Imperfect Information (imperfect + information)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


IMPERFECT INFORMATION AND DIFFERENCES IN HOME OWNERSHIP INVESTMENT

PACIFIC ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 4 2004
Keiko Nosse Hirono
We study the advantages accruing to buyers who have complete information and who can pay less than the equilibrium price if sellers undervalue their properties. The reduction in home ownership investment can increase consumption or investment in other assets. We develop an empirical model to capture the gain to such buyers. We estimate this to have been 12.6%,27.6% of the equilibrium price of houses at maximum in the Tokyo metropolitan area during the 1980s. [source]


Imperfect Information and Training Quality

LABOUR, Issue 4 2005
Wendy Smits
It is therefore not possible to have training wages completely contingent upon the level of training provided. Training wages will be too high. This, in turn, prevents firms from recouping the full benefits from training and leads to underinvestment. The more general the training, the more severe this underinvestment problem. [source]


TAXI DEREGULATION AND TRANSACTION COSTS

ECONOMIC AFFAIRS, Issue 2 2006
Christian Seibert
Deregulation of taxi markets has the potential to deliver significant benefits. However, it presents the problem of transaction costs and in particular problems linked with imperfect information and co-ordination. This article argues that the use of a centralised intermediary in deregulated taxi markets can overcome these problems so that the benefits of competition are maximised, without the need for government fare regulation. [source]


Producing a Modern Agricultural Frontier: Firms and Cooperatives in Eastern Mato Grosso, Brazil

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3 2006
Wendy Jepson
Abstract: In economic geography, explanations of emerging agricultural frontier regions are dominated by two theoretical perspectives: land-rent theory and political economy. This article advances current research by applying concepts from new institutional economics to reconcile these models. Drawing from a case of frontier expansion in eastern Mato Grosso state, I focus the debate on an institutional perspective. Two organizations, a colonization firm and an agricultural cooperative, are examined. The combined activities of cooperatives and firms reduced the overall costs of production in regions that are defined by high transactions costs (for example, land-tenure insecurity, poor links to the market, and imperfect information) and risk. Each organization linked individual farmers to necessary resources for commercial farming (for instance, land, capital, technology, and markets) and provided an organizational context for farmers to respond to land-tenure conflict and land degradation. The consequence was an increase in the marginal productivity of land, which translated into an expanded commercial agricultural frontier. [source]


Estimation of the consumption CAPM with imperfect sample separation information

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FINANCE & ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2008
Andrei Semenov
Abstract We propose a consumption-based capital asset pricing model consumption (CAPM), in which the pricing kernel is calculated as the average of individuals' intertemporal marginal rates of substitution weighted by the probabilities of holding the asset in question. These probabilities are conditional on available imperfect sample separation information and are estimated simultaneously with the parameters of Euler equations. Using data from the US Consumer Expenditure Survey, we find that the consumption CAPM with probability-weighted agents yields a more precise estimate of the agent's risk aversion compared with the model, in which the available imperfect information on asset-holding status is erroneously regarded as a perfect sample separation indicator. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Development of applications with fuzzy objects in modern programming platforms

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS, Issue 11 2005
F. Berzal
Most of the applications that are currently being developed use object-oriented programming technology, as is the case of those applications built with the Java or C, languages. Data management has not kept out of this trend, and object-oriented and object-relational database management systems have arisen as a result. Soft-computing applications need to manage imperfect data and Fuzzy Sets Theory has proven to be a good choice for accomplishing the task of imperfect data management. In this article we present a framework that allows the programmers of soft-computing applications to deal with fuzzy objects in a transparent and intuitive way. This framework can be used to develop an object-oriented code in those systems that conform with current hip object-oriented languages, so that imperfect information can be managed. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 20: 1117,1136, 2005. [source]


When Redistribution Leads to Regressive Taxation

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMIC THEORY, Issue 4 2007
CYRIL HARITON
We introduce labor contracts in a framework of optimal redistribution: firms have some local market power and try to discriminate among heterogeneous workers. In this setting we show that if the firms have perfect information, i.e., they perfectly discriminate against workers and take all the surplus, the best tax function is flat. If firms have imperfect information, i.e., if they offer incentive contracts, then (under some assumptions) the best redistributive taxation is regressive. [source]


Natural Disaster Insurance and the Equity-Efficiency Trade-Off

JOURNAL OF RISK AND INSURANCE, Issue 1 2008
Pierre Picard
This article investigates the role of private insurance in the prevention and mitigation of natural disasters. We characterize the equity-efficiency trade-off faced by the policymakers under imperfect information about individual prevention costs. It is shown that a competitive insurance market with actuarial rate making and compensatory tax-subsidy transfers is likely to dominate regulated uniform insurance pricing rules or state-funded assistance schemes. The model illustrates how targeted tax cuts on insurance contracts can improve the incentives to prevention while compensating individuals with high prevention costs. The article highlights the complementarity between individual incentives through tax cuts and collective incentives through grants to the local jurisdictions where risk management plans are enforced. [source]


Price-matching policy with imperfect information

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 6 2005
Article first published online: 25 AUG 200, Wen Mao
The model of price-matching policy emphasizes on the importance of information imperfection. The demand is derived based on the assumptions that consumers have different reservation prices and different preferences over location. When a firm undercuts its competitor's price, it changes the demand structure of the market. The result shows that price-matching policies are anticompetitive, but they do not facilitate monopoly price. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Foraging on spatially distributed resources with sub-optimal movement, imperfect information, and travelling costs: departures from the ideal free distribution

