ALBERT

Description: This paper seeks to analyze the dynamical structure of the Indian stock market by considering two major Indian stock market indices, namely, BSE Sensex and CNX Nifty. The recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) is applied on the daily closing data of the two series during the period from January 2, 2002, to October 10, 2013. A Rolling Window of 100 and step size 21 are applied in order to see how both the series behave over time. The analysis based on three RQA measures, namely, % determinism (DET), laminarity (LAM), and trapping time (TT), provides conclusive evidence that the Indian equity market is chaotic in nature. Evidences for phase transition in the Indian equity market around the time of financial crisis are also found.

Description: In many enterprises and other types of organizations, decision making is both a crucial and a challenging task. Despite their importance, many decisions are still made based on experience and intuition rather than on evidence supported by rigorous approaches. Decisions are often made this way because of lack of data, unknown relationships between data and goals, conflicting goals, and poorly understood risks. This research presents a goal-oriented, business intelligence-supported methodology for decision making. The methodology, which is iterative, allows enterprises to begin with limited data, discover required data to build their models, capture stakeholders goals, and model threats, opportunities, and their impact. It also enables the aggregation of Key Performance Indicators and their integration into goal models. The tool-supported methodology and its models aim to enhance the user’s experience with common business intelligence applications. Managers can monitor the impact of decisions on the organization's goals and improve both decision models and business processes. The approach is illustrated and evaluated through a retail business scenario, from which several lessons were learned. One key lesson is that once an organization has a goal model, data can be added iteratively. The example, tool support, and lessons suggest the feasibility of the methodology.

Description: The developing and least developed countries in the South and Southeast Asia have emerged as dynamic hosts of foreign direct investment; and inbound FDI growth surpassed that of the developing world during the decade 2001–2010. Yet foreign investment continues to flow quite unevenly into individual countries in the region, although majority of the Asian countries do emphasize liberalization unilaterally, bilaterally under the bilateral investment treaty (BIT) and the bilateral trade agreement (BTA), and regionally under the regional trade agreement (RTA). Under such scenarios, this study empirically assesses FDI determinants with a specific focus on the FDI effects of BIT, BTA, and RTA as well as of factors pertaining to institutional quality. Gravity-type econometric results of unbalanced panel data uncover that BIT, BTA, and RTA promote FDI insignificantly. It appears that the role of bilateral instruments in stimulating the inflow of foreign capital diminishes if liberal FDI policies already exist in the host country. Under such circumstances, the quality of the host country’s legal and regulatory environment exerts a profound influence on firms’ investment decisions. Nonetheless, core gravity variables are found to be important determinants of FDI.JEL Classification: C33, F21, F23.

Description: ObjectivesThis article aims to assess the relationship between the monetary value of informal care - approximated with the caregiver's willingness to pay to reduce caregiving time - and the caregiver's need of three types of support services: care training, respite care and support group. Developing such services may be the only way to provide sustainable informal care in the future, along with efficient allocation.Data & MethodsData used stemmed from two representative national surveys conducted by French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies and the French Head Office of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics of the Social Affairs Ministry in 2008. The contingent valuation method was used to approximate the monetary value of informal care. The model was run on 223 informal caregivers of people with Alzheimer's Disease. Statistical analyses were performed using Heckman's two-step estimation strategy, which is known to correct selection bias. Results: On average, one hour of informal care was estimated at €12.1. Monetary value of informal care was influenced by the caregiver's need of care training (p

Description: This paper extends the classical Samuelson multiplier–accelerator model for national economy. Actually, this new modeling structure removes the basic shortcoming of the original model producing stable business cycles when realistic values of the parameters (multiplier, accelerator) are entered into the system of equations. Under this new approach, we introduce some kind of randomness and memory into the system. We assume that consumption, private investment and governmental expenditure depend upon the national income values of the last n ( n 〉 1 ) years and further assume that multiplier and accelerator factors are stochastic variables. Then stochastic delayed difference equations of higher order are employed to describe the model, while the respective solutions of higher order polynomials for the expectation of national income variables correspond to the typical observed business cycles of real economy. Stability and controllability conditions are investigated while numerical examples provide further insight and better understanding as regards the control actions, system design, and produced business cycles.

Description: Within existing literature, it is well known that people’s behavior in ultimatum game experiments cannot be explained by perfect rationality model. There is, however, evidence showing that people are boundedly rational. In this paper, we studied repeated ultimatum game experiments in which the pie size is only known to the proposer (player 1), but the transaction history is made known to both players. We found that subject’s behavior can be very well explained by the history-consistent-rationality model (HCR model) of Lee and Ferguson (2010), which suggests that people’s behavior is affected by what they observed in the past. The HCR model is able to yield point predictions whose errors are on average within 5% of the total pie size. The experimental results provide evidence that subjects' behavior is boundedly rational with respect to the transaction history.

Description: This study addresses the indirect impacts of state-mandated workers' compensation benefits on workers' wages. The benefit structure of workers' compensation causes a fundamental estimation problem. I develop a new strategy to limit the biases inherent in earlier models. I utilize individual-level census data (between 1940 and 1990) to exploit benefit variation that occurs both across states and within the fifty states over time. The results suggest that wage offsets are not constant across time and may be larger for workers at lower-wage levels.

Description: This study intends to estimate the demand for indigenous chicken meat in Kenya, including other available meat products for comparison purposes. Data used was collected from six counties. A total 930 rural and urban households were sampled. Linear Approximated Almost Ideal Demand System (LA/AIDS) model was used to obtain the demand elasticities and to examine the socioeconomic and demographic factors influencing the meat budget shares. The results ascertain that the socio-demographic factors such as household location, the proportion of household members and the family size are important factors in explaining perceived variations in the consumption of meat products. Indigenous chicken meat, beef and mutton, were identified as necessities. Indigenous chicken meat and beef were identified as substitutes while indigenous chicken, goat and exotic chicken meats were complements. In view of the high expenditure elasticities, therefore, considering a policy option that would enhance consumer income is desirable, since it will result in high consumption thereby providing more incentives for production of meat products. The information generated would be more beneficial to the interest groups in the livestock sector as a whole. This would be utilised in the formulation of effective policies in line with food security and poverty alleviation.

Description: Within existing literature, it is well known that people’s behavior in ultimatum game experiments cannot be explained by perfect rationality model. There is, however, evidence showing that people are boundedly rational. In this paper, we studied repeated ultimatum game experiments in which the pie size is only known to the proposer (player 1), but the transaction history is made known to both players. We found that subject’s behavior can be very well explained by the history-consistent-rationality model (HCR model) of Lee and Ferguson (2010), which suggests that people’s behavior is affected by what they observed in the past. The HCR model is able to yield point predictions whose errors are on average within 5% of the total pie size. The experimental results provide evidence that subjects' behavior is boundedly rational with respect to the transaction history.

Description: We analyze the mutual relations among firms’ capital structure, ownership structure, and valuation. Through the estimation of a system of simultaneous equations for a sample of 1,130 firms from 16 countries from both the common law and the civil law environments, our results confirm the differential effect of ownership structure on firms’ value in each setting. Whereas in civil law firms the higher ownership concentration results in an entrenchment and an alignment effect, in the common law firms higher ownership concentration increases the value of the firm. Second, we corroborate the endogeneity of ownership structure since we find that ownership structure is affected by the value of the firm and by the capital structure. Third, our results suggest that corporate finance decisions are taken simultaneously with other mechanisms of corporate governance and conditional on firms’ valuation.

Description: Conditional expected shortfalls calculated for European insurance companies and banks under stressed market conditions are shown to be of similar magnitudes. Measured at 95% and 99% stress levels, on data covering the period from 1995 to 2011, the equity-return tail losses of insurance undertakings and banks are indistinguishable. Granger causality analysis, on all pairs of banks and insurance companies included in the sample, shows that banks and insurance companies have equal propensity to cause each others price movements. Even though the business model of insurance undertakings is different from the business model typically applied by banks, and even though insurance companies are not depending to a similar degree on short term funding as banks, the empirical results indicate that the financial equity markets in Europe do not differentiate their trading of banks and insurance companies in periods of stress.

Description: Total Factor Productivity (TFP) measures the growth in output which is not accounted for by inputs. Data Envelopment Analysis which forms the basis for the computation of Malmquist TFP index is used in this paper to study the performance of different river basins in Andhra Pradesh state, India. The results indicated that average technical efficiency of all the basins is only 66%. In all the basins there was a decline in growth of agricultural output during the first two decades, viz., 1979-1980 to 1988-1989 and it had picked in the last decade (1999-2000). All the river basins have TFP change greater than 1 indicating progress in agricultural productivity. Out of the 40 river basins, 14 river basins have technical efficiency change less than 1 indicating decline in TFP growth whereas all the basins have technical changes greater than 1 implying that there is shift in production frontier over years. In general, within the TFP, technical change contributed more than technical efficiency change. Looking at the future options for increasing the agricultural output in the river basins, it is important to focus on improving the TFP growth compared to increasing the quantities of physical inputs.

Description: This paper investigates the changes in cigarette demand in response to the changes in cigarette prices; smokeless tobacco prices; adoption of clean indoor air laws (CIALs). We used an error-correction econometric method to estimate the cigarette sales adjustment path in response to changes in prices and CIAL coverage in the United States by utilizing scanner data from supermarkets. Finding from this study indicates that smokeless tobaccos are not perfect substitutes for cigarettes, but increases in the price of cigarettes are associated with an increase in smokeless tobacco sales. The error-correction econometric method suggest that the demand for cigarettes and smokeless tobacco is related to each other; a price increase in either product leads to an increase in demand for the other product. However, the adjustment paths are quite different; an increase in cigarette prices lowers cigarette sales in relatively faster rate than decreases in smokeless tobacco prices or adoption of smoke-free laws. Changes in cigarette demand in response to changes in cigarette prices occur relatively quickly; but the full effects of smokeless tobacco price change and the adoption of 100% smoke-free laws on cigarette demand take a longer time.

