Implementing efficient market structure

Abstract. This article studies the design of optimal mechanisms to regulate entry in natural oligopoly markets, assuming the regulator is unable to control the behavior of firms once they are in the market. We adapt the Clarke–Groves mechanism, characterize the optimal mechanism that maximizes the weighted sum of expected social surplus and expected tax revenue, and show that these mechanisms avoid budget deficits and prevent excessive entry. Received: 7 May 2001 / Accepted: 24 June 2002 We would like to thank seminar participants at Bonn and Berlin, in particular Peter Bank, Wieland Müller, and Urs Schweizer, the two anonymous referees, and the associate editor for most useful and exceptionally detailed comments. Financial support was received by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, SFB 373 (“Quantifikation und Simulation ?konomischer Prozesse”), Humboldt–Universit?t zu Berlin.     

The determinants of nursing home costs in Nebraska's proprietary nursing homes.

In the past few years nursing home care expenditures in Nebraska and the U.S. have been the fastest growing component of total health care expenditures. This rate of increase is particularly alarming in view of the fact that nursing home care is financed primarily by the Medicaid program or direct out-of-pocket payments. In fact, given the cutbacks in federal and state funds for this program, consumers will be forced to allocate a larger share of their income to meet the costs of nursing home care. Although nursing home expenditures have grown at an extremely rapid rate, relatively few empirical studies exist which analyze the cost function of nursing home providers. The purpose of this study is to identify factors which have directly influenced the cost of nursing home care in Nebraska and to evaluate the current Nebraska Medicaid reimbursement system in terms of its impact upon nursing home costs. The study was limited to a sample of 40 nursing homes in Nebraska which represents 42% of the total proprietary nursing homes in the state. The sample was limited to those facilities licensed only as an Intermediate Care Facility--I and they had to be receiving some Medicaid revenue. The data were averaged over the period of 1977-79, but the year of analysis corresponded to 1978. Multiple regression analysis was used to measure the effect of the hypothesized independent variables upon two different measures of cost--the average total cost per patient day and the average variable cost per patient day. In the first regression model 76% of the variance was explained and 71% was explained in the second equation. The results of this analysis are basically consistent with the findings of other studies and indicate that the number of staffing hours, patient mix, facility age, administrator experience and administrative intensity are significant determinants of nursing home costs. The most important finding from a policy perspective is that the current retrospective cost-related Medicaid reimbursement system does not provide incentives for minimizing costs. In fact, the present system encourages administrators to overutilize resources and charge higher prices. Considerable evidence exists which suggests that a prospective system would encourage a more efficient allocation of resources without adversely affecting the quality of care. Given the increase in the state's share of the total Medicaid budget, it would appear that a change to a prospective system is critical in order to maintain the financial accessibility to nursing home care by all Nebraska residents.     

Creating an employer-employee relationship for the hture

A tidal wave of change is sweeping across the American workplace. Resulting in part from tumultuous economic conditions, the relationship between employers and employees is being redefined in a fundamental and permanent way. The consequences are as critical to the future of business as are developments in marketing, financial management, and technology.     

Using an artificial financial market for studying a cryptocurrency market

This paper presents an agent-based artificial cryptocurrency market in which heterogeneous agents buy or sell cryptocurrencies, in particular Bitcoins. In this market, there are two typologies of agents, Random Traders and Chartists, which interact with each other by trading Bitcoins. Each agent is initially endowed with a finite amount of crypto and/or fiat cash and issues buy and sell orders, according to her strategy and resources. The number of Bitcoins increases over time with a rate proportional to the real one, even if the mining process is not explicitly modelled. The model proposed is able to reproduce some of the real statistical properties of the price returns observed in the Bitcoin real market. In particular, it is able to reproduce the unit root property, the fat tail phenomenon and the volatility clustering. The simulator has been implemented using object-oriented technology, and could be considered a valid starting point to study and analyse the cryptocurrency market and its future evolutions.     

Creating an Innovative Culture

Four types of mutually exclusive cultures are described in Cameron and Quinn's (2011) Competing Values Framework, but only one is described as innovative. Each culture requires a certain type of leadership approach, values, concept of effectiveness, and quality improvement strategy. Brief interviews were conducted with leaders of four types of organizations to help determine the type of industries that align with these cultures and to consider how to create innovation in each.     

