{"title":"First-best health policy in vaccine markets with health and network externalities","authors":"Rabah Amir, Filomena Garcia, Iryna Topolyan","doi":"10.1111/jpet.12673","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jpet.12673","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper considers an oligopolistic market for a vaccine, characterized by negative network effects, which stem from the free-riding behavior of individuals engaged in a vaccination game. Vaccine markets often suffer from three imperfections: high concentration, network effects, and a health externality (contagion). The first conclusion of the paper is that the negative network externality is important as a market distortion, as it may lead to significant welfare losses. The second and main part of the paper develops a two-part per-unit subsidy scheme that a social planner could use to target both consumers and producers of vaccines. The scope of such a subsidy scheme to induce the firms to produce the first-best output without network effects (which is the most ambitious first-best target) is investigated. In many cases, while the first-best is attainable, it requires negative prices for vaccines, which amounts to rewarding consumers to induce them to vaccinate.</p>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"25 6","pages":"1229-1250"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134957221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Toygar T. Kerman, P. Jean-Jacques Herings, Dominik Karos
{"title":"Persuading sincere and strategic voters","authors":"Toygar T. Kerman, P. Jean-Jacques Herings, Dominik Karos","doi":"10.1111/jpet.12671","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jpet.12671","url":null,"abstract":"<p>A sender wants to persuade multiple homogeneous receivers to vote in favor of a proposal. Before the vote sender commits to a signal which sends private, potentially correlated, messages to receivers that are contingent on the true state of the world. The best equilibrium for sender in the resulting incomplete information game is unappealing: all receivers vote in favor of sender's preferred outcome, irrespective of their message. We therefore focus on the equilibrium where receivers vote sincerely, that is they vote in favor of the outcome that is optimal given their posterior. We characterize the optimal public and the optimal private signal, both for the case where receivers are behavioral and vote sincerely as well as the case where such behavior is a Bayes–Nash equilibrium (BNE). For the optimal public signal, sincere voting is a BNE, but the optimal private signal is subject to the swing voter's curse. Imposing the constraint that sincere voting be a BNE leads to an optimal signal where receivers are never pivotal.</p>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jpet.12671","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135634262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Double auction for trading perfect complements","authors":"Rakesh Chaturvedi, Ashish Kumar Pandey","doi":"10.1111/jpet.12672","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jpet.12672","url":null,"abstract":"<p>For a trading problem where a buyer is interested in an aggregate resource with fragmented ownership, the individually owned resources are perfect complements in trade. A double auction, chosen in accordance with a value alignment principle which we formulate, is shown to be strategy proof for owners. Since it also values the aggregate resource correctly, it mitigates the holdout problem by changing the source of inefficiency from complementarity on owners' side to lack of competition on buyer side. The value alignment principle implies that this double auction has a majority trading rule. With multiple buyers, a suitable modification makes the double auction strategy proof even for the buyers, thus mitigating the holdout problem by achieving approximate ex post efficiency when the number of owners is large.</p>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136102654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"FDI spillovers, new industry development, and economic growth","authors":"Thanh Tam Nguyen-Huu, Ngoc-Sang Pham","doi":"10.1111/jpet.12670","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jpet.12670","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The paper investigates the optimal strategy of a small open economy receiving foreign direct investment (FDI) in an optimal growth context. We prove that no domestic firm can enter the new industry when the multinational enterprise's productivity or the fixed entry cost is high. Nevertheless, the host country's investment stock converges to a higher steady state than an economy without FDI. A domestic firm enters the new industry if its productivity is high enough. Moreover, the domestic firm can dominate or even eliminate its foreign counterpart.</p>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135885160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Optimal law enforcement when individuals are either moral or norm followers","authors":"Claude Fluet, Tim Friehe","doi":"10.1111/jpet.12669","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jpet.12669","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Moral rules and social norms influence whether individuals break the law. We characterize optimal law enforcement when some individuals obey internalized moral rules and implement social norms for other individuals who prefer to comply with them. Moral individuals and norm followers are linked via the endogenous social norm and this induces the social planner to create an expected sanction for norm setters that is higher than without the link. The optimal expected sanction for moral individuals is higher than the one for norm followers if the moral rule is weak but the reverse ranking is true when it is strong.</p>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jpet.12669","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136295439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Green industrial policy, information asymmetry, and repayable advance","authors":"Guy Meunier, Jean-Pierre Ponssard","doi":"10.1111/jpet.12668","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jpet.12668","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The energy transition requires the deployment of risky research and development programs, most of which are partially financed by public funding. Recent recovery plans, associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and the energy transition, increased the funding available to finance innovative low-carbon projects and called for an economic evaluation of their allocation. This paper analyzes the potential benefit of using repayable advance: a lump-sum payment to finance the project that is paid back in case of success. The relationship between the state and innovative firms is formalized in the principal-agent framework. Investing in an innovative project requires an initial observable capital outlay. We introduce asymmetric information on the probability of success, which is known to the firm but not to the state agency. The outcome of the project, if successful, delivers a private benefit to the firm and an external social benefit to the state. In this context a repayable advance consists in rewarding failure. We prove that it is a superior strategy in the presence of pure adverse selection. We investigate under what conditions this result could be extended in the presence of moral hazard. Implications for green industrial policy are discussed.