International Journal of Economic Theory最新文献

I model the role of strategic defaults and informal moneylenders on multiple-installment loan contracts offered by microfinance institutions (MFIs). The results show that a single-installment loan is not viable due to MFIs' vulnerability to strategic defaults and borrowers' lack of collateral. In contrast, a multiple-installment contract requires borrowers to borrow from the moneylender, who is immune to strategic default, in order to repay the MFI's early installments that are due before the project yields a return. Consequently, both default costs and borrowing costs increase and incentives to commit strategic default decline, making the multiple-installment contract profitable for MFIs.

It is well-known that, in a competitive market, the number of firms in a free-entry equilibrium is the efficient one. This paper shows that this textbook result breaks down if firms face demand uncertainty. In this case, entry is excessive relative to the optimum and, therefore, regulation improves market efficiency. This occurs because, in the absence of regulation, entry is motivated by the profits that firms expect to receive if market demand turns out to be high. However, when choosing the optimal regulated entry, the planner also considers that some surplus is lost if demand turns out to be low.

This paper explores how the formation and stability of international environmental agreements vary with two often adopted mechanisms: imitating-the-best-average and imitating-the-best-total rules. We first show that the possible long-run equilibria of two dynamics are the same. They are countries' full participation, no-participation, and the two equilibria combined. However, the occurring conditions of these equilibria under two dynamics may differ. Then, we prove that countries' full participation is more likely to be long-run equilibrium in international environmental agreements when imitating-the-best-average rule is adopted. Moreover, all findings of this study hold whatever the function forms of countries' abnoatement benefits and costs are, and are unaffected by the positive affine transformation of countries' total payoffs.

This paper introduces the idea of a forward-looking reference benchmark on both consumption and leisure in the context of a Ramsey–Cass–Koopmans growth model by assuming that in addition to consumption and leisure the household utility also depends on reference benchmarks of future anticipated consumption and leisure. We analyze the macrodynamic equilibrium, contrasting it to the case when the reference benchmarks are backward-looking. We investigate if the presence of anticipation in leisure can lead to smoother jumps in labor under productivity shocks and what effect that has on the consumption adjustment at the time of shock. We present our results using numerical simulations that confirm the existence of parameter spaces where a dual anticipation model leads to smaller jumps in labor, albeit sometimes at the expense of higher consumption jumps.

We propose a theoretical framework to study Central Bank communication and to assess the benefits of commitment to a disclosure rule. Our model features a coordination environment, where agents have dispersed private information and their interests are not aligned with those of the Central Bank. Public information can lead to undesirable coordination among agents. We show that anything goes when the Central Bank cannot commit; both its most and least preferred outcomes can be supported in equilibrium, and so can anything in between. We find that commitment does not necessarily implement the Central Bank's most preferred outcome. However, the Central Bank can avoid the least desirable outcomes by choosing an information structure with only two messages that act as action recommendations for agents. Furthermore, our results suggest a higher correlation between fundamentals and outcomes under commitment.

We construct a two-sector overlapping generation model with endogenous fertility, where one sector produces goods and the other produces childcare services. The elasticity of fertility-related expenditures on services is crucial for determining labor participation and whether fertility converges to a steady state with monotone or oscillation. If capital intensity in the goods sector is greater than the products of elasticity and capital intensity in the service sector, then capital per capita and fertility converge to a steady state monotonically. Conversely, they converge to a steady state with oscillations, otherwise. We find an inverse J-shaped relationship between fertility and elasticity.

This paper explores the interaction between human capital and innovation in the process of economic growth. Using a model of endogenous growth, we focus on how taxes and other policy instruments affect the incentives to invest in human capital. In contrast to many other growth models we find that the taxation of human capital has a substantial negative effect on its accumulation. This in turn reduces innovation and, consequently, the income growth rate. More surprisingly, other policies that are intended to stimulate growth may have opposing effects on innovation and the accumulation of human capital. For example, while subsidies to research and to intermediate inputs do have positive effects on innovation and growth, they lead to a lower stock of human capital, in the empirically relevant case when the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is low.