Stabilisierungsfonds und makroökonomische Governance

Stabilisierungsfonds haben in den vergangenen Jahren, insb. während der letzten Energie- und Rohstoffpreishausse bis zum Sommer 2008, an Bedeutung gewonnen. In diesem Beitrag wird der Frage nachgegangen, welche strategische Rolle diese Fonds für die makroökonomische Governance von Ländern spielen. Es kann in zwei sehr unterschiedlichen Modellrahmen gezeigt werden, dass stabilisierungsfonds die Lösung von Glaubwürdigkeitsproblemen der Politik entweder weniger dringlich machen oder herbeiführen. Beiden Modellrahmen ist gemein, dass die Verfügbarkeit von fiskalischen windfalls bzw. deren Anlage in Stabilisierungsfonds institutionelle Fortschritte behindern können. In diesem Sinn kann der in der Literatur seit langem bekannte ,,Ressourcenfluch'' um eine institutionelle Komponente ergänzt werden.

When does centralization undermine adaptation?

We revisit the classic problem of optimally allocating decision rights in a multidivisional organization. To be able to adapt its decisions to local conditions, the organization has to rely on self-interested division managers to collect and disseminate the relevant information. We show that if division managers are certain about how the headquarter (HQ) weights each division’s performance, centralization may always dominate decentralization in generating information, and therefore even lead to more adaptative decisions. However, with uncertainty in HQ’s decision criterion, centralization can perform poorly in motivating information acquisition, and particularly so when it is highly important to coordinate the activities of different divisions. As a result, decentralization can be optimal even with an arbitrarily strong coordination motive

Stabilisierungsfonds und makroökonomische Governance

Stabilisierungsfonds haben in den vergangenen Jahren, insb. während der letzten Energie- und Rohstoffpreishausse bis zum Sommer 2008, an Bedeutung gewonnen. In diesem Beitrag wird der Frage nachgegangen, welche strategische Rolle diese Fonds für die makroökonomische Governance von Ländern spielen. Es kann in zwei sehr unterschiedlichen Modellrahmen gezeigt werden, dass Stabilisierungsfonds die Lösung von Glaubwürdigkeitsproblemen der Politik entweder weniger dringlich machen oder herbeiführen. Beiden Modellrahmen ist gemein, dass die Verfügbarkeit von fiskalischen windfalls bzw. deren Anlage in Stabilisierungsfonds institutionelle Fortschritte behindern können. In diesem Sinn kann der in der Literatur seit langem bekannte ,,Ressourcenfluch“ um eine institutionelle Komponente ergänzt werden.

Essays on economics of information

This thesis consists of three chapters. In the first two chapters I study the optimal design of communication hierarchies between an uninformed decision maker and privately informed experts who have different preferences over decision maker's action. The motivation for the model described in the first two chapters comes from the fact that in organizations, a central problem is that much of the information relevant for decision making is dispersed among employees who are biased and may lack the incentives to communicate their information to the management. This paper studies how a manager can elicit employees' information by designing a hierarchical communication network. The manager decides who communicates with whom, and in which order, where communication takes the form of cheap talk (Crawford and Sobel, 1982). I show that the optimal network is shaped by two competing forces: an intermediation force that calls for grouping employees together and an uncertainty force that favours separating them. The manager optimally divides employees into groups of similar bias. Under simple conditions, the optimal network features a single intermediary who communicates directly to the manager. Third chapter is work in progress. Here, I study a situation in which a DM can commit to both communication networks and to the delegation of decision rights but not to transfers or arbitrary decision rules based on received information. I show a novel trade-off between centralization and decentralization with two experts and a decision maker, when experts receive noisy and complementary evidence. There is a single decision to be made, the decision maker can allocate the decision right to any of the experts, and can commit to communication channels betwent the players. I study conditions under which delegation combined with decentralized communication outperforms centralization. This happens because delegation encourages information sharing between the experts. Two conditions have to be satisfied in order for a decision maker to benefit from decentralization. First, the expert who decides over policy has to be not too biased towards the decision maker. Second, he should have a smaller distance to the bias of the other expert compared to the DM. In this case, the other expert is willing to reveal more information to the first expert compared to the centralized case

Stabilisierungsfonds und makroökonomische Governance

Stabilisierungsfonds haben in den vergangenen Jahren, insb. während der letzten Energie- und Rohstoffpreishausse bis zum Sommer 2008, an Bedeutung gewonnen. In diesem Beitrag wird der Frage nachgegangen, welche strategische Rolle diese Fonds für die makroökonomische Governance von Ländern spielen. Es kann in zwei sehr unterschiedlichen Modellrahmen gezeigt werden, dass Stabilisierungsfonds die Lösung von Glaubwürdigkeitsproblemen der Politik entweder weniger dringlich machen oder herbeiführen. Beiden Modellrahmen ist gemein, dass die Verfügbarkeit von fiskalischen windfalls bzw. deren Anlage in Stabilisierungsfonds institutionelle Fortschritte behindern können. In diesem Sinn kann der in der Literatur seit langem bekannte ,,Ressourcenfluch“ um eine institutionelle Komponente ergänzt werden

Designing organizations in volatile markets

Multinational and multiproduct firms often experience uncertainty in the relative return of conducting activities in different markets due to, for example, exchange rate volatility or the changing prospects of different products. We study how a multi-divisional organization should optimally allocate decision-making authority to its managerial members when operating in such volatile markets. To be able to adapt its decisions to local conditions, the organization has to rely on self-interested division managers to collect and disseminate the relevant information. We show that if communication takes the form of verifiable disclosure, then centralized decision-making does not suffer from information asymmetry and it allows the headquarter of the organization to better cope with the inter-market uncertainty. However, a downside of centralization is that it can discourage information acquisition, and this negative effect is amplified by the need for coordinating the activities of different divisions. As a result, the optimality of decentralized decision-making can actually be driven by a large coordination motive