Second-best Solution Research Articles

Rights Variation within a Federalist System: Understanding the Importance of Mobility

Cosmopolitanism at the international level—the recognition of an international human rights regime—has been much defended of late. Little attention has been paid, however, to the federalist analogue: should there be insistence on a national rights regime? Or should variation in the recognition of rights be tolerated at the subnational level, as a necessary concession to moral disagreement, as an effort to contain problematic experiments, or as a way to generate progress about rights? This article argues that subnational variation in the recognition of rights represents a second-best solution to the problem of deep moral disagreement about rights. However, federalism provides a second-best solution only on the condition that citizens are able to move from one subnational jurisdiction to another. To the extent that citizens are able to move to rights regimes that are more favorable to them, intranational variation in the recognition of rights may have advantages over international variation, where national borders may pose barriers to migration. However, in the United States, despite the privileges and immunities of national citizenship, there remain impressive legal barriers to such mobility in the case of contested rights. Given these barriers, federalism as it exists in the United States today does not fully realize the advantages of a second-best solution to deep moral disagreements about rights.

Textile trade and trade credit in Spain, 1840–1913

AbstractTrade credit - the credit provided by suppliers to firms - can be seen as the second-best solution when financial development fails to keep pace with economic growth. This article analyses trade credit between Catalan cotton manufacturers and their clients in nineteenth-century Spain. Spanish historiography has suggested that trade credit had a detrimental effect on the profitability of the cotton firms. Based on an analysis of the archives of several firms, as well as judicial and notary sources, we present a more optimistic interpretation of the system. Manufacturers were, in fact, acting as their customers' bankers because they were in the best position to perform this function. They built up a good information structure, managed the credit risk efficiently and got positive returns from this activity.

A Case for Affirmative Action in Competition Policy

We analyze the trade-off faced by authorities envisaging a one-shot structural reform in a capitalistic industry. A structure is modeled as (1) a sharing of productive capital at some time and (2) a sharing of scarce sites or any other non-reproducible assets. These two distinct dimensions of policy illustrate the importance of a dynamic theory in which firms durably differ in several respects. Though equalization of endowments and rights is theoretically optimal, realistic constraints force competition authorities to adopt second-best solutions. Affirmative action here is the policy that recognizes the fact that, under certain circumstances, helping the disadvantaged contributes maximally to social surplus.

Present-biased preferences, self-awareness and shirking

We model a mechanism design problem in which the principal owns a project that requires work effort by an agent, but agents may have time-inconsistent, present-biased preferences and lack complete self-awareness of these preferences. The self-control problem and naïveté of an agent may lead him to agree to a contract but later shirk or slack-off, even though doing so is observable. When the principal cannot severely punish shirking and agents are completely naïve, the second-best solution entails allowing a present-biased agent to slack-off in order to avoid a greater loss due to shirking. With greater self-awareness among present-biased agents, the principal may do better by screening some from accepting the contract. Furthermore, when shirking can be severely punished, this does not lead to contracts that eliminate effects of the self control problem. Instead the principal may exploit present-biased agents by offering a contract that allows them to slack-off (which agents fail to foresee they will choose to do) but at the expense of foregoing much compensation.

The ECB’s Monetary Analysis Revisited

Monetary aggregates continue to play an important role in the ECB's policy strategy. This paper revisits the case for money, surveying the ongoing theoretical and empirical debate. The key conclusion is that an exclusive focus on non-monetary factors alone may leave the ECB with an incomplete picture of the economy. However, treating monetary factors as a separate matter is a second-best solution. Instead, a general-equilibrium inspired analytical framework that merges the economic and monetary pillars of the ECB's policy strategy appears the most promising way forward. The role played by monetary aggregates in such unified framework may be rather limited. However, an integrated framework would facilitate the presentation of policy decisions by providing a clearer narrative of the relative role of money in the interaction with other economic and financial sector variables, including asset prices, and their impact on consumer prices.

