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Economic Literature (economic + literature)
Selected AbstractsFurther Evidence on PPP Adjustment Speeds: the Case of Effective Real Exchange Rates and the EMS,OXFORD BULLETIN OF ECONOMICS & STATISTICS, Issue 4 2003Ivan Paya Abstract Two different approaches intend to resolve the ,puzzling' slow convergence to purchasing power parity (PPP) reported in the literature [see Rogoff (1996), Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 34.] On the one hand, there are models that consider a non-linear adjustment of real exchange rate to PPP induced by transaction costs. Such costs imply the presence of a certain transaction band where adjustment is too costly to be undertaken. On the other hand, there are models that relax the ,classical' PPP assumption of constant equilibrium real exchange rates. A prominent theory put together by Balassa (1964, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 72) and Samuelson (1964 Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 46), the BS effect, suggests that a non-constant real exchange rate equilibrium is induced by different productivity growth rates between countries. This paper reconciles those two approaches by considering an exponential smooth transition-in-deviation non-linear adjustment mechanism towards non-constant equilibrium real exchange rates within the EMS (European Monetary System) and effective rates. The equilibrium is proxied, in a theoretically appealing manner, using deterministic trends and the relative price of non-tradables to proxy for BS effects. The empirical results provide further support for the hypothesis that real exchange rates are well described by symmetric, nonlinear processes. Furthermore, the half-life of shocks in such models is found to be dramatically shorter than that obtained in linear models. [source] A Survey of the Theoretical Economic Literature on Foreign AidASIAN-PACIFIC ECONOMIC LITERATURE, Issue 1 2006Elisabeth Paul This paper surveys the theoretical economic literature on foreign aid,in particular, the aid donor,recipient relationship. Economic theory, especially new institutional economics, can be very helpful in understanding foreign aid relationships,especially the incentive problems involved,and in designing institutions to improve aid effectiveness. In particular, it helps in understanding the chain of principal,agent relations inherent in the aid delivery system and the resulting potential for agency problems. The survey shows that economic theory can improve the design of cooperation modalities by aligning the incentives of donors and recipients for poverty reduction, but that, in order to address the problems, policy analysis must take into account the constraints faced by stakeholders in the aid relationship. The aid ,contract' should thus seek to improve the agents' incentives to use aid effectively, given the circumstances of the developing country. [source] The role of economics in irrigation water management,,IRRIGATION AND DRAINAGE, Issue 2 2006Petra J. G. J. Hellegers allocation optimale de l'eau; fonction de satisfaction sociale; instruments économiques Abstract Economic literature and international conferences have extensively discussed the importance of treating irrigation water as an economic good, but there is still confusion about the role of economics in irrigation water management. Economics provides us with two contributions: analytical tools that help predict and interpret implications of various allocation procedures, and economic instruments that can assist in guiding users towards socially desirable outcomes. In this article the potential role of both contributions to improved irrigation water management is discussed, which is an extension of conventional work in this field. It becomes clear that, at this point in time, there is little empirical evidence of the effectiveness of economic instruments in irrigation water management. Economics mainly plays a role in understanding the implications of different procedures for allocating water, and guiding policymakers in defining appropriate allocation rules. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. La littérature économique et les conférences internationales ont débattu en détail de l'importance de traiter l'eau d'irrigation comme un bien économique, mais il règne encore une certaine confusion sur le rôle de l'économie dans la gestion de l'eau en irrigation. La science économique nous fournit deux contributions: des outils analytiques qui aident à prévoir et à interpréter les implications de diverses procédures d'allocation, et des instruments économiques qui peuvent aider à guider les usagers vers des effets socialement souhaitables. Dans cet article le rôle potentiel de ces deux apports dans l'amélioration de la gestion de l'eau en irrigation est examiné, ce qui va plus loin que l'approche traditionnelle dans ce domaine. Il devient clair que, à ce jour, il existe peu de preuves empiriques de l'effectivité des instruments économiques dans la gestion de l'eau en irrigation. L'économie joue surtout un rôle dans la compréhension des implications des différentes procédures d'allocation de l'eau, et dans la définition des règles d'allocation appropriées. