An auction theoretical approach to fiscal wars

I examine a situation where a firm has to choose to locate a new factory in one of several jurisdictions and it depends on the private information held by each jurisdiction. Jurisdiction compete for the location of the new factory. This competition may take the form of expenditures already incurred on infraestructure, commitments to spend on infraestructure, tax incentives or even cash payments. The model combines two elements that are usually considered separately; competition is desirable because we want the factory to be located in the jurisdiction that values it the most, but competition in itself is wasteful. I show that expected total amount paid to the firm under a large family of arrangements. Moreover, I show that the ex-ante optimal mechanism that guarantees that the firm chooses the jurisdiction with the highest value for the factory, minimizes the total expected payment to the firm, and balances the budget in an ex-ante sense - can be implemented by running a standard auction and subsidizing participation.

Hybrid Auctions I: Theory

In this paper we examine the properties of a hybrid auction that combines a sealed bid and an ascending auction. In this auction, each bidder submits a sealed bid. Once the highest bid is known, the bidder who submitted it is declared the winner if her bid is higher than the second highest by more than a predetermined amount or percentage. If at least one more bidder submitted a bid su¢ciently close to the highest bid (that is, if the di¤erence between this bid and the highest bid is smaller than the predetermined amount or percentage) the quali…ed buyers compete in an open ascending auction that has the highest bid of the …rst stage as the reserve price. Quali…ed bidders include not only the highest bidder in the …rst stage but also those who bid close enough to her. We show that this auction generates more revenue than a standard auction. Although this hybrid auction does not generate as much revenue as the optimal auction, it is ex-post e¢cient.

Why do bidders drop out from a sequential auction

In actual sequential auctions, 1) bidders typically incur a cost in continuing from one sale to the next, and 2) bidders decide whether or not to continue. To investigate the question "why do bidders drop out," we define a sequential auction model with continuation costs and an endogenously determined number of bidders at each sale, and we characterize the equilibria in this model. Simple examples illustrate the effect of several possible changes to this model.

The land assembly problem revisited

As in the standard land assembly problem, a developer wants to buy two adjacent blocks of land belonging to two di¤erent owners. The value of the two blocks of land to the developer is greater than the sum of the individual values of the blocks for each owner. Unlike the land assembly literature, however, our focus is on the incentive that each lot owner has to delay the start of negotiations, rather than on the public goods nature of the problem. An incentive for delay exists, for example, when owners perceive that being last to sell will allow them to capture a larger share of the joint surplus from the development. We show that competition at point of sale can cause equilibrium delay, and that cooperation at point of sale will eliminate delay.

Endogenous transactions costs in multi-seller model

vVe examine the problem of a buyer who wishes to purehase and eombine ti. objeets owned by n individual owners to realize a higher V'illue. The owners are able to delay their entry into the sale proeess: They ean either seU now 01' seU later. Among other assumptions, the simple assumptions of compef'if'irnl, · .. that the presenee of more owners at point of sale reduees their surplus .. · and di..,(Jyun,fúl,g lead to interesting results: There is eostly delay in equilibdum. rvIoreover, with suffidently strong eompetition, the probability of delay inereases with n. Thus, buyers who diseount the future \\i11 faee inereased eosts as the number of owners inereases. The souree of transaetions eosts is the owners' desire to dis-eoordinate in the presenee of eompetition. These eosts are unrelated to transaetions eosts eurrently identified in the literature, spedfieally those due to asymmetrie information, 01' publie goods problems where players impose negative externalities on eaeh other by under-eontributing.

Porque favorecer firmas nacionais?

In this paper we offer a rationale for the existence of preferences for domestic…rms in government procurement. When the domestic…rm’s probability of completion of a government contract is larger than the foreign …rms probability of completion, the government should favor domestic…rms in order to maximize the expected net bene…tof the project. We compute the…rms’ equilibrium strategies for a lowest offer procurement auction. We also compute numerically the level of preferences that maximizes the government’s net expected bene…t under different parameter values.