The ECB's Monetary Analysis Revisited

Monetary aggregates continue to play an important role in the ECB's policy strategy. This paper revisits the case for money, surveying the ongoing theoretical and empirical debate. The key conclusion is that an exclusive focus on non-monetary factors alone may leave the ECB with an incomplete picture of the economy. However, treating monetary factors as a separate matter is a second-best solution. Instead, a general-equilibrium inspired analytical framework that merges the economic and monetary pillars of the ECB's policy strategy appears the most promising way forward. The role played by monetary aggregates in such unified framework may be rather limited. However, an integrated framework would facilitate the presentation of policy decisions by providing a clearer narrative of the relative role of money in the interaction with other economic and financial sector variables, including asset prices, and their impact on consumer prices.

Sharing Demographic Risk: Who is Afraid of the Baby Bust?

We model the optimal reaction of a public PAYG pension system to demographic shocks. We compare the ex-ante first best and second best solution of a Ramsey planner with full commitment to the outcome under simple third best rules that mimic the pension systems observed in the real world. The model, in particular the pension system, is calibrated to the German economy. The objective of the social planner is calibrated such that the size of the German pension system was optimal under the economic and demographic conditions of the 1960s. We find that the German system comes relatively close to the second-best solution, especially when labor market distortions are correctly modelled. Furthermore, the German system and a constant contribution rate lead to a lower variability of lifetime utility than does the second best policy. The recent baby-boom/baby-bust cycle leads to welfare losses of about 5% of lifetime consumption for some cohorts. We argue that it is crucial for these results to model correctly the labor market distortions arising from the pension system.

Sharing Demographic Risk - Who is Afraid of the Baby Bust?

We model the optimal reaction of a public PAYG pension system to demographic shocks. We compare the ex-ante first best and second best solution of a Ramsey planner with full commitment to the outcome under simple third best rules that mimic the pension systems observed in the real world. The model, in particular the pension system, is calibrated to the German economy. The objective of the social planner is calibrated such that the size of the German pension system was optimal under the economic and demographic conditions of the 1960s. We find that the German system comes relatively close to the second-best solution, especially when labor market distortions are correctly modelled. Furthermore, the German system and a constant contribution rate lead to a lower variability of lifetime utility than does the second best policy. The recent baby-boom/baby-bust cycle leads to welfare losses of about 5% of lifetime consumption for some cohorts. We argue that it is crucial for these results to model correctly the labor market distortions arising from the pension system.

Heterogeneous physicians, lawsuit costs, and the negligence rule

Real-world observations of negligent and defensive medicine challenge malpractice liability. Based on a principal-agent model with two types of physicians I show that lawsuit costs affect the patients’ decision to sue and the physicians’ level of care under the negligence rule, leading to a separated equilibrium in care. Given these conditions, punitive damages allow for a pooled equilibrium where all physicians exert first-best care. If courts cannot use punitive damages, a second-best solution arises with an optimal negligence standard that deviates from first-best care.

Designing property rights for water: mediating market, government, and corporation failures

Recent decades have seen an acceleration in public concern about the allocation of increasingly scarce water supplies. There are many reasons for this concern, such as growth in urban populations. In this article, we focus on how surface water’s special qualities (the combination of spillovers, rent-seeking behavior, and common pool resources) complicate the assignment of property rights in any legal framework. These characteristics make specific market structures necessary in order to efficiently allocate rights. The state usually designs those structures. Yet, just like markets can fail, so can governments fail to effectively allocate those rights. So designers often turn to quasi-judicial conservancy boards as a second-best solution. We argue that those boards may themselves fail through a form of “corporation failure.” We address these three types of failures, and offer an analysis of two cases that suggests that the likelihood conservancy boards will suffer from corporate failure depends on the actions of the boards and outside stakeholders (like governments).