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Preliminary evidence on the appointment of institutional solutions to franchisor moral hazard,the case of franchisee councils,MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2007Olivier Cochet Besides franchisee opportunistic behavior, franchisor moral hazard is a central concern in franchise chains. Economic literature thus far focused on the sharing of franchisee revenues as an incentive for curbing franchisor malfeasance. In this paper, we ask whether and how the obligations of chains may be enforced through institutional arrangements like franchisee councils. Consistent with expectations, the appointment of a council empirically turned out to be more likely as decision rights,a proxy for the scope of moral hazard,were increasingly allocated to companies' management. We found this relationship to be negatively moderated by the contractual share parameter. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Inequality Aversion versus Risk AversionECONOMICA, Issue 277 2003Yoram Kroll Inequality aversion and risk-aversion are widely assumed in economic models; however existing economic literature fails to distinguish between the two. This paper presents methodology and a laboratory experiment, which separates inequality aversion from risk aversion. In a set of laboratory experiments, subjects had to choose between two risky alternatives which pay meaningful prizes with the same individual risk but different levels of egalitarianism. Thus, the choice of the more egalitarian alternative implies a higher level of inequality aversion. The experiment was conducted among children, some of whom live on a communal system (kibbutz) and some in the city. [source] Civil Servants, Economic Ideas, and Economic Policies: Lessons from ItalyGOVERNANCE, Issue 4 2005LUCIA QUAGLIA Building on theoretically oriented and empirically grounded research on two key macroeconomic institutions in Italy, this article explains how and why civil servants can engineer major policy changes, making a difference in a country's trajectory. Italy provides a challenging testing ground for this kind of analysis, as it is generally portrayed as a highly politicized system in which political parties and politicians fully control public policies. Three general lessons can be learned, the first being that the role of civil servants in changing modes of economic governance depends on the resources that they master in the system in which they operate. "Intangible assets" are of primary importance in complex and perceived technical policies, such as monetary and exchange rate policy, which have high potential for "technocratic capture." Second, in these policies, certain intangible assets, such as specific bodies of economic knowledge or policy paradigms, have a considerable impact on policy making. Third, besides interactions in international fora, the professional training of civil servants is a mainstream way through which economic policy beliefs circulate and gain currency, laying the foundations for policy shifts. By highlighting the importance of the intangible assets of macroeconomic institutions, this research makes an unorthodox contribution to the primarily economic literature on central bank independence. [source] University-to-industry knowledge transfer: literature review and unanswered questionsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT REVIEWS, Issue 4 2001Ajay K. Agrawal This paper reviews the economic literature concerning university-to-industry knowledge transfer. Papers on this topic are divided into four categories. Research in the ,firm characteristics' category focuses directly on company issues, such as internal organization, resource allocation, and partnerships. In contrast, research in the ,university characteristics' stream pays little attention to the firms that commercialize inventions, but rather focuses on issues relating to the university, such as licensing strategies, incentives for professors to patent, and policies such as taking equity in return for intellectual property. The ,geography in terms of localized spillovers' stream of research considers the spatial relationship between firms and universities relative to performance in terms of knowledge transfer success. Finally, the ,channels of knowledge transfer, literature examines the relative importance of various transfer pathways between universities and firms, such as publications, patents, and consulting. Each of these research streams is discussed and key papers are described highlighting important methodologies and results. Finally, an outline of topics requiring further research in each of the four categories is offered. [source] From Foraging To Farming: Explaining The Neolithic RevolutionJOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SURVEYS, Issue 4 2005Jacob L. Weisdorf Abstract., This article reviews the main theories about the prehistoric shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture. The transition, also known as the Neolithic Revolution, was ultimately