Cross section consumer expenditure data are frequently used to make conclusions about consumer demand behavior. Such conclusions, however, can only be justified under certain assumptions, which are often left unstated in the empirical demand literature. An assumption of this type, the metonymy...

Recent research has shown that small deviations from optimizing behavior can have substantial effects on economic equilibria. Nonoptimizing demand behavior is of particular importance since individual consumer expenditure data often violate the strong axiom of revealed preference, and since the...

This paper presents an analysis of a recently invented new form of price regulation. An index of prices of monopolistically supplied goods must never exceed the retail price index minus X. The main results of the chapter are as follows: (i) If the constant X is politically chosen, price-cap...

We analyze the allocative role of money as a numeraire in an intertemporal general equilibrium model with incomplete financial markets and nominal financial instruments. It is shown that regardless of their return specification nominal assets in net supply increase the consumption risk and...

This paper studies the form of the tax equilibrium set in simple Diamond-Mirrlees models and characterizes the corresponding Laffer curves. The curves need not ever slope downward and can have multiple local maxima. Local information about them is thus not sufficient to place restrictions on...

This paper deals with price--cap regulation of a monopolistic distribution grid which sells a license to some retailer. The sale of the license is a long--term incomplete contract. Both the grid and the licensee engage in relationship--specific investments before the value and costs of the...

Target-cost pricing has been a widely applied formula in defence contracting. If this type of pricing arrangement is chosen, the seller's ex-post profit consists of a fixed payment plus some share of the cost overrun, that is the difference between an ex--ante agreed estimation of the production...