Tagging with leisure needs

We study optimal redistributive taxes when individuals differ in two characteristics - earning ability and leisure needs - assumed to be imperfectly correlated. Individuals have private information about their abilities but needs are observable. With two different levels of observable needs the population can be separated into two groups and needs may be used as a tag. We first assume that the social planner considers individuals should be compensated for their leisure needs and characterize the optimal redistributive policy, and the extent of compensation for needs, with tagging. We also consider an alternative social objective in which individuals are deemed responsible for their needs.

Tagging with leisure needs

We study optimal redistributive taxes when individuals differ in two characteristics—earning ability and leisure needs—assumed to be imperfectly correlated. Individuals have private information about their abilities but needs are observable. With different levels of observable needs the population can be separated into groups and needs may be used as a tag.We first assume that the social planner considers individuals should be compensated for their leisure needs and characterize the optimal redistributive policy, and the extent of compensation for needs, with tagging.We also consider an alternative social objective where individuals are deemed responsible for their needs

Tagging with leisure needs

We study optimal redistributive taxes when individuals differ in two characteristics - earning ability and leisure needs - assumed to be imperfectly correlated. Individuals have private information about their abilities but needs are observable. With two different levels of observable needs the population can be separated into two groups and needs may be used as a tag. We first assume that the social planner considers individuals should be compensated for their leisure needs and characterize the optimal redistributive policy, and the extent of compensation for needs, with tagging. We also consider an alternative social objective in which individuals are deemed responsible for their needs.optimal non-linear taxation, quasi-linear preferences, tagging needs, responsibility

Success: talent, intelligence or beauty ?

We analyze the Celebrity 100 annual list of the world’s most “powerful celebrities” compiled and published by Forbes Magazine. The lists provide an interesting collection of people, that includes their earnings, and the perception of citizens concerning the attributes that made them become celebrities. We analyze the relationship between their earnings and the perceptions on their intelligence, talent, beauty and other attributes, and show that though beauty plays a role, intelligence and talent are more important.earnings, economic success, talent

Rock and roll bands, (in)complete contracts and creativity

Members of a rock and roll band are endowed with different creativity. They match and eventually obtain credit for song writing as well as a share of the returns from sales. More creative members increase the probability of success but may also claim a larger share of the pie. In our theoretical model, the nature of matching (postive or negative assortative) as well as the covariation between the probability of having a “hit” and the dispersion of credits given to individual members are a function of the completeness of contracting. When members adopt a “gentleman’s agreement” to share credits equally, the covariation between the probability of a hit and the dispersion of credits is negative, which is the consequence of positive assortative matching in creativity. The data show that the relation between dispersion and success is significantly negative, and that rock bands are thus likely to sign incomplete contracts.overlapping generations, resource management, common pool resource, spatial interdependence, strategic behaviour, cooperative behaviour

Unions' relative concerns and strikes in wage bargaining

We consider a model of wage determination with private information in a duopoly. We investigate the effects of unions having relative concerns on the negotiated wage and the strike activity. We show that an increase of unions' relative concerns has an ambiguous effect on the strike activity.relative position, wage bargaining, private information, strike activity

Lower bounds rule!

We propose two axioms that introduce lower bounds into resource monotonicity requirements for rules for the problem of adjudicating conflicting claims. Suppose the amount to divide increases. The first axiom requires that two claimants whose lower bound changes equally experience an equal change in awards. The second axiom requires that extra resources are divided only among those claimants who experience a strictly positive change in their lower bound. We show that, in the two-claimant case, Concede-and-Divide is the only rule that satisfies both axioms when the axioms are defined over a large set of lower bounds that include the minimal rights lower bound and the secured lower bound. We also show that, in the n-claimant case where at least one claimant claims the total amount, the Minimal Overlap rule is the only rule that satisfies both axioms when the axioms are defined over the secured lower bound.claims problems, lower bounds, concede-and-divide, minimal overlap rule

Competitively neutral universal service obligations

Universal service obligations impose specific costs on the universal service provider. The measure of these costs and their financing have been studied along two complementary lines of reasoning: is the universal service obligation sustainable? Who should bear its costs? Most often, a two-step procedure is put forward. In a first step the cost of USO must be assessed; in a second step the USP must be compensated for this cost. In this paper we argue that this procedure is most often problematic because the implementation of the compensation scheme directly affects the effective cost of USO. We therefore put forward an alternative approach to this problem which does not rely on this two-step procedure and fully acknowledges the distortions that result from the compensation mechanism.universal service obligations, cost-sharing mechanism, competitive neutrality

Compensating the dead? Yes we can!

An early death is, undoubtedly, a serious disadvantage. However, the compensation of short-lived individuals has remained so far largely unexplored, probably because it appears infeasible. Indeed, short-lived agents can hardly be identified ex ante, and cannot be compensated ex post. We argue that, despite the above difficulties, a compensation can be carried out by encouraging early consumption in the life cycle. In a model with heterogeneous preferences and longevities, we show how a specific social criterion can be derived from intuitive principles, and we study the corresponding optimal policy under various informational assumptions. We also study the robustness of our solution to alternative types of preferences and savings policies.compensation, longevity, mortality, fairness, redistribution

Low-rank matrix approximation with weights or missing data is NP-hard

Weighted low-rank approximation (WLRA), a dimensionality reduction technique for data analysis, has been successfully used in several applications, such as in collaborative filtering to design recommender systems or in computer vision to recover structure from motion. In this paper, we study the computational complexity of WLRA and prove that it is NP-hard to find an approximate solution, even when a rank-one approximation is sought. Our proofs are based on a reduction from the maximum-edge biclique problem, and apply to strictly positive weights as well as binary weights (the latter corresponding to low-rank matrix approximation with missing data).low-rank matrix approximation, weighted low-rank approximation, missing data, matrix completion with noise, PCA with missing data, computational complexity, maximum-edge biclique problem