43 research outputs found
Promoting Entry and Efficiency via Reserve Prices
Reserve prices are used by sellers to modify the allocation induced by standard auctions. The existing literature has shown that, if the number of bidders is fixed, a reserve price can be used to increase expected revenues. This comes at the expense of efficiency when the auctioned good goes unsold. Instead, when the number of bidders is not fixed, a reserve price may discourage entry. The reduction in the number of bidders caused by the reserve price in this situation is detrimental for both revenues and efficiency. This work shows that a different conclusion may emerge when potential entrants arrive sequentially and face the risk of incurring losses conditional on winning the object on sale. In fact, we show that reserve prices may lead to more entry and raise the efficiency. Applications characterized by the presence of an incumbent who is better informed about some common characteristics of the object for sale may yield the type of features that are needed for our different conclusion to hold
New Challenges Facing the Global Economy
This publication was written for a Global Political Economy course taught in business schools offering undergraduate or graduate levels of education. The textbook focuses on select countries and regions which, in our opinion, will be the most important consumer and export markets in the next two decades
Recommended from our members
Informal Vending and the State in Kampala, Uganda
This thesis examines how the agency of informal vendors in Kampala, Uganda, is shaped by the state. It argues that efforts by the President and the NRM to monopolize political power have dramatically restricted the agency of informal street and market vendors, forcing them to adapt to changing political circumstances in ways that have limited their ability to participate in urban development and economic life. This argument is presented through two examples of how expanding political control has led to a contraction of vendors’ agency. The first of these describes how the early decentralization and democratization reforms introduced by the NRM allowed street vendors to take advantage of competition between newly elected and empowered politicians to remain on the city’s streets, and how the central government’s subsequent recentralization and de-democratization of political power in Kampala has led to the repression of street vending while closing the channels of influence that vendors previously enjoyed. The second explores how efforts by the central government to undermine the opposition-led local government allowed market vendors to successfully oppose an unpopular market privatization initiative, and how both the President and the new city government have since been able to take advantage of disputes within markets for their own purposes while vendors have been largely unable to realize their market management and development ambitions. Both examples detail the causes, forms and implications of the ruling party’s monopolization of political power and explore how vendors have responded to their changing political circumstances, highlighting how these efforts face significant obstacles due to the increasingly restrictive environment in which vendors are forced to act. This thesis shows that the agency of informal vendors—while always manifest in certain ways—is constantly and increasingly constrained as the President and the ruling party tighten their grip on power. As their political exclusion precipitates a broader exclusion from urban development and economic life, informal vendors are forced to contend with a situation of increasing marginalization and vulnerability that they are largely unable to improve.This work was supported by the Smuts Memorial Fund, managed by the University of Cambridge in memory of Jan Smuts; and by the UAC of Nigeria Travel Fund
Business cycles, interest rates and market volatility : estimation and forecasting using DSGE macroeconomic models under partial information
Even long before the recent financial and economic crisis of 2007/2008 economists were more than aware of the insufficiencies and a lack of realism in macroeconomic modelling and model calibration methods, including those with DSGE methods and models, and spelled the need for further enhancements. The issues this research started addressing even before the 2008 crisis imposed demand for improvements, was use of single, fully informed rational agents in those modes. Consequently, the first part of this research project was aiming to improve the DSGE econometric methods by introducing novel solution for DSGE models with imperfect, partial information about the current values of deep variables and shocks, and apply this solution to imperfectly informed multiple agents with their different, inner-rationality models. Along these lines, this research also shows that DSGE models can be extended and suited to both, fitting and estimation of long-term yield curve, and to estimating with rich data sets by extending further its inner-mechanism.
In the aftermath of the 2008 crises, which struck at the beginning of this research project, and the subsequent, extensive criticism of DSGE models, this research analyses the alternative causes of the crisis. It then focuses on identifying its possible causes, such as yet unknown debt accelerator mechanism and the related, probable model miss-specifications, rational inattention, and as well, a role of institutional policies in both the development of the crisis and its resolution.
