Research in Economics最新文献

{"title":"Is local competition effective in improving quality and efficiency of hospitals? Insights from an asymmetric spatial competition model","authors":"Calogero Guccio ,&nbsp;Domenico Lisi ,&nbsp;Marco Ferdinando Martorana ,&nbsp;Giacomo Pignataro","doi":"10.1016/j.rie.2024.100962","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.rie.2024.100962","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>A critical aspect of healthcare reforms in various countries revolves around the relationship between efficiency, quality, and competition. Exploring the spatial dimension of competition is essential to understand this connection thoroughly. In this study, we develop a theoretical model that examines hospitals' choices regarding quality and cost-containment efforts across different competitive environments characterized by varying spatial distributions of hospitals. We derive and fully characterize hospitals' reaction functions and Nash equilibria concerning quality and cost-containment efforts. Our findings reveal that while localized competition tends to reduce hospitals' efforts in cost containment, its impact on treatment quality can vary. This variation depends on factors such as the cost of delivering quality care, its benefits to patients, and hospitals' objectives, including their level of altruism. Our findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the role of local competition in healthcare. They offer insights into the conditions that could yield divergent outcomes, often advocated by conflicting perspectives. These conditions serve as a foundation for refining competition policy models in healthcare.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":46094,"journal":{"name":"Research in Economics","volume":"78 3","pages":"Article 100962"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090944324000267/pdfft?md5=1d28f5b3a17b1d0dbec1d755118bcce4&pid=1-s2.0-S1090944324000267-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141049621","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Addressing fiscal uncertainty: Proposing policy pathways for enhancing economic growth and fertility rates in South Korea","authors":"Francesco Moscone ,&nbsp;Joan E. Madia ,&nbsp;Catia Nicodemo ,&nbsp;Jong-Chol An ,&nbsp;Changkeun Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.rie.2024.100975","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rie.2024.100975","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study investigates the critical role of fiscal uncertainty in driving economic growth in South Korea and explores the potential implications for the nation's long-standing low fertility challenge. Utilizing country-year data and advanced measures disaggregating economic policy uncertainty into dimensions like fiscal, monetary, and trade uncertainty, the analysis reveals a strong negative association between fiscal uncertainty and GDP growth rates over the past three decades. Periods of heightened fiscal volatility, characterized by unpredictable government spending, tax policies, and overall economic instability, consistently preceded declines in economic growth. Moreover, the findings indicate that fiscal uncertainty moderates the relationship between economic expansion and fertility rates. While GDP growth generally improves conditions favorable for childbearing by raising living standards, the positive impact on fertility diminishes as fiscal uncertainty increases. Strikingly, at sufficiently high levels of uncertainty, economic growth fails to boost fertility rates, underscoring the crucial role of fiscal stability in reaping the full benefits of growth. These insights highlight the importance of reducing fiscal uncertainty through strategies like implementing tax and spending \"calendarization\" systems and adopting long-term policy planning horizons. By promoting fiscal predictability and fostering an environment conducive to sustained economic expansion, policymakers can indirectly create conditions that support higher fertility rates by alleviating household aversion to uncertainty. While focused on economic factors, this research acknowledges the multifaceted nature of fertility decisions and calls for a holistic policy approach combined with further causal investigations using micro-level data and experimental designs. Ultimately, prioritizing fiscal stability and addressing fiscal uncertainty present a critical pathway towards stimulating economic growth and potentially revitalizing fertility rates in South Korea and similar developed nations confronting demographic challenges.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":46094,"journal":{"name":"Research in Economics","volume":"78 3","pages":"Article 100975"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090944324000395/pdfft?md5=98cb5499f8eed358baf6be54c3878c61&pid=1-s2.0-S1090944324000395-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141164152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"When you need it or when I die? Timing of monetary transfers from parents to children","authors":"Giacomo Pasini ,&nbsp;Rob Alessie ,&nbsp;Adriaan Kalwij","doi":"10.1016/j.rie.2024.100974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rie.2024.100974","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The standard overlapping generations model assumes the ability to borrow against bequests. If this assumption is not met, it may happen that not all generations smooth their consumption over time. We prove that by allowing for inter vivos transfers in this latter situation, all generations smooth consumption, i.e. the first best solution is restored. Next, using a combination of Dutch survey and administrative data, we provide empirical support for the model's implication that parents transfer wealth when their children need to borrow out of future resources. Our findings suggest an instrumental role for inter vivos transfers as a device that generations can resort to for smoothing their consumption over time.