Inframarginal Economics Society Website in TAIWAN
Possible Research Topics of Inframarginal Economics

(1) Pure Theory

  • Existence theorem of dynamic general equilibrium model, such as the Yang-Borland model.
  • Existence theorem of an inframarginal general equilibrium model with labor market and firms.
  • Invalidating Shaple's marginal productivity principle
  • Inframarginal models with a finite set of consumer-producers
  • Redefine degree of competition to show that competition might be intensified as evolution in division of labor reduces the number professional producers in each occupation.

(2) Applied Theory

  • A Markov perfection equilibrium model with endogenous specialization, which might be used to explore implication of obsession with or addiction to an occupation for evolution in division of labor
  • A commitment game model with endogenous specialization, which might be used to formalize the economics of the state and property rights
  • A Stiglitz type efficient wage model with endogenous specialization, which might be used to explore implications of endogenous unemployment for the equilibrium network size of division of labor
  • An inframarginal model with endogenous emergence of specialized education (specialized learning by learning or by teaching)
  • An inframarginal model with endogenous emergence of specialized research and development (specialized learning by learning or by researching)
  • An inframarginal model with the assumption of extremely low trading efficiency for transacting services or government services, which can be used to investigate the economics of the state and implications of interplay between public goods and division of labor. Such a model might be obtained by introducing transaction cost of transacting services into Waiman Liu's model of endogenous emergence of professional transacting sector.
  • An inframarginal model with endogenous emergence of the institution of the state as a bundling mechanism between tax on private goods and free provision of public goods
  • A Holmstrom-Milgrom type model of multi-task, privatization vs. state ownership, and piece rate wage vs. hourly wage with endogenous specialization
  • An extension of the Sun model of urbanization and the Liu model of good vs. bad capitalism to investigate the dual structure between urban and rural sector (or between the developed world and less developed world) in the absence of free migration
  • Dear MC, I will send your papers to referees asap. You can then use referee reports as evidence for refereeing procedure. You may extend the model example 10.2 in my text to the following cases. (1) There are two types of individuals with different degree of risk aversion. (2) There are three goods. I attach a note which includes discussion of this model by Eric Maskin. Basically, he has learned that this model really makes a distinguishing contribution to the literature of moral hazard model. Since this model is not published in any referred journal, you may extend it to claim some priorities. You may submit the papers to our journal. The merit of this model compared to your model of moral hazard is that there is no ad hoc insurance sector, everything is endogenous in a well closed general equilibrium model. There is interpersonal trade in risk since risk is different from sector to sector even if all individuals are ex ante identical. Hence, there is a trade-off between risk sharing and incentive provision even if effort level is observable. You may consider extending your model of insurance with m goods to submit to our journal. You may cook up a story on globalization to show that globalization may increase aggregate risk, or that insurance may increase risk of coordination failure of network of division of labor. This implies that innovation of digital communication may make stock exchange, such as daily trading of shares more risky. An issue of JEP in 2001 provides empirical evidence for this. Did you submit your paper with GZ to our conference proceedings? Can you extend that model to submit to our journal?
  • Dear GZ, Can you use the notion of Walrasian sequential equilibrium to develop a dynamic version of your urbanization model? You can then have an evolutionary story on urbanization that can speak to fundamental, social, and endogenous uncertainties, entrepreneurial discovery, bounded rationality. Since the way to combine comparative statics of general equilibrium of a static inframarginal model with algorithm to have such a story is simple, all of our static models can be extended to evolutional models. We should encourage students and colleagues to do such exercises.
  • Dear JX, You may extend my static model in chapter 11 of my textbook to investigate effects of monetary and fiscal policies on macroeconomic (aggregate) variables via their effects on the network size of division of labor. Since many macroeconomists have published many papers to play around implication of endogenization of the number of goods in the Dixit-Stiglitz model, you can work out more models than they do. Our static models endogenize not only the number of goods, but also the degree of globalizaiton, market integration, individuals' levels of specialization, and the network size of division of labor for society as a whole. You may also extend the Cheng model of endogenous emergence of money in chapter 26 to investigate effects of monetary and fiscal policies on macroeconomic variables. We (you and our colleagues in the group of inframarginal economics) should encourage students to do research in this field.

    XK

(3) Empirical Studies

  • Measurement of level of division of labor: choose one from the following: the number of industrial categories, the number of occupations in labor statistics, the number of business categories in yellow pages, the degree of commercialization, degree of trade dependence, degree of production roundaboutness.

(4) Policy Application

(5) Case Studies

(6) Economic History

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