On simple concrete giffen utility functions : old and new results

The authors present a theoretical review of the literature on simple concrete continuous utility functions for Giffen and inferior goods within the context of the utility maximisation problem under a budget restriction and provide new functional forms. The article is organised around the specific properties such utility functions have. These properties include increasingness, quasi-concavity, and the applicability of Gossen's Second Law

Securing land rights under rapid population growth: The feasibility of institutional land rights protection in Africa

The paper examines the claim that a virtuous cycle of more secure land rights, more land-saving investments, and denser populations requires the development of institutions that regulate competition over land. We construct a contest model that links the tenure-security-investment relationship to the efforts of land users to enhance land rights themselves and the role of institutional protection. We study the effect of population growth on a close-to-subsistence economy, including the possibility that it weakens institutional protection. We derive sufficient conditions for a positive effect on land investment, but also show that population growth can push the economy into a low-productivity trap

The Selten-Szidarovsky Technique: the Transformation Part

A technique due to Selten and Szidarovszky for the analysis of Nash equilibria of games with an aggregative structure is reconsidered. Among other things it is shown that the transformation part of this technique can be extended to abstract games with co-strategy mappings and tha this part allows for a porely algebraic setting

Relations between Inverse Demand and Revenue

The purpose of this short paper is to provide a formally correct and exhaustive reference for some general properties of price and revenue functions in homogenous-good markets. The scope is limited to price and revenue functions that solely depend on the quantities; therefore the results here presented can be usefully employed in the analysis of homogeneous-good Cournot oligopolies. Particular attention is devoted to the monotonicity properties of price and marginal revenue functions

Sufficient and necessary conditions for equilibrium uniqueness in aggregative games

We identify sufficient and necessary conditions for an aggregative game to have a unique Nash equilibrium. In particular, an improvement of a result of Gaudet and Salant (1991) for Cournot oligopolies is obtained. The results are obtained by exploiting the general between Nash equilibria and fixed points of the (virtual) aggregate cumulative best reply correspondence

Inferior Factor in Cournot Oligopoly Revisited

We reconsider the recent work by Okuguchi (J Econ 101:125–131, 2010) on (possibly asymmetric) Cournotian firms with two production factors, one being inferior for each firm. It is shown there that an increase in the price of the inferior factor does raise the equilibrium industry output. In addition of providing a simpler and more rigorous proof of that result, we generalize it to the case of technologies with TeX factors and also allow some firms not to use the inferior one

New Insights into the Theory of Giffen Goods

One might expect that after their identification in the 19th century, all aspects of Giffen goods would have been studied by now. This appears not to be the case. This book contains the latest insights into the theory of Giffen goods. In the past, surprisingly few goods could be categorized as "Giffen." This may be because of a lack of understanding of the character of these goods. Therefore, the theories explained in this book may also produce a solid basis for further empirical research in the field. Experts throughout the world have contributed to this book, which predominantly pursues a mathematically rigorous approach. It may be used by researchers in the field of fundamental economics and in graduate-level courses in advanced microeconomics