Sorting and Decentralized Price Competition

We investigate under which conditions price competition in a market with matching frictions leads to sorting of buyers and sellers. Positive assortative matching obtains only if there is a high enough degree of complementarity between buyer and seller types. The relevant condition is root-supermodularity; i.e., the square root of the match value function is supermodular. It is a necessary and sufficient condition for positive assortative matching under any distribution of buyer and seller types, and does not depend on the details of the underlying matching function that describes the search process. The condition is weaker than log-supermodularity, a condition required for positive assortative matching in markets with random search. This highlights the role competition plays in matching heterogeneous agents. Negative assortative matching obtains whenever the match value function is weakly submodular.Competitive Search Equilibrium. Directed Search. Two-Sided Matching. Decentralized Price Competition. Root-Supermodularity.

Quasimarket failure

The efficiency of “quasimarkets”—decentralized public goods provision subjected to Tiebout competition—is a staple of public choice conventional wisdom. Yet in the 1990s a countermovement in political economy called “neoconsolidationism” began to challenge this wisdom. The neoconsolidationists use the logic of government failure central to public choice economics to argue that quasimarkets fail and that jurisdictional consolidation is a superior way to supply public goods and services in metropolitan areas. Public choice scholars have largely ignored the neoconsolidationists’ challenge. This paper brings that challenge to public choice scholars’ attention with the hope of encouraging responses. It also offers some preliminary thoughts about the directions such responses might take.Public Goods; Quasimarkets

Platform pricing in matching markets.

This paper develops a simple model of monopoly platform pricing accounting for two pertinent features of matching markets. 1) The trading process is characterized by search and matching frictions implying limits to positive cross-side network effects and the presence of own-side congestion. 2)Matched agents bargain over the division of the match surplus depending on the qualitative characteristics of both parties. We find that, compared to the frictionless benchmark typically analyzed in the classic platform pricing literature, the harms of monopoly market power are mitigated by frictions. However, when the platform is allowed to make investments in the reduction of frictions, a private platform is likely to under-invest compared to a Pigouvian platform. In addition, accounting for user quality differentiation further reduces classic harms of monopoly market power when user quality types are complements in creation of the match surplus. In this case it is socially desirable to attract smaller groups of users with higher average quality to maximize the aggregate match surplus, resulting in a downward price distortion. This result is reversed when quality types are substitutes and the distortion disappears when they are strategically independent.

Welfare Competition in Norway

Local redistribution policy creates incentives for welfare migration that may result in 'underprovision' or even a 'race to the bottom'. This paper evaluates the empirical importance of welfare competition. Our contribution is to separate between the policy decision and the actual welfare benefit payments and to introduce income distribution as a determinant of welfare policy. Utilizing spatial econometric methods we find statistical significant strategic interaction between local governments for both the welfare benefit norm decided by the local council and the expected welfare benefits of a standardized person. No robust relationship is found between inequality and welfare benefits and thus we offer no strong support for the Romer-Meltzer-Richard hypothesis. We conclude that there is a geographic pattern in welfare benefits. This does not necessarily imply underprovision, since the grant financing of the local governments may generate overall excessive public spending.

Adverse Selection and Liquidity Distortion in Decentralized Markets

Why do some markets remain liquid even when there is a positive gain from trade? In order to understand the real determinants of market liquidity in decentralized markets, we are going to analyze this question in a competitive market setting when both search frictions and adverse selection play roles. In a dynamic environment with heterogeneous sellers and buyers, we investigate the role of market frictions and how adverse selection leads to the distortion of equilibrium market liquidity. The resulting friction therefore prohibits resources from reallocating efficiently. In the application of capital reallocation, we further show that this trading friction can generate significant economic fluctuations.Liquidity; Search frictions, Adverse selection; Uncertainty; Capital Reallocation JEL Classification Numbers: D82, G1

Sorting versus screening: Search frictions and competing mechanisms

In a market where sellers compete by posting trading mechanisms, we allow for a general search technology and show that its features crucially affect the equilibrium mechanism. Price posting prevails when meetings are rival, i.e., when a meeting by one buyer reduces another buyer’s meeting probability. Under price posting buyers reveal their type by sorting ex ante. Only if the meeting technology is sufficiently non-rival, price posting is not an equilibrium. Multiple buyer types then visit the same sellers who screen ex post through auctions

From Excess to Shortage - Recent Developments in the Danish Labour Market

The Danish labour market has undergone a remarkable change during the 1990s with a reduction of the unemployment rate from about 12 per cent in 1993 to less than 6 per cent at the turn of the century. This reflects both a turn in the business cycle but also structural changes related to shifts in labour market policies. The focus of labour market policies has been changed from passive measures towards more active measures and there has also been important changes in the unemployment insurance system. This paper offers an overview of the developments in the Danish labour market during the 1990s, and reviews the major policy shifts, as well as possible explanations of the remarkable reduction in unemployment.

Federalism and Accountability with Distorted Election Choices

Random factors such as bad weather or exogenous economic shocks affect the re-election of politicians and can reduce accountability. Such distorted election choices interact with the architecture of government. Contrasting centralized with decentralized political systems, this study shows that centralization is likely to result in higher accountability if election choices are subject to small random distortions. Furthermore, equity and efficiency arguments for uniform policies in centralized systems are derived as these are likely to result in the better overall performance of politicians and in more equal performance across regions.accountability, federalism, decentralization, retrospective voting, Condorcet Jury Theorem