And finally, in a response to many of the critiques of the, usually monetary policy oriented DSGE models, this research project provides another set of novel extensions to such models, aiming to bring more of Keynesian characteristics suited to a more active, endogenous fiscal policy deemed needed in the aftermath of the crisis. This project, henceforth, extends the NK-Neo-Classical synthesis monetary DSGE models with a novel, endogenous, counter-cyclical fiscal policy rule driven by news and unemployment changes. It then also shows overall benefits of the resulting, mutually active, monetary-fiscal policy for both capital utilisation and overall economic stability
FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS BETWEEN PERU, COLOMBIA AND THE UNITED STATES: EFFECTS OF NEGOTIATIONS AND IMPLEMENTATION ON FDI AND NON-TRADITIONAL EXPORTS
This dissertation uses a mixed methodology that combines interviews and data analysis to evaluate the process of negotiating and implementing the U.S.-Peru and U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and to provide initial evidence on the impact of the respective agreements on foreign direct investment (FDI) and export diversification in the two Andean Countries. I find that institutional elements in each country impacted the process of negotiation and the outcomes of the two FTAs differently. Colombia had a relative initial advantage in institutional capacity and negotiating expertise, while Peru had a stronger leadership and commitment that made the FTA a reality sooner. At the same time, both Peru and Colombia had in common the continuity of their trade policies through different administrations, their pledge to maintain structured consultation mechanisms with the private sector and non-government agents, and the vision to continue to build their institutional capacity. The signing, ratification and implementation of these FTAs coincide with an expansion of non-traditional exports from the two Andean nations and an increase in inward FDI into sectors outside of commodities such as oil, natural gas and minerals. Although the external shocks and already established economic trends may play a big role in these increases, the extent to which they are related with the FTAs is analyzed in this dissertation
Proceedings of The Ninth Pacific Trade and Development Conference : Mineral Resources in the Pacific Area
The Ninth Pacific Trade and Development Conference, held at the
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on August 22- 26, 1978, was
directed to the theme of development and trade in mineral resources
among the nations in the Pacific region. Some 40 policy- oriented
academic and business economists, and government and central bank
officials acting in their private capacities, participated in the
conference . They came from a number of resource- rich and resourcepoor
Pacific Basin countries -- including North America, Latin
America, Oceania, Southeast Asia, and Northeast Asia -- and
represented a wide range of expertise and viewpoints
Business Cycles in Economics
The business cycles are generated by the oscillating macro-/micro-/nano- economic output variables in the economy of the scale and the scope in the amplitude/frequency/phase/time domains in the economics. The accurate forward looking assumptions on the business cycles oscillation dynamics can optimize the financial capital investing and/or borrowing by the economic agents in the capital markets. The book's main objective is to study the business cycles in the economy of the scale and the scope, formulating the Ledenyov unified business cycles theory in the Ledenyov classic and quantum econodynamics
Investment in capital markets
Investment in Capital Markets creates a strategic vision on the financial capital investment in the capital markets with the aim to get an increased return premium in the short and long time periods. The book is written with a main goal to explain the pros and cons of the financial capital investment in the capital markets, discussing the sophisticated investment concepts and techniques in the simple understandable readable general format language. We would like to highlight the three interesting facts about the book: 1. It is centered on the consideration of the modern investment products, the investment vehicles and the investment mediums for the financial capital investment in the capital markets; 2. It is focused on the financial risk calculation and mitigation techniques for the financial capital investment in the financial capital markets. 3. It is aimed to describe the quantum winning virtuous investment strategies creation and execution techniques during the financial capital investment in the capital markets. The investors, financiers, economists, financial analysts, financial traders, financial advisers, lawmakers, policy analysts, subject experts, professors, and students will certainly enjoy a breathtaking splendid learning journey with the explained new ideas, established concepts and outlined future prospects toward the financial capital investment in the capital markets with the aim to get an increased return premium in the short and long time periods