Informal care and labor market participation

Understanding the effect of informal care for an elderly or disabled person on labor market outcomes is important for developing policies targeted towards caregivers. However, because of omitted variables bias, simple cross-sectional relationships may provide a misleading picture of the causal impact of informal care provision on labor force status. To address this, I use panel data for the period 2001–2007, which make it possible to track the same individuals over time, and observe how their outcomes alter as their care arrangements change. While caregiving does appear to have a modest negative impact on labor force participation, this impact is only one-quarter to one-sixth as large in the panel as in the cross-section. Taking account of individual heterogeneity, the impact of caregiving on other labor force outcomes (and on life satisfaction) seems to be small or non-existent. Large estimated effects from cross-sectional regressions are most likely driven by individual heterogeneity. One possible interpretation of this result is that the impact of caregiving on labor market outcomes and life satisfaction takes several years to manifest itself. Another is that the causal effect of caregiving on labor force outcomes and life satisfaction is quite small.     

规划高效发展的航空大都市

目前大多数针对航空大都市发展所编制的总体规划主要包含的是商业用地规划、城市规划以及如何提升机场及周边地区的陆面交通基础设施等内容,很少有总体规划关注到发展策略、经济发展以及房地产投资等因素,而这些因素恰恰决定着航空大都市经济模型能否顺利实现。因此,行之有效的航空大都市总体规划还必须是一个经济发展规划和策略发展规划,它应该讲清楚航空大都市发展过程中的驱动因素和阻碍因素,并针对不同的航空大都市的功能和位置提供相应的商业地产需求数据分析,应该关注本地区对航空经济的市场需求;方便快捷的空中和陆面连通性;整合消费者和股东们之间的需求;商业房地产发展的管理以及吸引投资者和投资等。由于吸引投资者和投资对于航空大都市发展成功与否起着关键作用,因此,本文突出讨论了再策略规划以及具体实施中如何吸引投资者和如何吸引他们在切实可行的商业地产项目上投资。     

Migration and gender differences in the home labour market: Evidence from Albania

This paper examines the role of migration in affecting the labour market opportunities of male and female household members left behind. We address this question by analyzing the impact of international migration flows from Albania, where migration is a massive and male-dominated phenomenon. We find that the labour supply of men and women responds differently to current and past migration. Controlling for the potential endogeneity of migration, estimates show that having a migrant abroad decreases female paid labour supply while increasing unpaid work. On the other hand, women with past family migration experience are significantly more likely to engage in self-employment and less likely to supply unpaid work. The same relationships do not hold for men. These results suggest that while left-behind women in Albania may take on the extra burden associated with the migration of male family members, they gain employment opportunities upon their return.     

Aggregate nursing requirement planning in a public health care delivery system.

In this paper, we present an aggregate nursing requirement planning model for inpatient services to provide inputs for preparing yearly budgets in a public health care delivery system. A forecasting system using autoregressive integrated moving average time-series models forms the basis of project demands for nursing hours by medical specialities. These projections along with the institutional constraints and patient care requirements are all incorporated in a linear programming model for assessing needs for permanent staff, overtime pay and contracting temporary help—by medical service, nursing skill level and time period (month). We also expand the model to evaluate the sizing of a pool of float nurses. The model is developed within the framework of routine managerial planning process of the system under study (vis-à vis, the data base and the organizational structure). Historical data are used to estimate input parameters for the model. The staffing needs generated from the model for 1978 are compared with the actual system performance.     

创立一个中国式的生态发展模式:安吉研究

作者通过两年对浙江省安吉县比较深入的研究,根据理论文献和实证经验,提出了安吉生态发展模式.认为安吉的发展是一种内生型的生态发展,其生态发展模式是在探索一条生态保护和经济发展相结合的范式.生态发展模式在城镇化的中观和宏观层面政策上,以及在农业和乡村重组过程中,体现了重新本地化的过程,以求减少碳的排放和资源的消耗.生态发展模式显示了一个具有领先意义的、新型的、以社区为基础的网络的自我组织形式.     