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":46094,"journal":{"name":"Research in Economics","volume":"78 3","pages":"Article 100974"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090944324000383/pdfft?md5=39bbaa91e089c58a6588e93a847c8911&pid=1-s2.0-S1090944324000383-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141240722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Equal tax and equal compensation: A fair and efficient way to save climate","authors":"Jim Y. Jin ,&nbsp;Shinji Kobayashi","doi":"10.1016/j.rie.2024.100965","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.rie.2024.100965","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We show that “equal tax and equal compensation” (T&amp;C) is fair as justified by the two fairness principles. It differs from any Pigouvian tax with fixed lump-sum payments and can motivate every country to maximize world welfare. It benefits countries with current per capita emissions lower than the world average and would benefit every country when compared with a fair benchmark where emissions are duly penalized and compensated. Subsidizing emission reduction by poll tax is Pareto efficient and Pareto improving over status quo, but unfair. An imperfect T&amp;C with a sub-optimal tax or pyramid taxes can still benefit the world.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":46094,"journal":{"name":"Research in Economics","volume":"78 3","pages":"Article 100965"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090944324000292/pdfft?md5=dbc74a8ecef859bb634dfb49a5e6a2de&pid=1-s2.0-S1090944324000292-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141130201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Choice by elimination then selection","authors":"Keshav Sureka ,&nbsp;Debabrata Pal","doi":"10.1016/j.rie.2024.100966","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.rie.2024.100966","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper analyzes a decision-making process known as Choice by Elimination then Selection (ES), in which an individual narrows down available alternatives based on a preference order called the elimination relation and then selects the best element from the remaining alternative(s) based on a different preference order called the selection relation. The elimination and selection criteria need not rank alternatives in the same order. ES can be seen as a response to information overload, where shortlisting alternatives can facilitate more informed and beneficial choices. It can also be seen as a method to make a choice when moral or personal values are in the way of utility maximization. The paper uses an axiomatic approach to fully characterize the choices based on the ES method, showing that ES choices may not satisfy the Weak Axiom of Revealed Preference (WARP) and, thus, are not rationalizable under the standard classical framework. Four axioms are introduced to fully characterize the choice correspondence based on ES. The paper also discusses the uniqueness of the elimination and selection ordering relations. The ES method belongs to the class of models that analyze boundedly rational choice behavior, such as choice with frames, limited attention models, list rationalizable models, categorize then choose, and status quo bias.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":46094,"journal":{"name":"Research in Economics","volume":"78 3","pages":"Article 100966"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141047840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assessing external validity in practice","authors":"Sebastian Galiani ,&nbsp;Brian Quistorff","doi":"10.1016/j.rie.2024.100964","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.rie.2024.100964","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We review, from a practical standpoint, the evolving literature on assessing external validity (EV) of estimated treatment effects. We review existing EV measures, and focus on methods that permit multiple datasets (Hotz et al., 2005). We outline criteria for practical usage, evaluate the existing approaches, and identify a gap in potential methods. Our practical considerations motivate a novel method utilizing the Group Lasso (Yuan and Lin, 2006) to estimate a tractable regression-based model of the conditional average treatment effect (CATE). This approach can perform better when settings have differing covariate distributions and allows for easily extrapolating the average treatment effect to new settings. We apply these measures to a set of identical field experiments upgrading slum dwellings in three different countries (Galiani et al., 2017).