Competition, Technocracy and Inequality

Foreign Competition and Wage Inequality*

I argue that increased foreign competition can affect technical choice and skill differentials even when actual imports do not rise significantly. I present a model of General Oligopolistic Equilibrium ("GOLE") in which a reduction in import barriers (whether technological or policy-imposed) encourages more strategic investment by incumbent firms. The predictions accord with many of the stylise...

Distributive politics: Does electoral competition promote inequality ?∗

Within the framework of pure redistribution (dividing one unit of a homogeneous good among identical individuals), the paper analyses the redistributions that arise from Downsian two-party electoral competition. It appears that the strategic behavior of vote-maximizing parties lead them to propose divisions which are not far from the egalitarian one. ∗While preparing this article, we benefited ...

Competition, human capital and income inequality with limited commitment

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with two-sided limited commitment to study how barriers to competition, such as restrictions to business start-up, a¤ect the incentive to accumulate human capital. We show that a lack of contract enforceability ampli…es the e¤ect of barriers to competition on human capital accumulation. High barriers reduce the incentive to accumulate human capital...

Hospital Competition in Prices and Quality: A Variational Inequality Framework

In this paper, we construct a game theory model to capture competition among hospitals for patients for their medical procedures. The utility functions of the hospitals contain a revenue component and a component due to altruism benefit. The hospitals compete in prices charged to paying patients as well as in the quality levels of their procedures. Both prices and quality levels are subject to ...

Inequality, Interests, and Competition in Mexico NO GROWTH WITHOUT EQUITY?