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Articles 1 - 30 of 58
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Obfuscation And Rational Inattention, Aljoscha Janssen, Johannes Kasinger
Obfuscation And Rational Inattention, Aljoscha Janssen, Johannes Kasinger
Research Collection School Of Economics
We study the behavior of duopolistic firms that can obfuscate their prices before competing on price. Obfuscation affects the rational inattentive consumers' optimal information strategy, which determines the probabilistic demand. Our model advances related models by allowing consumers to update their unrestricted prior beliefs with an informative signal of any form. We show that the game may result in an obfuscation equilibrium with high prices or a transparency equilibrium with low prices and no obfuscation, providing an argument for market regulation. Obfuscation equilibria cease to exist for low information costs and if one firm seems a priori considerably more attractive.
Regulatory Protection And The Role Of International Cooperation, Yuan Mei
Regulatory Protection And The Role Of International Cooperation, Yuan Mei
Research Collection School Of Economics
I develop a general equilibrium framework to analyze the welfare consequences of product regulations and their international harmonization. In my model, raising product standards reduces a negative consumption externality, but also increases the marginal and fixed costs of production. When product standards are set noncooperatively, the effects of standards on other countries' wages and number of firms are not internalized, giving rise to an international inefficiency. The World Trade Organization's nondiscrimination principle of national treatment only partly addresses this inefficiency. Welfare losses from abandoning national treatment average 2.8%, whereas the maximum welfare gains from efficient cooperation average 11.8%.
The Distributional Impacts Of Transportation Networks In China, Lin Ma, Tang Yang
The Distributional Impacts Of Transportation Networks In China, Lin Ma, Tang Yang
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper evaluates the distributional impacts of transportation networks in China.We show that the quality of roads and railroads vary substantially over time and space, and ignoring these variations biases the estimates of travel time. To account for quality differences, we construct a new panel dataset and approximate quality using the design speed of roads and railroads that varies by vintage, class, and terrain at the pixel level. We then build a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model that allows for multiple modes and routes of transportation and forward-looking migration decision.We find aggregate welfare gain and less spatial income inequality led …
R&D Subsidies In Permissive And Restrictive Environment: Evidence From Korea, Yumi Koh, Gea M. Lee
R&D Subsidies In Permissive And Restrictive Environment: Evidence From Korea, Yumi Koh, Gea M. Lee
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper investigates the extent to which a regulatory environment for R&D subsidies shapes the magnitude and direction of R&D subsidies set by a government and consequent innovation paths. When the WTO adopted a permissive regulatory environment, we find that the Korean government increased R&D subsidies significantly (89.21%) and selectively so for firms and industries with higher returns. Recipient firms conducted less basic research and more development research. Improvements in innovations were mostly incremental and minor. However, such changes did not persist once the WTO switched to a restrictive regulatory environment. Our findings show that the regulatory environment imposed by …
Retail Pharmacies And Drug Diversion During The Opioid Epidemic, Aljoscha Janssen, Xuan Zhang
Retail Pharmacies And Drug Diversion During The Opioid Epidemic, Aljoscha Janssen, Xuan Zhang
Research Collection School Of Economics
This study investigates the role of retail pharmacy ownership in the opioid epidemic. Using data of prescription opioid orders, we show that compared with chain pharmacies, independent pharmacies dispense 39.1% more opioids and 60.5% more OxyContin. After an independent pharmacy becomes a chain pharmacy, opioid dispensing decreases. Using the OxyContin reformulation, which reduced non-medical demand but not the legitimate medical demand, we show that at least a third of the difference in the amount of OxyContin dispensed can be attributed to non-medical demand. We show that differences in competitive pressure and whether pharmacists own the pharmacy drive our estimates.
