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Venkataraman Bhaskar

Bio: Venkataraman Bhaskar is an academic researcher from University of Texas at Austin. The author has contributed to research in topics: Repeated game & Stochastic game. The author has an hindex of 27, co-authored 84 publications receiving 2265 citations. Previous affiliations of Venkataraman Bhaskar include University of Texas System & University of Essex.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that models of oligopsony or monopsonistic competition provide insights and explanation for many empirical phenomena in labor markets, such as the existence of wage dispersion, the persistence of labor market discrimination, market failures in the provision of training and the anomalous employment effects of minimum wages.
Abstract: We argue that models of oligopsony or monopsonistic competition provide insights and explanation for many empirical phenomena in labor markets. Using a simple model with job differentiation and preference heterogeneity, we illustrate how such models can be employed to explain the existence of wage dispersion, the persistence of labor market discrimination, market failures in the provision of training and the anomalous employment effects of minimum wages.

346 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper developed a model of monopsonistic competition with free entry to analyse the effects of minimum wages and found that a rise in the minimum wage raises employment per firm, causes firm exit and may increase or reduce industry employment.
Abstract: Recent empirical work on the effects of minimum wages has called into question the conventional wisdom that minimum wages invariably reduce employment. We develop a model of monopsonistic competition with free entry to analyse the effects of minimum wages, and our predictions fit the empirical results closely. Under monopsonistic competition, we find that a rise in the minimum wage raises employment per firm, causes firm exit and may increase or reduce industry employment. Minimum wages increase welfare if they raise industry employment but welfare effects are ambiguous if employment falls.

226 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article analyzed repeated prisoners' dilemma games with imperfect private monitoring and constructed mixed trigger strategy equilibria, where a player's action only depends upon her belief that her opponent(s) are continuing to cooperate.

110 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the sustainability of intergenerational transfers in Samuelson's consumption-loan model when agents are imperfectly informed about past events is analyzed, and it is shown that with mild informational constraints, transfers cannot be supported by pure-strategy equilibria.
Abstract: This paper analyses the sustainability of inter-generational transfers in Samuelson's consumption-loan model when agents are imperfectly informed about past events. We find that with mild informational constraints, transfers cannot be supported by pure-strategy equilibria. Mixed strategies allow transfers to be sustained even if agents have little information, so that a version of the Folk theorem holds. However, these equilibria are not robust. If each agent's utility function is subjected to a small random perturbation as in Harsanyi (1973), these mixed strategy equilibria unravel, and only the zero-transfer allocation survives as the unique rationalizable outcome. This result is an example of mixed strategy equilibrium of an extensive form game which cannot be purified.

108 citations

Book Chapter
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: In this paper, the effect of privatization on employment in the Bangladeshi jute textile industry has been analyzed and the extent of employment reduction has been substantially greater among clerical workers and managers as compared to manual workers.
Abstract: This paper analyzes the effect of privatization upon employment in the Bangladeshi jute textile industry. Privatization was partia and the selection of mills which were privatized was not based on current economic performance. This provides us with a panel data set which permits reliable estimates of the effects of ownership on employment and output. Privatization has reduced employment of all categories of permanent workers significantly, but the extent of employment reduction has been substantially greater among clerical workers and managers as compared to manual workers. This implies that public sector excess employment benefited white-collar workers, who were both better off and better educated, and suggests that public sector behaviour was clientelist rather than welfarist.

83 citations


Cited by
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Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 1977
TL;DR: In the Hamadryas baboon, males are substantially larger than females, and a troop of baboons is subdivided into a number of ‘one-male groups’, consisting of one adult male and one or more females with their young.
Abstract: In the Hamadryas baboon, males are substantially larger than females. A troop of baboons is subdivided into a number of ‘one-male groups’, consisting of one adult male and one or more females with their young. The male prevents any of ‘his’ females from moving too far from him. Kummer (1971) performed the following experiment. Two males, A and B, previously unknown to each other, were placed in a large enclosure. Male A was free to move about the enclosure, but male B was shut in a small cage, from which he could observe A but not interfere. A female, unknown to both males, was then placed in the enclosure. Within 20 minutes male A had persuaded the female to accept his ownership. Male B was then released into the open enclosure. Instead of challenging male A , B avoided any contact, accepting A’s ownership.

