Suchergebnisse

Warlords compete for turf that provides them with rents and 'taxable' resources but they can also offer a semblance of security within their respective territories. This article first examines two economic models of warlord competition. Because such competition takes place through the use of force or the threat of the use of force, more competition typically leads to lower material welfare as resources are wasted on unproductive arming and fighting. This is in contrast to ordinary economic models, in which typically greater competition leads to higher material welfare. Furthermore, rents from oil, diamonds, and even foreign aid crowd out production. In extreme cases this crowding out of ordinary production can be complete, whereby all economic resources can be devoted to the unproductive competition for rents. The article then reviews factors that lead either to actual war or to peace in the shadow of war. Because war is destrucrive, human beings are typically risk averse, and there exist numerous complementarities in production and consumption, we can expect peace in the shadow of war to be most often preferable by all parties. Actual war can take place because of incomplete information about the preferences and capabilities of the adversaries but also, somewhat surprisingly, when the shadow of the future is long.

Theoretical models based on the assumption that telecommunications is a natural monopoly no longer reflect reality. As a result, policymakers often lack the guidance of economic theorists. Competition in Telecommunications is written in a style accessible to managers, consultants, government officials, and others. Jean-Jacques Laffont and Jean Tirole analyse regulatory reform and the emergence of competition in network industries using the state-of-the-art theoretical tools of industrial organisation, political economy, and the economics of incentives. The book opens with background information for the reader who is unfamiliar with current issues in the telecommunications industry. The following sections focus on four central aspects of the recent deregulatory movement: the introduction of incentive regulation; one-way access (access given by a local network to the providers of complementary segments, such as long-distance or information services); the special nature of competition in an industry requiring two-way access (whereby competing networks depend on the mutual termination of calls); and universal service, in particular the two leading contenders for the competitively neutral provision of universal service: the use of engineering models to compute subsidies and the design of universal service auctions. The book concludes with a discussion of the Internet and regulatory institutions.

We consider a dynamic (differential) game with three players competing against each other. Each period each player can allocate his resources so as to direct his competition towards particular rivals -- we call such competition selective. The setting can be applied to a wide variety of cases: competition between firms, competition between political parties, warfare. We show that if the players are myopic, the weaker players eventually loose the game to their strongest rival. Vice versa, if the players value their future payoffs high enough, each player concentrates more on fighting his strongest opponent. Consequently, the weaker players grow stronger, the strongest player grows weaker and eventually all the players converge and remain in the game.

THE SEPARATION OF OWNERSHIP FROM CONTROL IN GOVERNMENT RENDERS POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS ONLY PARTLY SUBSERVIENT TO THE DEMANDS OF CONSUMER/TAXPAYERS. AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT COMPETITION VIA THE ELECTORAL PROCESS LEAVES POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS CONSIDERABLE LATITUDE BECAUSE OF THE RATIONAL IGNORANCE EFFECT (TULLOCK, 1967). BEGINNING WITH TIEBOUT (1956), IT HAS BEEN ARGUED THAT AT THE LOCAL LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT COMPETITION AMONG JURISDICTIONS RESTRICTS A BUREAUCRAT'S ABILITY TO PURSUE POLICIES WHICH DO NOT REFLECT THE DESIRES OF TAXPAYERS AND TO SHIRK THE MONITORING OF PUBLIC SERVICE PROVISION. RECENT THEORETICAL WORK BY WAGNER (1974) AND EPPLE AND ZELENITZ (1981) HAS SHOWN THAT JURISDICTIONAL COMPETITION IS INDEED EXPECTED TO ESTABLISH CONSTRAINTS ON THE CHOICES MADE BY LOCAL GOVERNMENTS AND TO INDUCE COST EFFECTIVENESS IN THE PROVISION OF LOCAL PUBLIC SERVICES. EPPLE AND ZELENITZ FOUND THAT SUCH CONSTRAINTS ARE EXPECTED TO EXIST, BUT ARE NOT SUFFICIENT TO PREVENT LOCAL GOVERNMENTS FROM EXERCISING SOME MONOPOLY POWER.

Is science a 'market of ideas'? Not according to the economics of science. Science is competitive, but scientific competition is not market competition. Nor is scientific competition the same as competition between universities. Scientific competition is, first of all, competition between individual scientists. Current science policies shift the boundary between scientific competition, where scientists provide public goods in the hope to acquire status among their peers, and market competition in science, where the results of research are private property protected by patents or other means, in favor of the market. However, the economic ring of the political slogans cannot conceal a serious lack of understanding of scientific competition behind the reform proposals.