Description: This paper provides new insights into the calculation of trade potential between the EU and its Southern and Eastern Mediterranean partners (MPs). It is based on an econometric specification which takes into account some new explanatory variables which are not included simultaneously in the previous studies. These include trade costs (tariffs, NTBs, and logistics costs), factor movement (migration and FDI), as well as governance. In addition, specific estimators are implemented in order to account for zero trade flows, endogeneity and dynamics. The main conclusion of this study is that contrary to some results found in previous studies, MPs have reached their export potential with the EU. It is also shown that there is no specificity of the MP-EU trade potential in comparison with the other main PTAs (NAFTA, MERCOSUR, and ASEAN) which have also reached their trade potential. These results have strong policy implications.

Description: The purpose of this study is to investigate how earnings announcement event affects stock returns at Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE). For this purpose we use the KSE-100 Index as our sample. We use the CAR Analysis to analyze the impact of earnings announcement over the stock returns around announcement dates. Our results suggest that KSE experiences abnormal stock returns around earnings announcement dates for the overall market and for different categories which indicate that efficient market hypothesis does not hold in Pakistani market and point out the presence of informational dissemination inefficiencies in the market.

Description: In the past 50 years, a striking stylized fact has been the downward—or flat—trend of intra-African trade as a share of Africa’s total trade, while official development assistance (ODA) has experienced a noticeable expansion. During the same period, economic growth performances have not been consistent and robust enough to put a dent in the poverty level across the African continent in general and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in particular. Using a two-stage least square (TSLS) estimation technique, this paper finds out that intra-ECOWAS trade stimulates per capita income growth substantially more than foreign aid, which rather constitutes an impediment to that growth in most specifications. Additionally, comparable results are obtained when the scope of the study is expanded to include trade of ECOWAS members with the rest of the world. As a result, it becomes appropriate to suggest policy recommendations encouraging increased cooperation among member states in an attempt to (i) expand and build new cross-states infrastructures, aimed at boosting communications and telecommunications networks, (ii) accelerate the trade facilitation process by addressing administrative red tapes that balloon both transaction costs and delays in the flows of goods across borders, seaports, and airports, and (iii) develop and diversify the industrial base in member states.

Description: The main purpose of this paper is to consider the multivariate GARCH (MGARCH) framework to model the volatility of a multivariate process exhibiting long-term dependence in stock returns. More precisely, the long-term dependence is examined in the first conditional moment of US stock returns through multivariate ARFIMA process, and the time-varying feature of volatility is explained by MGARCH models. An empirical application to the returns series is carried out to illustrate the usefulness of our approach. The main results confirm the presence of long memory property in the conditional mean of all stock returns.

Description: This study examines the economic and welfare effects of raising the number of high-skilled immigrants in Canada. It uses a life-cycle applied general equilibrium model with endogenous time allocation decisions between work, education, and leisure. According to the simulation results, raising the number of high-skilled immigrants would boost productive capacity and labour productivity but could lower real GDP per capita. In addition, by raising the supply of high-skilled workers, more high-skilled immigrants would reduce the skill premium and the return to human capital. This in turn would lower incentives for young adults to invest in human capital and have a dampening effect on the domestic supply of skilled workers. Finally, it is found that more high-skilled immigrants would be welfare enhancing for medium- and low-skilled workers but welfare decreasing for high-skilled workers.

Description: This paper studies how boundedly rational default expectations affect the credit cycle. I propose a simple model of oligopolistic bank competition which serves to compare situations with just a portion of boundedly rational banks to situations where either all banks are rational or all banks are boundedly rational. When all banks are boundedly rational, the credit cycle is most amplified relative to the situation where all banks are rational. However, the amplifying effect of bounded rationality on the side of banks largely remains even when only a portion of banks are boundedly rational. Hence, the interest rate decisions of a minority of boundedly rational banks induce the more rational competitors to aggravate the credit cycle.

Description: In 2008 Scott Barrett wrote a paper on “The incredible economics of geoengineering” in which he argued that the potentially low cost of climate engineering (CE) measures together with the quick response of the earth’s temperature to such interventions will change the whole debate about the mitigation of climate change. Whereas Barrett was mostly focusing on the cost of running CE measures, we point out that several determinants of overall economic cost like price or external effects are not yet sufficiently accounted for and that the question of dynamic efficiency is still unresolved. Combining the existing theoretical investigations about the topic from the literature, we show that even though these new measures provide new options to deal with climate change, several of them might also reduce our scope of action. Consequently, we suggest that economic research should shift its focus to portfolios of CE measures and put more emphasis on those measures which control atmospheric carbon concentration and therefore allow extending our scope of action. Additionally, economic research should address the question of phase-in and phase-out scenarios for measures which directly influence the radiation balance.

Description: The policy view, which argues that foreign aid is effective only in a good policy environment, suggests that aid ought to be given to countries with good policies. This has generated a lot of interest and controversy. We argue that the key recommendation of the policy view runs contrary to other prescriptions, particularly those that arise under asymmetric information. Inefficiencies that derive from information problems often require that policy makers do not base the amount of foreign assistance on the recipient's policy effort. This suggests that donors should be cautious in applying the policy view. We also briefly discuss problems that are likely to emerge in estimating aid's productivity given policy in the light of potential information problems.

Description: This study contributes to the literature by estimating discount rate for health benefits and value of statistical life of workers in India. The discount rate is imputed from wage-risk trade-offs in which workers decide whether to accept a risky job with higher wages. The estimated real discount rate varies across regions ranging 2.4–5.1 percent, which is closer to the financial market rate for the study period. The estimated value of a statistical life is Rs. 20 (US $ 1.107) million. The results thus provide no empirical support for utilizing a separate rate of discount for health benefits of life-saving policies in developing countries like India.

Description: In the presence of a risk-free asset the investment opportunity set obtained via the Markowitz portfolio optimization procedure is usually characterized in terms of the vector of excess returns on individual risky assets and the variance-covariance matrix. We show that the investment opportunity set can alternatively be characterized in terms of the vector of Sharpe ratios of individual risky assets and the correlation matrix. This implies that the changes in the characteristics of individual risky assets that preserve the Sharpe ratios and the correlation matrix do not change the investment opportunity set. The alternative characterization makes it simple to perform a comparative static analysis that provides an answer to the question of what happens with the investment opportunity set when we change the risk-return characteristics of individual risky assets. We demonstrate the advantages of using the alternative characterization of the investment opportunity set in the investment practice. The Sharpe ratio thinking also motivates reconsidering the CAPM relationship and adjusting Jensen's alpha in order to properly measure abnormal portfolio performance.

Description: This paper highlights some recent components related to the endogenous growth literature; in particular, (i) research and development progress, direction, and diffusion; (ii) human-capital accumulation; (iii) wage inequality; (iv) nonscale economic growth, showing how each one has been treated by the existing seminal literature and the expected impact of bringing them together. The connection of the different components is mainly done by involving the leading literature on North-South technological-knowledge diffusion by imitation under trade, and the prevailing literature on intra- and intercountry wage inequality.

Description: This paper examines the impact of various determinants on gender gaps in human capital in developing countries. We find that female primary completion is dependent on per capita GDP growth, female employment in agriculture, in industry, and in services, and the interactions between per capita GDP growth and female employment in industry and in services. We are also able to show that the ratio of girls to boys’ enrollments in primary and secondary schools is a function of the poverty rate, the fraction of the population with access to an improved water source, and maternal mortality. In addition, we observe that girls’ mortality is dependent upon the fraction of the population having access to improved sanitation and water services, and ethnic fractionalization. Finally, we find that maternal mortality is a function of the fraction of the population with access to improved water services, the fraction of births attended by skilled staff, the fraction of women receiving prenatal care, and ethnic fractionalization. These statistical results can assist developing countries identify areas that need to be improved upon in order to reduce gender gaps in human capital—specifically those concerning female mortality and education.

Description: This paper explores the economic and labour market effects of implementing a tax reduction targeted at older workers. The analysis is conducted with a life-cycle computable general equilibrium model calibrated on Canadian data. The analysis shows that implementing a permanent income tax reduction for workers aged 60 and over has only small macroeconomic effects because the labour supply increase of older workers is partly offset by a reduction in the labour supply at core ages. This induced effect also discourages savings and generates crowding out through private investment but has a favourable impact on lifetime economic welfare. The macroeconomic impact is much larger when the income tax reduction is temporary because workers no longer reduce their hours at core ages and there is no reduction in savings. However, since only current middle-aged and older workers benefit from the tax cut, a temporary income tax cut reduces intergenerational equity.

Description: Pacific island countries (PICs), which attained political independence, are open economies with very small manufacturing base and narrow range of exports of copra and tuna. They are highly dependent on imports ranging from food and mineral fuels to intermediate and capital goods and transport machinery. Four of the 14 PICs, namely Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu, have independent currencies with usual paraphernalia of central banks under fixed exchange rate regimes. Their financial sectors are small and with undeveloped money and capital markets. The nominal exchange rate as an anchor has served the four PICs well by keeping inflation low. The objective of the paper is to investigate whether money has played any significant part in output growth as well as determination of prices in PICs. The findings are that broad money (M2) and exchange rate have a long run as well as short-run casual relationship with both output and prices in all PICs.

Description: The countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have gone through immense political and socioeconomic restructuring after the collapse of communism around 1990. Such transition has affected the lives of populations in these countries in many significant respects. A key aspect of life and wellbeing in any society is that of population health. This paper traces the transitions in population health—life expectancies and mortality rates for both males and females—in seven of the CEE countries during the two decades after the fall of communism. We estimate a series of panel data models to identify some of the common factors that would explain health transitions in these countries, while allowing for country-specific variability. Our findings indicate that the health transitions are strongly country specific. Moreover, income per capita and trade openness are statistically significant common contributors to health transitions.