The Rise and Effects of the Indirect Holding System - How Corporate America Ceded its Shareholders to Intermediaries

This paper explains how the choice of the indirect holding system for securities settlement forced U.S. issuers to cede their shareholder data to intermediaries. Part I describes the law applicable to the transfer of certificated securities. Part II describes how the paper-intensive process of transferring certificated securities led to a market failure in the 1960's. It further shows how the indirect holding system was seen as a temporary, second-best solution pending the dematerialization of shares and improvements in communications technology. In the mean time, the effects of separating beneficial and record ownership led to an expensive and inefficient process of shareholder communication and voting. Part III examines this process, whose inefficiency offered service providers the profitable niche industry of assisting issuers to distribute proxy materials through and around extensive chains of intermediaries. Part IV explains how, when law and technology had developed sufficiently to allow a return to a system of direct issuer-shareholder relationships via a direct registration system, intermediaries acted rationally to absorb DRS into the DTTC system, and continue to enjoy their central role between issuers and shareholders. This Part also demonstrates how a truly effective direct registration system could provide the transparency necessary to address problems such as empty voting and could arguably spread the costs of securities settlement more equitably through broader-based netting, rather than pushing them downstream. Part V argues that although the indirect holding system and its negative effects are no longer necessary, a combination of unawareness and interest serves to perpetuate a perceived need for issuers and shareholders to cede their ownership/governance relationship to a custodian utility, which then offers to put them back into contact, for a fee. By explaining the interests behind choices made and the possibility of alternative structures, this paper hopes to assist regulators to serve the entire market, not just its central hub.

Intellectual Property as Property: Delineating Entitlements in Information

This Article proposes that intellectual property’s close relationship to property stems from the role that information costs play in the delineation and enforcement of exclusion rights. As theorists have emphasized, the nonrivalness of information causes exclusive rights to be more costly in terms of forgone use than in the law of tangible property. But if intellectual property does not solve a problem of allocation, it can play a role in allowing those who find and develop information to appropriate the returns from their rival inputs. It is on the cost side that exclusion emerges as a possible shortcut: exclusive rights in information are simple, indirect, and low-cost devices for solving the problem of appropriating the returns from these rival inputs. Building on a framework that identifies exclusion and governance as complementary strategies for defining property rights, the Article derives some propositions about which factors can be expected to push toward and away from exclusion in delineating entitlements to information. The role that exclusion plays in keeping the system of entitlements over information modular— allowing information to be hidden behind metaphorical boundaries—is both its strength and its weakness. Because exclusion is both more costly and potentially more beneficial as interconnected information becomes more valuable, it is an empirical question whether we would expect more exclusion—and whether it would be desirable. The Article uses this information-cost theory to explain some of the basic differences between the more tort-like copyright regime and the more property-like patent law. The information-cost theory also has implications for suggestive sources of empirical evidence on the structure of entitlements, such as rules within business organizations. Intellectual property, like property in general, can be seen as (at best) a second-best solution to a complex coordination problem of attributing outputs to

THE CASE OF EXPORT CARTEL EXEMPTIONS: BETWEEN COMPETITION AND PROTECTIONISM

Most competition laws do not prohibit anticompetitive conduct that affects foreign target markets as long as there is no spill over effect on the home market. The U.S. in particular justifies this leniency towards export cartels by the aim of increasing efficiency in target markets that are suffering from high entrance barriers for importers. Attempts to use the legal regime of the WTO to overcome private restrictions of competition are likely to fail, because of the fundamental differences between trade policy and competition policy. Although a multilateral competition policy would be best suited to challenge export cartels, the current state of the political debate makes it more likely that second-best solutions such as capacity building in lesser developed target states will have to be established.

European economic institutions: Stability- or growth-oriented?

This paper deals with various aspects of the performance expected from some of the most relevant European institutions (monetary and tax authorities, unions) vis-a-vis alternative ones, from a macroeconomic point of view. The role of the rules (e.g. the Stability and Growth Pact) as a coordination device to deal with externalities arising from national fiscal policies is first considered and compared to explicit coordination. The priority given to price stability is then discussed together with the questions of reputation, credibility and the relationship with fiscal policy and labour markets. A conservative central bank eliminates the temptation to inflate, but is only a second-best solution for internalising the externalities arising from uncoordinated-wage bargaining. The paper finally discusses the consequences on growth of the stability pursued by actual European institutions. Some reflections on the ‘model’ adopted for shaping European institutions conclude the paper.

