Barter relationships

We offer a simple economic model of repeated barter to explore current economic exchange in Russia: individuals trade with each other in a dynamic environment where the threat of dissolving the relationship constrains the incentives to cheat. We show how the value of future interactions affects the willingness of individuals to trade with each other; only when rates of interaction are large can trust compensate for an absence of money. Moreover, when trading relationships are asymmetric – either in the trading partners’ values for each other’s goods or in their relative bargaining power – the resulting barter allocations are distorted, as goods must be used for liquidity reasons. When third-party middlemen exist who can facilitate barter, they command a premium for their services, and have preferences for improved liquidity which may or may not correspond with the other traders in the barter economy. Fourth, we demonstrate that the restriction of trading to tight trading networks may be a socially efficient response to insufficient barter interactions. Finally, we consider how liquidity constraints affect pricing, and illustrate how the existence of a barter market can mute incentives to change prices in response to credit crunches.Barter, non-monetary exchange

A dynamic model of barter exchange

We consider the problem of efficient operation of a barter exchange platform for indivisible goods. We introduce a dynamic model of barter exchange where in each period one agent arrives with a single item she wants to exchange for a different item. We study a homogeneous and stochastic environment: an agent is interested in the item possessed by another agent with probability p, independently for all pairs of agents. We consider two settings with respect to the types of allowed exchanges: a) Only two-way cycles, in which two agents swap their items, b) Two or three-way cycles. The goal of the platform is to minimize the average waiting time of an agent. Somewhat surprisingly, we find that in each of these settings, a policy that conducts exchanges in a greedy fashion is near optimal, among a large class of policies that includes batching policies. Further, we find that for small p, allowing three-cycles can greatly improve the waiting time over the two-cycles only setting. Specifically, we find that a greedy policy achieves an average waiting time of Θ(1/p2) in setting a), and Θ(1/p3/2) in setting b). Thus, a platform can achieve the smallest waiting times by using a greedy policy, and by facilitating three cycles, if possible. Our findings are consistent with empirical and computational observations which compare batching policies in the context of kidney exchange programs

Barter relationships

We offer a simple economic model of repeated barter to explore current economic exchange in Russia: individuals trade with each other in a dynamic environment where the threat of dissolving the relationship constrains the incentives to cheat. We show how the value of future interactions affects the willingness of individuals to trade with each other; only when rates of interaction are large can trust compensate for an absence of money. Moreover, when trading relationships are asymmetric – either in the trading partners’ values for each other’s goods or in their relative bargaining power – the resulting barter allocations are distorted, as goods must be used for liquidity reasons. When third-party middlemen exist who can facilitate barter, they command a premium for their services, and have preferences for improved liquidity which may or may not correspond with the other traders in the barter economy. Fourth, we demonstrate that the restriction of trading to tight trading networks may be a socially efficient response to insufficient barter interactions. Finally, we consider how liquidity constraints affect pricing, and illustrate how the existence of a barter market can mute incentives to change prices in response to credit crunches

Decentralized trade, random utility and the evolution of social welfare

We study decentralized trade processes in general exchange economies and house allocation problems with and without money. The processes are subject to persistent random shocks stemming from agents' maximization of random utility. By imposing structure on the utility noise term -logit distribution-, one is able to calculate exactly the stationary distribution of the perturbed Markov process for any level of noise. We show that the stationary distribution places the largest probability on the maximizers of weighted sums of the agents' (intrinsic) utilities, and this probability tends to 1 as noise vanishe

Barter relationships

We offer a simple economic model of repeated barter to explore current economic exchange in Russia: individuals trade with each other in a dynamic environment where the threat of dissolving the relationship constrains the incentives to cheat. We show how the value of future interactions affects the willingness of individuals to trade with each other; only when rates of interaction are large can trust compensate for an absence of money. Moreover, when trading relationships are asymmetric – either in the trading partners’ values for each other’s goods or in their relative bargaining power – the resulting barter allocations are distorted, as goods must be used for liquidity reasons. When third-party middlemen exist who can facilitate barter, they command a premium for their services, and have preferences for improved liquidity which may or may not correspond with the other traders in the barter economy. Fourth, we demonstrate that the restriction of trading to tight trading networks may be a socially efficient response to insufficient barter interactions. Finally, we consider how liquidity constraints affect pricing, and illustrate how the existence of a barter market can mute incentives to change prices in response to credit crunches

U.S. Domestic Barter : an Empirical Investigation

This paper studies the barter industry developed in North America during he 1950s, pointing ut some of its main characteristics. Thus, it examines its two main sectors : (i) Corporate Barter and (ii) Commercial Barter. Contrary to expectations, the analysis of official data shows that this phenomenon is essentially pro-cyclical for the Commercial Barter component. Moreover, commecial barter activity turns out to be complementary to the cash economy. While the two sectors display some differences in their pattern, they both help firms to increase their profits.E-Barter; Corporate Barter; Economic Cycle

Countertrade and the choice of strategic trading form.

