Showing papers by "Andreu Mas-Colell published in 2010"

The governance and performance of universities: evidence from Europe and the US

Abstract: We test the hypothesis that universities are more productive when they are both more autonomous and face more competition. Using survey data, we construct indices of university autonomy and competition for both Europe and the United States. We show that there are strong positive correlations between these indices and multiple measures of university output. To obtain causal evidence, we investigate exogenous shocks to US universities’ expenditures over three decades. These shocks arise through the political appointment process, which we use to generate instrumental variables. We find that an exogenous increase in a university’s expenditure generates more output, measured by either patents or publications, if the university is more autonomous and faces more competition. Exploiting variation over time in the ‘stakes’ of competitions for US federal research grants, we also find that universities generate more output for a given expenditure when research competitions are high stakes. We draw lessons, arguing that European universities could benefit from a combination of greater autonomy and greater accountability. Greater accountability might come through increased reliance on competitive grants, enhanced competition for students and faculty (promoted by reforms that increase mobility), and yardstick competitions (which often take the form of assessment exercises).

The governance and performance of universities: evidence from Europe and the US

Abstract: We test the hypothesis that universities are more productive when they are both more autonomous and face more competition. Using survey data, we construct indices of university autonomy and competition for both Europe and the United States. We show that there are strong positive correlations between these indices and multiple measures of university output. To obtain causal evidence, we investigate exogenous shocks to US universities’ expenditures over three decades. These shocks arise through the political appointment process, which we use to generate instrumental variables. We find that an exogenous increase in a university’s expenditure generates more output, measured by either patents or publications, if the university is more autonomous and faces more competition. Exploiting variation over time in the ‘stakes’ of competitions for US federal research grants, we also find that universities generate more output for a given expenditure when research competitions are high stakes. We draw lessons, arguing that European universities could benefit from a combination of greater autonomy and greater accountability. Greater accountability might come through increased reliance on competitive grants, enhanced competition for students and faculty (promoted by reforms that increase mobility), and yardstick competitions (which often take the form of assessment exercises). — Philippe Aghion, Mathias Dewatripont, Caroline Hoxby, Andreu Mas-Colell and Andre Sapir

A simple adaptive procedure leading to correlated equilibrium

Abstract: We propose a simple adaptive procedure for playing a game. In this procedure, players depart from their current play with probabilities that are proportional to measures of regret for not having used other strategies (these measures are updated every period). It is shown that our adaptive procedure guaranties that with probability one, the sample distributions of play converge to the set of correlated equilibria of the game. To compute these regret measures, a player needs to know his payoff function and the history of play. We also offer a variation where every player knows only his own realized payoff history (but not his payoff function).

Bargaining and Cooperation in Strategic Form Games

Abstract: In this paper we view bargaining and cooperation as an interaction superimposed on a game in strategic form. A multistage bargaining procedure for N players, the “proposer commitment” procedure, is presented. It is inspired by Nash’s two-player variable-threat model; a key feature is the commitment to “threats.” We establish links to classical cooperative game theory solutions, such as the Shapley value in the transferable utility case. However, we show that even in standard pure exchange economies, the traditional coalitional function may not be adequate when utilities are not transferable. (JEL: C70, C71, C78, D70)