At the Top of His Game

If you want to know the mind of Alan Greenspan, you might start with this: Before he entered public life in the 1970s, all his top deputies at his flourishing economic consulting firm were women. "It just made great business sense,"he writes with the unexpectedly sunny wonkiness that pervades much of his memoir, The Age of Turbulence. "I valued men and women equally, and found that because other employers did not,good women economists were less expensive than men."     

CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY: PROPERTY CLAIMS IN A DYNAMIC WORLD

Constitutional political economy concerns the legal foundations of the market. One central component of that legal infrastructure relates to property rights over objects and circumstances. The idea of "takings" causes one to focus on the conditions under which regulatory actions call for compensation to those who imagine that their property rights have been taken. A dynamic economy is alleged here to be one in which legal processes must carry the burden of discovering when particular parties have an interest that can be said to constitute a property right requiring compensation. That is, objects and circumstances are not protected because they are "property." Rather, those objects and circumstances that are protected become, by virtue of that protection, "property." The task for the economist is to understand the perverse incentives to flow from a compensation requirement on all instances of institutional change concerning landed property. A further task is to incorporate a dynamic concept of property rights into general equilibrium models of economic systems.     

A Neglected Aspect of the Economic Ideology of the Early New Deal

I have been exceedingly interested in the paper on Price inflexibility which you kindly sent me. I think that your distinction between market prices and administered prices is one of first class importance and very illuminating. I have been aware of the point in a dim sort of way, but had not crystallized it, as you have. Nor had I realized how sharp and important a division there is in practice between the two. [Keynes, 1935]     

Sharpen your bargaining skills

As the health-care revolution continues, bargaining skills have become more crucial for doctors than ever before. If you want your practice to thrive, you must regularly negotiate with colleagues, practice administrators, allied health professionals, managed-care plans, business groups, hospitals, and the government. Yet medical schools and residency programs devote little if any time to negotiating skills. The "golden days," when physicians could afford to be mavericks, are over. Doctors must develop a new collaborative outlook to be successful and happy in their careers, says Leonard J. Marcus, Ph.D., lead author of the book "Renegotiating Health Care: Resolving conflict to Build Collaboration." He and his co-authors often conduct seminars for health professionals on improving bargaining skills. The following excerpt concerns the role of conflict in negotiation, and how to resolve it.     

Axiomatisches Mißverständnis

From the axiomatic point of view, mathematics appears thus as a storehouse of abstract forms – the mathematical structures; and so it happens without our knowing how that certain aspects of empirical reality fit themselves into these forms, as if through a kind of preadaptation. (Bourbaki, 1950, p. 231)
So you believe that the application of mathematics to the physical world is a miracle? If so, then I invite you to admire another miracle; I can travel around the world with my American Express card. You say of the second, 'That's just a network. If you step out of it by so much as an inch, your card will be valueless.' Quite so. That is what I am saying about science, nothing more and nothing less. (Latour, 1988, p.221)     

Leaders and windshields: the art of deflecting essential information

Do you know how much information you deflect in a day? Do you know what techniques you use to keep information at bay? We all erect windshields. It is just a matter of degree. Sometimes we deflect information in spite of our good intentions. If we are not present when people are in dialogue with us, we soon lose the attention of that person. If we are leading a meeting and the feedback begins to get uncomfortable for us, we can interject the techniques of the alpha male or alpha female, or a variety of our own. But the audience knows you are not listening, and they soon go underground with their comments and interpretations. Soon you are cut out of valuable feedback. Deflecting information by surrounding yourself with windshields just won't work. We need second and third opinions continually. One of Warren Bennis' (2002) ten traits to becoming a "tomorrow leader" is that of ensuring that the leader's boundaries are porous and permeable. In his view, leaders need the foresight to see around the corner long before others do. His belief is that the only way to do this is to be in touch with your customers, and the outside world. But that only happens when the leader's boundaries are porous and permeable so that information can seep in. Effective leaders learn to lead without windshields.     

