Knowledge that Transforms

In models of asymmetric information, possession of private information leads to rents for the possessors. This induces mechanism designers to distort away from efficiency. The authors show that this is an artifact of the presumption that information is independently distributed. Rent extraction in a large class of mechanism design games is analyzed, and a necessary and sufficient condition for arbitrarily small rents to private information is provided. Additionally, the two-person bargaining game is shown to have an efficient solution under first-order stochastic dominance and a hazard rate condition. Similar conditions allow full rent extraction in Milgrom-Weber auctions.

In this paper, a new estimator is proposed for discrete choice models with choice-based sampling. The estimator is efficient and can incorporate information on the marginal choice probabilities in a straightforward manner and for that case leads to a procedure that is computationally and intuitively more appealing than the estimators that have been proposed before. The idea is to start with a flexible parametrization of the distribution of the explanatory variables and then rewrite the estimator to remove dependence on these parametric assumptions. Copyright 1992 by The Econometric Society.

A stochastic differential formulation of recursive utility is given sufficient conditions for existence, uniqueness, time consistency, monotonicity, continuity, risk aversion, concavity, and other properties. In the setting of Brownian information, recursive and intertemporal expected utility functions are observationally distinguishable. However, one cannot distinguish between a number of non-expected-utility theories of one-shot choice under uncertainty after they are suitably integrated into an intertemporal framework. In a "smooth" Markov setting, the stochastic differential utility model produces a generalization of the Hamilton-Bellman-Jacobi characterization of optimality. A companion paper explores the implications for asset prices. Copyright 1992 by The Econometric Society.

Most of the available results on the existence of marginal cost pricing equilibrium are unsatisfactory in that they make a survival assumption that is stated as a condition on the production equilibria of the economy. The primary objective of this paper is to provide a relatively elementary existence result that replaces such an assumption with one on the primitive data of the economy. The author's main assumption is that no firm faces unbounded increasing returns in the sense that if it uses some input then the rate at which this input can be substituted into an output is finite. Copyright 1992 by The Econometric Society.

An experimental test of some qualitative predictions of the Kreps-Wilson (1982) model of reputation building is conducted in a version of a borrower-lender game first used experimentally by Colin Camerer and Keith Weigelt (1988). A systematic response to changes in the payoff function of borrowers is observed. However, the response is opposite to the direction predicted by the theory. Furthermore, the observed behavior cannot be reconciled with the theory by an appeal to "homemade" priors of the type specified by Camerer and Weigelt. Copyright 1992 by The Econometric Society.

Ariel Rubinstein, Zvi Safra, William Thomson, On the Interpretation of the Nash Bargaining Solution and Its Extension to Non-Expected Utility Preferences, Econometrica, Vol. 60, No. 5 (Sep., 1992), pp. 1171-1186

Orley Ashenfelter, Janet Currie, Henry S. Farber, Matthew Spiegel, An Experimental Comparison of Dispute Rates in Alternative Arbitration Systems, Econometrica, Vol. 60, No. 6 (Nov., 1992), pp. 1407-1433

The existence and stability of invariant distributions for stochastically monotone processes is studied. The Knaster-Tarski fixed point theorem is applied to establish existence of fixed points of mappings on compact sets of measures that are increasing with respect to a stochastic ordering. Global convergence of a monotone Markov process to its unique invariant distribution is established.under an easily verified assumption. Topkis's theory of supermodular functions is applied to stochastic dynamic optimization, providing conditions under which optimal stationary decisions are monotone functions of the state and induce a monotone Markov process. Applications of these results to investment theory, stochastic growth and industry equilibrium dynamics are given. Copyright 1992 by The Econometric Society.

Efficiency bounds for conditional moment restrictions with a nonparametric component are derived. There is a given function of the data (a random sample from a distribution F) and a parameter. The restriction is that a conditional expectation of this function is zero at some point in the parameter space. The parameter has two parts: a finite-dimensional component and a general function evaluated at a subset of the conditioning variables. An example is a regression function that is additive in parametric and nonparametric component, as arises in sample selection models. Copyright 1992 by The Econometric Society.