Intra-Firm Hierarchies And Gender Gaps, Nicolo Dalvit, Aseem Patel, Joanne Tan
Intra-Firm Hierarchies And Gender Gaps, Nicolo Dalvit, Aseem Patel, Joanne Tan
Research Collection School Of Economics
We study how changes in female representation at the top of a firm’s organisation affect gender-specific outcomes across hierarchies within firms. We start by developing a theoretical model of a hierarchical firm, where gender representation in top organisational layers can affect gender-specific hiring and promotion probabilities at lower layers. We then exploit a recent French reform that imposed gender representation quotas in the boards of directors and test the model’s predictions in the data. Our empirical results show that the reform was successful in reducing gender wage and representation gaps at the upper layers of the firm, but not at …
Attenuation Of Agglomeration Economies: Evidence From The Universe Of Chinese Manufacturing Firms, Li Jing, Liyao Li, Shimeng Liu
Attenuation Of Agglomeration Economies: Evidence From The Universe Of Chinese Manufacturing Firms, Li Jing, Liyao Li, Shimeng Liu
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper quantifies industry-specific spatial attenuation of agglomeration economies by taking advantage of unique geocoded administrative data on the universe of Chinese manufacturing firms. The estimates of industry-level attenuation speed further allow us to systematically assess the goodness of fit of various spatial decay functional forms and to evaluate the micro-foundations that govern the decay patterns across industries. We obtain three main findings. First, agglomeration spillovers attenuate by about 90 percent on average from 0-1 km to 1-5 km in China, with large heterogeneity in the extent of attenuation ranging from 73 percent to 116 percent across industries. Second, the …
Government Support For Smes In Response To Covid-19: Theoretical Model Using Wang Transform, Shaun Shuxun Wang, Jing Rong Goh, Didier Sornette, He Wang, Esther Yang
Government Support For Smes In Response To Covid-19: Theoretical Model Using Wang Transform, Shaun Shuxun Wang, Jing Rong Goh, Didier Sornette, He Wang, Esther Yang
Research Collection School Of Economics
Purpose: Many governments are taking measures in support of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to mitigate the economic impact of the COVID-19 outbreak. This paper presents a theoretical model for evaluating various government measures, including insurance for bank loans, interest rate subsidy, bridge loans and relief of tax burdens. Design/methodology/approach: This paper distinguishes a firm's intrinsic value and book value, where a firm can lose its intrinsic value when it encounters cash-flow crunch. Wang transform is applied to (1) calculating the appropriate level of interest rate subsidy payable to incentivize banks to issue more loans to SMEs and to extend …
Public Health Insurance And Pharmaceutical Innovation: Evidence From China, Xuan Zhang, Huihua Nie
Public Health Insurance And Pharmaceutical Innovation: Evidence From China, Xuan Zhang, Huihua Nie
Research Collection School Of Economics
Developing countries are characterized by low levels of pharmaceutical innovation. A likely reason is their small market size, which is not because of the population size but because of low levels of income and lack of health insurance coverage. This study exploits a natural experiment from the implementation of a public health insurance program for rural residents in China (New Cooperative Medical Scheme [NCMS]) to examine whether the pharmaceutical industry increases innovation regarding diseases covered by the NCMS that are prevalent in rural areas. We examine the 1993–2009 patent data to gauge pharmaceutical innovation in China. Diseases with a 10% …
The Convergence Of Water, Electricity And Gas Industries: Implications For Ppp Design And Regulation, Sock Yong Phang
The Convergence Of Water, Electricity And Gas Industries: Implications For Ppp Design And Regulation, Sock Yong Phang
Research Collection School Of Economics
In several countries that have privatised their utilities, power and water are separate industries regulated by sector-specific regulators. In a parallel development, desalination has become an important source of water supply in countries where there is a shortage of cheap and clean freshwater. Where the energy source is gas, the use of gas-fired power plants to supply electricity for desalination links the water, electricity and gas industries. We use the case of the financial collapse of an integrated water and power project to illustrate the problems that can arise from such convergence, and to draw lessons for firms, Public-Private Partnerships …
Density Of Demand And The Consumer Benefit From Uber, Matthew H. Shapiro
Density Of Demand And The Consumer Benefit From Uber, Matthew H. Shapiro
Research Collection School Of Economics
Uber has attracted the attention of economists and policy makers for its innovations in the taxicab market and its potential for significant consumer welfare gains. The size of this gain depends in part on whether these innovations permit transactions previously costly or infeasible. Using New York City — the largest taxi market in the country — as its context, this paper estimates the level of any technological advantage Uber has over hail taxis in matching to consumers. I combine publicly available transportation data with data scraped from Uber and traffic cameras to estimate a model of the demand for transportation …
Firm Productivity And The Variety Of Inputs And Outputs: Evidence From Chinese Trade Data, Ken Onishi, Jianhuan Xu, Guang Yang
Firm Productivity And The Variety Of Inputs And Outputs: Evidence From Chinese Trade Data, Ken Onishi, Jianhuan Xu, Guang Yang
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper studies how the trade liberalization in China changes the firm productivity. We develop a framework to estimate revenue productivity (TFPR) and real productivity (TFPQ) with multi-product firms. We find that the aggregate TFPR increases 30\% from 2002-2007 and TFPQ increases 22\%, suggesting that the observed TFPR increase is mainly driven by real productivity change rather than the markup change. We further decompose the change of productivity into three channels: (1) access to foreign inputs; (2) technology upgrade; (3) resource re-allocation within the firm. We find the most significant channel is the last one, which explains half of the …
The Optimal Degree Of Reciprocity In Tariff Reduction, Pao-Li Chang
The Optimal Degree Of Reciprocity In Tariff Reduction, Pao-Li Chang
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper characterizes the optimal reciprocal trade policy in the environment of Melitz (2003) with firm productivity heterogeneity. With all the conflicting effects of import tariffs on welfare considered, the optimal degree of reciprocity in multilateral tariff reduction is shown to be free trade.