Economic costs of obesity and the case for government intervention

Economic costs of obesity and the case for government intervention

Information Acquisition by Price-Setters and Monetary Policy

In this paper we examine a model where firms decide on the intensity of information acquisition about shocks. We analyze how the monetary policy framework impacts on the aggregate amount of information collected by firms. We show that it is socially beneficial to delegate monetary policy to a conservative central bank even if there are no incentives to push output above its long-run level. Transparency of central banks about economic shocks has ambiguous e ects on welfare. If an extreme level of opacity is feasible, it represents the social optimum. Otherwise full transparency may be a second-best solution.

Limiting the number of charities

We consider a model where creating a charity implies a fixed cost and individual contributions depend on how close donors feel with respect to the charity. In that setting we show that there are an optimal number of charities and an optimal rate of subsidization that depend on the set-up cost and on the attachment of donors to charities that share the same values as theirs. We also consider the case of free-entry and compare it with the second-best solution controlling for the number of charities.

Alternative central bank credit policies for liquidity provision in a model of payments

I explore alternative central bank policies for liquidity provision in a model of payments. I use a mechanism design approach so that agents’ incentives to default are explicit and contingent on the credit policy designed. In the first policy, the central bank invests in costly enforcement and charges an interest rate to recover costs. I show that the second-best solution is not distortionary. In the second policy, the central bank requires collateral. If collateral does not bear an opportunity cost, then the solution is first best. Otherwise, the second best is distortionary because collateral serves as a binding credit constraint.

Specific Investment and Corporate Law

At the close of the twentieth century, U.S. corporate scholarship was dominated by a principal-agent paradigm that assumed that shareholders were the principals or sole residual claimants in public corporations, and also assumed that corporate directors were the shareholders’ agents. This approach led many corporate scholars to assume that the proper purpose of the corporation was to maximize shareholder wealth and that the chief economic problem of interest in corporate law was the “agency cost” problem of getting corporate directors to focus on this goal.There are basic aspects of U.S. corporate law, however, that the principal-agent model cannot explain. These include directors’ extensive and sui generis legal powers; the fact that directors control dividends; the device of legal personality; and the open-ended rules of corporate purpose. These corporate law “anomalies” have prompted contemporary economic and legal scholars to begin to move beyond a focus on agency costs and to pay attention to a second economic problem that arises in public corporations: the problem of protecting specific investment. When corporate production requires more than one individual or group to make specific investments, problems of intrafirm opportunism arise if shareholders try to exploit each other’s specific investments or try to exploit the specific investments of creditors, employees, customers, and other groups. Board governance, while worsening agency costs, may provide a second-best solution to such intrafirm rent-seeking. This perspective explains many important corporate law “anomalies” that cannot be explained by the principal-agent model.It also suggests a pressing need to revisit conventional notions of corporate purpose. Focusing on the problem of specific investment suggests that the proper purpose of the public corporation is not maximizing shareholder wealth, but promoting long-term, value-creating economic production under conditions of complexity and uncertainty, in a fashion that provides surplus benefits not only to shareholders but to other groups that make specific investments in corporations as well. This corporate objective is difficult to measure, much less maximize. Nevertheless, it may provide a better gauge of good corporate governance than the simplistic rubric of shareholder wealth.

The Psychotherapist and the Sign Language Interpreter

Specialized psychotherapy for deaf people in the Dutch and Western European mental health systems is still a rather young specialism. A key policy principle in Dutch mental health care for the deaf is that they should receive treatment in the language most accessible to them, which is usually Dutch Sign Language (Nederlandse Gebarentaal or NGT). Although psychotherapists for the deaf are trained to use sign language, situations will always arise in which a sign language interpreter is needed. Most psychotherapists have the opinion that working with a sign language interpreter in therapy sessions can be a valuable alternative option but also see it as a second-best solution because of its impact on the therapeutic process. This paper describes our years of collaborationship as a therapist and a sign language interpreter. If this collaborationship is optimal, it can generate a certain "therapeutic power" in the therapy sessions. Achieving this depends largely on the interplay between the therapist and the interpreter, which in our case is the result of literature research and our experiences during the last 17 years. We analyze this special collaborative relationship, which has several dimensions and recurrent themes like, the role conception of the interpreter, situational interpreting, organizing the interpretation setting, or managing therapeutic phenomena during therapy sessions.