Assessing French nursing home efficiency: An indirect approach via budget-constrained DEA models

In this paper, data envelopment analysis (DEA) techniques are applied to the French nursing home industry in order to address two policy issues. The first involves nursing home size and returns to scale, while the second deals with the potential effects of a change in nursing home reimbursement from a flat rate to one based on the severity of case-mix. To accomplish this, our analysis expands on the existing nursing home literature to analyze technical and allocative efficiency along with budget-constrained models rather than the more common direct input-based distance function. Technical efficiency is evaluated via an indirect output distance function while allocative output efficiency is computed with a cost indirect revenue function. The findings suggest that system-wide efficiency and equity may result from coming reforms since payments would more accurately reflect resource use.     

Network of companies: an analysis of market concentration in the Italian stock market

In this paper we propose an adjustment to the Herfindahl–Hirschman concentration index for explicitly considering the role of the topology of financial economic networks on market concentration. The case study of the Italian stock market serves for outlining the relevance of the shareholding network in the measurement of effective concentration. Moreover, we deepen the analysis of the network comparing network centrality measures, that are a well known method for understanding the relative relevance of network nodes. The correlations among them show their relation, and the fact that none of them can completely substitute the information contained in the size of companies. Such analysis constitutes the base for randomized experiments aiming at understanding to which extent the topology of this financial economic network is constraining the market concentration, so we derive and comment the results on the maximum value of HH \(_{i}\) under the scale-free constraint. We also show the fragility of the network under random rewiring, both unconstrained and constrained by the network topology.     

Detecting speculative bubbles in an IT-intensive stock market

Using a battery of unit root test procedures and cointegration analysis with alternative null hypotheses we find some evidence of speculative bubbles in the Finnish stock market for monthly data on industry portfolio stock prices and returns from the 1990s. When analyzing the time series behavior of stock market prices and returns against the development of certain macroeconomic fundamentals, the bubbles seem to be present especially in the information technology (IT) prices and only during the latter half of the decade. (JEL C22, G12)     

Option pricing with an illiquid underlying asset market

We examine how price impact in the underlying asset market affects the replication of a European contingent claim. We obtain a generalized Black–Scholes pricing PDE and establish the existence and uniqueness of a classical solution to this PDE. Unlike the case with transaction costs, we prove that replication with price impact is always cheaper than superreplication. Compared to the Black–Scholes case, a trader generally buys more stock and borrows more (shorts and lends more) to replicate a call (put). Furthermore, price impact implies endogenous stochastic volatility and an out-of-money option has lower implied volatility than an in-the-money option. This finding has important implications for empirical analysis on volatility smile.     

Capital outflow liberalization and stock market reaction in an emerging market: Experience from Greece

This paper examines the response of the Greek equities market to the liberalization of capital flows during the 1992–1994 period. While past empirical research has largely examined the effects of capital inflow liberalization in emerging markets, we focus on capital outflow liberalization. In particular, we consider changes in the regulatory environment that allow domestic investors to hold foreign risky assets. Employing a time series of daily equity returns, a wealth effect is found that is indirectly linked to the announcement of capital flow liberalization. Additionally, our results reveal a significant change in the daily return distribution before and after final implementation. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and should not be interpreted as those of their respective affiliations.     

驾驶室前围钣金更改电测分析及优化设计

某重卡驾驶室前围钣金更改后通过试验电测分析进行优化设计,提高前围钣金结构强度,降低驾驶室前围钣金在行驶中出现疲劳损坏的风险,,     

Tradable and non-tradable expenditure and aggregate demand for imports in an emerging market economy

Using an assumption of non-separability of non-tradable expenditure from imports, this paper examines the impact of the structural transformation undertaken after 2001 on imports and, in turn, the current account stance of Turkey. In this regard, an import demand function is derived under the assumption of non-separability, and is estimated using quarterly time series data from Turkey. The empirical results show that the assumption of non-separability cannot be rejected in the case of Turkey and the relative prices of non-tradable and tradable goods must be among the determinants of import demand in addition to the relative price of imports and real GDP. This result accordingly implies that recent increases in import expenditure are, to some extent, due to changes in the relative price structure in favour of non-tradable goods.