Firms can adjust to shocks by laying off and hiring workers or by adjusting the hours worked by each worker. Adjustment of hours provides job security for employed workers. Adjustment of employment generates higher labor market turnover and, thus, better job prospects for the unemployed. Since...

In a standard English auction in which bidders’ valuations are independently drawn from a common distribution, a standard regularity condition is that the survivor function of the distribution be log concave. In an auction where the seller sets a fixed price, the equivalent condition requires...

This paper derives a general sufficient condition for existence and uniqueness in continuous games using a variant of the contraction mapping theorem applied to mapping from a subset of the real line on to itself. We first prove this contraction mapping variant, and then show how the existence...

This paper is the second in a symposium of papers that examine the 2009 report by Frank Wolak into the New Zealand electricity market. In this paper, we discuss the Report’s measures of the ability and incentives of generators to exercise unilateral market power. We show that the construction...

This paper is the first in a symposium of papers that examine the 2009 report by Frank Wolak into the New Zealand electricity market. The Wolak report concluded that there had been a cumulative total of $4.3b (NZD) of overcharging in the New Zealand wholesale market over a period of seven years....

This paper discusses the desirability of government-legislated job security. Job security may be beneficial to employed workers, but it can also impose a cost on unemployed workers by lowering labour market turnover and thereby increasing the average duration of unemployment spells. This...

A recent paper has suggested a reason why there might be a lasting trade-off between inflation and unemployment at low inflation rates. This has led some economists to recommend that Canada increase its inflation rate. The idea underlying this view is that, because firms are reluctant to cut...

Vertical separation of generation from electricity retailing has often been required as a condition of electricity market liberalisation. A well-developed and liquid contracts market is similarly suggested as necessary to manage the resulting wholesale market risks which risks are further...

This paper is the first in a symposium of papers that examine the 2009 report by Frank Wolak into the New Zealand electricity market. The Wolak report concluded that there had been a cumulative total of $4.3b (NZD) of overcharging in the New Zealand wholesale market over a period of seven years....

Seamus Hogan presented Vertical Integration and Market Power in Electricity Markets at an ISCR seminar in Wellington on 1 May 2007