</p>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jpet.12668","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136296091","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Patent licensing for signaling the cost-reduction innovation: The case of the insider innovator","authors":"Cheng-Tai Wu, Tsung-Sheng Tsai","doi":"10.1111/jpet.12667","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jpet.12667","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We analyze the patent licensing contracts offered by an insider innovator that has private information about the quality of innovation that can be transferred to two downstream firms. When information is complete, the first-best choice is a pure-royalty contract which is accepted by both firms (i.e., is nonexclusive). When information is incomplete, however, no nonexclusive contract can be supported as a separating equilibrium; it can only be the case where the innovator sells an exclusive contract to only one firm or a nonlicensing contract where no license is sold. In particular, when the gap in the innovation between the efficient and inefficient type is sufficiently small, there does not exist any separating equilibrium. It is sharply different from the case of an outsider innovation, in which a separating equilibrium always exists.</p>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135197754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
C. Bravard, J. Durieu, J. Kamphorst, S. Roché, S. Sémirat
{"title":"Should the police give priority to violence within criminal organizations? A personnel economics perspective","authors":"C. Bravard, J. Durieu, J. Kamphorst, S. Roché, S. Sémirat","doi":"10.1111/jpet.12666","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jpet.12666","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Even among themselves, criminals are not seen as trustworthy. Consequently, a criminal organization needs to incentivize its members, either by threats of violence or by rewarding good behavior. The cost of using violence depends on the resources police allocate to investigating intraorganizational violence. This means that the police may affect the choice of an incentive scheme by the criminal organization. The design of the optimal strategy for crime control has to take this into account. We develop a model of an infinitely repeated criminal labor market where (i) a criminal organization hires and incentivizes members, and (ii) peripheral crime (crime outside the criminal organization) is a stepping stone to a career in organized crime. We establish that there are two possible optimal strategies for the police. (i) There are situations in which the optimal strategy for the police is to use all of their resources to decrease the efficiency of criminals. (ii) In other situations, the optimal strategy for the police is to spend the minimum amount of resources to ensure that the criminal organization cannot punish disloyal criminals, and spend the rest of their resources to decrease the efficiency of criminals.</p>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"25 6","pages":"1361-1393"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jpet.12666","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135207495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nonrenewable resource use sustainability and public debt","authors":"Nicolas Clootens, Francesco Magris","doi":"10.1111/jpet.12665","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jpet.12665","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The sustainability of resource use and the management of public finances are both long-run issues that are linked to each other through savings decisions. To study them conjointly, this paper introduces a public debt stabilization constraint in an overlapping generation model in which nonrenewable resources constitute a necessary input in the production function and belong to agents. It shows that stabilization of public debt at a high level (as share of capital) may prevent the existence of a sustainable development path, that is, a path on which per capita consumption is not decreasing. Public debt thus appears as a threat to sustainable development. It also shows that higher public debt-to-capital ratios (and public expenditures-to-capital ones) are associated with lower growth. Two transmission channels are identified. As usual, public debt crowds out capital accumulation. In addition, public debt tends to increase resource use which reduces the rate of growth. We also provide a numerical analysis of the dynamics that shows that the economy is characterized by saddle path stability. Finally, we show that the public debt-to-capital ratio may be calibrated to implement the social planner optimal allocation according to which the growth rate is increasing in the degree of patience.</p>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135397408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A generalized Hotelling–Downs model with asymmetric candidates","authors":"Elham Nikram, Dieter Balkenborg","doi":"10.1111/jpet.12663","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jpet.12663","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We investigate an extension of the Hotelling–Downs model to the case where the preferences of the voters do not have to be single peaked. In the case where candidates only care about winning or losing, assuming that a voter elects each candidate symmetrically with equal probability when indifferent, previous works by Fisher and Ryan and by Laffond, Laslier, and Le Breton have shown that the equilibrium outcome of the model is unique. Uniqueness also holds in the case where candidates care about the strength of their majority. Our paper shows that furthermore the equilibrium is unique for small asymmetries in voter's behavior but not necessarily for large ones. In particular, if voters always vote for the incumbent rather than a newcomer when indifferent, the equilibrium policy outcome may fail to be unique. Moreover, we provide a further sufficient condition for uniqueness. Namely, suppose all voters vote for a given candidate with the same probability when indifferent. Then, if there is a Nash equilibrium in completely mixed strategies between the candidates, it is the only Nash equilibrium.</p>","PeriodicalId":47024,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Economic Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jpet.12663","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135397344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}