建设什么样的优秀团队

1994年,管理学家斯蒂芬P罗宾斯首次提出了＂团队＂的概念。在随后的10余年里,关于＂团队合作＂的理念风靡全球,团队似乎随处可见,而人们也早已泛滥地使用这个词汇了。可如果深究：什么样的团队才能够使工作做得最出色、什么样的团队管理才能够真正提高团队的效率时,那就不是一件容易的事情了。因此,试从建设什么样的优秀团队方面和大家探讨一下优秀团队的建设。     

Investment and poverty: The role of the International Financial Institutions: The Jacques de Larosière Lecture

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is a unique institution with an inspiring and challenging mandate. I look back on the six years I spent with you as a most productive and cheerful period of my working life. And it is a great honour to give a lecture bearing the name of Jacques de Larosière. Like many of you, I learned enormously from him and owe him an immense debt. And even as bankers, we must recognize that there are some debts that it is a privilege to bear. Jacques is a very special figure in the international community. He is someone who, through his outstanding abilities, personality, dedication and charm, has changed the shape of development and progress in the global economy of the last fifty years. Giving this lecture in his name means a great deal to me, and I would like to thank Jean Lemierre and the Executive Committee of the EBRD for the invitation.     

"Thank God . . . I Thought for a Moment You Were Going to Confess to Converting to Socialism!": Gender and Identity in Deirdre McCLoskey's Crossing

"Thank God . . . I thought for moment you were going to confess to converting to socialism! 'critiques McCloskey's account of her transition from a heterosexual male professor of "Chicago school" economics to a female, "free-market feminist." McCloskey's account raises fascinating questions for all feminists regarding both one's definitions of gender, and the institutions and practices which reinforce gender boundaries. At the same time, McCloskey's account is found to be lacking in certain respects. For example, she pays insufficient attention to the implications of gender for rational-choice, free-market economic theories, and she insufficiently contextualizes her definitions of masculinity/femininity to a particular class and race in the late 20th century US.     

Temptation-Driven Preferences

"My own behaviour baffles me. For I find myself not doing what I really want to do but doing what I really loathe." Saint Paul
What behaviour can be explained using the hypothesis that the agent faces temptation but is otherwise a "standard rational agent"? In earlier work, Gul and Pesendorfer (2001) use a set betweenness axiom to restrict the set of preferences considered by Dekel, Lipman and Rustichini (2001) to those explainable via temptation. We argue that set betweenness rules out plausible and interesting forms of temptation including some which may be important in applications. We propose a pair of alternative axioms called DFC, desire for commitment , and AIC, approximate improvements are chosen . DFC characterizes temptation as situations in which given any set of alternatives, the agent prefers committing herself to some particular item from the set rather than leaving herself the flexibility of choosing later. AIC is based on the idea that if adding an option to a menu improves the menu, it is because that option is chosen under some circumstances. From this interpretation, the axiom concludes that if an improvement is worse (as a commitment) than some commitment from the menu, then the best commitment from the improved menu is strictly preferred to facing that menu. We show that these axioms characterize a natural generalization of the Gul–Pesendorfer representation.     

Changing the start of the hospital workweek

Essential to the success of a project of this magnitude were: (a) having the support and input of both management and staff; (b) clarifying federal wage and hour issues; (c) allowing adequate time for the change process; (d) determining impact of change on every hospital department; (e) providing hospital departments with necessary information, resources, and support to accommodate the change; and (f) communicating the change to each hospital employee in a timely manner. Can a hospital provide budget-neutral, flexible nurse schedules necessary to recruit and retain registered nurses? Yes, they can if they know how to do it. By redefining the workweek, Saint Marys realized an annual decrease of almost $750,000 in scheduled overtime expense for full-time nurses working 12-hour weekends, every third weekend. If health care institutions want the competitive edge in recruiting nurses, they will need to provide work schedules that are not only attractive, but also help ensure a positive "bottom line."     

