Logic is a harsh mistress: welfare economics for economists

Leeson, Peter T.

doi:10.1017/s1744137419000109

Cited by 52 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 18 publications

(16 reference statements)

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“…Research on commons also emphasized the meta-political challenge that the government requires incentives to provide communities with autonomy to self-govern (Agrawal and Ostrom, 2001), as well as the analysis of the relationships between collective action and governance of commons (Poteete and Ostrom, 2004). When combined with the idea that change in institutions depends on the cost and benefits to the privatizers (Allen, 2015; Leeson, 2019), the analysis of the incentives of the FCC/NTIA, along with coalitions that may oppose self-governance, is an important future area of research.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spectrum anarchy: why self-governance of the radio spectrum works better than we think

Bustamante

Gomez

Murtazashvili

et al. 2020

Journal of Institutional Economics

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The exploitation of radio-electric spectrum bands for wireless transmission purposes has some features of the commons: it is subject to congestion and conflict without rules governing its use. The Coasean approach is to assign private property rights to overcome the tragedy of the spectrum commons. The process of assigning these rights is still centralized, with governments assigning property rights through agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission and National Telecommunications and Information Administration in the USA. We consider the possibility of self-governance of the spectrum. We use insights from the study of common pool resources governance to analyze the emergence of property rights to spectrum in a ‘government-less’ environment in which norms, rules, and enforcement mechanisms are solely the product of the repeated interactions among participants in the network. Our case study considers the spectrum-sharing arrangement in the 1,695–1,710 MHz band. Using agent-based modeling (ABM), we show that self-governance of the spectrum can work and under what conditions it is likely to improve the efficiency of the allocation of property rights.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spectrum anarchy: why self-governance of the radio spectrum works better than we think

Bustamante

Gomez

Murtazashvili

et al. 2020

Journal of Institutional Economics

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“…Several solutions to this puzzle have been suggested. One type of solution is based on the view that every observed institution is efficient (Leeson, 2019) and therefore, the inefficiency of in-kind gifts is only apparent. One such solution is based on the idea of signalling.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Money or in-kind gift? Evidence from red packets in China

Hudík¹,

Fang

2019

Journal of Institutional Economics

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In Western societies, in-kind gifts are generally more common than money gifts. However, exchange of in-kind gifts potentially involves inefficiency. Several models have been suggested to explain the in-kind gift-giving practice as a rational behaviour under certain assumptions about givers’ preferences and information and/or technological constraints. Unlike many Western societies, China has a long tradition of money gift-giving. So-called red packets are commonly exchanged. We argue that models developed to rationalise Western norms of gift-giving cannot fully account for Chinese gift-giving practices, and some Chinese practices even contradict existing theories. We collect Chinese household data through two surveys to establish stylised facts about gift-giving. We find that money gifts are commonly appropriate, depending on the occasion and relationship between givers and receivers. Moreover, for every occasion and relationship, money is more appropriate than gift vouchers. Finally, unlike studies focusing on Western gift-giving, our study finds no evidence that givers need to compensate receivers with higher value when giving money gifts rather than in-kind gifts. Our results are consistent with the view that the acceptability of money vis-à-vis in-kind gifts is governed primarily by social convention rather than information and technological constraints or the specific preferences of givers.

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“…How, then, do I think we should define it? In the vein of Economics Nobel Laureate Becker (1976, 1993) and, before him, should-have-been Economics Nobel Laureate Ludwig von Mises (1949): as an approach to human behavior grounded in the assumption that individuals maximize (Leeson, 2020). 2 In this view, economic analysis is a theoretical approach, not an empirical one – a way of thinking, if you like, not a way of testing.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%