Second-best Level Research Articles

Social welfare maximization by optimal toll design for congestion management: models and comprehensive numerical results

The purpose of this paper is to present a bi-level-based optimization model and develop a genetic algorithms (GA)-based method to solve the optimal toll design with elastic demand problem for congestion management and to determine the second-best linked-based optimal toll locations and toll levels simultaneously. The upper-level subprogram is to maximize the total social welfare given certain toll level constraints. The lower level subprogram is a traditional user equilibrium problem with elastic demand. The proposed GA model is applied to the Sioux Falls network, which has 76 links and 24 OD-pairs, assuming homogeneous users. Comprehensive numerical results including solutions achieved under continuous tolling and discrete tolling schemes, tolling on optimized links and tolling on heuristically selected most congested links are carefully presented and compared. The impact of value of time and the elastic demand sensitivity are also comprehensively investigated.

The Social Marginal Cost Curve and a Corner Solution of the Second-Best Level of Public Good Provision: A Review and an Extension

Summary Assume that the private goods and the public good are weakly separable, the private goods are gross complements, and the private utility function is a homogeneous of degree one function with constant elasticity of substitution. We demonstrate that, under commodity taxation, the social marginal cost curve of public good provision is initially upward sloping and eventually becomes downward sloping. Moreover, the social marginal cost eventually falls below the private marginal cost. These unusual properties arise from a demand-shift effect: An increase in the tax rate raises the marginal willingness to pay for the public good since it pushes up the unit cost of private utility, hence making the public good more attractive than private goods. In other words, the supply of the public good creates its own demand when the funding to cover production costs is raised through distortionary commodity taxes. It follows that there may exist three solutions to the first-order condition for the second-best problem: two of them are interior solutions and one is a corner solution.

Anxiety level and decision-making among Norwegian top-class soccer referees

The purpose of this study was to examine the level of anxiety experienced by Norwegian top-class soccer referees while officiating, and to predict the level of anxiety according to refereeing level and perceived refereeing competence. Also investigated were referees' perceptions of how crowd noise and disturbance from players and/or coaches, failure (i.e. mistakes) in refereeing, and aggressive behaviour by players and/or coaches influence their decision-making when officiating. A total of 83 (response rate: 84.7%) referees (73 men and 10 women) aged 20–46 years (mean = 33.2 years) completed our questionnaire using SurveyXact, a web-based program for conducting electronic questionnaires. The mean level of anxiety for all referees in the sample was 28 (SD = 5.4), as assessed using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Form Y. A regression analysis showed that referees attending the premier league in Norway typically scored higher on anxiety compared with referees working at the second-best level. Furthermore, the referees who perceived their competence as being weaker or average (compared with their colleagues) scored significantly higher on anxiety than did the other referees (the “best” or “very best” groups). The majority of referees reported that noise and disturbance, failure in refereeing, and aggressive behaviour did not affect their decision-making (frequency of disagreement, 80–95%).

Road pricing with optimal mass transit

This paper considers the second-best policy problem that arises when auto travel is priced below its marginal cost and there is a substitute mass transit mode. Using analytical methods, a global comparison is made between the second-best levels of transit service and the fare and their first-best levels. The fact that the results are global permits an application to road pricing not possible with the local results of Kraus (2003).

On second-best policing effort against the illegal disposal of recyclable waste

In this paper, we construct a partial equilibrium model of a product that can be manufactured by using a recycled material as well as a virgin natural resource. In particular, we consider the possibility that a household may resort to the illicit disposal of its waste, such as midnight dumping, instead of discarding it properly. Our focus is on conducting a comparative static analysis on the second-best level of the government’s policing effort to counter illegal disposal. More specifically, we examine how the government should adjust the effort level in response to changes in the environmental damage cost of illegal disposal and the cost associated with exported waste.

Ramsey, Pigou, Heterogenous Agents, and Non-Atmospheric Consumption Externalities

This paper analyzes the effects of non-atmospheric consumption externalities on optimal commodity taxation and on the social cost and optimal levels of public good provision. A negative consumption externality, by lowering the social cost of public good provision, may require the second-best level of public good provision to exceed the first-best level. If those households who are most important for building up the consumption reference level respond the least to commodity taxation, heterogeneity may imply an equity-efficiency tradeoff. This tradeoff is present only if the consumption externality is of the non-atmospheric type.

