We specify an oligopoly game, where firms choose quantity in order to maximise profits, that is strategically equivalent to a standard Tullock rent-seeking game. We then show that the Tullock game may be interpreted as an oligopsonistic market for influence.Alternative specifications of the...

This paper investigates the optimality of sharp incentives in contracts where output prices are set at the time of contracting but are random in nature. It shows that when prices are specified with error, schemes involv- ing sharp incentives might result in substantial deviations from first-best...

Agricultural producers typically are faced with risk about the yields they will experience and the prices they will receive. Stabilisation schemes can spread risk and thereby reduce the risk faced by individual producers. The risk-reducing capacity of a scheme and the cost of risk reduction...

It has often been suggested that more stable wool prices would lead to an outward shift in the long-run demand for wool. To assess this claim it is necessary to examine different sources of risk and instability in wool prices and their impact on the risk borne by wool users. A model is presented...

Risk has long been recognised as an important feature of the environment facing farmers. In recent years the von Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility theory has been used to analyse decision making under risk. However, many people behave in a manner inconsistent with the expected utility theory....

This paper presents a unified treatment of the production and financial decisions available to a firm facing frictionless financial markets and a stochastic production technology under minimal assumptions on the firm's stochastic technology and objective function. The specific focus is on...

Two separate bodies of literature on stabilization give radically different results, yet these contradictions have not attracted any attention. The first arises from the neoclassical theory of stabilization and predicts that beneficial stabilization will always attract positive supply response....