Essays in microeconomics [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Philipp Weinschenk

Philipp Weinschenk

Informations

• Publié par: rheinische_friedrich-wilhelms-universitat_bonn
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 12
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

ESSAYS IN
MICROECONOMICS
Inaugural-Dissertation
zur Erlangung des Grades eines Doktors
der Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftswissenschaften
durch die
Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftliche Fakultät
der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität
Bonn
vorgelegt von
Philipp Weinschenk
aus Fellbach
Bonn 2009ii
Dekan: Porf. Dr. Christian Hillgruber
Erstreferent: Prof. Martin Hellwig, Ph.D.
Zweitreferent: Prof. Paul Heidhues, Ph.D.
Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 04.11.2009
Diese Dissertation ist auf dem Hochschulschriftenserver der ULB
Bonn
(http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/diss_online) elektronisch publiziert.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank Martin Hellwig for his valuable and precise advice. The interac-
tion with Paul Heidhues taught me a lot about industrial organization
and behavioral economics. Jörg Budde’s topics course brought me
and my co-authors solid knowledge about principal agent models and
the basis for our common paper.
I thank my co-authors and friends Fabian Herweg and Daniel Müller
for the close and excellent collaboration. I benefited a lot from our dis-
cussions and their help. Despite his aversion to industrial organization,
Felix Bierbrauer helped me a lot during my studies.
I am grateful for the comments and suggestions from: Patrick Bol-
˝ton, Stefanie Brilon, Christoph Engel, Jos Jansen, Botond Koszegi,
Michael Kurschilgen, Matthias Lang, Tymofiy Mylovanov, Klaas Schul-
ze, Nora Szech, and numerous seminar participants. I thank Brian
Cooper for correcting my texts on several occasions. I enjoyed and
still enjoy the research atmosphere at the Bonn Graduate School of
Economics and the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective
Goods.
I am grateful to my parents that they not only begot me, but also
constantly supported me. I thank my girlfriend ♥Andrea Wittke♥ for
her lovability and encouragements.ivContents
I INTRODUCTION 1
II PERSISTENCE OF MONOPOLY AND
RESEARCH SPECIALIZATION 7
II.1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
II.2 MODEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
II.3 ANALYSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
II.3.1 BERTRAND PROFITS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
II.3.2 RESEARCH DECISIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
II.3.3 RESULTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
II.4 DISCUSSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
II.4.1 EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
II.4.2 THE ROLE OF ASSUMPTION A1 . . . . . . . . 17
II.4.3 COMPARISON TO THE LITERATURE . . . . . . 18
II.4.4 TIMING AND ROBUSTNESS . . . . . . . . . . . 19
II.5 WELFARE ANALYSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
II.6 EXTENSION: AUCTION SETTING . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
II.7 CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
III ENTRY AND INCUMBENT INNOVATION 25
III.1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
III.2 MODEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
III.3 ANALYSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
III.3.1 BERTRAND COMPETITION AND ENTRY . . . 30
III.3.2 INVESTMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
III.4 ALTERNATIVE TIMING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34vi
III.5 HOW IMPORTANT ARE THE INCUMBENT’S INITIAL
COSTS? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
III.6 CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
IV AMBIGUITY IN A PRINCIPAL-AGENT MODEL 41
IV.1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
IV.2 MODELS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
IV.2.1 THE STANDARD LEN MODEL . . . . . . . . . . 44
IV.2.2 THE MODEL WITH AMBIGUITY AND AMBIGU-
ITY AVERSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
IV.3 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: VIOLATION OF THE IN-
FORMATIVENESS PRINCIPLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
IV.4 DISCUSSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
IV.4.1 WHEN PARTIES “AGREE TO DISAGREE” . . . 52
IV.4.2 MULTIPLE PRINCIPALS AND COMPETITION . 53
IV.4.3 AGENT’S WELFARE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
IV.4.4 HISTORY DEPENDENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
IV.5 CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
V THE OPTIMALITY OF SIMPLE CONTRACTS:
MORAL HAZARD AND LOSS AVERSION 57
V.1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
V.2 MODEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
