Monthly Archives: May 2012

Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organizations hopes to explore two questions about the foundations the firm: is production increased more when specialization occurs within the firm or across firms and what is the structure of the firm? This paper was presented by Andreas Moller, Frank Guan, William Snyderwine, Biyuan Zhang and Yanchi Yu. Enjoy!

What is the relationship between increased life expectancy and investment in human capital during economic growth? The conclusion from Kalemli-Ozcan, Ryder, and Weil is that the effect of mortality decline on schooling works through increased length of time in which education is paid off. Kuan Liu, Ibrahim Keita, Daijing Lü, and Alecia Waite compiled the [...]

What is the optimal consumption path of exhaustible resources when the goal is for those resources to be available to future generations as well? Do we consume as much as desired in the present time period? Do we consume none and leave it for future generations? This is the basis of Solow’s paper on Intergenerational [...]

Though David Li focused on Chinese Non-State Sector, A Theory of Ambiguous Property Rights in Transition Economics can be applied to other developing or developed countries where there is a potential for government bureaucracy in interactions with the private sector. Enjoy this summary by Jeff Faris, Alla Khalitova, Lijing Song, and Xiao Qin.

Ben Barber, Ganna Tkackencho, Zhi Chen, Xiaoshu Bei, and Shabai Jiang, of the Spring 2012 Econ 206 class, have their own take on the classic Rothschild and Stiglitz publication on The Economics of Imperfect Information.View their notes on Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets here.

The idea of addiction being rational may sound strange, but it has been studied extensively after the original rational addiction theory proposed by Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy. Salama Freed presents to the Spring 2012 Econ 206 class. Enjoy  A Theory of Rational Addiction.