and it must be generic (useful in evaluating a number of securities). A competitive equilibrium in which standard contracts are used may be subject to coordination failure: while there always exists a constrained efficient equilibrium, there may also exist Pareto-ranked equilibria.

We analyze incomplete long-term financial contracts between an entrepreneur with no initial wealth and a wealthy investor. Both agents have potentially conflicting objectives since the entrepreneur cares about both pecuniary and non-pecuniary returns from the project while the investor is only concerned about monetary returns. We address the questions of (i) whether and how the initial contract can be structured in such a way as to bring about a perfect coincidence of objectives between both agents (ii) when the initial contract cannot achieve this coincidence of objectives how should control rights be allocated to achieve efficiency? One of the main results of our analysis concerns the optimality properties of the (contingent) control allocation induced by standard debt financing.

This paper studies whether the dynamic behavior of GNP growth, unemployment, and inflation is affected by elections and changes of governments. The sample includes the last three decades in eighteen OECD economies. The authors' results are as follows: (1) the "political business cycle" hypothesis on output and employment is rejected; (2) inflation tends to increase immediately after elections; (3) they find evidence of temporary partisan differences in output and unemployment and of long-run partisan differences in the inflation rate; and (4) they find virtually no evidence of permanent partisan differences in output growth and unemployment. Copyright 1992 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.

The present paper tries to explain cooperative behavior in an organization run by a sequence of long- but finitely-lived agents. The author shows that the Folk theorem holds for infinitely repeated games with overlapping generations of finitely-lived players; any mutually beneficial outcome can approximately be sustained if the player's life span and the overlapping periods are long enough. The result is stronger than the usual Folk theorems in that it employs no assumption on the stage game, such as the full dimensionality of payoff set or multiplicity of equilibria. Copyright 1992 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.

A model of sequential bargaining with one-sided incomplete information is analyzed where, if an agreement is not reached, the agents go to court. A "deadline effect" emerges where much settlement occurs just prior to the trial and many cases proceed to court. If fixed costs are incurred during each bargaining period, a "U-shaped" pattern of settlement emerges. These patterns persist in the limit as the time between offers approaches zero. A model with an endogenous trial date is also considered and it is shown that even with complete information there exists inefficient equilibria where disputes are resolved in court. Copyright 1992 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.

A generalized common consequence problem is used to contrast the predictions of expected utility theory and several new theories of choice under uncertainty. An experiment designed to test these predictions is reported. Systematic violations of expected utility theory are detected but, although a consistent pattern emerges from the data, it offers little support for any of the new theories. The analysis is extended to test predictions that are unique to regret theory and significant regret effects are detected. Copyright 1992 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.

Estimated U.S. M1 demand functions appear unstable, regularly “breaking down,” over 1960–1988 (e.g. missing money, great velocity decline, M1-explosion). We propose a money demand function whose arguments include inflation, real income, long-term bond yield and risk, T-bill interest rates, and learning curve weighted yields on newly introduced instruments in M1 and non-transactions M2. The model is estimated in dynamic error-correction form; it is constant and, with an equation standard error of 0–4%, variance-dominates most previous models. Estimating alternative specifications explains earlier “breakdowns,” showing the model's distinctive features to be important in accounting for the data.