Description: This paper aims to investigate the determinants of nonperforming loans in the Romanian banking sector by means of time series modelling. It is motivated by the hypothesis that macroeconomic-cyclical indicators, monetary aggregates, interest rates, financial markets, and bank-specific variables influence the nonperforming loans in the Romanian banking system. Using monthly series that span from December 2001 to November 2010, we cover both the booming period and the recent financial crisis. Given the significant presence of the Greek banks in Romania, the novelty of the paper lies in the introduction of variables that proxy the Greek crisis. Thus, we examine the existence of a potential transmission channel to the Romanian banking system by investigating the impact of the Greek crisis to the Romanian nonperforming loans. Our findings indicate that macroeconomic variables, specifically the construction and investment expenditure, the inflation and the unemployment rate, and the country's external debt to GDP and M2 jointly with Greek crisis-specific variables influence the credit risk of the Romanian banking system. The results have several implications for policymakers, regulators, and managers as the most recent published stress tests on the Romanian banking system are based on end 2008 data.

Description: We investigate the effect of different scales of addictive factors on the utilization of medical services in this paper using a two-part model. Data are from the 2005 National Health Interview Survey and the claims data in the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan. The results show that personal addictive behavior is significantly associated with both outpatient and inpatient utilization. Moreover, our result implies that those who smoked at least 20 cigarettes per day might not visit a doctor until the illness was severe. It suggests that the government can accomplish these goals by promotion and education in order to increase public awareness of personal health.

Description: An analysis of Canadian farmland risk and its return on investment shows that a Farmland Real Estate Investment Trust (F-REIT) and gold would have significantly enhanced portfolio performance over the past 35 years. Investors who desire low-risk portfolios would not have benefited from an F-REIT or gold investment. However, investors in the medium-risk category could have improved the financial performance of their portfolios by including an F-REIT investment rather than gold. The financial gains from F-REIT result from a level of risk that is lower than gold, REITs, and stocks, an expected yield that is greater than for bonds, and a low correlation with other financial asset returns.

Description: The recession of 2007–2009 has led to renewed interest in forecasting discretionary consumer spending and whether marketing variables contain predictive content. Using the ACSI customer satisfaction index and both linear and nonlinear methods, this note suggests the index fails to enhance our understanding of the temporal evolution of discretionary spending.

Description: The paper demonstrates the efficacy of liquidity management through both the rate and quantum channels. Using the concepts of autonomous and discretionary liquidity, the paper derives the optimal policy mix of instruments which can be used for stabilizing the price of liquidity. For effective liquidity management, the sufficient condition highlighted in the paper has important implications for developing market-related monetary policy instruments, particularly in emerging market economies.

Description: We extend the literature on endogenous lifetime and economic growth by Chakraborty (2004) and Bunzel and Qiao (2005) to endogenous fertility. We show that development traps due to underinvestments in health cannot appear when fertility is an economic decision variable and the costs of children are represented by a constant fraction of the parents' income used for their upbringing.

Description: This paper examines the degree of polarization in African countries' per capita GDP distribution between 1966 to 2004. We first use a nonparametric analysis and find that the countries tend to cluster in two classes of per capita GDP. Secondly, by using the Wolfson's bipolarization measure, the results reveal that bipolarization has been accelerating during the two first decades and is still growing. We relate the evolution of polarization during the period to the business sectors. We find that the specialization of the countries is the main factor explaining its evolution, namely, in agriculture and industry sectors.

Description: Over the recent past, the global market of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) has grown exponentially, while the lifespan of these products has become increasingly shorter. More of these products are ending up in rubbish dumps and recycling centers, posing a new challenge to policy makers. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the e-Waste problem and to put forward an estimation technique to calculate the growth of e-Waste.

Description: The objective of this study was to examine whether the implementation of the helmet law had reduced the likelihood of head injury and the associated medical cost in Taiwan. Data were taken from the 1996 and 1998 population-based data. In total, 888,179 and 921,058 effective samples were used in the study from the two years. Two different types of regression model were adopted to evaluate the impact of the motorcycle helmet use law on incidences of head injury and associated medical cost and hospital length of stay. The results reveal that medical cost is down by 11.5 percent and hospital LOS has fallen by 18.58 percent. Thus, with the introduction of the motorcycle helmet use law having had a demonstrably positive influence on motorcycle head injuries and fatalities, significant savings are clearly being achieved, not only in terms of economic and social costs, but also with regard to medical cost.

Description: The aim of this study is to investigate whether there is any relationship between socioeconomic factors and mental depression, specifically in connection with family income and education. Our empirical model was estimated using the database of three National Household Sampling Surveys (1998, 2003, and 2008) and their special supplements on the health status of the Brazilian population. Analyses for men and women were conducted separately. Family income proved to be a protective factor against depression for both men and women. With regard to the effects of education, the estimates indicate that the maximum risk of depression occurs when women have approximately four years of schooling and men have about eight. Above these levels, the risk decreases as schooling years increase.

Description: Unilateral trade preferences are one of the most important instruments offered by developed countries to foster developing country exports. This paper analyzes the impact of unilateral trade preferences on developing countries by focusing on the experience of Mozambique. In this paper, we analyze whether unilateral preferences offered by the EU are “valuable” for Mozambican exporters based on the impact on preferential margins, utilization rates, and export prices. We use a detailed dataset with cif unit values at HS8-digits level covering the period 2000–2007. Our findings indicate that (i) for a large number of product lines, export margins are zero; (ii) utilization rates are generally high; however, (iii) this does not translate into a positive price margins captured by Mozambican exporters compared to MFN competitors. These findings cast doubts on the “value” of preferences and their potential impact on developing country exports.

Description: This paper tackles the problem of aggregate TFP measurement using stochastic frontier analysis. We estimate a world production frontier for a sample of 75 countries over a long period. The “Bauer-Kumbhakar” decomposition of TFP is applied to a smaller sample in order to evaluate the effects of changes in efficiency (technical and allocative), scale effects, and technical change. Estimated technical efficiency scores are compared to productivity indexes offered by nonfrontier studies. We conclude that differences in productivity are responsible for virtually all the differences of growth performance between developed and developing nations and that a large part of this is due to allocative efficiency.

Description: If an emission reduction agreement with participation of all players is not enforceable because politicians are too myopic or costs of reducing emissions are too high, strategic investments in research and development (R&D) of green technology, for example, sustainable drivetrains, can pave the way for a future treaty. Although no player will rationally reduce emissions on its own, investments in R&D by at least one player can change the strategic situation of negotiations to control emissions: emission abatement costs will decrease so that a treaty with full participation can be achieved in future periods through time consistent sustainable policies.

Description: The importance of the individual’s health behaviour for the health production process is beyond controversy. Health relevant behaviour can be viewed as a key variable in the health production process. Changes in the behaviour may influence individual’s assessment of health. Following this idea, we use German microdata to identify determinants of smoking, drinking, and obesity and their impact on health. Our empirical approach allows for the simultaneity of behaviours and self-reported health. In addition, we account for endogeneity of health behaviours and take aspects of reporting heterogeneity of self-reported health into account. We find that health behaviour is directly related to the socioeconomic status and observe gender-specific differences in the determinants of drinking, smoking, and heavy body weight in particular. The influence on health is also gender specific. While we do not find any impact of smoking, overweight is relevant only for males and no clear pattern for alcohol exists.

Description: Progressive reformers failed to gain support to implement compulsory health insurance in the US after WWI. Modeling results presented in this paper, using a lifecycle model with sickness risk and precautionary savings, support the conclusion that existing voluntary insurance plans were adequate and welfare-enhancing in the US, that compulsory health insurance as proposed would not be welfare-enhancing, and that Americans' preference to self-insure during most of their working lives was rational, utility-maximizing behaviour.

Description: Understanding the economic impacts of transportation projects is essential for decision makers, officials, and stakeholders as they determine the best course of action for their jurisdiction. Economic impacts can guide decisions of future projects and help explain past economic fluctuations. This study uses an evaluative (ex-post) analysis process to assess the generative economic impacts of transportation projects after completion that can be used to identify the economic impacts of transportation projects while quantifying their relationship. Both pre- and postconstruction data were collected and used to compare the trends of sales tax revenue and employment numbers adjacent to transportation projects in Utah over a 10-year period. Plots of the trends before, during, and after construction for each project in the analysis were generated. A formal process was created for completing the analysis for future study. Results indicate that there is a positive relationship between transportation improvement projects and sales tax revenues. This relationship amounts to approximately a 4.0 percent increase in trends compared to the state overall. Employment demonstrated a 4.5 percent increase compared to the state overall. Although the results are not considered statistically significant, they are considered practically significant and add to the literature on this topic.

Description: In an incomplete regulation framework, the regulator cannot replicate all the possible outcomes by himself since he has no influence over some firms in the market. Due to asymmetric information, it may be better for the regulator to allow the unregulated firms to extract a truthful report from the regulated firm through side-payments under collusion, and therefore the “collusion-proofness principle” may not hold. In fact, by introducing an exogenous number of unregulated firms, social welfare differences seem to favour a collusion-allowing equilibrium. However, such result will depend on the relative importance given by the regulator to the consumer surplus in the social welfare function.

Description: This paper investigates whether the relationship between income inequality and growth changes over time. Two time periods, covering 1970–1985 and 1985–1999, are analyzed and compared. A statistically significant relationship between inequality and growth in either time period fails to emerge. However, there are indications that effect of inequality on growth may be different in the nineties when compared to the seventies. In the literature, a consistent negative effect of inequality on growth is documented although the significance of the effect is open to debate. This paper also finds a negative effect of income inequality on growth in the seventies but, although statistically insignificant, a consistently positive effect in the nineties.