Bring in the Green Cat

The New York Times, November 15, 2006 I've been a regular visitor to China since 1990, and here's what strikes me most: Each year that I've come here, China's people seem to speak with greater ease and breathe with greater difficulty. Yes, you can now hav…     

The Social Gene

Synopsis Skew selection is a multiple-selection model (not to be confused with a multi-level selection model) that explains the inherent duality of social behavior from an individualistic, self-preservation point of view. The dual behaviors of social beings are greed and sharing. Greed produces resource stockpiles. Stockpiles buffer an individual from famine. Sharing aggregates individuals into groups. Groups buffer an individual from predation through safety-in-numbers. In this paper, skew selection is applied to genes as a potential solution for two genomic puzzles: (1) junk DNA; and (2) the C-value enigma. Junk DNA refers to the large number of non-coding DNA sequences within a genome. Skew selection hypothesizes that, when genes are exposed to agents of predation such as point mutations, viral infections or chromosomal crossovers, genes that share resources with a large number of junk DNA sequences will survive longer than genes that do not share. The C-value enigma refers to the lack of relationship between genomic size and animal complexity. Skew selection hypothesizes that genomic size and animal complexity evolve independently of each other. Genomic size (i.e., junk DNA) shields genes from agents of mutation, viruses or chromosomal crossovers. Animal complexity (i.e., gene diversity) buffers genes from resource scarcity by allowing organisms to exploit diverse resources. In conclusion, by viewing gene survival through the lens of skew selection, molecular biologists gain insight into the evolution of genomic size and animal complexity as independent survival strategies of self-interested genes facing multiple agents of selection.JEL classification: P50     

Inverse probability weighted M-estimators for sample selection, attrition, and stratification

I provide an overview of inverse probability weighted (IPW) M-estimators for cross section and two-period panel data applications. Under an ignorability assumption, I show that population parameters are identified, and provide straightforward -consistent and asymptotically normal estimation methods. I show that estimating a binary response selection model by conditional maximum likelihood leads to a more efficient estimator than using known probabilities, a result that unifies several disparate results in the literature. But IPW estimation is not a panacea: in some important cases of nonresponse, unweighted estimators will be consistent under weaker ignorability assumptions.JEL Classification: C13, C21, C23I would like to thank Bo Honoré, Christophe Muller, Frank Windmeijer, and the participants at the CeMMAP/ESCR Econometric Study Group Microeconometrics Workshop for helpful comments on an earlier draft.     

The extent of the market and optimal specialization

Summary. In this paper I examine how the socially optimal allocation, and specialization in particular, depends on the extent of the market. I interpret the societys ability to keep transaction records as the extent of the market and measure it by a probability with which the society can update agents past transactions into the public record. The society uses this record to detect potential defections from the optimal allocation and to punish the defectors with autarky. I show that when is small, increasing increases optimal specialization. However, when is close to 1, increasing further has no effect on the optimal allocation. I also show that optimal specialization is gradual over time when there is cost to reduce specialization. Even for small , the process converges to the unconstrained optimum that would occur under .JEL Classification Numbers: D60, C78.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Society for Economic Dynamics meetings in Stockholm (2001). I thank a referee and the editor for useful comments and suggestions. For financial support, I gratefully acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Bank of Canada Fellowship. The opinion expressed here is my own and does not reflect the view of the Bank of Canada.     

Medical practice and malpractice litigation in an evolutionary context

We model the interactions between the behaviors of physicians and patients, subject to clinical and legal risks, by means of evolutionary game theory. We propose an original game in which patients may sue their physician for medical malpractice, and physicians have to choose between two alternative treatments, with different levels of benefits and risks. The safer treatment is also the less effective, therefore its provision corresponds, under the assumptions of our model, to practicing negative defensive medicine. We study the Nash equilibria, test their stability in the replicator dynamics, and analyze their welfare properties. We find that the accuracy of the judicial system plays an important role, with possible counter-intuitive effects related to legal reforms. If the court is not sufficiently accurate, defensive medicine can be favored, paradoxically, by an increase in the probability that defensive physicians are sanctioned by the court. A similar outcome can be generated also by an increase in the compensation paid to patients by physicians, when sanctioned for medical malpractice.     