</p></div>","PeriodicalId":46094,"journal":{"name":"Research in Economics","volume":"78 3","pages":"Article 100964"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141134476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Monetary policy and inflation rate in the behavior of consumer sentiment in the us. A fractional integration and cointegration analysis","authors":"Manuel Monge ,&nbsp;Ana Lazcano ,&nbsp;Juan Infante","doi":"10.1016/j.rie.2024.100981","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rie.2024.100981","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Consumer sentiment is a relevant tool for experts when it comes to determining the economic situation in a country, making it possible to analyze the spending trend in advance; for this reason, this paper analyzes links between monetary policy and the inflation rate in the behavior of consumer sentiment in the United States. We use methodologies based on fractional integration and fractional cointegration to obtain the stochastic properties of the monthly time series, from December 2019 to August 2022. The results using fractional integration methodologies exhibit a high degree of persistence and the consumer price index (CPI) and consumer sentiment index present a non-mean reversion I(1) behavior. Focusing on the cointegrating part, we conclude from the results that: 1) an increase in the variable “Total Monetary Base” produces an increase in the CPI, 2) the “variation in the total monetary base” in the United States does not affect consumer sentiment, and 3) a positive variation in the consumer sentiment indicator affects the increase in the inflation rate in the United States.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":46094,"journal":{"name":"Research in Economics","volume":"78 3","pages":"Article 100981"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141314161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Can the Phillips curve provide answers to current high inflation rates","authors":"Hany Guirguis ,&nbsp;Kelly Cwik ,&nbsp;Joseph DeMauro ,&nbsp;Michael Suen","doi":"10.1016/j.rie.2024.100956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rie.2024.100956","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Motivated by the weak response of the inflation rate to the tight labor market, the Federal Reserve (Fed) Bank stepped away from its longstanding preemptive policy to fight inflation as the economy approached full employment. This paper aims to reevaluate the relationships of four measures of inflation with the unemployment rate. We accomplish this task by allowing the Phillips curve (PC) slope to vary over time and depend on the magnitude of the unemployment gap. Assessed by both PC convex specification assessment and the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation method, we confirm the convexity of the PC when the unemployment gap is negative. In addition, we show that the slope of the PC more than doubled when we allow the coefficient on the economic slack to vary over time. Thus, our study shows that PC is still a relevant tool for guiding monetary policy.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":46094,"journal":{"name":"Research in Economics","volume":"78 2","pages":"Article 100956"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140620713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The role of asymmetric innovation’s sizes in technology licensing under partial vertical integration","authors":"M. Sánchez ,&nbsp;A. Nerja","doi":"10.1016/j.rie.2024.100958","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rie.2024.100958","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In this paper, we compare the scenarios of exclusive licenses and cross-licenses under the existence of partial vertical integration. To do this, a successive duopoly model is proposed, with two owners and two firms competing in a differentiated product market. Each technology owner has a share in one of the competing firms, so that competition is also extended to the upstream R&amp;D sector. We propose a novel analysis where differences in the size of their innovation process are allowed, extending the results in Sánchez et al. (2021). We find that the cross-licensing scenario is preferred when the size of the innovation is small; this occurs regardless of the participation in the competing companies and how many innovate. If the innovation is very large, the owners may be better off with exclusive licenses.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":46094,"journal":{"name":"Research in Economics","volume":"78 2","pages":"Article 100958"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140638160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Impact of economic policy uncertainty on global carbon emissions","authors":"Saqib Farid,&nbsp;Quratulain Zafar","doi":"10.1016/j.rie.2024.100961","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rie.2024.100961","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The article aims to examine the potential effect of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) on the mean and variance of carbon (CO2) emissions by employing a novel nonparametric causality-in-quantiles and quantile-on-quantile on the dataset comprising of 17 economies to test our hypothesis. The results of causality-in-quantiles find that EPU offers a significant yet mixed ability to impact the carbon emissions of most economies. These mixed patterns of impact pertain not only to mean and variance but also across regions. The results of quantile-on-quantile reveal that high EPU leads to an augmented level of carbon emissions. This causality may indicate that macroeconomic and institutional factors influence the carbon emission for all analyzed countries. These findings are particularly useful for practitioners, policymakers, academic researchers, and traders in the carbon market as they could promote the realization of carbon reductions targets by maintaining stable economic policies that have tangible ramifications for carbon emissions behavior.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":46094,"journal":{"name":"Research in Economics","volume":"78 2","pages":"Article 100961"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140950961","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}