Description: This paper examines ethnic wage differentials for the entire population of workers who enrolled for the first time as students at Dutch universities (WO) and colleges (HBO) in 1996 using unique administrative panel data for the period 1996 to 2005 from the Dutch tertiary education system. The study breaks down wage differentials into two components: a component which can be explained by the observed characteristics and an unexplained component. The analysis provides new evidence for the magnitude and the origin of ethnic wage differentials by gender. In general, ethnic wage gap is larger for migrant women than migrant men and larger for Western and Caribbean migrants than for Mediterranean migrants. Ethnic minority workers appear to have larger wage surpluses which is almost entirely explained by their observed favourable characteristics. Most notably, Mediterranean female graduates have significantly positive wage discrimination, while Western female graduates seem to face a small wage penalty.

Description: A shareholder theory of firm and a stakeholder theory of firm may differ in their respective evaluation method of firm performance. Both theories however recognize the importance of value creation as the economic role of firms as institutions. The New Institutional Economics (NIE) emphasizes incentives alignment, while also viewing stakeholder engagements as methods to expand the boundaries of firms. The difference in performance evaluation between the two approaches can be reduced if stakeholders, while formulating incentive alignment, also evaluate the mechanisms of establishing a common currency value. The concomitant development of stakeholder engagement, incentive alignment, and value currency creation is argued to be an evolutionary process with the efficiency implications of the two theories tending to converge.

Description: US wheat varieties are examined for differential disease resistance between public and private varieties, an issue for critics of plant intellectual property. Analysis using disease resistance rankings of wheat varieties from Kansas and Texas indicate that private varieties are as or more resistant. This finding was further confirmed with two years of Texas data. Thus, the results from the study reject the criticism of private breeding activities that they are more susceptible to disease compared to public varieties. However, private varieties resistance is incorporated from public offerings so that productive private wheat breeding is partly derivative.

Description: Utilizing linear mixed oligopoly model, this paper explores the magnitude of the maximum-revenue tariff, optimum-welfare tariff, and revenue-constrained optimal tariff that is especially designed for the consideration of the bureaucratic inefficiency. In particular, the tariff ranking issue is examined under both cases of Cournot competition and domestic public leadership. We found that, under Cournot competition, the optimum-welfare tariff is the highest and it is followed by the revenue-constrained optimal tariff while the maximum-revenue tariff is the lowest. But, under Stackelberg public leadership, if the domestic private firms are fewer than the foreign firms, the maximum-revenue tariff becomes the highest and the optimum-welfare exceeds the revenue-constrained optimal tariff.

Description: The research community has developed three main concepts and indicator systems to measure sustainability: the capital concept, the ecological concept and the multidimensional concept. Whereas a lot of research has been dedicated to the pros and cons of the three/four-pillar sustainability concept, to the shaping of the pillars and their indicators, research on standardized methods to aggregate the indicators to one index is lacking. However, a useful model exists—the GDP—which summarizes the different economic activities of various social actors in one index. An overall sustainability index has the advantage that the sustainability of a system can be expressed in one index. This allows the sustainability status of a system to be better communicated both to the public and to politicians. Against this background, we developed the Index of Sustainable Development (ISD) to measure the sustainability of systems described by multidimensional sustainability concepts. We demonstrate that it is possible to aggregate sustainability indicators of the multidimensional sustainability concepts to one index. We have chosen exemplarily the German sustainability strategy and selected the energy indicators within it because of the importance of the energy sector and due to the good statistical database in this sector.

Description: The objective of this paper is to present the technical efficiency of individual companies and their respective groups of Bangladesh stock market (i.e., Dhaka Stock Exchange, DSE) by using two risk factors (co-skewness and co-kurtosis) as the additional input variables in the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). The co-skewness and co-kurtosis are derived from the Higher Moment Capital Asset Pricing Model (H-CAPM). To investigate the contribution of these two factors, two types of technical efficiency are derived: (1) technical efficiency with considering co-skewness and co-kurtosis (WSK) and (2) technical efficiency without considering co-skewness and co-kurtosis (WOSK). By comparing these two types of technical efficiency, it is noticed that the technical efficiency of WSK is higher than the technical efficiency of WOSK for the individual companies and their respective groups. As per available literature in the context Bangladesh stock market, no study has been conducted thus far to measure technical efficiency of companies and their respective groups by using the risk factors which are derived from the H-CAPM. In this research, the link between H-CAPM and SFA is established for measuring technical efficiency and it is believed that the findings of this study may be applied to other emerging stock markets.

Description: This paper introduces a new model describing the aggregate growth of job markets. We divide the job market in each city into two groups: native job market of size and an immigrant job market of size . A reversible migration of jobs exists in both groups. In addition, the interaction between these two groups creates both native and immigrant jobs. A loss of native jobs also takes place due to the interaction. Through studying initial conditions, job-creation rate, and job-loss rate we discover some meaningful results. The size change of native job market is closely related to that of the migration rate, native job-creation rate, and native job-loss rate. We assume that these rates are proportional to the sizes of two groups and find out that for certain initial conditions, immigrants influence native job markets positively. They create more jobs for both job markets. In addition, we can make conclusions about the future trend of the flow of jobs. People will move to places like big cities where there is a higher concentration of job opportunities.

Description: The inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) are important for a country's economic development, but the world market for FDI has become more competitive. This paper empirically analyses the exchange rate movements and foreign direct investment (FDI) relationship using annual data on ASEAN economies, that is, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore. By employing ARDL bounds test approach, the empirical results show the existence of significant long-run cointegration between exchange rate and FDI for the case of Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines with all countries recording negative coefficient implying that the appreciation of Singapore dollar, Malaysian ringgit, and the Philippine peso has a positive impact on FDI inflows. Using the ECM based ARDL approach for causality test, both Singapore and the Philippines show long-run bidirectional causality between exchange rate and FDI whereas long-run unidirectional causality running from the exchange rate to FDI in Malaysia. Furthermore, this study also found that short-run unidirectional causality running from the exchange rate to FDI exists in Singapore.

Description: Recent increases in U.S. immigration enforcement at the local and state level may be impacting remittance flows to developing countries by curtailing undocumented immigration, restricting the cyclicality of migration flows and limiting employment opportunities for the undocumented. We examine how the remitting patterns of Mexican migrants in the United States are being impacted by two types of immigration enforcement policies: police-based initiatives, such as 287(g) agreements and Secure Communities, and employment-based programs, as is the case with employment verification mandates. We find that increased enforcement reduces the share of migrants sending money home. However, legal migrants remitting money home increase their money outflows enough to offset any reductions in remittance payments from their undocumented counterparts. As a result, the average dollar amount remitted per Mexican migrant rises in the midst of increased uncertainty, safeguarding remittances as one of the least volatile sources of income in the developing world.

Description: The fishery of the Bay of Bengal (BOB) is assumed to be suffering from the overexploitation. This paper aims to assess the sustainability of current level of fishing effort as well as possible changes driven by anthropogenic and climate driven factors. Therefore, the commercial marine fishery of BOB for the period of 1985/86 to 2007/08 is analyzed by applying Gordon-Schaefer Surplus Production Model on time series of total catch and standardized effort. Static reference points such as open-access equilibrium, maximum economic yield, and maximum sustainable yield are established. Assumptions about potential climatic and anthropogenic effects on r (intrinsic growth rate) and K (carrying capacity) of BOB fishery have been made under three different reference equilibriums. The results showed that the fishery is not biologically overexploited; however, it is predicted to be passing a critical situation, in terms of achieving reference points in the near future. But, on the other hand, economic overfishing started several years before. Higher fishing effort, and inadequate institutional and legal framework have been the major bottlenecks for the proper management of BOB fisheries and these may leads fishery more vulnerable against changing marine realm. Thus, the present study calls for policy intervention to rescue the stock from the existing high fishing pressure that would lead to depletion.

Description: Immigrants experience substantial disadvantages in employment in the host country. “Ethnic capital” (e.g. the ethnic network) is argued to provide a niche for immigrants. Previous international studies adopt either ethnic concentration or language as proxy for immigrants’ network in host country. In this paper we introduce a new “spatial autoregressive network approach” to construct a dynamic network variable from micro-data to capture the effects of social and resource networks for immigrants. This approach allows each individual’s self-employment decision to be geographically and ethnically correlated with that of other individuals. We further show that there are three advantages of this approach: it captures a more accurate effect of networks; it provides a better estimation of the impact of other socio-economic variables on self-employment; and it provides a better data fit. The empirical findings of this study strongly suggest that ethnic capital plays a vital role in relation to immigrants’ self-employment decisions.JEL classification codes: J23, J61, Z13

Description: Do more risk loving migrants opt for self-employment? We use a novel vignette-adjusted measure of risk preferences to investigate the link between risk aversion and entrepreneurship in migrant communities. Using an original representative household survey of the migrant population in the Greater Dublin Area, we find a significant negative relationship between risk aversion and entrepreneurship. Our results show that the use of vignettes improves the significance of the results, as they simultaneously correct for differential item functioning (where respondents interpret the self-evaluation scale in different ways) between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs, and correct for variation in the use of self-evaluation scales between migrants from different countries of origin. This finding may help explaining the variability in results on the correlation between risk preferences and entrepreneurship reported in previous studies.JEL: F22; J01; J15; J61; L26

Description: ObjectivesMany European countries regulate the markets for prescription drugs in order to cope with rising health expenditures. On the other hand, regulation distorts incentives to invest in pharmaceutical R&D. This study aims at empirically assessing the impact of regulation on pharmaceutical R&D expenditures. Methods: We analyze a sample of 20 leading pharmaceutical companies between 2000 and 2008. The share of sales in Europe serves as a proxy for the degree of pharmaceutical regulation. We control for other firm specific determinants of R&D such as cash flow, company size, leverage ratio, growth rate, and Tobin’s q. Results: Our results suggest a nonlinear relationship between European sales ratio and R&D intensity. Beyond a threshold of 33% of sales generated in Europe, a higher presence in Europe is associated with lower R&D investments. Conclusion: The results can be interpreted as further evidence of the deteriorating effect of regulation on firm’s incentives to invest in R&D.