V.3 ANALYSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
V.3.1 TWO POLAR CASES: PURE RISK AVERSION
VS. PURE LOSS AVERSION . . . . . . . . . . . 77
V.3.2 THE GENERAL CASE: LOSS AVERSION AND
RISK AVERSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
V.4 IMPLEMENTATION PROBLEMS, TURNING A BLIND
EYE, AND STOCHSTIC CONTRACTS . . . . . . . . . . 90
V.4.1 THE CASE OF A BINARY MEASURE OF PER-
FORMANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
V.4.2 INVALIDITY OF THE FIRST-ORDER APPROACH 91
V.4.3 TURNING A BLIND EYE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
V.4.4 BLACKWELL REVISITED . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95vii
V.5 ROBUSTNESS, EXTENSIONS, AND CONCLUSION . 97
VI TECHNOLOGY OF SKILL FORMATION AND
HIDDEN INFORMATION 101
VI.1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
VI.2 MODELS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
VI.2.1 CUNHA AND HECKMAN’S MODEL . . . . . . . 102
VI.2.2 THE MODEL WITH HIDDEN INFORMATION . . 103
VI.3 CONCLUSIONS & DICUSSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
VII APPENDICES 109
VII.1 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
VII.2DIX TO CHAPTER III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
VII.3 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
VII.4DIX TO CHAPTER V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
VII.5 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146viiiI. INTRODUCTION
This thesis contains five papers. Two belong to the field of industrial or-
ganization. Both are on innovation and the investment in it. The paper
“Persistence of Monopoly and Research Specialization”takes a new look
at monopoly persistence and explores which effects determine it. In“En-
try and Incumbent Innovation”, we investigate how the threat of entry
influences the innovation activity of an incumbent. Two papers belong
to the field of contract theory. They are on principal-agent relationships
with moral hazard. In“Ambiguity in a Principal-Agent Model”, we as-
sume that the agent’s knowledge about the statistical properties of the
performance measure is ambiguous and that the agent is averse to ambi-
guity. We investigate how ambiguity and ambiguity aversion change the
useofinformationandthepoweroftheincentiveswhichareoptimallyset.
In“The Optimality of Simple Contracts: Moral Hazard and Loss Aver-
sion”, Fabian Herweg, Daniel Muller, and I explore how an agent’s loss¨
aversion changes the complexity of the optimal contract. The last paper
is on the economics of education and human capital formation. In“The
Technology of Skill Formation and Hidden Information”, we consider a
modelofchilddevelopment,wheretheformationofhumancapitaloccurs
in multiple stages via investments. We explore how hidden information
about how to treat a young child best changes the optimal investment
plan. In the remainder of the introduction, we will explain the papers
and their results in more detail.
InChapterII, weinvestigatethepersistenceofmonopoliesinmarkets
with innovations. The extensive literature on the subject has discussed
this issue in terms of the efficiency effect and the replacement effect.
Since competition destroys profits, the efficiency effect predicts that the2
incumbent’s incentive to remain a monopolist through innovating is at
least as great as the entrant’s incentive to become a duopolist. The re-
placementeffectpredictstheopposite: theentrant’sincentivetoinnovate
is higher than the incumbent’s because only the incumbent takes into ac-
count that innovating replaces its existing technology. According to the
classical work of Gilbert and Newbery (1982), the efficiency effect deter-
mines the outcome, whereas in a seminal paper by Reinganum (1983) it
is the replacement effect.
We build a unifying model in which both effects are present. In our
model, the first-moving incumbent may be able to discourage the poten-
tial entrant from investing in research by investing itself. The outcomes
of research activities are uncertain. Therefore, preemption is less than
perfect. For high success probabilities, we obtain a result in the spirit
of Gilbert and Newbery (1982): preemption is almost perfect and so the
efficiency effect is the driving force. For low success probabilities the
incumbent can hardly preempt and so the replacement effect predomi-
nates. ThisresultisinthespiritofReinganum(1983). Aroughintuition
is that research is a powerful preemption device if and only if it is likely
to succeed.
Theformerresultsimplythatresearchwithahighsuccessprobability
is more likely done by the incumbent than by the potential entrant, and
it is vice versa for research with a low success probability. In this sense,
incumbents specialize in“safe”research, and potential entrants in“risky”
research. We also show that research undertaken by potential entrants
is, on average, “riskier” than that of incumbent firms. Moreover, the
probability of entry has an inverted U-s