Научные публикации

Статья «A Solomonic Solution to the Problem of Assigning a Private Indivisible Good» default.published в Games and Economic Behavior (2013), Volume 82, pp. 369–387.

Автор: Эфтимос Афанасио

Аннотация

A benevolent Planner wishes to assign an indivisible private good to n claimants, each valuing the object differently. Individuals have quasi-linear preferences. Therefore, the possibility of transfers is allowed. A second-best efficient mechanism is a strategy-proof and anonymous mechanism that is not Pareto dominated by another strategy-proof and anonymous mechanism. In this context, we identify three conditions that are necessary and, together with Voluntary Participation, sufficient for a mechanism to be second-best efficient. This set includes mechanisms that destroy the good at certain profiles. For domains comprising two individuals we provide an explicit characterization of the family of second-best efficient mechanisms.

Статья «Specificity of Control: The Case of Mexico’s Ejido Reform» default.published в Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 91, pp. 13–33.

Авторы: , Paul Castaneda Dower, Tobias Pfutze

Аннотация

An important aspect of property rights is specificity, the ability of a third party to enforce rights. The empirical literature rarely isolates the effect of specificity because exogenous changes, due to land reforms, either simultaneously change both control and specificity or exclusively change control. We investigate the effect of specificity in the context of the 1992 Salinas land reforms in Mexico, which constitutionally changed individual control rights for all communal landholders but reserved changes to specificity for a subsequent voluntary land certification program. We are able to address selection into the program by taking advantage of the peculiarities in the certification process. Using agricultural production data from before and after the reform, we demonstrate that land certification significantly increases agricultural investments but only for investments directly affected by the changes in control. We explain the results using a simple model that shows how specificity can better coordinate landholders’ beliefs about the implementation of changes in control.