Description: The theory of compensating differentials asserts that night shift workers should receive compensating wage differentials due to undesirable work conditions. In weak local economies, workers may have difficulty finding jobs; thus, these workers might be more likely to accept night shift work and be less concerned with the size of the compensating differential for night shifts. Using CPS data from 2001, this paper employs maximum likelihood estimation of an endogenous switching regression model to analyze wages of day and night shift workers and shift choice. The findings indicate the presence of selection bias, thus emphasizing the importance of correcting for self-selection into night shifts. The average of the estimated wage differentials for night shift work is negative for the overall sample, with differentials varying by worker characteristics. The shift differential is found to be a statistically significant predictor of shift choice, indicating that shift premiums play an important role in motivating individuals to select night shift work. Using two measures of local economic conditions and a new method of analyzing interaction effects in the context of an endogenous switching regression model, this paper finds limited evidence that weak local economic conditions lessen the impact of compensating differentials on shift choice.

Description: Biologic drugs, as with all other medical technologies, are subject to a number of regulatory, marketing, reimbursement (financing) and other demand-restricting hurdles applied by healthcare payers. One example is the routine use of cost-effectiveness analyses or health technology assessments to determine which medical technologies offer value-for-money. The manner in which these assessments are conducted suggests that, holding all else equal, the economic value of biologic drugs may be determined by how much is spent on administering these drugs or trade-offs between drug acquisition and administration costs. Yet, on the supply-side, it seems very little attention is given to how manufacturing and formulation choices affect healthcare delivery costs. This paper evaluates variations in the administration costs of biologic drugs, taking care to ensure consistent inclusion of all relevant cost resources. From this, it develops a regression-based algorithm with which manufacturers could possibly predict, during process development, how their manufacturing and formulation choices may impact on the healthcare delivery costs of their products.

Description: Background: This contribution seeks to measure preferences for health insurance in Germany and the Netherlands, using two Discrete Choice Experiments (DCE). Since the Dutch DCE was carried out right after the 2006 health reform, which made citizens explicitly choose a health insurance contract, two research questions naturally arise. First, are the preferences with regard to contract attributes (such as Managed Care-type restrictions of physician choice), incentives (such as bonus options for no claims, deductibles, and a bonus for preventive behavior), and extra services provided by the health insurer (such as patient counseling) similar between the two countries? Second, was the requirement to explicitly choose imposed by the Dutch government in the context of the reform effective in reducing status quo bias with respect to future reforms? Results: Based on random-effects Probit estimates, these two questions can be answered as follows. First, there is resistance against Managed Care-type attributes in both populations, but Germans would have to be compensated more for giving up free physician choice. Second, their status quo bias is twice as important as among their Dutch counterparts, who apparently learned to bear the cost of information associated with future choices concerning their health insurance.JEL codesC25, D12, I18

Description: Background: Experimental designs constitute a vital component of all Stated Choice (aka discrete choice experiment) studies. However, there exists limited empirical evaluation of the statistical benefits of Stated Choice (SC) experimental designs that employ non-zero prior estimates in constructing non-orthogonal constrained designs. This paper statistically compares the performance of contrasting SC experimental designs. In so doing, the effect of respondent literacy on patterns of Attribute non-Attendance (ANA) across fractional factorial orthogonal and efficient designs is also evaluated. The study uses a ‘real’ SC design to model consumer choice of primary health care providers in rural north India. A total of 623 respondents were sampled across four villages in Uttar Pradesh, India. Methods: Comparison of orthogonal and efficient SC experimental designs is based on several measures. Appropriate comparison of each design’s respective efficiency measure is made using D-error results. Standardised Akaike Information Criteria are compared between designs and across recall periods. Comparisons control for stated and inferred ANA. Coefficient and standard error estimates are also compared. Results: The added complexity of the efficient SC design, theorised elsewhere, is reflected in higher estimated amounts of ANA among illiterate respondents. However, controlling for ANA using stated and inferred methods consistently shows that the efficient design performs statistically better. Modelling SC data from the orthogonal and efficient design shows that model-fit of the efficient design outperform the orthogonal design when using a 14-day recall period. The performance of the orthogonal design, with respect to standardised AIC model-fit, is better when longer recall periods of 30-days, 6-months and 12-months are used. Conclusions: The effect of the efficient design’s cognitive demand is apparent among literate and illiterate respondents, although, more pronounced among illiterate respondents.This study empirically confirms that relaxing the orthogonality constraint of SC experimental designs increases the information collected in choice tasks, subject to the accuracy of the non-zero priors in the design and the correct specification of a ‘real’ SC recall period.

Description: In the past three decades, farm families have relied on government payments and off-farm income to reduce income risk and increase total household income. Many studies have analyzed the role of government payments; however, little is known about the impact of health insurance coverage on labor allocation. This study builds on previous literature by using copulas to test for dependence in the labor allocation, addressing the importance of fringe benefits to the farm household, and determining how these considerations affect our knowledge of the impact of fringe benefits on off-farm labor. The results indicate that the off-farm hours worked by the operator and spouse are jointly determined; health insurance coverage is an endogenous variable. Using the predicted probability of insurance coverage and joint estimation techniques, we find a positive and highly significant relationship with the hours worked off-farm. Further, we find that both coupled and decoupled payments are negatively correlated with the hours worked off-farm.Keywords:Health insurance coverage, Endogeneity, Copula, Off-farm labor supply, Dependence, Bivariate tobit, Coupled farm programs payments, Decoupled farm program payments.

Description: Background: Diabetes Mellitus Type II (T2DM) is a major and growing medical, social and economic burden in the East-Asian country of Cambodia. However, no economic modelling has been done to predict the number of cases and the budget impact.ObjectiveThis paper forecasts the epidemiological and economic consequences of T2DM in Cambodia. The Ministry of Health and related donor agencies are supported to select the most cost-effective interventions against the disease. At the same time this paper demonstrates the relevance and potential of health economic modelling for least developed countries. Methods: We developed a Markov-Model for the specific situation of Cambodia. Data was taken from the scientific literature, grey literature in Cambodia and key-informant interviews. Results: The number of people living with T2DM is steadily increasing from 145,000 in the year 2008 to 264,000 in the year 2028 (+82 %). In the year 2008 the diagnosed T2DM patients would incur costs of some 2 million US$ to cover all of diabetes treatment. 57 % of this amount would have to be spent for OAD-therapy, the rest for insulin therapy. In the year 2028 this amount will have grown to some 4 million US$. If all patients (incl. non-diagnosed) had to be paid-for the respective figure would be 5.5 million and 11 million US$.Screening for T2DM is only cost-effective if the sensitivity of the test is high while the unit price is low. The results of this simulation call for targeting the high-risk groups. However, an increased availability of Oral Anti-Diabetic and Insulin Therapy is highly cost-effective.DiscussionType 2 Diabetes Mellitus is a major public health challenge in Cambodia. The simulations clearly indicate that prevention and treatment of this disease is highly cost-effective. However, not everything that is cost-effective might be affordable in Cambodia. This country will require external support to ease the growing burden of T2DM.

Description: During the 2000s Arab and Islamic American racial identity selection was subjected to an exogenous racializing event, viz., public and private reaction to the Al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. The Al Qaeda attacks clearly demarcate a period in which there was a structural increase in the intensity of US stigmatization of persons with Islamic religious affiliation and Arab ethnicity. This stigmatization created an exogenous reduction in the expected payoff to acculturation relative to non-acculturation. This paper uses self-identification as white as its measure of acculturation and the fraction of all hate crimes directed at Muslims as its measure of stigmatization after 9/11. Comparing 2002–2012 to 1996–2001, there is a statistically significant and substantively large decrease in the unconditional and conditional probabilities that Arab and Islamic Americans will self-identify as white. The data are combined cross sections of the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement.Keywords:Race, Identity, Arab, Muslim, Islam, September 11.

Description: The next generation of artificial vision devices (AVDs), which is currently developed in pre-clinical settings, has the potential to improve the vision of blind patients with retinitis pigmentosa (RP) in a manner that they will be categorized as visual impaired but no more as blind. This unprecedented vision improvement will result in a mentionable quality of life gain which poses the question at which costs the next generation AVDs are to be regarded as cost-effective, from a German healthcare payer perspective. In order to answer this research question a Markov model was developed to simulate and to compare the costs and effects of next generation AVDs versus best supportive care (BSC). Applying the base case settings resulted in incremental costs of €107,925, in 2.03 incremental quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and in a cost-effectiveness ratio of €53,165 per QALY gained. Probabilistic and deterministic sensitivity analyses as well as scenario analyses for the effect size and the AVD costs were performed in order to investigate the robustness of results. In these scenario analyses a strong variation of the cost-effectiveness results was obtained ranging from €23,512 (best case) to €176,958 (worst case) per QALY gained by AVD therapy. This early health economic evaluation has to handle with three main uncertainty factors: the effect size of next generation AVDs, the costs of next generation AVDs and the WTP threshold that might be applied in RP patients, which reflect the main limitations of the presented assessment. In conclusion the presented early cost-effectiveness evaluation has obtained that next generation AVDs have the potential to be a cost-effective therapy option in patients with RP in Germany. The innovative nature, the high unmet medical need and the expected unprecedented efficacy of next generation AVDs will highly likely lead to the case that even relatively high incremental cost-effectiveness ratios, that have been obtained when simulating various effect and pricing scenarios, will be regarded as acceptable from a German healthcare payer perspective.