Envy and pricing of quality in adverse selection

The paper analyzes the optimal pricing of quality when consumers feel envious of other purchase deals. The influence of envy on the optimal pricing of quality varies depending on whether consumers are concerned about envy in payments or in rents. If consumers compare their payments with those of other consumers, the firm has an incentive to produce lower quality than the first-best level for the high valuation consumer and higher quality than the second-best level for the low valuation consumer. Conversely, when consumers’ disutility from envy arises from envy in rents, the trade-off between efficiency and rent extraction becomes more serious than in the situation where there is no envy.

WAGE SUBSIDY AND WELFARE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

This paper seeks to answer if wage subsidy to workers displaced due to trade reform raises welfare in a developing country. We use a general equilibrium model with non-specific factor inputs and trade liberalization as a policy variable. A combination of wage subsidy and tariff rate obtains the second-best welfare level. The theoretical result is new, policy-relevant and important in view of political-economy aspects of free trade in developing and transition countries.

Ramsey, Pigou, and a Consumption Externality

This paper analyzes the effects of consumption externalities on optimal taxation and on the social cost and optimal levels of public good provision. If public and private goods are Hicksian complements and no lump sum taxes are available, the second-best level of public good provision can exceed the first-best level. In contrast to economies without externalities, this result even holds for Cobb-Douglas economies with homogeneous agents. Heterogeneity of agents raises the second-best commodity tax rate due to equity considerations, but lowers the tax rate due to the concern for externality-correction.

Conformism, peer pressure and adverse selection

To examine the effects of peer pressure in adverse selection problem, we define a peer pressure function that represents the psychological costs and incorporate it into the agent's utility function. Based on these assumptions, the efficient agent who has conformity preference produces less outputs than the first-best level, while the inefficient agent produces more than the second-best level of standard adverse selection output when the agents feel peer pressure among themselves. Although the production gap between the utility functions under peer pressure narrows, the gap of the ex post information rent goes wider as the information rent of efficient agents increases. Our theoretical results are consistent with some empirical/experimental findings.

Livestock Disease Indemnity Design When Moral Hazard Is Followed by Adverse Selection

AbstractAverting or limiting the outbreak of infectious disease in domestic livestock herds is an economic and potential human health issue that involves the government and individual livestock producers. Producers have private information about preventive biosecurity measures they adopt on their farms prior to outbreak (ex ante moral hazard), and following outbreak they possess private information about whether or not their herd is infected (ex post adverse selection). We investigate how indemnity payments can be designed to provide incentives to producers to invest in biosecurity and report infection to the government in the presence of asymmetric information. We compare the relative magnitude of the first‐ and second‐best levels of biosecurity investment and indemnity payments to demonstrate the tradeoff between risk sharing and efficiency, and we discuss the implications for status quo U.S. policy.

A note on the optimal level of public inputs

This paper analyses whether the first-best level of public inputs exceeds the second-best level. On the basis of a simple model, we argue that the level of productivity-enhancing public expenditures is always higher than the level of public inputs provided with distortionary taxation.

Envy, Inequity Aversion, and Optimal Income Taxation

The paper analyzes the optimal income taxation policy when inequity aversion exists among taxpayers. The influence of inequity aversion on the optimal income tax scheme depends on whether taxpayers are concerned about inequality in wages or in rents (i.e., wages minus effort costs). If agents compare wages, then a more productive agent who is averse to inequity produces more output than the first-best level of output, while a less productive agent produces less than the second-best level of the output in a standard adverse-selection model. Therefore, the trade-off between efficiency and equity becomes more serious than the trade-off in a reference case without inequity aversion. Conversely, when agents´ disutility from inequity arises from inequality in rents, the trade-off between efficiency and equity may become either more serious or milder than in the reference case.