OIKOS, Issue 9 2010
Shuichi Matsumura
Ideal free distribution (IFD) theory offers an important baseline for predicting the distribution of foragers across resource patches. Yet it is well known that IFD theory relies on several over-simplifying assumptions that are unlikely to be met in reality. Here we relax three of the most critical assumptions: (1) optimal foraging moves among patches, (2) omniscience about the utility of resource patches, and (3) cost-free travelling between patches. Based on these generalizations, we investigate the distributions of a constant number of foragers in models with explicit resource dynamics of logistic type. We find that, first, when foragers do not always move to the patch offering maximum intake rate (optimal foraging), but instead move probabilistically according to differences in resource intake rates between patches (sub-optimal foraging), the distribution of foragers becomes less skewed than the IFD, so that high-quality patches attract fewer foragers. Second, this homogenization is strengthened when foragers have less than perfect knowledge about the utility of resource patches. Third, and perhaps most surprisingly, the introduction of travelling costs causes departures in the opposite direction: the distribution of sub-optimal foragers approaches the IFD as travelling costs increase. We demonstrate that these three findings are robust when considering patches that differ in the resource's carrying capacity or intrinsic growth rate, and when considering simple two-patch and more complex multiple-patch models. By overcoming three major over-simplifications of IFD theory, our analyses contribute to the systematic investigation of ecological factors influencing the spatial distribution of foragers, and thus help in deriving new hypotheses that are testable in empirical systems. A confluence of theoretical and empirical studies that go beyond classical IFD theory is essential for improving insights into how animal distributions across resource patches are determined in nature. [source]


Patch area, substrate depth, and richness affect giving-up densities: a test with mourning doves and cottontail rabbits

OIKOS, Issue 11 2009
Mohammad A. Abu Baker
We compared the foraging behavior of mourning doves Zenaida macroura and cottontail rabbits Sylvilagus floridanus in patches that varied in initial food abundance, surface area and substrate depth. We measured giving-up densities (GUD), food harvest and proportion of food harvested to investigate their ability to respond to characteristics of resource patches. GUDs have been analyzed in three ways: grams of per patch, grams per unit surface area (GUDAREA), and grams per unit volume of sand (GUDVOL). Mourning doves and cottontails exhibited similar responses to resource density and sand depth. Both foragers detected and responded to variation in initial food abundance. The proportion of food harvested from a patch increased from 40.7, 43.8 to 48.3% (for the doves) and 34.9, 35.8 to 38.4% (for the rabbits) in patches of low, medium and high initial food abundance, respectively. Deeper substrates reduced the foragers' encounter probability with food, decreased patch quality and resulted in higher GUDs (60% higher in the deepest relative to shallowest substrate) and lower harvests. A significant interaction between initial food abundance and substrate depth showed that both species were willing to dig deeper in patches with higher resource density. Patch size (surface area) had no effect on food harvest or the proportion of food harvested. Consequently, GUDAREA and GUDVOL increased in patches with a smaller surface area. Smaller patches appeared to hamper the dove's and cottontail's movement across the surface. Our results revealed that mourning doves and cottontails forage under imperfect information. Both species were able to respond to patch properties by biasing their feeding efforts toward rich and easy opportunities, however, mourning doves were more efficient at food harvesting. The interaction of patch area, volume and food abundance directly influenced food harvest. Such resource characters occur under natural situations where food varies in abundance, area of distribution, and accessibility. [source]


Theory and Practice in the Design of Physician Payment Incentives

THE MILBANK QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2001
James C. Robinson
Combining the economic literature on principal-agent relationships with examples of marketplace innovations allows analysis of the evolution of methods for paying physicians. Agency theory and the economic principles of performance-based compensation are applied in the context of imperfect information, risk aversion, multiple interrelated tasks, and team production efficiencies. Fee-for-service and capitation are flawed methods of motivating physicians to achieve specific goals. Payment innovations that blend elements of fee-for-service, capitation, and case rates can preserve the advantages and attenuate the disadvantages of each. These innovations include capitation with fee-for-service carve-outs, department budgets with individual fee-for-service or "contact" capitation, and case rates for defined episodes of illness. The context within which payment incentives are embedded, includes such nonprice mechanisms as screening and monitoring and such organizational relationships as employment and ownership. The analysis has implications for health services research and public policy with respect to physician payment incentives. [source]


Product Safety Provision and Consumers' Information

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC PAPERS, Issue 4 2000
Stephan Marette
Economic mechanisms related to the provision of product safety are explored, with particular attention paid to the structure of consumers' information. The case of perfect information, of experience goods (for which consumers detect product safety after consumption) and of credence goods (where consumers cannot link a disease to a particular product consumed in the past) are explored. Imperfect competition is assumed in the supply sector. In the case of both perfect information and experience goods, market equilibrium is characterised by a less-than-socially optimal provision of safety, when the safety effort is costly. With credence goods, imperfect information leads to the absence of safety effort and to a market closure. Different types of public regulation aiming at increasing consumer protection and circumventing market failures are explored. Particular attention is paid to minimum safety standards, labels and liability enforcement. The relative efficiency of these instruments depends on the information structure. In the cases of perfect information and experience goods, a minimum safety standard can be an efficient instrument. Regulation is necessary but not sufficient to avoid market failure in the case of credence goods. [source]


Games in Dynamic-Epistemic Logic

BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, Issue 4 2001
Johan Van Benthem
The author discusses games of both perfect and imperfect information at two levels of structural detail: players' local actions, and their global powers for determining outcomes of the game. Matching logical languages are proposed for both. In particular, at the ,action level', imperfect information games naturally model a combined ,dynamic-epistemic language', and correspondences are found between special axioms in this language and particular modes of playing games with their information dynamics. At the ,outcome level', the paper presents suitable notions of game equivalence, and some simple representation results. [source]