Within a production theoretic framework, this paper considers an axiomatic approach to benchmark selection. It is shown that two simple and weak axioms: efficiency and comprehensive monotonicity characterize a natural family of benchmarks which typically becomes unique. Further axioms are added...

Is variation in empirical mortality across populations consistent with a hypothesis of selec-tion? To examine this proposition an extended frailty mortality model is put forward; incor-porating biological frailty; a common non-parametric hazard, joint for men and women, rep-resenting endogenous...

This paper considers the market for digital music. We claim that the combination of the MP3 format and peer-to-peer networks has made music non-excludable and this feature is essential for the understanding of the economics of the music market. We study optimal business models for selling...

In this paper we analyze the welfare properties of the set of Drèze equilibria for economies with incomplete markets and firms. The well known fact that a Drèze equilibrium need not be constrained Pareto optimal is often attributed to a lack of coordination between firms. We show that there...

The present paper concerns the microeconomic basis for the macroeconomic demand constraint in the form of the Keynesian demand price constraint: taking Say into account denoted by the extended Keynesian demand price constraint. Price flexibility at a scale sufficient for the working of the...

We apply a Bernheim-Whinston (1986) type mechanism to a situation where a single buyer with uncertain demand wishes to buy from a small number of suppliers. We let suppliers bid a payment contingent on own quantity supplied, and another payment contingent on the realization of total demand. We...

The present financial and economic crisis has revealed a systemic failure of academic economics and emphasized the need to re-think how to model economic phenomena. Lawson (2009) seems concerned that critics of standard models now will fill academic journals with contributions that make the same...

In this article we show that technological parameter estimates obtained by estimating a cost function that is derivable as the dual of a production function can be biased and inconsistent if the stochastic structure of the model arises from certain types of behavioural assumptions made about...

This paper documents the evolution of variables central to understanding the creation of an Atlantic Economy in wheat between the US and the UK in the nineteenth century. The cointegrated VAR model is then applied to the period 1838-1913 in order to find long-run relationships between these...

Based on a money market analysis the paper discusses possible pitfalls in acroeconomic inference related to inadequate stochastic model formulation. A number of questions related to concepts such as empirical and theoretical steady-states, speed of adjustment, feed-back and interaction effects,...