The Optimal Degree Of Reciprocity In Tariff Reduction, Pao-Li Chang
The Optimal Degree Of Reciprocity In Tariff Reduction, Pao-Li Chang
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper characterizes the optimal reciprocal trade policy in the environment of Melitz (2003) with firm productivity heterogeneity. In particular, without making parametric assumptions on firm productivity distribution, this paper derives the optimal degree of reciprocal tariff reductions that maximize the world welfare. A reciprocal import subsidy raises the industry productivity, lowering aggregate price; a reciprocal import tariff helps correct the markup distortion, increasing nominal income. With all the conflicting effects of import tariffs on welfare considered, the optimal degree of reciprocity in multilateral tariff reduction is shown to be free trade.
Estimating The Benefits And Costs Of Forming Business Partnerships, Jungho Lee
Estimating The Benefits And Costs Of Forming Business Partnerships, Jungho Lee
Research Collection School Of Economics
I estimate a matching model of business‐partnership formation to quantify the relative importance of productivity gains, financing gains, and the coordination failure of effort provision (moral hazard) among partners. Productivity gains account for 61% of the gain from the observed partnerships. For partners in the first quartile of the wealth distribution, however, financing accounts for 93% of the gain. The cost of moral hazard corresponds to 42% of the entire gain from partnerships. A loan policy specifically targeting partnerships is less effective in improving welfare than a conventional loan policy that provides loans to individual entrepreneurs.
Foreign Direct Investment And Industrial Agglomeration: Evidence From China, Wen-Tai Hsu, Yi Lu, Xuan Luo, Lianming Zhu
Foreign Direct Investment And Industrial Agglomeration: Evidence From China, Wen-Tai Hsu, Yi Lu, Xuan Luo, Lianming Zhu
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper studies the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on industrial ag-glomeration. Using the differential effects of FDI deregulation in 2002 in China on different industries, we find that FDI actually affects industrial agglomeration neg-atively. As FDI brings technological spillovers and various agglomeration benefits, other forces must be at work to drive our empirical finding. We propose a simple theory that FDI may discourage industrial agglomeration due to fiercer competition pressure. We find various evidence on this competition mechanism. We also examine an alternative theory based on spatial political competition, but find no evidence sup-porting it. On industrial growth, …
Why Do Businesses Grow Faster In Urban Areas Than In Rural Areas?, Lee, Jungho, Jianhuan Xu
Why Do Businesses Grow Faster In Urban Areas Than In Rural Areas?, Lee, Jungho, Jianhuan Xu
Research Collection School Of Economics
We document that growth of business earnings is mostly observed among young firmsin metro areas. Three explanations are considered: metro areas attract more-productiveentrepreneurs, and reaching the optimal size takes time due to borrowing constraints;metro areas provide better learning opportunities; and high operating costs in metroareas allow only the productive firms to survive. We use a firm-dynamics model with alocation choice to quantify the extent to which the three theories explain the data. Wefind the first two theories largely explain the high growth among metro, young firms. Ourmodel also suggests the distortion in entrepreneurs’ location choice can induce substantialwelfare loss.
Common Power Laws For Cities And Spatial Fractal Structures, Tomoya Mori, Tony E. Smith, Wen-Tai Hsu
Common Power Laws For Cities And Spatial Fractal Structures, Tomoya Mori, Tony E. Smith, Wen-Tai Hsu
Research Collection School Of Economics
City-size distributions are known to be well approximated by power laws across a wide range of countries. But such distributions are also meaningful at other spatial scales, such as within certain regions of a country. Using data from China, France, Germany, India, Japan, and the United States, we first document that large cities are significantly more spaced out than would be expected by chance alone. We next construct spatial hierarchies for countries by first partitioning geographic space using a given number of their largest cities as cell centers and then continuing this partitioning procedure within each cell recursively. We find …
Uncertainty, Depreciation And Industry Growth, Roberto Samaiego, Juliana Yu Sun
Uncertainty, Depreciation And Industry Growth, Roberto Samaiego, Juliana Yu Sun
Research Collection School Of Economics
When investment is irreversible, firms invest only when the mismatch between their productivity and their capital stock is large. This suggests that two factors should be related to the frequency of mismatch: volatility and capital depreciation. A canonical model of industry dynamics with investment irreversibility displays slow growth in times of high uncertainty, and decline is particularly pronounced in industries where capital depreciation is rapid. A differences-in-differences regression using industry growth data from a large sample of countries supports this result.
