My purpose is to build an explanation of production that takes time into account. Adam Smith and the English Classical economists approached the problem by studying the relation between profits and wages or wages and capital. they emphasise the time aspect of production by saying that capitalists "advance" wages to labour long before its final consumption product is ready. On the background of that conception they painted a rough picture of production through time. I follow the classical tradition both in the title of my work and in parts 2. and 3. of my work where I approached the problem of production by studying equilibrium between the rates of interest and wages. Some light is thrown on the nature of this equilibrium by the statistics of distribution of the national income. My main results are in part 4. which contains a fairly general theory of production that takes time into account, found the use of mathematics indispensable. The best known attempts to formulate such a theory are Bohm-Bawerk's, Professor Fisher's and J.B. Clarks's (which is exemplified by Dr. Hicks' Theory of Wages). As I show Bohm-Bawerk's famous doctrine of the "average period of production" is based on a mathematical mistake. Professor Fisher's analysis of the "output streams" while very instructive, contains a greater number of unknowns than equations to determine them. Dr Hicks assumes that capital is a homogeneous factor of production assisting the production of consumption goods which emerge wither instantaneously or after time lags. If there are time - lags, Dr. Hicks assumes it makes no difference what these lags are. This is an attempt to deal with the time aspect of production by means abstracting from it. In recent articles (Economica and the Economic Journal) a very distinguished economist, Professpr F. Knight, appears to think that the problem of capital is incomprehensible and that it is no use trying to understand it. All these difficulties of theory mean that the pronouncements of economists on every concrete question of production - such as wage policies - are necessarily surrounded by a penumbra of considerable doubt. And no substantial improvement can take place until matters of general principles are cleared up. I try to clear them up. The essence of my analysis in part 4 is this. Assuming for simplicity that each competing firm controls a vertically completely integrated process of production of a consumption good, and writing t=0 as "the present", and entrepreneur finds himself in possession of a set of goods c at t=0 and is aware of a large number of alternative production plans. Each plan provides for future investment at a rate f(t) in values terms and for output of the consumption good at a rate of u(t). For simplicity we can take the good as the "numeraire". As between all the alternatives plans the functions u(t), f(t) are different. I.e. they have certain fields of variation. the central idea of the analysis is this: for each particular input function f(t) the output function u(t) can be varied within a certain field by varying the methods of production. This is the "missing link" which the earlier theories failed to bring out. Given the interest rate p, the condition which determines which plan is chosen is that the present value of the collection of goods c is maximised. I.e. that the present value of future profits is maximised (and is zero under perfect competition). That means that for each possible input function f(t) such an output function u(t) has to be considered as maximises x. I.e. the first partial variation. As f(t) is varied, different output functions u(t) become possible, and for each f(t) an output function u(t) is segregated which maximises x i.e. satisfies (2). Thence, in (1) f(t) becomes the only independent variable, and the equilibrium condition is that x is maximised with respect to the input function f(t). This condition determines which plan is chosen i.e. determines the unknown functions f(t), u(t). From (1) (2) (3) i.e. the present value of the future marginal product equals the present value of the future marginal costs. In this way a marginal productivity theory is built up which takes time into account. Then the theory is extended: account is taken of uncertainty, of "vertical disintegration" etc., etc., until a fairly comprehensive picture is reach of the course of production through time.

This dissertation focuses on testing and identifying individual ambiguity preference under the framework of "smooth ambiguity preference" developed by Klibanoff, Marinacci, and Mukerji (2005). Following the seminal contributions of Allais (1953) and Ellsberg (1961), experimental data have consistently demonstrated that individuals do not behave in accordance with predictions of the expected utility model when they face uncertainty. As one important class of ambiguity utility, the smooth ambiguity model distinguishes ambiguity aversion from risk aversion, which makes the comparative statics possible. However, currently there is little work on testing and recovering such preferences based on observable choices. The dissertation contains four parts. Chapter 2 uses two approaches to derive the necessary and sufficient conditions for observed individual portfolio choice to be compatible with the smooth ambiguity preference. The first approach is the revealed preference method, and is based on finite observations. The second approach is demand function testing, and is based on infinite observations. Chapter 3 establishes the conditions under which the smooth ambiguity preference can be uniquely identified from individual demand functions. In Chapter 4, I extend the argument of Varian (1988) to multiple observations and incomplete market case to non-parametrically test different shapes of risk aversion, and then to test hypotheses on shapes of ambiguity aversion. In Chapter 5, to use household survey data to identify household risk and ambiguity aversion, I build a simple parametric model to identify household risk and ambiguity aversion from their saving and portfolio choice. The data from the Bank of Italy Survey on Household Income and Wealth 2008 and 2010 support the constant relative risk aversion and constant relative ambiguity aversion hypothesis, and give evidence of the magnitude of household risk and ambiguity aversion.

