Business cycle and inflation synchronisation in Mainland China and Hong Kong

This paper uses annual data spanning 1962 to 2003 to examine whether business and inflation cycles have become more similar across Chinese provinces as the economy has been liberalised and modernised. We find evidence of synchronisation, although business cycles in a group of mainly northwestern provinces appear to have diverged from those in the rest of China. Both the business and inflation cycles in Hong Kong seem to have become increasingly synchronised with those in the Mainland over recent years.     

Alzheimer: Kein Grund für therapeutischen Nihilismus

Betreuung und Therapie bei Menschen mit Demenz - Alle drei Minuten wird in Deutschland bei einem Menschen eine Alzheimer-Demenz diagnostiziert. Kausale Therapien gibt es bislang nicht, doch nicht-medikament?se und medikament?se Ma?nahmen k?nnen das Befinden verbessern, Symptome reduzieren und den Verlauf der Erkrankung positiv beeinflussen. Dennoch erh?lt derzeit die Mehrheit der Betroffenen keine ad?quate Therapie.     

Transparency of Monetary Policy: Theory and Practice

Transparency has become one of the main features of monetarypolicymaking during the last decade. This article establishesstylized facts and provides a systematic overview of the practiceof monetary policy transparency around the world. It shows muchdiversity in information disclosure, even for central bankswith the same monetary policy framework, including inflationtargeting. Nevertheless, the study finds significant differencesin transparency across monetary policy frameworks. The empiricalfindings are explained using key insights distilled from thetheoretical literature. Thus, this article aims to bridge thegap between the theory and practice of monetary policy transparency.(JEL codes: E58, D82)     

Policies to stimulate regional innovation capabilities via university–industry collaboration: an analysis and an assessment

In this paper, we demonstrate how regional economic policies to stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation, can lead to successes. More specifically, through a detailed theoretical and empirical analysis, we discuss the critical ingredients that can lead to regional innovation and economic success. These critical ingredients consist of a balanced mix based on the presence of research institutes, a texture of endogenous knowledge–intensive start–ups coupled to larger R&D–intensive incumbents, all of them embedded in a professional environment that supports business advice and services. We illustrate the effects of this mix using empirical material from various innovative regions around the world.     

The role of transformational leadership and leaders’ skills for new agricultural cooperatives in post-soviet countries

Team leadership plays a crucial role in the management of agricultural cooperatives, especially in post-Soviet countries where farmers keep bad experiences from the collectivization of their farms. The main objective of the research was to investigate how important the role of leadership is in the process of establishing, initial sustaining of cooperation and members’ commitment among small farmers in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Leadership was analysed from multiple perspectives using an explanatory sequential mixed approach involving quantitative and qualitative methods. We interviewed 293 cooperative leaders and members. The partial least squares structural equation model was used to examine the relationship between multiple constructs and variables. We concluded that leaders do differ in some of their characteristics from other members. They are the most active in the group, influencing all major decisions, playing a crucial role in trust-building and group cohesion. Their skills and leadership style are significantly important for members’ commitment to the group's success. However, the dominance of group founders and lack of understanding of cooperative principles among members indicate some emerging challenges to the cooperatives’ sustainability and efficiency, and it is necessary to focus on the progressive professionalization and capacity building of leaders while maintaining a transformational leadership style.     

On the correlation of self-reported and behavioral risk attitude measures: The case of the General Risk Question and the Investment Game following Gneezy and Potters (1997)

Risk attitudes play a pivotal role to understand economic decision-making, and several measures are used to elicit them in the lab and survey them in the field. We provide a literature review on the most commonly used risk elicitation methods by Holt and Laury (HL) and the Investment Game (IG) by Gneezy and Potters and the General Risk Question (GRQ) utilized in the German Socioeconomic Panel. Based on the metadata from three experiments, we show that the GRQ has a robust and economically relevant association with the IG.     

Insurance demand in the presence of loss-dependent background risk

We analyze insurance demand when insurable losses come with an uninsurable zero-mean background risk that increases in the loss size. If the individual is risk vulnerable, loss-dependent background risk triggers a precautionary insurance motive and increases optimal insurance demand. Prudence alone is sufficient for insurance demand to increase in two cases: the case of fair insurance and the case where the smallest possible loss exceeds a certain threshold value (referred to as the large loss case). We derive conditions under which insurance demand increases or decreases in initial wealth. In the large loss case, prudence determines whether changes in the background risk lead to more insurance demand. We generalize this result to arbitrary loss distributions and find conditions based on decreasing third-degree Ross risk aversion, Arrow–Pratt risk aversion, and Arrow–Pratt temperance.     

Health insurers' use of quality improvement expenses to achieve a minimum medical loss ratio requirement

Health insurer medical loss ratios (MLRs) are the percentage of premium dollar spent on medical claims and healthcare quality improvement expenses (QIEs). QIEs include activities to improve patient health outcomes and safety, reduce medical errors, and prevent hospital readmissions. The Affordable Care Act mandates minimum MLRs in certain health insurance markets lest rebates be paid to policyholders. QIEs are reported in all markets regardless of whether that market is subject to minimum MLR requirements. Using health insurer statutory filings for a sample of group market insurers from 2010 to 2018, we employ a mixed regression discontinuity/regression kink approach to evaluate whether QIEs are used by insurers as a potential strategy for meeting the minimum MLR requirement. We show that health insurers' QIE increase in the loss ratio until meeting the minimum MLR requirement, have a significant discontinuous jump at the threshold, and decrease above the threshold after the introduction of the MLR mandate.