The Electricity Market Game

This paper examines the effects of imperfect competition in unregulated electricity markets from a general equilibrium perspective, and demonstrates that horizontal market power can explain both the large peak-period price spikes observed recently in California and elsewhere, and the marked reduction in additions to capacity that have also occurred during the transition to competitive markets.

When to Fire a CEO: Optimal Termination in Dynamic Contracts

The repeated agency model has been widely applied to a number of interesting and important problems in economics, though in many instances, the fact that the standard model generates transient dynamics limits the usefulness of the results obtained from the model for the simple reason that purely transient dynamc phenomena are empirically irrelevant since they cannot be systematically observed and studied. \ In this paper, we show to embed the standard long-term contracting model in an economic environment in which the inherently transient dynamics of the model are transformed into dyanmics which are stationary and ergodic. \ We then use the model to study CEO termination and issues of corporate takeover.

Endogenous Market Incompleteness Without Market Frictions: Dynamic Suboptimality of Competitive Equilibrium in Multiperiod Overlapping Generations Economies

In this paper, we show that within the set of stochastic three-period-lived OLG economies with productive assets (such as land), markets are necessarily sequentially incomplete, and agents in the model do not share risk optimally. We start by characterizing perfect risk sharing and find that it requires a state-dependent consumption claims which depend only on the exogenous shock realizations. We show then that the recursive competitive equilibrium of any overlapping generations economy with weakly more than three generations is not strongly stationary. This then allows us to show directly that there are short-run Pareto improvements possible in terms of risk-sharing and hence, that the recursive competitive equilibrium is not Pareto optimal. We then show that a financial reform which eliminates the equity asset and replaces it with zero net supply insurance contracts (Arrow securities) will implement to Pareto optimal stochastic steady-state known to exist in the model. Finally, we also show via numerical simulations that a system of government taxes and transfers can lead to a Pareto improvement over the competitive equilibrium in the model.

Shaking the Tree: An Agency Theoretic Model of Asset Pricing

In this paper, we develop an agency-theoretic extension of the Lucas asset pricing model and examine the resulting asset price dynamics. In the model, an agent of the firm can expand or contract the firm's output and dividend payments in response to exogenous shocks, although expansions become increasingly costly for the agent to maintain. Analysis of numerical simulations shows that the time-series of equilibrium asset prices exhibits both significant time-varying conditional heteroskedasticity, and longer memory persistence.

Macroeconomic Dynamics Online Submission

This announcement is forthcoming in Macroeconomic Dynamics. The announcement regards the creation of a new online submission and manuscript processing system for the journal, Macroeconomic Dynamics.

An Overlapping Generations Model of Electoral Competition

This paper presents a dynamic model of political competition between two "parties" with different policy preferences. A "party" is explicitly modeled as a sequence of overlapping generations of candidates, all of whom face finite decision horizons. In general, there is a conflict between the interests of the individual policymakers and those of the "party" , which includes subsequent generations of candidates. We characterize this conflict and suggest a scheme of "intergenerational transfers" within the party which can resolve or mitigate this conflict. The paper shows how the "overlapping generations" model can be usefully applied to the political arena.

Macroeconomic Dynamics Online Submission

This page is forthcoming in the journal, Macroeconomic Dynamics, as an Announcement from the Editor. The page provides information about the conversion of the journal's submission procedure from on-paper to all electronic. The new system was created by Stephen Spear and is maintained by him on his server at Carnegie Mellon Universityonline submission, macroeconomics, dynamics, electronic processing

Factor Price Equalization in Heckscher-Ohlin Model

This paper investigates the likelihood of factor-price equalization under the simple assumptions of Heckscher-Ohlin Theory. Factor-price equalization is also directly related to whether countries specialize or not in the global market. A full-equilibrium in the world requires not only the equilibrium in the production side of the economy, but also the supply-demand equality in the world. However, once we obtain an equilibrium in the production side of the economy, it is always possible to define demand in a way to get supply-demand equality at any production side equilibrium amounts. Therefore, it is not possible to talk about factor-price equalization without specifying demand in the economy. Using L-P diagrams, the paper demonstrates how both factor-price equalization and non-equalization cases are possible when we look at only the production side of the economy. It is also demonstrated that the equilibrium possibilities will be much larger for factor-price equalization case if the number of commodities is more than the number of factors of production. However, the larger possibilities do not refer to different real equilibria, but only to indeterminacy in production. When demand is introduced in the economy and supply-demand equality constraints are respected, we see that factor-prices might or might not be equalized depending on factor endowments, production functions and demand. The paper demonstrates this by introducing a model with 2 countries, 2 factors of production, 3 goods and CES utility function. Finally, using comparative statistics on this simple model, the conditions under which the likelihood of factor-price equalization increases are determined.

An Overlapping Generations Model of Electoral Competition

Economic