Workshops

2012年5月22日 （火　Tuesday） 16:40-18:20

Eric Weese (Yale University)

Efficiencies of Scale in Local Public Good Provision: Estimation via Coalition Panel Data

Preferences of players in a coalition formation game can be estimated using a constrained maximum likelihood approach if there if there is data available for two periods, where coalitions were formed in only one of these periods due to an exogenous change, such as a new policy instituted by a higher level of government. Using this technique, revealed preference data from two sets of Japanese municipal mergers is compared with official Japanese ministry estimates of efficiencies of scale in the production of local public goods. The official estimates state that public goods which cost $10,000 per capita to provide in a municipality with a population of 1,000 can be provided for $1,200 per capita in a municipality with a population of 100,000. Actual returns to scale appear to be over 70% of these official estimates. The null hypothesis of zero returns to scale is rejected.

2012年6月12日 （火　Tuesday） 16:40-18:20

Shoshana Grossbard (San Diego State University)

Racial Intermarriage and Household Production: Are There Compensating Differentials? (joint with J. Ignacio Gimenez Nadal and José Alberto Molina)

We investigate whether in the U.S.A. hours of household work vary by whether individuals are in different-race or same-race couples. Data from the American Time Use Survey data for years 2003-2009 are analyzed for samples of White and Black male and female respondents. We find that White women married to Black men devote 0.7 fewer hours per day to housework than their counterparts in all-White marriages, which is comparable to the effect of a young child on their hours of housework. Findings for White men also indicate that they work less at housework when in couple with Black women than when in all-White couples. Conversely, Blacks appear to do more housework if they are in couple with Whites than when in all-Black couples. Results are sensitive to whether time use was measured on weekdays or weekends, relationship status, and employment status in ways that are consistent with our theoretical framework based on Becker's second Demand and Supply model and the concept of Work-In-Household for the benefit of a partner or spouse.

2012年6月19日 （火　Tuesday） 16:40-18:20

郡山幸雄 (Yukio Koriyama) (Ecole Polytechnique)

Optimal Apportionment

2012年6月21日 （木　Thursday） 17:00-18:30

※日時と場所にご注意下さい。　

※都市経済ワークショップと共催

Marcus Berliant (Washington University at St. Louis)

Explaining the Size Distribution of Cities: X-treme Economies (with Hiroki Watanabe)

2012年6月26日 （火　Tuesday） 16:40-18:20

※都市経済ワークショップと共催

長町 康平 (Kohei Nagamachi) (University of Tokyo)

TBA

2012年7月17日 （火　Tuesday） 16:40-18:20

室岡健志 (Takeshi Murooka) (University of California, Berkeley)

The Market for Deceptive Products

2012年10月16日 （火　Tuesday） 16:40-18:20

坂井豊貴 (Toyotaka Sakai) (Keio University)

TBA

2012年4月5日 (木　Thursday) 16:40-18:20

※曜日と時間にご注意ください。

※マクロワークショップ, UTIPE Distinguished Research Seminar Series funded by Global 30と共催

Doh-Shin Jeon (Toulouse School of Economics)

Reputation as an Entry Barrier in the Credit Rating Industry (joint with Stefano Lovo)

We study competition between an incumbent Credit Rating Agency (CRA) and a sequence of entrant CRAs that are potentially more e¤ective but whose ability in appraising default risk is unproven when they enter the market. We show that free entry competition fails to select the most competent CRA as long as two conditions are met. First, investors and issuers trust the incumbent CRA to provide a sincere, although imperfect, assessment. Second, CRAs cannot charge higher fees for low rating than for high rating. Then, a rather incompetent CRA can dominate the market without concerns about entry. We derive policy implications.

2012年4月10日 （火　Tuesday）16:40-18:20

松島斉 (Hitoshi Matsushima) (University of Tokyo)

Japanese Package Auction Format (JP): Practical Design for 4G Spectrum Allocation in Japan [slides]

2012年4月17日 （火　Tuesday） 16:40-18:20

佐野隆司 (Ryuji Sano) (Osaka University)

The Vickrey-Target Strategy and the Core in Ascending Combinatorial Auctions [PDF]

This paper considers a class of combinatorial auctions with ascending prices, which includes the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism and core-selecting auctions. We analyze incentives in ascending combinatorial auctions under complete information. We show that in every ascending auction, the "Vickrey-target strategy" constitutes a subgame perfect equilibrium if bidders' strategy space is restricted. The equilibrium outcome is in the bidder-optimal core and unique under some criteria. This implies that equilibrium selection is done by an ascending price scheme from many equilibria of sealed-bid auctions. The equilibrium outcome is "unfair" in the sense that winners with low valuations tend to earn high profits. This payoff non-monotonicity leads to inefficiency in the equilibrium under unrestricted strategy space.

2012年5月8日 （火　Tuesday） 16:40-18:20

※UTIPE Distinguished Research Seminar Series funded by Global 30と共催

Stephanie Lluis (University of Waterloo)

Uncertainty, Task Environment, and Organization Design: An Empirical Investigation (joint with Avner Ben-Ner and Fanmin Kong) [PDF]

The paper addresses two broad research questions: 1. How do internal uncertainty associated with the task environment and external uncertainty arising from market volatility impact organization design? 2. What are the relationships among various elements of organization design: delegation of decision-making, incentives, monitoring, and internal labor market practices (promotion, training, employment security)? We expand on Prendergast (2002a), who challenged the conventional view of a tradeoff between risk and incentives, and build a single unified framework for answering our two research questions. Using a uniquely rich dataset that contains detailed information about the task environment of core employees and organization design at the individual, group and firms levels in 530 Minnesota firms in the mid 1990s, we first find support for Prendergast's key argument that internal uncertainty (over which employees have control) affects directly the allocation of decision-making and only indirectly incentives (via allocation of decision-making). This confirms similar findings by Foss and Laursen (2005), DeVaro and Kurtulus (2010) and Shi (2011). We also find that internal uncertainty has much impact on organization design through the choice of delegation of decision-making at the employee level, less so at the group level, and very little at the firm level, whereas external (market) uncertainty has little effect on organization design, especially at the individual and group level. Decision-making, monitoring, various internal labor market practices and incentives are strongly related to each other through substitution and complementarity.