This dissertation provides an economic analysis of social value by examining how public policies and institutional designs can induce firms and markets to generate socially desirable outcomes.
Chapter 1 introduces a novel government policy instrument...
This dissertation provides an economic analysis of social value by examining how public policies and institutional designs can induce firms and markets to generate socially desirable outcomes.
Chapter 1 introduces a novel government policy instrument to address environmental damage: social performance management by public firms. This chapter examines its impact in mixed oligopoly markets consisting of one public firm and multiple private firms. The results show that introducing social performance management under Cournot competition can reduce overall environmental damage and increase social welfare. Depending on the number of private firms in the market, privatizing the public firm can be an optimal policy under Cournot competition. In contrast, under Stackelberg competition with the public firm as a leader, introducing social performance management decreases social welfare, and the optimal policy is to avoid any intervention other than taxation, including privatization. Additionally, both social welfare and environmental damage are higher under Stackelberg competition without social performance management than under Cournot competition with social performance management. These results highlight the importance of accounting for market competition structures when developing policies for social performance management and privatization in mixed oligopolies.
Chapter 2 introduces a framework with mandatory employment for vulnerable workers and a tradable credit system. The mandatory employment system targeting vulnerable workers is part of the labor market redistribution policy that supports the employment of vulnerable workers in the labor market to aid in their self-reliance. However, deadweight losses occur when vulnerable workers are employed at wages higher than their productivity. In other words, the introduction of the mandatory employment system for vulnerable workers leads to a trade-off between inefficiency and redistribution. In markets where both for-profit and social firms coexist, the introduction of a mandatory employment system for vulnerable workers typically results in a reduction in social welfare compared to situations without such a system. On the other hand, applying a floor-and-trade method, which allows trading rights for the employment of vulnerable workers among firms, can reduce social deadweight losses compared to a system with only mandatory employment for vulnerable workers. This study suggests that the introduction of a credit trading system can lead to appropriate levels of efficiency and redistribution outcomes for individual firms through market-driven transactions.
Chapter 3 extends the analysis of mandatory employment and a tradable credit system to markets consisting exclusively of for-profit firms. The results show that introducing a tradable credit system encourages the employment of vulnerable workers while simultaneously improving social welfare.
Chapter 4 develops a microeconomic model of preferences incorporating primary needs and examines its implications for market outcomes. By introducing a threshold below which primary need goods receive priority, this chapter shows that competitive market outcomes may fail to achieve allocations that satisfy primary need considerations, even when such allocations are feasible. This result highlights structural limitations of decentralized markets and provides an economic foundation for policies aimed at ensuring minimum living standards.