Description: Background: EQ-5D-3L valuation studies continue to employ the MVH protocol or variants of MVH. One issue that has received attention is the selection of the states for direct valuation by respondents. Changes in the valuation subset have been found to change the coefficients of the utility function. The purpose of this study was to test the performance of valuation subsets based on orthogonal experiment designs. The design of the study also allowed a comparison of models based on raw or untransformed VAS values with values transformed at the level of the respondent and at the aggregate level. Methods: Two different valuation subsets were developed based on orthogonal arrays. A VAS elicitation was undertaken with two groups of similar respondents and the resulting utility functions based on the valuations of the two different valuation subsets were compared using mean absolute errors between model and observed values, and by correlation with values in and out of sample. The impact of using untransformed versus VAS values transformed at the level of the individual and at aggregate level and the inclusion of a constant term in the utility functions were also investigated. Results: The utility functions obtained from the two valuation subsets were very similar. The models that included a constant and based on raw VAS values from the two valuation studies returned rank correlation coefficients of 0.994 and 0.995 when compared with respective observed values. MAEs of model values with observed values were 2.4% or lower for all models that included a constant term. Several models were developed and evaluated for the combined data (from both valuation subsets). The model that included the N3 term performed best. Conclusions: The finding that two very different valuation subsets can produce strikingly similar utility functions suggests that orthogonal designs should be given some attention in further studies. The impact of rescaling VAS values at the level of the individual versus at aggregate level had minimal impact on the performance of the models when compared to models based on the raw VAS values.

Description: This paper investigates the synchronization of fixed income markets within Eurozone countries using the new wavelet based methodology. Conventional wavelet methods that use multivariate set of variables to calculate pairwise correlation and cross correlation lead to spurious correlation due to possible relationships with other variables, amplification of type-1 errors, and results, in the form of large set of erroneous graphs. Given these disadvantages of conventional wavelet based pairwise correlation and cross-correlation method, we avoid these limitations by using wavelet multiple correlation and multiple cross correlations to analyze the relationships in Eurozone fixed income markets. Our results based on this methodology indicate that Eurozone fixed income markets are highly integrated and this integration grows with timescales, and hence there is almost no scope for independent monetary policy and bond diversification in these countries.

Description: This paper analyses farmers’ credit allocation behaviors and their effects on technical efficiency. Data were collected from 476 farmers using the multistage sampling procedure. The stochastic frontier truncated-normal with conditional mean model is used to assess allocation schemes effects on technical efficiency. Tobit model reveals the impact of farmers’ sociodemographic characteristics on efficiency scores. Results reveal that farm revenue (about 2,262,566 Fcfa on average) is positively correlated with land acreage, quantity of labour, and costs of fertilizers and insecticides. Farmers’ behaviors respond to six schemes which are categorized in two allocations contexts: out-farm and in-farm allocations. The model shows that only scheme (e) positively impacts technical efficiency. This scheme refers to the decision to invest credit to purchase better quality of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and so forth. The positive effect of the scheme (c) may be significant under conditions of farmers’ education level improvement. Then, scheme (e) is a better investment for all farmers, but effect of credit allocation to buy agricultural materials is positive only for educated farmers. Efficiency scores are reduced by household size and gender of the household head. Therefore a household with more than 10 members and a woman as head is likely to not be technically efficient.

Description: People’s demand for preventive medical care is one type of investment in health. The aim of this paper is to examine women’s demand for secondary prevention in Taiwan, focusing on the role a physician’s gender plays in women’s inclination to undergo Pap tests. Our estimation results show that regional ratio of female doctors has a positive and significant effect on utilization of Pap tests for the full sample and for women aged below 30. In addition, doctor’s gender matters only in utilization of Pap tests not in other types of preventive healthcare services in Taiwan. We suggest that the government may consider liberalizing medical laws to make it legal for trained female nurses or nurse practitioners to perform Pap tests in order to encourage the utilization of Pap tests, especially in rural and mountain areas. The government may also consider subsidizing the use of cervical cancer vaccines to help females prevent cervical cancer.

Description: This paper evaluates the current state of the literature concerning the effects of exchange rate movements on trade balance. Thus, this paper is a review article and provides a survey of the alternative theories that focus on the effect of exchange rate changes on the trade balance. It systemizes the literature into four distinct reviews and approaches following the chronological order. The paper presents the (a) Standard Theory of International Trade, (b) Elasticity Approach, (c) Keynesian Absorption Approach, and (d) Monetary Approach. The study shows that higher attention should be given for the most plausible dynamic theory in this field, known as the J-Curve.

Description: The correct definition of the product market and of the geographic market is a prerequisite for assessing market structures in antitrust cases. For hospital markets, both dimensions are controversially discussed in the literature. Using data for the German hospital market we aim at elaborating the need for differentiating the product market and at investigating the effects of different thresholds for the delineation of the geographic market based on patient flows. Thereby we contribute to the scarce empirical evidence on the structure of the German hospital market. We find that the German hospital sector is highly concentrated, confirming the results of a singular prior study. Furthermore, using a very general product market definition such as “acute in-patient care” averages out severe discrepancies that become visible when concentration is considered on the level of individual diagnoses. In contrast, varying thresholds for the definition of the geographic market has only impact on the level of concentration, while the correlation remains high. Our results underline the need for more empirical research concerning the definition of the product market for hospital services.Keywords:Hospital market, Concentration, Product market, Geographic market, Germany.

Description: Foreign exchange (ForEx) rates are amongst the most important economic indices in the international monetary markets. ForEx rate represents the value of one currency in another and it fluctuates over time. It is related to indicators like inflation, interest rate, gross domestic product, and so forth. In a series of works, we investigated and confirmed the chaotic property of ForEx rates by finding positive largest Lyapunov exponent (LLE). As inflation influences ForEx, in this work we would like to address the specific question, Is inflation data also chaotic? We collected data for time period of 2000 to 2013 and tested for nonlinearity in data by surrogate method. Calculating LLE, we find existence of chaos in inflation data for some countries.

Description: ObjectiveTo obtain detailed real-world data on persistence and dosing patterns in the utilisation of the TNF inhibitors adalimumab, etanercept, and infliximab in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients treated in Germany. Methods: In this retrospective observational study claims data of a major German health insurance fund between 2005 and 2008 were analysed. Patients receiving at least one prescription of adalimumab, etanercept or infliximab were identified and categorised as “TNF inhibitor naive" or “TNF inhibitor continuing”. For the calculation of TNF inhibitor persistence a survival analysis with the Kaplan–Meier estimator was used. A Cox regression was used to analyse, if any relevant factors were influencing persistence. Dosage increase rates were analysed for adalimumab, etanercept and infliximab. Sensitivity analyses based on variations in gap length were conducted. Results: A total of 2,201 RA patients were identified. 1,468 of these patients were TNF inhibitor naive patients and 733 were defined as TNF inhibitor continuing patients. There were no significant differences in the treatment persistence rates between adalimumab, etanercept and infliximab for TNF inhibitor naive and continuing patients. The persistence rate after three years was 22.47% for adalimumab, 24.27% for etanercept and 21.49% for infliximab naive patients. For continuing patients, the persistence rate after three years was 32.88% for adalimumab, 30.95% for etanercept, and 33.90% for infliximab, respectively. Gender, medication and Charlson Comorbidities Index did not influence the persistence significantly. Dosage increase occurred in 7.3% adalimumab, 1.4% etanercept, and 17.2% infliximab naive patients and 5.8%, 1.1% and 11.9% respectively in the continuing patients. Conclusions: In this study, there were no significant differences in persistence among adalimumab, etanercept and infliximab treated patients. Consistent with previous research, there was a higher dose escalation for infliximab than for the two subcutaneous treatments, adalimumab or etanercept.

Description: The paper investigates the effect of adequate use of prenatal care on birth weight in Kenya using data from the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey of 2008–2009 together with additional administrative data. Both a single–level model and a multi–level model are estimated. The estimation strategy controls for potential sample selection bias, potential endogeneity of prenatal care, and potential unobserved heterogeneity. The results indicate that adequate use of prenatal care increases birth weight, holding other factors constant. We further observe that the single–level model overstates the effect of prenatal care on birth weight. The results imply that infant health can be improved by using prenatal care adequately. The study calls for the pursuit of policies that encourage adequate use of prenatal care by expectant mothers such as ensuring availability of skilled health care providers such as doctors and nurses at prenatal care clinics, reducing the average distances mothers have to cover when seeking prenatal care services, intensifying education of females as a way of empowering them to be able to make the right choices regarding when to seek prenatal care and from whom, and increasing income opportunities for households.

Description: Early benefit assessment in Germany under the legislative framework of AMNOG (Arzneimittelmarktneuordnungsgesetz) requires direct comparisons of the new drug with appropriate comparators determined by the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA). In case no head-to-head studies are available for direct comparisons, the submission of indirect comparisons is permitted to assess the additional benefit of the new drug. However, the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) states a clear preference for head-to-head trials and defines strict requirements for indirect comparisons to be considered in the benefit assessment. Similar requirements also exist in other countries with mandatory health technology assessments (HTA), like France, England and Scotland. Our evaluation shows that a comparison of the different HTA regarding indirect comparisons is difficult. Overall, external preconditions and methodological requirements are demanding and hardly to fulfill by pharmaceutical companies for implementation of indirect comparisons in early benefit assessment. The determination of the appropriate comparators, outcomes, patient subgroups and study choice are the main target within indirect comparisons for the future. To compare and assess submitted indirect comparisons it would be desirable that a transparent process was established, including the mandatory publication of HTA-reports within Europe and international guidelines, accepted by a large number of HTA-agencies.JEL classification:I18.