This thesis studies loss aversion and reference-dependent preferences. The second chapter and the fourth chapter analyze the price strategy for the monopolist with a loss-averse consumer following the reference-dependent model of Kőszegi and Rabin (2006). The second chapter takes into account the happiness of not paying at the highest price and the disappointment of not paying at the lowest price and finds that this happiness has a positive effect on the monopolist's revenue and this disappointment has a negative effect on the monopolist's revenue. The fourth chapter proposes a two-period pricing model and shows that the monopolist could make use of two-price strategy to earn a revenue that is greater than the product value. The revenue of the two-period model is higher than one-period model when the weight of gain-loss utility is big enough. The third chapter studies the winner's regret with bidders when they have reference-dependent preferences in the sealed-bid first-price auction, second-price auction and all-pay auction and shows that the optimal bid is smaller with regret than without regret for loss-averse bidders, is greater for gain-seeking bidders and is the same for risk-neutral bidders.

No description available.

This thesis investigates the choices under risk in the framework of non-expected utility theories. One of the key contributions of this thesis is providing an approach that allows for a complete characterisation of Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT) preferences without prior knowledge of the reference point. The location of the reference point that separates gains from losses is derived endogenously, thus, without any additional assumptions on the decision maker’s risk behaviour. This is different to the convention used in the literature, according to which, the reference point is preselected. The problem arising from imposing the location of the reference point is that the underlying preference conditions might not be alligned with the predictions made by the model. Consequently, it is difficult to verify such a model or to test it empirically. The present contribution offers a set of normatively and descriptively appealing preference conditions, which enable the elicitation of the reference point from the decision maker’s behaviour. Since these conditions are derived using objective probabilities, they can also be applied to settings such as health or insurance, where the continuity of the utility function is not required. As a result, the obtained representation theorem is not only the most general foundation for CPT currently available, but it also provides further support for the use of CPT as a modelling tool in decision theory and fi…nance. Another contribution that this thesis can be credited with is an application of rank-dependent utility theory (RDU) to the problem of insurance demand in the monopoly market affected by adverse selection. The present approach extends the classical model of Stiglitz (1977) by accounting for an additional component of heterogeneity among consumers, the heterogeneity in risk perception. Speci…fically, consumers employ distinctive probability weighting functions to assess the likelihood of risky events. This aspect of consumers’' behaviour highlights the importance that the probabilistic risk attitudes within the RDU framework, such as optimism and pessimism, have for the choice of insurance contract. The analysis yields a separating equilibrium, with full insurance for a sufficiently pessimistic decision maker. An important implication of this result is that any low-risk individual who sufficiently overestimates his probability of loss will induce the uninformed insurer to o¤er him full coverage, thereby, affecting the high-risk type adversely. This outcome is consistent with the recent empirical puzzle regarding the correlation between ex-post risk and insurance coverage, according to which, agents with low exposure to risk receive a larger amount of compensation. By providing an explanation of this pattern of individual behaviour, the current work demonstrates that theory and practice of insurance demand can be reconciled to a greater extent. The paper also provides a behavioural rationale for policy intervention in the market with RDU agents, where the initial distortions in contracts due to unobservable risks are aggravated by the non-linear weighting of probability of a risky event.