Tax Uncertainty And Business Activity, Jungho Lee, Jianhuan Xu
Tax Uncertainty And Business Activity, Jungho Lee, Jianhuan Xu
Research Collection School Of Economics
We investigate the extent to which uncertainties about tax policies affect business activities. We develop a statewide tax-uncertainty measure (TU measure) and show that it captures state corporate tax uncertainty. By comparing adjacent counties across state borders, we show that increasing tax uncertainty by one standard deviation (a 30% increase in the TU measure) leads to a 0.17% point per-year decrease in the growth rate of establishments over two years. The result holds after conducting a variety of robustness checks and is not likely to be driven by general state-policy uncertainties.
Does Foreign Direct Investment Lead To Industrial Agglomeration?, Wen-Tai Hsu, Yi Lu, Xuan Luo, Lianming Zhu
Does Foreign Direct Investment Lead To Industrial Agglomeration?, Wen-Tai Hsu, Yi Lu, Xuan Luo, Lianming Zhu
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper studies the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on industrial agglomeration.Using the differential effects of FDI deregulation in 2002 in China on different industries, we find that FDI actually affects industrial agglomeration negatively. This result is somewhat counter-intuitive, as the conventional wisdom tends to suggest that FDI attracts domestic firms to cluster for various agglomeration benefits, in particular technology spillovers. To reconcile our empirical findings and the conventional wisdom, we develop a theory of FDI and agglomeration based on two counter-veiling forces. Technology diffusion from FDI attracts domestic firms to cluster, but fiercer competition drives firms away. Which …
Competition, Markups, And Gains From Trade: A Quantitative Analysis Of China Between 1995 And 2004, Wen-Tai Hsu, Yi Lu, Guiying Laura Wu
Competition, Markups, And Gains From Trade: A Quantitative Analysis Of China Between 1995 And 2004, Wen-Tai Hsu, Yi Lu, Guiying Laura Wu
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper provides a quantitative analysis of gains from trade in a model with head-to-head competition using Chinese firm-level data from Economic Censuses in 1995 and 2004. We find a significant reduction in trade cost during this period, and total gains from such improved openness during this period is 7:1%. The gains are decomposed into a Ricardian component and two pro-competitive ones. The procompetitive effects account for 20% of the total gains. Moreover, the total gains from trade are 13 31% larger than what would result from the formula provided by ACR (Arkolakis, Costinot, and Rodríguez-Clare 2012), which nests a …
Does Foreign Direct Investment Lead To Industrial Agglomeration?, Wen-Tai Hsu, Yi Lu, Xuan Luo, Lianming Zhu
Does Foreign Direct Investment Lead To Industrial Agglomeration?, Wen-Tai Hsu, Yi Lu, Xuan Luo, Lianming Zhu
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper studies the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on industrial agglomeration. Using the differential effects of FDI deregulation in 2002 in China on different industries, we find that FDI actually affects industrial agglomeration negatively. This result is somewhat counter-intuitive, as the conventional wisdom tends to suggest that FDI attracts domestic firms to cluster for various agglomeration benefits, in particular technology spillovers. To reconcile our empirical findings and the conventional wisdom, we develop a theory of FDI and agglomeration based on two counter-veiling forces. Technology diffusion from FDI attracts domestic firms to cluster, but fiercer competition drives firms away. …
When Does Limited Commitment Matter In A Production Economy?, Kyoung Jin Choi, Jungho Lee
When Does Limited Commitment Matter In A Production Economy?, Kyoung Jin Choi, Jungho Lee
Research Collection School Of Economics
We investigate the conditions under which the first-best allocation without commitment is sustainable in a production economy. While it is widely known in the literature that allowing capital accumulation creates a distortion, we find that it can help to sustain the first-best allocation. We also find that for a certain set of endowment economiesin which the efficient allocation is not sustainable, the efficient allocation becomes sustainable once we introduce a production technology with very small returns to scale orany returns to scale higher than that of the minimum value. In some cases, gains fromefficient resource allocation between agents can be …
On The Relationship Between Household Wealth And Entrepreneurship, Jungho Lee
On The Relationship Between Household Wealth And Entrepreneurship, Jungho Lee
Research Collection School Of Economics