Description: Background: Child malnutrition remains widespread in many developing countries. Malnutrition during infancy may substantially increase vulnerability to infection and disease, and the risk of premature death. Malnutrition in children may also lead to permanent effects and to their having diminished health capital later in life as adults. These negative consequences of child malnutrition entail that the reduction of child malnutrition is vital for the social-economic development of countries. Urban children generally have better nutritional status than rural children. Malawi is no exception in this regard. The objective of this paper is to explore how much of the rural-urban nutrition gap in Malawi is explained and how much is unexplained by differences in characteristics.MethodUsing data from the 2006 multiple indicator cluster survey (MICS), the paper used the Nopo decomposition method to decompose the rural-urban malnutrition gap. This nonparametric method takes into account the fact that the supports of the distributions of characteristics between the two areas can be different. Results: The results show that 90% and 89% of the stunting and underweight gaps respectively would be eliminated if there were no urban children with combinations of characteristics which positively influence child nutrition that remain entirely unmatched by rural children. Further to that, 4% and 6% of the stunting and underweight gaps respectively would disappear if there were no rural children with combinations of characteristics which negatively affect child nutrition that remain entirely unmatched by urban children. Conclusions: These findings suggest that the characteristics which negatively affect child nutrition in rural areas play a small role in the gap, and that most of the gap is largely due to the favourable characteristics such as better parental education and better household economic status among others that urban children have. The findings imply that in order to reduce the malnutrition gap policy interventions should focus more on ensuring that the favourable characteristics that urban children have such as better parental education, better household economic status among others are also available to rural children.

Description: Background: BRAC, a large Bangladeshi NGO, recently has been using female volunteer community health workers (CHWs) in Dhaka urban slums to provide maternal and child health services. Due to erratic performance-based income and higher opportunity cost the urban CHWs lose motivation which contributes to high dropout and poor performance. This results challenges for the cost effectiveness and sustainability of the urban health program. CHWs also consider their performance-based income very low compare to their work load. So, CHWs raise their voice for a fixed income. In order to understand this problem we explored fixed income for CHWs and the correlates that influence it. We surveyed a sample of 542 current CHWs. We used bidding game approach to derive the equilibrium reservation wage for CHWs for providing full-time services. Then, we performed ordered logit models with bootstrap simulation to identify the determinants of reservation wage. Results: The average reservation wage of CHWs to continue their work as full-time CHWs rather than volunteer CHWs was US$24.11 which was three times higher than their current performance-based average income of US$ 8.03. Those CHWs received additional health training outside BRAC were 72% and those who joined with an expectation of income were 62% more likely to ask for higher reservation wage. On the contrary, CHWs who were burdened with household loan were 65% and CHWs who had alternative income generating scope were 47% less likely to ask for higher reservation wage. Other important factors we identified were BRAC village organization membership, competition with other health services providers, performance as a CHW, and current and past monthly CHW income. Conclusions: The findings of this study are relevant to certain developing countries such as Bangladesh and Tanzania which commonly use volunteer CHWs, and where poor retention and performance is a common issue due to erratic and performance-based income. So, the study has implications in improving retention of health workers as well as their level of performance. The study also suggests that the financial incentives provided to CHWs should be clearly based on their qualifications and opportunity cost to ensure a high performing and motivated health workforce.

Description: This study assesses the effects of fiscal policy on economic growth in a sample of 96 countries from 1990 to 2010. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Extreme Bound Analysis are mainly estimated in order to investigate whether public investments, human capital, and political stability affect growth controlling for initial output and human capital levels. Furthermore, in this empirical research four subsets of independent variables were used: (a) demographic factors, (b) political determinants, (c) region variables, and (d) variables regarding macroeconomic policy. Empirical results suggest that there is an important difference in the impact of public and private sector investments on the growth of per capita income. Moreover, political indicators such as corruption control, rule of law, and government effectiveness have a high impact on economic growth. Demographic factors, including fertility rate and mortality growth, as well as several macroeconomic variables, like inflation rate index and government consumption, were estimated to be statistically significant factors of economic performance. Fiscal volatility may also be a new possible channel of macroeconomic instability that leads to lower growth. Policy implications of the findings are discussed in detail.

Description: This paper revisits the association between exchange rates and monetary fundamentals with the focus on both linear and nonlinear approaches. With the monthly data of Euro/US dollar and Japanese yen/US dollar, our linear analysis demonstrates the monetary model is a long-run description of exchange rate movements, and our nonlinear modelling suggests the error correction model describes the short-run adjustment of deviations of exchange rates, and monetary fundamentals are capable of explaining exchange rate dynamics under an unrestricted framework.

Description: Recent empirical evidence links migrant remittances, savings and return migration, and stresses the inaccuracy of return migration plans. This paper presents a model of endogenous remittances, savings and return decisions under uncertainty. In our framework, migrants make remittance and saving decisions at an early stage of migration, when their long term economic performance in the host country is still uncertain. Over time, information about professional prospects is acquired, and conditionally on past decisions, migrants adjust their return plans. We show that when migrants expect large gains from migration and face relatively low wage risks in the host country, they tend to remit less, save more and are less likely to return migrate. These results are in line with recent empirical evidence and provide a rationale for the support by relatives in the sending country of low-skill, illegal migration.JEL codes D13; D80; JE

Description: By examining the preferences over migration destinations of those revealing a desire to permanently leave their country, this paper provides new evidence on the relevance of subjective measures for cross country comparisons. While hard statistics such as GDP per capita and unemployment rates are commonly used to measure a country’s success, this analysis reveals that people’s preferences over alternative migration destinations are better explained by average levels of life satisfaction in the destination country. Aggregated measures of subjective well-being are, therefore, useful for international comparisons as they better reflect what makes some countries more attractive than others.JEL:F22; I30

Description: This paper applies the framework for pro-poor analysis to welfare changes from a CGE-microsimulation model to analyze what are the better or worse models for agriculture modernization, and to estimate the contribution of growth and redistribution to changes in poverty in DRC. The findings indicate that labor-using technological change generates absolute and relative pro-poor effects whereas capital-using technological change leads to immiserizing growth. More importantly, the results suggest that labor-using technological change can be independently sufficient for reducing poverty via the income growth effects. This study also highlights how developing input supply networks, securing tenure among smallholders, and improving access to land for women are important for pro-poor agricultural modernization.JEL Classification:C68, D33, O33, Q10, Q18.

Description: We focus on high school dropout rates among male and female immigrant children. We consider the relationship between the dropout rate and age at arrival of the immigrants. Using repeated cross sectional data from the Israeli Labor Force Surveys of 1996-2011 we show that the share of high school dropouts among immigrant children who arrived from the Former Soviet Union during 1989-1994 is at least double that of natives in the same age group. Further, we show that among immigrant youth there is a negative relation between age at arrival and the share of high school dropouts. To understand our results we present a theoretical framework that links between age at arrival in the host country, language proficiency, quality of education and wages.Keywords:Immigrants, Age at arrival, High-school dropouts.

Description: The primary objective of this study is to examine the effect of farm size on economic efficiency among wheat producers and to suggest ways to improve wheat production in the country. Specifically, the study attempts to estimate the levels of technical, allocative, and economic efficiencies among the sampled 130 large and small scale wheat producers in Nakuru District. The social-economic factors that influence economic efficiency in wheat production have also been determined. Results indicate that the mean technical, allocative, and economic efficiency indices of small scale wheat farmers are 85%, 96%, and 84%, respectively. The corresponding figures for the large scale farmers are 91%, 94%, and 88%, respectively. The number of years of school a farmer has had in formal education, distance to extension advice, and the size of the farm have strong influence on the efficiency levels. The relatively high levels of technical efficiency among the small scale farmers defy the notion that wheat can only be efficiently produced by the large scale farmers.

Description: In this paper we construct a standard CGE model to explore the impact of scaling up infrastructure in six African countries. As the debate on the importance of scaling up infrastructure to stimulate growth and provide a push to African economies, some analysts raise concern on financing these infrastructures after construction and that external funding of these can create major distortion and have a negative impact on the trade balance of these countries. This study aims to provide insights into this debate. It draws from the infrastructure productivity literature to postulate positive productive externalities of new infrastructure and Fay and Yepes (2003) for operating cost associated with new infrastructure. We compare various infrastructure investments funded with different fiscal tools. These investments scenarios are compared to nonproductive investment that can be interpreted as a business as usual scenario. Our results show that foreign aid does produce Dutch disease effects but the negative impacts are strongly dependent on the type of investments performed. Moreover, growth effects contribute to attenuate the negative effects.

Description: Over the past decade or so, there has been widespread recognition that a large and growing proportion of the global workforce is employed in informal sector enterprises. To explain this, neo-liberals contend that enterprises operate in the informal sector due to high taxes, public sector corruption and too much state interference in the free market and that the remedy is therefore to reduce taxes, public sector corruption and the regulatory burden via minimal state intervention. To evaluate critically this neo-liberal policy approach, this paper explores whether cross-national variations in the share of the workforce in informal sector enterprises are associated with cross-national variations in the level of tax rates, corruption and state interference. To do this, International Labour Organisation data on the share of the workforce in informal sector enterprises in 43 developing and transition economies is compared with cross-national variations in tax rates, corruption and levels of state intervention using World Bank development indicators. The finding is that there is little or no evidence to support the neo-liberal policy approach that decreasing tax rates, public sector corruption and the regulatory burden via minimal state intervention, reduces the share of the workforce in informal sector enterprises. Instead, higher tax rates and levels of regulation and state intervention are found to be associated with lower (not higher) levels of employment in informal sector enterprise. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and policy implications.

