When should a government provide a service in-house, and when should it contract out provision? We develop a model in which the provider can invest in improving the quality of service or reducing cost. If contracts are incomplete, the private provider has a stronger incentive to engage in both quality improvement and cost reduction than a government employee has. However, the private contractor's incentive to engage in cost reduction is typically too strong because he ignores the adverse effect on noncontractible quality. The model is applied to understanding the costs and benefits of prison privatization.

Two core meanings of “utility” are distinguished. “Decision utility” is the weight of an outcome in a decision. “Experienced utility” is hedonic quality, as in Bentham's usage. Experienced utility can be reported in real time (instant utility), or in retrospective evaluations of past episodes (remembered utility). Psychological research has documented systematic errors in retrospective evaluations, which can induce a preference for dominated options. We propose a formal normative theory of the total experienced utility of temporally extended outcomes. Measuring the experienced utility of outcomes permits tests of utility maximization and opens other Unes of empirical research.

We test and confirm that retail gasoline prices respond more quickly to increases than to decreases in crude oil prices. Among the possible sources of this asymmetry are production/inventory adjustment lags and market power of some sellers. By analyzing price transmission at different points in the distribution chain, we attempt to shed light on these theories. Spot prices for generic gasoline show asymmetry in responding to crude oil price changes, which may reflect inventory adjustment effects. Asymmetry also appears in the response of retail prices to wholesale price changes, possibly indicating short-run market power among retailers.

The authors examine core convergence for economies with a large finite number of agents and an infinite number of commodities. They find a serious disconnection between economies with a large finite number of agents and economies with a continuum of agents: the authors provide examples of nonconvergence of the core for large finite economies in L[superscript 1], a commodity space for which core equivalence holds for continuum economies. In addition, they show that, if preferences exhibit uniformly vanishing marginal utility of consumption at infinity, core convergence is restored.

The authors consider a family of rank tests based on the regression rank score process introduced by C. Gutenbrunner and J. Jureckova (1992) to test the unit root hypothesis in economic time series. In contrast to tests based on least-squares methods, the rank tests are asymptotically Gaussian under the null hypothesis, and have excellent power--particularly under innovation exhibiting heavy tails. These regression rank scores arise as a vector of solutions of the dual form of the linear program required to compute the regression quantile statistics of R. W. Koenker and G. Bassett (1978). For location model, they are simple ranks of the sample observations.

Kristian R. Miltersen, Klaus Sandmann, Dieter Sondermann, Closed Form Solutions for Term Structure Derivatives with Log-Normal Interest Rates, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp. 409-430

The authors derive a unified model that gives closed form solutions for caps and floors written on interest rates as well as puts and calls written on zero-coupon bonds. The crucial assumption is that simple interest rates over a fixed finite period that matches the contract, which the authors want to price, are log-normally distributed. Moreover, this assumption is shown to be consistent with the Heath-Jarrow-Morton model for a specific choice of volatility.

We derive a unified model that gives closed form solutions for caps and floors written on interest rates as well as puts and calls written on zero‐coupon bonds. The crucial assumption is that simple interest rates over a fixed finite period that matches the contract, which we want to price, are log‐normally distributed. Moreover, this assumption is shown to be consistent with the Heath‐Jarrow‐Morton model for a specific choice of volatility.

In this paper, the author constructs an equilibrium for markets with frictions, which is competitive in the sense that all agents are price takers and maximize utility subject to a set of market parameters. He shows that the equilibrium can be achieved if employers with vacancies can advertise publicly the wages they pay.