Motivated by a substantial number of startup owners with negative household net worth, I present a model that incorporates credit borrowing into Evans and Jovanovic [1989]. The estimated model generates no relationship between household wealth and the propensity for business entry. Ignoring credit borrowing for potential business owners substantially overstates the efficiency loss from financial constraints in business entry. However, the efficiency loss in investments by the entrants is large even if credit borrowing is allowed. Individuals who start a business once credit borrowing is available are those whose business ideas are of a high-enough quality to compensate high financing …
Free Entry And Social Inefficiency In Vertical Relationships: The Case Of The Japanese Mri Industry, Ken Onishi, Naoki Wakamori, Chiyo Hashimoto, Shun-Ichiro Bessho
Free Entry And Social Inefficiency In Vertical Relationships: The Case Of The Japanese Mri Industry, Ken Onishi, Naoki Wakamori, Chiyo Hashimoto, Shun-Ichiro Bessho
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper quantifies the welfare consequences of the medical arms race in the context of MRI adoption. We build and estimate a model of the vertical structure of the industry where MRI manufacturers sell high- and low-quality MRIs in the upstream market, whereas medical institutions provide medical services to patients in the downstream market. Simulation results suggest that the current free-entry policy in Japan leads to excess MRI adoption. Furthermore, regulating medical institutions’ MRI adoption, taxing MRI purchases, or softening competition among MRI manufacturers would increase social welfare substantially by mitigating the business-stealing effect in the downstream market.
Lumpy Investment, Lumpy Inventories, Ruediger Bachmann, Lin Ma
Lumpy Investment, Lumpy Inventories, Ruediger Bachmann, Lin Ma
Research Collection School Of Economics
The link between the microenvironment (frictions and heterogeneity) and the macroeconomic dynamics of general equilibrium macromodels is influenced by exactly how general equilibrium closes the model. We make this observation concrete using the recent literature on how nonconvex capital adjustment costs influence aggregate investment dynamics. We introduce inventories into a two-sector lumpy investment model and find that nonconvex capital adjustment costs dampen and propagate investment impulse responses, more so than without inventories. With two means of transferring consumption into the future, fixed capital and inventories, the tight link between aggregate saving and fixed capital investment is broken.
Productivity Growth And Structural Transformation, Roberto Samaniego, Juliana Y. Sun
Productivity Growth And Structural Transformation, Roberto Samaniego, Juliana Y. Sun
Research Collection School Of Economics
Economies diversify and then re-specialize as they develop. These “stages of diversification” may result from productivity-driven structural change if initially resources are concentrated in industries other than those that dominate economic structure in the long run. A calibrated multi-industry growth model with many countries and with industry differences in productivity growth rates replicates the main features of the “stages of diversification”. We also present evidence that countries systematically shift resources towards manufacturing industries with rapid productivity growth, and towards sectors with low productivity growth, consistent with the model and supporting the “productivity mechanism” for structural transformation.
Macroeconomic Effects Of Energy Price Shocks On The Business Cycle, Bao Tan Huynh
Macroeconomic Effects Of Energy Price Shocks On The Business Cycle, Bao Tan Huynh
Research Collection School Of Economics
This paper proposes a framework of endogenous energy production with convex costs to investigate the general equilibrium effects of energy price shocks on the business cycle. This framework explicitly models the consumption of durables and nondurables and implements a high complementarity between energy and the usage of durables and capital. The model predicts energy price elasticities of various consumption variables that fall within reasonable agreement with empirical estimates. Convex costs in energy production produce energy price and energy supply dynamics that tallies well with empirical behavior. Our analysis confirms in a theoretical setting recent observations that not all energy price …
Quantity Discounts And Capital Misallocation In Vertical Relationships, Ken Onishi
Quantity Discounts And Capital Misallocation In Vertical Relationships, Ken Onishi
Research Collection School Of Economics
I study transactions between aircraft manufacturers and airlines as well as airlines' utilization of their fleet. Aircraft production is characterized by economies of scale via learning-by-doing, which creates a trade-off between current profit and future competitive advantage in the aircraft market. The latter consideration makes large buyers more attractive than small buyers and induces quantity discounts. The resulting nonlinear pricing strategy may distort both production and allocation in favor of large buyers. In the data, there is a negative correlation between the size of aircraft orders and the per-unit price, and a positive correlation between the price paid and the …