Consumption Externalities and Pigouvian Ranking - A Generalized Cobb-Douglas Example

This paper analyzes the impact of consumption externalities on the ``Pigouvian ranking,'' according to which the second-best level of public good provision is \emph{smaller} than the first-best level. Consumption externalities introduce exceptions to the Pigouvian ranking. Two necessary and sufficient conditions for reversal of the Pigouvian ranking are identified, when preferences for private goods (Cobb-Douglas) and the public good are weakly separable: (i) consumption generates a \emph{negative} externality, (ii) utility is not too concave in the subutility of private goods. If preferences are \emph{strongly} separable in the public good, the Pigouvian ranking is reversed if and only if the second-best consumption price is lower than the corrective (Pigouvian) consumption price.

Status effects, public goods provision, and excess burden

Most studies of the optimal provision of public goods or the excess burden from taxation assume that individual utility is independent of other individuals' consumption. This paper investigates public good provision and excess burden in a model that allows for interdependence in consumption in the form of status (relative consumption) effects. In the presence of such effects, consumption and labor taxes no longer are pure distortionary taxes but have a corrective tax element that addresses an externality from consumption. As a result, the marginal excess burden of consumption taxes is lower than in the absence of status effects, and will be negative if the consumption tax rate is below the ”Pigouvian” rate. Correspondingly, when consumption or labor tax rates are below the Pigouvian rate, the second-best level of public goods provision is above the first-best level, contrary to findings from models without status effects. For plausible functional forms and parameters relating to status effects, the marginal excess burden from existing U.S. labor taxes is substantially lower than in most prior studies, and is negative in some cases.

Environmental Liability Law and Induced Technical Change: The Role of Spillovers

We investigate the incentives of environmental liability law to improve pollution control technology. It is shown that equilibrium choice of abatement technology and of the level of pollution reduction is socially optimal under very restrictive conditions. However, technological spillovers distort the incentives to innovate. The negligence rule turns out to be less sensitive to this problem than strict liability if the due-care standard is set sufficiently close to the second-best level of care.

Ex ante contracting with inequity aversion

We introduce that the principal and the agent can contract at the ex ante stage, and allow for risk-averse agents with inequity aversion to analyse the properties of the optimal incentive scheme under adverse selection. Contrary to the solutions of standard adverse selection problems, our main finding is that the efficient agent who is a risk-averse in presence of concerns with inequity produces more than first-best level, whereas the inefficient agent produces less than second-best level than canonical pure adverse selection output.

Pensions with endogenous and stochastic fertility

This paper studies the design of a pay-as-you-go social security system in an overlapping generations model where fertility is in part stochastic and in part determined through capital investment. If investments are publicly observable, pension benefits must be linked positively to the level of investment, and payroll taxes negatively to the number of children. The outcome is characterized by full insurance with all parents, regardless of their number of children, enjoying identical consumption levels. Without observability, benefits must increase, and payroll taxes decrease, with the number of children. The second-best level of investment, and the resulting average fertility rate, are less than their corresponding first-best levels.

Robustly Collusion-Proof Implementation

A contract with multiple agents may be susceptible to collusion. We show that agents' collusion imposes no cost in a large class of circumstances with risk neutral agents, including both uncorrelated and correlated types. In those circumstances, any payoff the principal can attain in the absence of collusion, including the second-best level, can be attained in the presence of collusion in a way robust to many aspects of collusion behavior. The collusion-proof implementation generalizes to a setting in which only a subset of agents may collude, provided that noncollusive agents' incentives can be protected via an ex post incentive compatible and ex post individually rational mechanism. Our collusion-proof implementation also sheds light on the extent to which hierarchical delegation of contracts can optimally respond to collusion.

Pensions with Endogenous and Stochastic Fertility

This paper studies the design of a pay-as-you-go social security system in a society where fertility is in part stochastic and in part determined through capital investment. If parents' investments in children are publicly observable, pension benefits must be linked positively to the level of investment, and payroll taxes negatively to the number of children. The outcome is characterized by full insurance with all parents, regardless of their number of children, enjoying identical consumption levels. Without observability, benefits must increase, and payroll taxes decrease, with the number of children. The second-best level of investment in children, and the resulting average fertility rate, are less than their corresponding first-best levels.