2,364 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a microeconomic model of price setting is used to show that lower pass-through is caused by lower perceived persistence of cost changes, suggesting that the low inflation itself has caused the low passthrough, and an economy-wide model consistent with the micromodel is presented to illustrate how such changes in pricing power affect output and inflation dynamics in favorable ways, but can disappear quickly if monetary policy and expectations change.

1,321 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors report further empirical evidence on the relative efficiency of public and private enterprises and study the performance of government-owned and privately-owned corporations over longer time periods.
Abstract: For some, it is an article of faith that governmentowned firms must be less efficient or, at least, less profitable than privately owned firms. Maxim Boycko et al. (1996) argue that politicians cause government-owned firms to employ excess labor inputs. Anne O. Krueger (1990) suggests that such firms may be pressured to hire politically connected people rather than those best qualified to perform desired tasks. More generally, government-owned firms are thought to forgo maximum profit in the pursuit of social and political objectives, such as wealth redistribution. In addition, the residual cash flow claims of these firms are not readily transferable like the shares of a private corporation. This impairs residual claimant incentives to monitor managers and, ultimately, degrades firm performance. As a consequence, one expects government-owned firms to be technically less efficient and, therefore, less profitable than private firms. The implication is that in competitive markets without significant externalities private ownership is the superior organizational form. The view that government firms are inherently less efficient than private ones, however, remains controversial among economists. John Vickers and George Yarrow (1991), among others, point out that agency problems arise in private firms as well as public ones. In most large private corporations managers own little of the stock. Because monitoring managers is costly, a divergence arises between their objectives and those of private shareholders. Private shareholders typically hold a small stake in any one firm and it may not pay any shareholder to bear the cost of monitoring management. It follows from this discussion that whether government firms are more or less efficient than private firms is primarily an empirical issue. To date the body of empirical evidence is mixed. In this paper, we report further empirical evidence on the relative efficiency of public and private enterprises. We build on previous work by studying larger samples over longer time periods and by allowing for additional factors that influence firm performance. In particular, our analysis controls for time-series variation in the general level of economic activity that may otherwise confound performance comparisons between government and private firms. 2 We approach the issue in two different ways. First, using accounting numbers, we conduct a large-sample cross-sectional comparison of government-owned and privately owned corporations. This comparison is similar in design to that of Boardman and Vining (1989), but our sample is three times the size of theirs and includes three

1,173 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors show empirically that economists fail to understand fundamental economic questions when they disregard social preferences, in particular, that without taking social preferences into account, it is not possible to understand adequately (i) effects of competition on market outcomes, (ii) laws governing cooperation and collective action, effects and the determinants of material incentives, which contracts and property rights arrangements are optimal, and important forces shaping social norms and market failures.
Abstract: A substantial number of people exhibit social preferences, which means they are not solely motivated by material self-interest but also care positively or negatively for the material payoffs of relevant reference agents. We show empirically that economists fail to understand fundamental economic questions when they disregard social preferences, in particular, that without taking social preferences into account, it is not possible to understand adequately (i) effects of competition on market outcomes, (ii) laws governing cooperation and collective action, (iii) effects and the determinants of material incentives, (iv) which contracts and property rights arrangements are optimal, and (v) important forces shaping social norms and market failures.

949 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the link between accumulation and financialization is tested econometrically by means of a time series analysis of aggregate business investment for USA, UK, France, and Germany.
Abstract: Over the past decades financial investment of non-financial businesses has been rising and accumulation of capital goods has been declining. The first part of the paper offers a novel theory to explain this phenomenon. Financialization, the shareholder revolution and the development of a market for corporate control have shifted power to shareholders and thus changed management priorities, leading to a reduction in the desired growth rate. In the second part the link between accumulation and financialization is tested econometrically by means of a time series analysis of aggregate business investment for USA, UK, France, and Germany. Extensive test of robustness are performed. For the first three countries evidence that confirms the negative effect of financialization on accumulation is found. (author's abstract)

894 citations