Description: This paper studies the respective influences of intergenerational transmission and the environment in shaping individual trust. Focusing on second generation immigrants in Australia and the United States, we exploit the variation in the home country and in the host country to separate the effect of cultural transmission from that of the social and economic conditions on individual trust. Our results indicate that trust in the home country contributes to the trust of second generation immigrants in both of the host countries, and marginally more in the United States. Social and economic conditions in the host country also affect individual trust.JEL classificationJ15, O15, Z10

Description: Addiction has attracted considerable attention in health and behavioral economics, and economists have attempted to understand addiction from the viewpoint of decision making over time. This paper investigates whether two time preference parameters can successfully predict smoking status, including cigarette dependence. Both the present bias and the constant time preference parameters account for smoking behavior status and cigarette dependence.

Description: Indian economy witnessed significant transformations in the postreform period both in terms of change in policy paradigm adopting greater market orientation and overall macroeconomic performance with development of a broad-based financial market and increasing global integration. Guided by the fact that domestic savings play a critical role in augmenting capital accumulation and contributing to achieve and sustain high economic growth, an attempt to review and reassess the role of various factors influencing domestic savings under the changed environment is quite relevant for sustaining the growth momentum. In this backdrop, the present study empirically analyzed the role of various determinants of household savings in India with the latest available data. It employed ARDL approach for this purpose due to its suitability for estimating an equation with a mix of stationary and nonstationary variables of order (1) and address potential endogeneity problems. The estimated results revealed that GDP, dependency ratio, interest rate, and inflation have statistically significant influence on household savings in India, both in the long run and short run. As regards policy implications, we suggest that ensuring price stability and avoiding any disruption to the growth process will be useful for augmenting savings and sustaining the savings-growth spiral in India.

Description: This paper analyses the impact that diversity has on life satisfaction of people living in England. In England, and in many other countries, local communities are becoming more diverse in terms of country of birth, ethnicity and religion of residents, with unclear consequences on the well-being of people living in these communities. The results suggest that white British people living in diverse areas have on average lower levels of life satisfaction than those living in areas where diversity is low, while there is no correlation on average between diversity and life satisfaction for non-white British people and foreign born.JEL codesJ31, J61, R23

Description: We start this paper by providing a detailed study of how the mean monthly return on the Small-Minus-Big (SMB) Fama-French factor is affected by the January effect and the stock market return during the preceding month and preceding calendar year. We then proceed to building a predictive model for the monthly SMB factor return that incorporates the January effect and the dependence on both the market return during the preceding month and preceding calendar year. Our findings suggest that a positive small stock premium appears mainly during the years following the years with a negative return on the market as the result of a delayed and stronger reaction of small stocks to good news and a stronger January effect. We also argue that the January effect constitutes a much lesser part of the size effect than it was previously supposed.

Description: The rationalization of the healthcare processes and organizations is a task of fundamental importance to grant both the quality and the standardization of healthcare services, and the minimization of costs. Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) are one of the major tools that have been introduced to achieve such a challenging task. CPGs are widely used to provide decision support to physicians, supplying them with evidence-based predictive and prescriptive information about patients' status and treatments, but usually on individual pathologies. This sets up the urgent need for developing decision support methodologies to assist physicians and healthcare managers in the detection of interactions between guidelines, to help them to devise appropriate patterns of treatment for comorbid patients (i.e., patients affected by multiple diseases).We identify different levels of abstractions in the analysis of interactions, based on both the hierarchical organization of clinical guidelines (in which composite actions are refined into their components) and the hierarchy of drug categories. We then propose a general methodology (data/knowledge structures and reasoning algorithms operating on them) supporting user-driven and flexible interaction detection over the multiple levels of abstraction. Finally, we discuss the impact of the adoption of computerized clinical guidelines in general, and of our methodology in particular, for patients (quality of the received healthcare services), physicians (decision support and quality of provided services), and healthcare managers and organizations (quality and optimization of provided services).

Description: The paper builds on the Goodwin (1967) model which describes the distributive cycle of capitalist economies whereby mass unemployment is generated periodically through the conflict about income distribution between capital and labor. We add to this model a segmented labor market structure with fluid, latent, and stagnant components. The model exhibits a unique balanced growth path which depends on the speeds with which workers are pushed into or out of the labor market segments. We investigate the stability properties of this growth path with segmented labor markets and find that, though there is a stabilizing inflation barrier term in the wage Phillips curve, the interaction with the latent and stagnant portions of the labor market generates potentially (slowly) destabilizing forces if policy measures are absent that regulate these labor markets. We then introduce an activating labor market policy, where government in addition acts as employer of last resort thereby eliminating the stagnant portion of the labor market, whilst erecting benefit systems that partially sustain the incomes of workers that have to leave the floating/latent labor market of the private sector of the economy. We show that such policies guarantee the macrostability of the economy’s balanced growth path.

Description: Entrepreneurs allocate resources among different activities that generates a profit; in particular, in this paper entrepreneurs consider at each instant of time both innovation and rent-seeking as alternative sources of profit. The consequences in terms of economic growth are obviously quite different: the higher the amount of innovations in the economy the higher the rate of economic growth and vice versa. What are the determinants of these different entrepreneurial behavior? Is there anything in the nature of entrepreneurs that essentially distinguishes between innovators and rent seekers? A main claim of this paper is that differences among entrepreneurs are not essential but of degree: all of them are in fact profit-seekers and the only difference is to be found in their attitude towards innovation as a source of profit. In this sense entrepreneurial effort is defined and modelled for each entrepreneur according to its propensity to innovate and the corresponding Entrepreneurial Problem (EP) is posed and solved both analytically and via simulation in terms of profit maximization. The individual decisions measured in units of innovation are then aggregated to calculate the innovation quantity for a given population based on the distribution of heterogeneous entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurship rate and the implications for economic growth are also modelled. Consequently, policy makers should focus on reducing the entry barriers and the costs of production in order to stimulate the entrepreneurial activity and maximize the innovation quantity.

Description: Correspondence studies can identify the extent of discrimination in hiring as typically defined by the law, which includes discrimination against ethnic minorities and females. However, as Heckman and Siegelman (1993) show, if employers act upon a group difference in the variance of unobserved variables, this measure of discrimination may not be very informative. This issue has essentially been ignored in the empirical literature until the recent methodological development by Neumark (2012). We apply Neumark’s method to a number of already published correspondence studies. We find the Heckman and Siegelman critique relevant for empirical work and give suggestions on how future correspondence studies may address this critique.JEL classificationJ71

Description: This paper studies the individual-level relationship between immigration and property crime in England and Wales using crime self-reports from the Crime and Justice Survey. Models that account for underreporting are used, since this is a major concern in crime self-reports. The results indicate that the reported crime is substantially underreported, but if anything, immigrants are less likely to underreport than natives. More importantly, controlling for underreporting and basic demographics, the estimates across all model specifications, although imprecise, indicate that immigration status and property crime are negatively associated. We finally find that the estimated relationship between immigration status and property crime differs across regions and ethnic groups.JEL CodesK42, J15, J22, C25, C51

Description: Background: The prospective reimbursement of hospitals through the grouping of patients into a finite number of categories (Diagnosis Related Groups, DRGs), is common to many European countries. However, the specific categories used vary greatly across countries, using different characteristics to define group boundaries and thus those characteristics which result in different payments for treatment. In order to assist in the construction and modification of national DRG systems, this study analyses the DRG systems of 10 European countries.AimsTo compare the characteristics used to categorise patients receiving a coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery into DRGs. Further, to compare the structure into which DRGs are placed and the relative price paid for patients across Europe.MethodPatients with a procedure of CABG surgery are analysed from Austria, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Spain and Sweden. Diagrammatic algorithms of DRG structures are presented for each country. The price in Euros of seven typical case vignettes, each made up of a set of a hypothetical patient’s characteristics, is also analysed for each country. In order to enable comparisons across countries the simplest case (index vignette) is taken as baseline and relative price levels are calculated for the other six vignettes, each representing patients with different combinations of procedures and comorbidities. Results: European DRG payment structures for CABG surgery vary in terms of the number of different DRGs used and the types of distinctions which define patient categorisation. Based on the payments given to hospitals in different countries, the most resource intensive patient, relative to the index vignette, ranges in magnitude from 1.37 in Poland to 2.82 in Ireland. There is also considerable variation in how much different systems pay for particular circumstances, such as the occurrence of catheterisation or presence of comorbidity. Conclusion: Past experience of the construction of DRG systems for CABG patients demonstrates the variety of options available. It also highlights the importance of updating systems as frequently as possible, to incentivise best practice.

Description: In the majority of children and adolescents with epilepsy, optimal drug therapy adequately controls their condition. However, among the remaining patients who are still uncontrolled despite mono-, bi- or tri-therapy with chronic anti-epileptic treatment, a rescue medication is required. In Western Europe, the licensed medications available for first-line treatment of prolonged acute convulsive seizures (PACS) vary widely, and so comparators for clinical and economic evaluation are not consistent. No European guidelines currently exist for the treatment of PACS in children and adolescents and limited evidence is available for the effectiveness of treatments in the community setting. The authors present cost-effectiveness data for BUCCOLAM® (midazolam oromucosal solution) for the treatment of PACS in children and adolescents in the context of the treatment pathway in seven European countries in patients from 6 months to 18 years. For each country, the health economic model consisted of a decision tree, with decision nodes informed by clinical data and expert opinion obtained via a Delphi methodology. The events modelled are those associated with a patient experiencing a seizure in the community setting. The model assessed the likelihood of medication being administered successfully and of seizure cessation. The associated resource use was also modelled, and ambulance call-outs and hospitalisations were considered. The patient’s quality of life was estimated by clinicians, who completed a five-level EuroQol five dimensions questionnaire from the perspective of a child or adolescent suffering a seizure. Despite differences in current therapy, treatment patterns and healthcare costs in all countries assessed, BUCCOLAM was shown to be cost saving and offered increased health-related benefits for patients in the treatment of PACS compared with the current local standard of care.