necessary to the rise of modern civilization by creating the foundation for the later process of industrialization and sustained economic growth. The article provides a brief historical survey of the leading hypotheses concerning the rise of agriculture proposed in the archaeological and anthropological literature. It then turns to a more detailed review of the theories put forth in the economic literature. [source] Meta-Regression Analysis: A Quantitative Method of Literature SurveysJOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SURVEYS, Issue 3 2005T. D. Stanley Abstract., Pedagogically, literature reviews are instrumental. They summarize the large literature written on a particular topic, give coherence to the complex, often disparate, views expressed about an issue, and serve as a springboard for new ideas. However, literature surveys rarely establish anything approximating unanimous consensus. Ironically, this is just as true for the empirical economic literature. To harmonize this dissonance, we offer a quantitative methodology for reviewing the empirical economic literature. Meta-regression analysis (MRA) is the regression analysis of regression analyses. MRA tends to objectify the review process. It studies the processes that produce empirical economic results as though they were any other social scientific phenomenon. MRA provides a framework for replication and offers a sensitivity analysis for model specification. In this brief essay, we propose a new method of reviewing economic literature, MRA, and discuss its potential. [source] Systematic review: patient-centred endpoints in economic evaluations of gastro-oesophageal reflux diseaseALIMENTARY PHARMACOLOGY & THERAPEUTICS, Issue 8 2002N. Vakil Summary Aim : To perform a systematic review of the economic literature on gastro-oesophageal reflux disease to evaluate (a) the use of patient-centred effectiveness end-points, or (b) the use of patient-centred economic end-points, and the influence of these end-points on the outcome of the model. Methods : Three electronic databases (EMBASE, BIOSIS and Medline) were used, together with a manual search of meeting abstracts for relevant articles. The quality of the studies was determined by the Drummond criteria. Results : Our initial search identified 179 articles and a manual search revealed 78 abstracts and articles. A total of 47 studies (36 fully published articles and 11 abstracts) met the seven Drummond criteria for inclusion in our evaluation. Conclusions : This systematic review demonstrates that many of the published economic evaluations available today take the perspective of the third-party payer and focus on pharmaceutical costs relevant to the third-party payer. Our study also demonstrates that there are a number of costs of illness determinations, such that pharmaceutical costs account for only a small proportion of the total costs of managing gastro-oesophageal reflux disease. Future economic analyses should consider an evaluation of the patient's desire for complete symptom relief by including cost,utility assessments or willingness to pay data. [source] Efficient organization of information processingMANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2007Jacek Cukrowski The paper examines the application of the concept of economic efficiency to organizational issues of collective information processing in decision making. Information processing is modeled in the framework of the dynamic parallel processing model of associative computation with an endogenous setup cost of the processors. The model is extended to include the specific features of collective information processing in the team of decision makers which may lead to an error in data analysis. In such a model, the conditions for efficient organization of information processing are defined and the architecture of the efficient structures is considered. We show that specific features of collective decision making procedures require a broader framework for judging organizational efficiency than has traditionally been adopted. In particular, and contrary to the results available in economic literature, we show that there is no unique architecture for efficient information processing structures, but a number of various efficient forms. The results indicate that technological progress resulting in faster data processing (ceteris paribus) will lead to more regular information processing structures. However, if the relative cost of the delay in data analysis increases significantly, less regular structures could be efficient. