Stephen W. Salant is an economist who has done extensive research in applied microeconomics. His 1975 model of speculative attacks in the gold market was by and others to explain speculative attacks in foreign exchange markets. Hundreds of journal articles and books on financial speculative attacks followed. In a series of six articles, Salant has continued to focus instead on real speculative attacks. These may be divided into two categories: speculative attacks induced by government policies such as total allowable catch quotas in fisheries, H1-B immigration quotas, commodity price ceilings, and most recently the proposed price-collars on tradable emissions permits; and speculative attacks that are naturally occurring rather than induced by government policy such as the precipitous depletions of storable common properties. In industrial organization, he has contributed to the literatures on horizontal mergers, price discrimination, durable goods monopoly, and cartels. Salant also has a long-standing interest in the Alger Hiss case and has in that area as well. He earned his B.A. in mathematics at Columbia University in 1967, and his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1973. He worked at the Federal Reserve Board and the Rand Corporation, where he coedited The RAND Journal of Economics. Currently, Dr. Salant is Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan and a nonresident fellow at Resources for the Future.
Publications
Besides his work on speculative attacks, his papers include the following:
"Exhaustible Resources and Industrial Structure: A Nash-Cournot Approach to the World Oil Market," Journal of Political Economy, October 1976.
"Search Theory and Duration Data: A Theory of Sorts," Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1976---anthologized in the International Library of Critical Writings volume entitled The Economics of Unemployment edited by P.N. Junakar, The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics, 2000.
"Analytical Underpinnings of a Computerized World Oil Model," Operations Research, Spring 1982.
"Losses from Merger: The Effects of an Exogenous Change in Industry Structure on Cournot-Nash Equilibrium", Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 1983—reprinted in Cournot Oligopoly: Characterization and Applications, edited by Andrew Daughety, Cambridge University Press, 1988.
"A Misguided Energy Program: Reshaping OECD's Oil-Sharing Plan", New York Times, Sunday Forum, November 4, 1984. Supporting editorial appeared in New York Times, November l6, 1984.
"Cartels that Vote: Agricultural Marketing Boards and Induced Voting Behavior", Public Regulation: New Perspectives on Institutions and Policies, edited by Elizabeth Bailey, and published by MIT Press, 1987.
"Ending the Hidden Subsidy to South Africa," Newsday, July 10, 1987.
"The Positive and Normative Consequences of Treble Damage Awards in Private Lawsuits for Price Fixing," Journal of Political Economy, December 1987.
"When is Inducing Self-Selection Suboptimal for a Monopolist?" Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 1989.
"Durable-Goods Monopoly with Discrete Demand", Journal of Political Economy, December 1989.
"Predicting Committee Behavior in Majority-Rule Experiments", Rand Journal, Summer 1990.
"Existence and Uniqueness of Cournot Equilibrium: New Results from Old Methods", Review of Economic Studies, April 1991.
"Increasing the Profits of a Subset of Firms in Oligopoly Models with Strategic Substitutes", American Economic Review, June 1991.
"When to Use a Broker and How to Price the House" Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, June 1991.
"Intertemporal Self-Selection with Multiple Buyers under Complete Information", Economic Theory, vol 5, 1995.
"Deducing Implications of Fitness Maximization When a Tradeoff Exists Among Alternative Currencies", Behavioral Ecology, vol. 6, no. 4, winter 1995.
"Cartel Quotas under Majority Rule", American Economic Review, March 1995. Reprinted in Agricultural Markets: Mechanisms, Failures and Regulations edited by David Martimort, North Holland.
"Game Theory and the Law: Is Game Theory Ready for Prime Time?", Michigan Law Review, May 1996.
"Optimal Asymmetric Strategies in Research Joint Ventures", International Journal of Industrial Organization,
March 1998.
"When is the Standard Analysis of Common Property Extraction under Free Access Correct?---A Game-Theoretic Justification for Non Game-Theoretic Analyses", Journal of Political Economy, August 1999.
"Unequal Treatment of Identical Agents in Cournot Equilibrium: Private and Social Advantages", American Economic Review, June 1999.
"Intertemporal Depletion of Resource Sites by Spatially Distributed Users", American Economic Review, September 2001.
