This paper develops a general-equilibrium model that involves production technology and management service to study the emergence of firms from the perspective of saving transaction costs. Inframarginal analysis is used to formalize Coase and Cheung's theory of the firm and to generalize Yang...

The 'diamond effect' exists when a consumer's utility depends on the exchange value, not just on the intrinsic consumption effects of the good. Yew-Kwang Ng has discussed the optimal tax on a pure 'diamond' good. This paper extends Ng's model to cover mixed diamond goods. It uses three...

The institutional settings in China, including the land allocation system and the household registration system, lead to a rural–urban labour migration pattern that differs from that in other countries. Individual peasants' labour is often split (typically over different times of the year)...

This article examines why firms in Shanghai comply or over-comply with social insurance obligations in a regulatory environment where the expected punishment for non-compliance is low. Our first finding is that firms found to be in non-compliance in the first audit in 2001 were moved into a...

We examine the unit root properties of 16 Australian macroeconomic time series using monthly data spanning the period 1960-2004. In addition to the standard Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test, we implement one- and two-break endogenous structural break ADF-type unit root tests as well as one-...

Across the developing world education is seen as a means of raising levels of everyday wellbeing and is being linked to improved measures of productivity and economic growth. This paper employs a household production function framework to examine the determinants of school attendance among...

This paper develops a general equilibrium model to consider the effects of corruption caused by institutionalized privilege on economic welfare, the network size of division of labour and productivity. First a Walrasian equilibrium in a market economy is computed; then we consider the effects on...

This paper uses a model of endogenous theft and endogenous network division of labour to formalize some of the main principles of the economics of the state and to explore related issues concerning why new constitutional rules emerge and evolve. The model suggests that fiscal competition between...