Cette thèse interroge l’unité de l’économie politique classique en montrant qu’à partir d'une conception de l’autonomie de l’économie, plusieurs articulations de la théorie des prix et d’une «science du législateur» sont possibles. Adam Smith se démarque de François Quesnay et David Ricardo sur ce point. Alors que ces auteurs sont souvent lus à travers le seul prisme de la théorie des prix et donc inclus dans un même projet, nous verrons notamment que Dugald Stewart joua un rôle de premier plan dans le développement d’une lignée qui fût bâtie en excluant Smith. A l’aune des conceptions de l’autonomie de chacun, nous montrons dans une première partie que les concepts de la théorie des prix, notamment la règle de répartition et le processus de circulation, traduisent l’encastrement de l’économie dans une totalité sociale. Or, si Quesnay, Stewart et Ricardo ont chacun pu contribuer à la théorie classique, les analyses de Smith ne respectent pas ses critères de cohérence logique et semblent mener dans l’impasse. Il s’agit en réalité de la marque d’un projet alternatif, mis à jour dans la seconde partie. Quesnay, Stewart et Ricardo présupposent que l’économie est sujette à un ordre qu’il convient de réaliser par la concurrence, mais se distinguent quant aux institutions nécessaires pour ce faire. En revanche, Smith suppose que le législateur n’est pas contraint par des mécanismes économiques. En effet, l’économie n'est pour lui que la modalité d'un lien social général, nécessitant un arbitrage entre rapports sociaux agonistiques. / This thesis aims at questioning the homogeneity of classical political economy by showing that alternative links between price theory and the science of a legislator may be endorsed, depending on what conception of the autonomy of the economic domain is retained. In this respect, Adam Smith departs from François Quesnay and David Ricardo. While these authors are often compared on the sole ground of price theory, and thereby subsumed under a common framework, Dugald Stewart played a prominent role in the development of a trend in the history of ideas which actually excluded Smith from the start. In the light of the author’ understanding of the autonomy of the economy, the first part of this thesis shows that key concepts of classical price theory, among which the rule of distribtuion orthe circulation of commodities, reflect the fact that the economy is embedded in society considered as a whole. Yet, while Quesnay, Stewart and Ricardo did contribute to classical theory in this respect, Smith's analyses do not fit its logical requirements and seem to represent a deadlock.These are however the sign of an alternative project, dealt within the second part of the thesis. Quesnay, Stewart and Ricardo presuppose that the economy is subject to an overall order which ought to be realised thanks to market competition, although they disagree as to what formof institution is best suited to do so. On the contrary, Smith presupposes that the legislator is not impeded by any economic mechanism, since the economy are only a dimension of social interactions, whereby conflicting interests need to be counterbalanced.

Ma thèse s'intéresse à la théorie financière de l'entreprise qui émerge entre 1880 et 1929, ainsi qu’à l’apport de Veblen.Tout d'abord nous mettons en exergue les contributions analytique et macroéconomique que livre Veblen concernant la business enterprise. Il met en avant un triptyque crédit-actions-goodwill grâce auquel nous affirmons qu'il est un théoricien "pré-moderne" de la finance d'entreprise. Sa vision du goodwill lui permet de dresser une théorie de l'investissement qui s'ancre dans la filiation de la Q-Theory. Il propose ainsi un regard pionnier sur le management d'entreprise, avec son analyse du comportement de l'insider et de l'outsider. Dans un second temps, à travers un travail d'archives et une investigation dans les premiers manuels de finance d'entreprise, nous présentons une lecture de l'émergence de cette discipline académique, issue de la pratique des grandes entreprises. Un premier vocabulaire et les premières théories émergent. Par ailleurs, un débat plus large prend place concernant l'éducation aux Etats-Unis et l'institutionnalisation de l'enseignement des affaires dans la higher education, auquel Veblen prend part. / My PhD dissertation focuses on the theory of the corporate finance that emerged between 1880 and 1929, as well as the contribution of Veblen.First, we highlight Veblen’s analytical and macroeconomic contributions to the business enterprise. He highlights a trinity credit-equity-goodwill by which we assert that he is a "pre-modern" theorist of corporate finance. His vision of goodwill allows him to draw up a theory of investment that is rooted in the affiliation of the Q-Theory. It thus offers a pioneering look at the management of an enterprise, with its analysis of the behavior of the insider and the outsider.Secondly, through an archival work and an investigation into the first corporate finance manuals, we present a reading of the emergence of this academic discipline, resulting from the practice of large companies. A first vocabulary and the first theories emerge. In addition, there is a wider debate about education in the United States and the institutionalization of business education in higher education, in which Veblen takes part.