Social Security and personal saving: 1971 and beyond

Feldstein (1996, 1974) reported that Social Security in the U.S.A. reduced personal saving (“saving”) in 1992 (1971) by $416 ($61) billion. I reestimate his life-cycle consumption specification using data from the latest NIPA revision, correct his calculations, and find that the implied reduction in 1992 (1971) saving is now $280 ($22) billion, 48% (16%) of actual net private saving, with a standard error of $114 ($14) billion. If structural breaks around WWII and the 1972 Social Security amendments (which raised real per capita SSW by 22%) are allowed, and the market value of Treasury debt included in the specification, the reduction in 1971 and 1992 saving attributable to Social Security is at most 0.55 times its standard error, and 12% of net private saving. I then reestimate the preferred specification of Coates and Humphreys (1999), allowing for these structural breaks and relaxing other restrictions. The implied effect of Social Security on saving is again statistically zero. First version received: September 2000/Final version received: September 2001 RID="*" ID="*"  I thank Les Oxley for pointing out that correcting for AR(1) residuals is not a categorical imperative but a cultural relative, in which case common factor restrictions are crucial.     

中国股票市场估值研究——局部投资价值凸现与市场整体性结构调整并存

在当前价格下,样本股票未来带给国内投资者的回报率可能不低于成熟市场,如果国内投资者对样本股票所要求的股权风险溢价能与境外投资者对成熟市场所要求的水平相当,那么样本股票无疑已凸现投资价值;如果国内投资者对样本股票所要求的股权风险溢价与境外投资者对中国香港等新兴市场所要求的水平看齐,那么样本股票就可能存在高估的问题;但是如果考虑到A股含权的因素,即使是与中国香港市场比较,样本股票可能已具备较高的投资价值。     

ESTIMATES OF THE PRICE ELASTICITY OF SWITCHING BETWEEN BRANDED AND GENERIC DRUGS

We estimate price elasticities of switching from branded to generic drugs for two widely used drugs: Prozac and Zocor. We find the price elasticity of switching varies by drug and is between 0.01 and 0.10. While elasticity estimates for Zocor are robust to the inclusion of controls for supply‐side factors, those for Prozac are not. Our results indicate consumers in managed care plans are most responsive to differences in out‐of‐pocket (OOP) cost, and we estimate that a 10% increase in the OOP cost difference between Zocor and generic Simvastatin increases an individual's probability of switching to the generic by approximately 0.3%. This would result in a modest total savings of $36,700 among our sample of 114,218 privately insured Zocor users. Our finding that individuals are relatively unresponsive to the lower prices caused by generic introduction implies that policies targeting supply‐side behavior are likely to have a larger effect on generic uptake than price‐based inducements. If generic‐uptake did occur immediately within the first 18 months after generic introduction, the total savings among individuals and insurance companies within our sample would be approximately $7 million for Zocor and $255,000 for Prozac. (JEL I11, I18)     

Estimating the time involved in managing the 'unoccupied bed:' a time and motion study

Occupied bed days are often used as a demand indicator when calculating the number of nurses required to provide safe care. However, such calculations fail to take into account the amount of nursing time consumed by the "unoccupied bed." This study used direct observation time-and-motion methods to estimate the time and costs associated with a bed that is unoccupied. The average time taken to complete all of the activities associated with a bed that was unoccupied due to an internal transfer was 8.65 minutes, for a patient discharge 26.27 minutes, and for a patient admission 37.7 minutes. An average daily cost for activities surrounding these patient movements was approximately $386/day (AUD) in registered/enrolled nursing salaries alone. The unoccupied bed is not resource neutral and time associated with its maintenance should be considered when calculating nursing requirements to provide safe care.