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Intrinsische Motivation und umweltpolitische InstrumentePERSPEKTIVEN DER WIRTSCHAFTSPOLITIK, Issue 2 2001Erik Gawel In the discussion on the rational choice model of individual behavior, a growing emphasis has recently been placed on the importance of intrinsic motivation. Contrary to assumptions made in the standard economic literature, it is suggested that an individual's motivation to act may not be exclusively determined by external influences (incentives, restrictions) and (given) personal preferences, but, in addition, depends on intrinsically anchored ethical preferences. Intrinsic motivation may diminish if parallel external incentives, such as rewards or orders, come into play: Insofar as external intervention weakens the corresponding intrinsic motivation to act, the (normal) effect of relative prices is opposed by a (countervailing) crowding-out effect of intrinsic motivation. The effect of (over-) crowding-out has been thematized especially in the context of environmental policy. It was suggested that subsidies may support intrinsic incentives whereas taxes and licences (especially though command-and-control measures) tend to undermine them. This paper critically analyzes the impact of intrinsic behavior considerations on the evaluation of environmental policy instruments. It is argued that, if at all, economists' standard recommendations for policy design with respect to subsidies need not be revised even if intrinsic motivation plays any role for the agents' environmental bevavior. Furthermore, command-and-control policy might rather support than weaken intrinsic motivation. [source] Two-part regression models for longitudinal zero-inflated count dataTHE CANADIAN JOURNAL OF STATISTICS, Issue 2 2010Marco Alfò Abstract Two-part models are quite well established in the economic literature, since they resemble accurately a principal-agent type model, where homogeneous, observable, counted outcomes are subject to a (prior, exogenous) selection choice. The first decision can be represented by a binary choice model, modeled using a probit or a logit link; the second can be analyzed through a truncated discrete distribution such as a truncated Poisson, negative binomial, and so on. Only recently, a particular attention has been devoted to the extension of two-part models to handle longitudinal data. The authors discuss a semi-parametric estimation method for dynamic two-part models and propose a comparison with other, well-established alternatives. Heterogeneity sources that influence the first level decision process, that is, the decision to use a certain service, are assumed to influence also the (truncated) distribution of the positive outcomes. Estimation is carried out through an EM algorithm without parametric assumptions on the random effects distribution. Furthermore, the authors investigate the extension of the finite mixture representation to allow for unobservable transition between components in each of these parts. The proposed models are discussed using empirical as well as simulated data. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 38: 197,216; 2010 © 2010 Statistical Society of Canada Les modèles en deux parties sont bien établis dans la littérature économique puisqu'ils sont très similaires à un modèle principal-agent pour lequel les résultats homogènes, observables et dénombrables sont sujets à un critère de sélection (exogène et a priori). La première décision est représentée à l'aide un modèle de choix binaire et une fonction de lien probit ou logit tandis que la seconde peut être analysée à l'aide d'une loi discrète tronquée telle que la loi de Poisson tronquée, la loi binomiale négative, etc. Depuis peu, une attention particulière a été portée à la généralisation du modèle en deux parties pour prendre en compte les données longitudinales. Les auteurs présentent une méthode d'estimation semi-paramétrique pour les modèles en deux parties dynamiques et ils les comparent avec d'autres modèles alternatifs bien connus. Les sources hétérogènes qui influencent le premier niveau du processus de décision, c'est-à-dire la décision d'utiliser un certain service, sont censées influencer aussi la distribution (tronquée) des résultats positifs. L'estimation est faite à l'aide de l'algorithme EM sans présupposés paramétriques sur la distribution des effets aléatoires. De plus, les auteurs considèrent une généralisation à une représentation en mélange fini afin de permettre une transition non observable entre les différentes composantes de chacune des parties. Une discussion est faite sur les modèles présentés en utilisant des données empiriques ou simulées. La revue canadienne de statistique 38: 197,216; 2010 © 2010 Société statistique du Canada [source] The Efficiency Principle in Non-Cooperative Coalitional BargainingTHE JAPANESE ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2000Akira Okada Applying the non-cooperative theory of coalitional bargaining, I examine a widely held view in economic literature that an efficient outcome can be agreed on in voluntary bargaining among rational agents in the absence of transaction costs. While this view is not always true, owing to the strategic formation of subcoalitions, I show that it can hold under the possibility of successive renegotiations of agreements. Renegotiation may, however, motivate bargainers to form a subcoalition first and to exploit the first-mover rent. This strategic behaviour in the process of renegotiation may distort the equity of an agreement. JEL Classification Numbers: C72, C78, D23, D61, D63. [source] Theory and Practice in the Design of Physician Payment IncentivesTHE MILBANK QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2001James