Reciprocal trade agreements, usually known under the generic name of countertrade (CT) have been traditionally seen as a form of bilateralism, and thus as an inefficient form of international exchange. Although contemporary trade theories do not fully explain the increasing prevalence of CT transactions, we will argue that it is possible to construct and use a third (hybrid) institutional form, which is congruent with the transaction-cost theories, and we will show how — under market imperfections — countertrade can reduce transaction costs while conserving the efficiency gains generated by these specific arrangements.Barter; countertrade; transaction cost theory; asymmetric information; trading strategies;

Countertrade and the choice of strategic trading form

Reciprocal trade agreements, usually known under the generic name of countertrade (CT) have been traditionally seen as a form of bilateralism, and thus as an inefficient form of international exchange. Although contemporary trade theories do not fully explain the increasing prevalence of CT transactions, we will argue that it is possible to construct and use a third (hybrid) institutional form, which is congruent with the transaction-cost theories, and we will show how — under market imperfections — countertrade can reduce transaction costs while conserving the efficiency gains generated by these specific arrangements.Publicad

Operation Frames and Clubs in Kidney Exchange

A kidney exchange is a centrally-administered barter market where patients swap their willing yet incompatible donors. Modern kidney exchanges use 2-cycles, 3-cycles, and chains initiated by non-directed donors (altruists who are willing to give a kidney to anyone) as the means for swapping. We propose significant generalizations to kidney exchange. We allow more than one donor to donate in exchange for their desired patient receiving a kidney. We also allow for the possibility of a donor willing to donate if any of a number of patients receive kidneys. Furthermore, we combine these notions and generalize them. The generalization is to exchange among organ clubs, where a club is willing to donate organs outside the club if and only if the club receives organs from outside the club according to given specifications. We prove that unlike in the standard model, the uncapped clearing problem is NP-complete. We also present the notion of operation frames that can be used to sequence the operations across batches, and present integer programming formulations for the market clearing problems for these new types of organ exchanges. Experiments show that in the single-donation setting, operation frames improve planning by 34%--51%. Allowing up to two donors to donate in exchange for one kidney donated to their designated patient yields a further increase in social welfare.Comment: Published at IJCAI-1

Institutional Traps and Transition

Two myths have harmed many economies throughout the world. One is the theory of absolute advantage of central planning over the market mechanism, and the other is the belief that efficient markets develop spontaneously and quickly enough if appropriate economic legislation is established. Volumes have been written to debunk the first myth. The falsity of the second needs to be better understood. The problem is that inside of any legislated change there exists a room for development of different institutions, or behavior norms, and it is not simple to predict which direction will be chosen by an economy. The hypothesis that efficient institutions must arise because of natural selection does not prove to be truthful. Inefficient development can be self-supporting and stable. The supporting mechanisms were systematically investigated by Arthur (1988) for technological changes. North (1990) pointed out that the same mechanisms plaid an important role in the evolution of institutions. A number of examples have been studied in different branches of economics. The most striking examples can be found in recent history of economic reforms in Russia and East European countries. This chapter uses the ideas by Arthur and North to describe a general scheme for the formation of inefficient yet stable norm or institutions, referred herein as institutional traps. The scheme is substantially based on the concepts of transaction costs, transformation costs, and transitional rent discussed below. Then the theory developed is applied to explain emergence in Russia of barter, mutual arrears, tax evasion, corruption, and some other institutional traps. Implications for reform strategy are explored. The analysis shows that the formation of institutional traps is a major risk in any reform process, and avoidance of these traps is an urgent task during transition.arrears; barter; civic culture; civil society; coordination failures; corruption; institutional trap; multiple equilibria; path dependence; rent seeking; reputation; systemic crises; transaction costs; transformation costs; transitional rent; trust