Synergies and price trends in sequential auctions

In this paper we consider sequential auctions where an individual’s value for a bundle of objects is either greater than the sum of the values for the objects separately (positive synergy) or less than the sum (negative synergy). We show that the existence of positive synergies implies declining expected prices. When synergies are negative, expected prices are increasing. There are several corollaries. First, the seller is indi¤erent between selling the objects simultaneously as a bundle or sequentially when synergies are positive. Second, when synergies are negative, the expected revenue generated by the simultaneous auction can be larger or smaller than the expected revenue generated by the sequential auction. In addition, in the presence of positive synergies, an option to buy the additional object at the price of the …rst object is never exercised in the symmetric equilibrium and the seller’s revenue is unchanged. Under negative synergies, in contrast, if there is an equilibrium where the option is never exercised, then equilibrium prices may either increase or decrease and, therefore, the net e¤ect on the seller’s revenue of the introduction of an option is ambiguous. Finally, we examine two special cases with asymmetric players. In the …rst case, players have distinct synergies. In this example, even if one player has positive synergies and the other has negative synergies, it is still possible for expected prices to decline. In the second case, one player wants two objects and the remaining players want one object each. For this example, we show that expected prices may not necessarily decrease as predicted by Branco (1997). The reason is that players with singleunit demand will generally bid less than their true valuations in the …rst period. Therefore, there are two opposing forces; the reduction in the bid of the player with multiple-demand in the last auction and less aggressive bidding in the …rst auction by the players with single-unit demand.

Duplication of R&D and industry concentration

The purpose of the literature on Research Joint Ventures (RJV), pioneered by DíAspremont and Jacquemin (1988) and Kamien, Muller, and Zang (1992), has been to combine the best of two worlds: to appropriately deal with R&D spillovers while preserving competition in the product market. Moreover, RJVs eliminate duplication of R&D. Thus, at least in theory, RJVs dominate other solutions such as subsidies. If, however, we are concerned about risks of cartelization, then Spenceís (1984) subsidy-based solution for independently acting firms, is a viable alternative that cannot be dismissed. Indeed, in contrast to the previous literature, we find that in the presence of R&D subsidies, market performance may unambiguously improve with the number of firms in the market.

Reforma previdenciária: em busca de incentivos para atrair o trabalhador autônomo

Este artigo busca modelar que incentivos são capazes de influenciar a decisão do trabalhador autônomo de participar ou não do sistema público de Previdência (INSS) utilizando um arcabouço de Teoria de Contratos (modelo de Principal e Agente). Por conta de alterações nas regras referentes à cessão de benefícios previdenciários presentes na Constituição Federal de 1988, supunha-se que os trabalhadores de renda mais baixa teriam incentivo para saírem do sistema. A análise empírica, entretanto, contradiz as previsões do modelo. Há um movimento generalizado de saída do sistema público de previdência e esse movimento É mais acentuado exatamente no grupo dos autônomos mais ricos. Em termos teóricos isto é explicado como uma violação das restrições de compatibilidade de incentivos. Em termos práticos pode-se pensar na maior oferta de fundos de pensão privados existente no mercado, concorrendo com o INSS.

"PETROBRÁS" : seu papel na politica do petroleo e o processo de internacionalização econômica

Partindo da análise histórica acerca dos fatores que conduziram o Estado a se envolver na questão do petróleo e, consequentemente, criar um instrumento de política pública como a Petrobrás, esta dissertação estuda o desenvolvimento da estatal desde a sua institucionalização até o momento presente, enfatizando as mudanças que vêm sendo conduzidas para o ajustamento do seu papel na implementação da política de petróleo às transformações decorrentes do processo de internacionalização dos sistemas econômicos nacionais.

O imposto predial e territorial urbano como instrumento de controle o uso do solo urbano

o desenvolvimento urbano tem produzido -inúmeras dificuldades referentes ã ocupação do solo, cujo contro le está a cargo dos Municlpios, embora haja interferência das outras esferas governamentais. Os instrumentos normalmente util~zados têm-se mostrado insuficientes para regular com resultados positivos essa ocupação, sendo necessária a busca de novos meios para fazer frente ao problema. o imposto predial e territorial urbano - IPTU, por sua vez, embora permitindo, por suas caracterlsticas, sua utilização com esse objetivo, não tem sido posto em pri _tica regularmente com outra finalidade que não seja a de constituir-se em fonte de receita municipal. O instituto da extrafiscalidade, por meio do qual se pode dar outras funções ao IPTU, vem sendo pratic~ do basicamente sob duas formas, a da isenção e a da redução do imposto, como se pod~ ver de numerosos exemplos encontr~ dos no pals. Quando aplicado de modo inovador, teve sua constitucionalidade rejeitada pelos tribunais, por vlcio na • I •• elaboração da lei (casa do Municlpio de Americana), ou nao surtiu os efeitos esperados, pelo próprio abandono da ideia (caso do Projeto CURA). A conjugação da extrafiscalidade ao IPTU, forme proposto neste trabalho, ao tempo em que atende con -as preliminares-constitucionais-legais, pode ser útil aos Muni clpios que se defrontam com o problema da urbanização acelerada, malgrado empecilhos de caráter administrativo que possa conter, superáveis mediante esforço a ser realizado pela Administração municipal.