C. Robinson Combining the economic literature on principal-agent relationships with examples of marketplace innovations allows analysis of the evolution of methods for paying physicians. Agency theory and the economic principles of performance-based compensation are applied in the context of imperfect information, risk aversion, multiple interrelated tasks, and team production efficiencies. Fee-for-service and capitation are flawed methods of motivating physicians to achieve specific goals. Payment innovations that blend elements of fee-for-service, capitation, and case rates can preserve the advantages and attenuate the disadvantages of each. These innovations include capitation with fee-for-service carve-outs, department budgets with individual fee-for-service or "contact" capitation, and case rates for defined episodes of illness. The context within which payment incentives are embedded, includes such nonprice mechanisms as screening and monitoring and such organizational relationships as employment and ownership. The analysis has implications for health services research and public policy with respect to physician payment incentives. [source] A Survey of the Theoretical Economic Literature on Foreign AidASIAN-PACIFIC ECONOMIC LITERATURE, Issue 1 2006Elisabeth Paul This paper surveys the theoretical economic literature on foreign aid,in particular, the aid donor,recipient relationship. Economic theory, especially new institutional economics, can be very helpful in understanding foreign aid relationships,especially the incentive problems involved,and in designing institutions to improve aid effectiveness. In particular, it helps in understanding the chain of principal,agent relations inherent in the aid delivery system and the resulting potential for agency problems. The survey shows that economic theory can improve the design of cooperation modalities by aligning the incentives of donors and recipients for poverty reduction, but that, in order to address the problems, policy analysis must take into account the constraints faced by stakeholders in the aid relationship. The aid ,contract' should thus seek to improve the agents' incentives to use aid effectively, given the circumstances of the developing country. [source] Environmental management and strategic positioning of Spanish manufacturing industriesBUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, Issue 1 2004Roberto Fernández Gago This work is based on data collected from a survey of environmental managers in 277 Spanish manufacturing industries with the objective of analysing the attitudes of companies towards the environment. The analysis determined the main indicators of these companies' environmental strategy and classified them into strategic clusters according to the accumulative or progressive scale suggested theoretically in the existing economic literature. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] WORKINGS OF THE MELTING POT: SOCIAL NETWORKS AND THE EVOLUTION OF POPULATION ATTRIBUTES,JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2007Jan K. Brueckner ABSTRACT This paper links the two nascent economic literatures on social networks and cultural assimilation by investigating the evolution of population attributes in a simple model where agents are influenced by their acquaintances. The main conclusion of the analysis is that attributes converge to a melting-pot equilibrium, where everyone is identical, provided the social network exhibits a sufficient degree of interconnectedness. When the model is extended to allow an expanding acquaintance set, convergence is guaranteed provided a weaker interconnectedness condition is satisfied, and convergence is rapid. If the intensity of interactions with acquaintances becomes endogenous, convergence (when it occurs) is slowed when agents prefer to interact with people like themselves and hastened when interaction with dissimilar agents is preferred. [source] Institutions and Development: A Conceptual ReanalysisPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 2 2006Alejandro Portes This essay reviews the concept of "institutions" as used in the recent economic literatures on firms and national development and notes its limitations. An alternative framework is proposed that draws on classic and contemporary sociological theory to position the concept of institutions in relation to other basic elements of culture and social structure. The framework is used to analyze (1) the failure of attempts to transplant institutions of developed countries into the global South and (2) the dynamics of massive privatization in Mexico. The bearing of this framework on current institutional theories of social change is examined, leading to the identification of sources of change at different levels of causal significance and scope. This modified theory of change is applied to the longstanding demographic debates on historical and institutional determinants of fertility transitions. The bearing of the proposed "thick institutionalist" framework on social theory and future development policies is discussed. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||