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Recent Submissions

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    (De)regulation and market thickness
    (University of Waterloo, 2013-03-11) Forand, Jean Guillaume; Maheshri, Vikram
    Regulation is a set of constraints imposed on transactions between buyers and sellers. We introduce a dynamic frictional matching model with horizontal differentiation and nontransferable utility in which a regulator determines permissible transactions. We show the existence and uniqueness of a market equilibrium for any level of regulation and characterize the regulator's optimal choice of regulatory environment. We argue that in 'thin', markets, regulation can correct market failure arising from mismatch between buyers and sellers. However, in 'thick' markets, deregulation is optimal, as a regulator can rely on market participants' equilibrium behavior instead of explicit constraints on economic activities.
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    Competing through information provision
    (University of Waterloo, 2012-04) Forand, Jean Guillaume
    This paper studies the symmetric equilibria of a two-buyer, two-seller model of directed search in which sellers commit to information provision. More informed buyers have better differentiated private valuations and extract higher rents from trade. When sellers cannot commit to sale mechanisms, information provision is higher under competition than under monopoly, yet partial information is provided when sellers are price-setters. In contrast, when sellers commit to both information provision and sale mechanisms, I identify simple conditions under which sellers post auctions and provide full information in every equilibrium, ensuring that all equilibrium outcomes are constrained efficient. Sellers capture the efficiency gains from increased information and compete only over non-distortionary rents offered to buyers.
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    Exiting poverty: Does sex matter?
    (University of Waterloo, 2013-09-25) Curtis, Lori J.; Rybczynski, Kathleen
    While Murphy, Zhang & Dionne (2012) report a slight decrease in the average duration of poverty spells in Canada over the past decade, little is understood about the factors associated with poverty duration in Canada, nor which factors, if any, may affect women and men differently. Moreover, research pays scant attention to how far Canadians transition out of poverty. For example, some may exit poverty only marginally while others exit to much higher incomes. We investigate the determinants of poverty duration among women and men in Canada. A major contribution of this paper is the examination of poverty duration across different exit destinations (competing risks); exits to just above the poverty line versus exits to higher levels of income. We find that nearly 1/4 of poverty spells end within 110% of the poverty line (near poverty). Many of those that exit to near poverty experience multiple spells. As expected, we find that higher education increases the probability of transitioning to higher income levels, but very little is correlated with exits near poverty relative to not exiting. The longer the poverty spell, the lower the probability of exit, particularly to higher income levels. We find few significant gender differences in the coefficient estimates. However, several factors associated with exit to higher income levels differ from those factors that are associated with exits to near poverty.
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    A theory of top income taxation and social insurance
    (University of Waterloo, 2013-10) Gonzalez, Francisco M.; Wen, Jean-Francois
    The development of the welfare state in the Western economies between 1930 and 1990 coincided with a puzzling pattern in the taxation of top incomes. Effective tax rates at the top increased sharply but then gradually decreased, even as social transfers continued rising. We propose a new theory of the development of the welfare state to explain these facts. Our main insight is that social insurance and top income taxation are substitutes for averting social conflict. We emphasize the role of the Great Depression as a source of aggregate risk, and argue that the rise of the welfare state can be understood as a process of exploiting efficiency gains in response to gradual technological improvements in the provision of social insurance. Our detailed arguments build on the policy histories of the United States, Great Britain, and Sweden.
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    Markovian elections
    (University of Waterloo, 2013-10-09) Duggan, John; Forand, Jean Guillaume
    We establish existence and continuity properties of equilibria in a model of dynamic elections with a discrete (countable) state space and general policies and preferences. We provide conditions under which there is a representative voter in each state, and we give characterization results in terms of the equilibria of an associated "representative voting game." When the conditions for these results are not met, we provide examples that uncover new classes of dynamic political failures.