We present some new ways of looking at economic systems. The aspect of human behavior which we emphasize is that individuals' judgments entail errors (they sometimes reject good projects and accept bad projects). The aspect of an economic system on which we focus is its architecture; that is, how...

The authors report an empirical regularity in the market shares of brands. They propose a theoretical explanation for this observed regularity and identify additional consequences of their explanation. Empirical testing of these consequences supports the proposed explanation. The empirical...

Higher-order discrete dynamic systems arise naturally in many economic models in which the problem at hand requires an explicit treatment of dynamics involving lags of more than one period. In studying such models, one type of analysis that economists are often interested in is the assessment of...

This paper presents a general framework for analyzing shadow wages in LDCs. We focus on (i) the differences between the domestic and international prices, (ii) the equilibrating mechanisms in the economy, (iii) the endogeneity of earnings in industry and agriculture, (iv) the consequences of...

Non-linear systems of difference equations of various orders arise naturally in many economic models in which the dynamics is explicit. In such contexts, economists often have potential interest in the comparative statics of locally stable steady-states, with respect to the system's parameters....

The classical Schur-Cohn criteria are an important source of stability conditions for discrete dynamic systems. However, the conventional statement of these criteria is opaque and not of much direct use for an applied analysis of higher-order dynamic systems. The contribution of this note is to...

This paper derives several properties of the optimal k-out-of-n: G systems where: (i) the i.i.d. components can be, with a pre-specified frequency, in one of two possible modes, (ii) components are subject to failures in each of the two modes, and (iii) the costs of two kinds of system's...

In this paper, we ask, what are the dynamic consequences of a greater centralization or decentralization of decision-making authority (to appoint managers) on the quality of managers who are actually appointed? The central result we obtain is that there is a greater variability (over time) in...

This paper compares the outcomes of several basic types of allocation systems which are commonly employed in developing countries and centrally planned economies to distribute certain goods among individuals. The allocation systems (to distribute the limited supply of a deficit good) that we...