Are stricter investment rules contagious? Host country competition for foreign direct investment through international agreements

We argue that competitive diffusion is a driver of the trend toward international investment agreements with stricter investment rules, namely defensive moves of developing countries concerned about foreign direct investment (FDI) diversion in favor of competing host countries. Accounting for spatial dependence in the formation of bilateral investment treaties and preferential trade agreements that contain investment provisions, we find that the increase in agreements with stricter provisions on investor-to-state dispute settlement and pre-establishment national treatment is a contagious process. Specifically, a developing country is more likely to sign an agreement with weak investment provisions if other developing countries that compete for FDI from the same developed country have previously signed agreements with similarly weak provisions. Conversely, contagion in agreements with strong provisions exclusively derives from agreements with strong provisions that other FDI-competing developing countries have previously signed with a specific developed source country of FDI.     

Integrating partitioned prices via computational estimation

This paper introduces computational estimation to the literature on consumers’ numerical cognition. Computational estimation involves simplifying an arithmetic problem via mathematical procedures to produce an approximate answer. Employing calculation knowledge and approximation together, consumers are likely to use computational estimation as it is relatively accurate while saving cognitive effort compared to calculating values. Three studies applied to partitioned prices in the form of a base price and a percentage discount, demonstrate that when faced with this numeric integration task, the strategy consumers undertake is dependent on the characteristics of the numerals with discounts that are round or close to round being associated with greater use of computational estimation. Further, when employing computational estimation, consumers arrive at more accurate, and lower, price estimates in which they place more confidence than when using alternative an integration strategy. As a result, discounts that are near a round value are preferred to those that are not; a result that is dependent upon the use of computational estimation.     

Increasing consumer well-being: risk as potential driver of happiness

This article investigates the relation between risk and individual well-being. We propose a theoretical model of happiness that makes a distinction between ex ante evaluations of happiness and ex post assessments. The main assumptions of the model are tested through three studies based on anchoring vignettes. We show that, even if, ex ante, consumers fear high risk and do not associate it to a high level of happiness, their ex post evaluation of well-being is generally higher when identical consequences result from a high-risk situation than from a low-risk situation. Control over risk-taking reinforces the gap between ex ante and ex post measures of happiness. Thus, our article provides empirical evidence about a positive relation between risk and individual well-being, suggesting that risky experiences have the potential to increase consumer well-being.     

A Brief Survey of Modern Optimization for Statisticians

Modern computational statistics is turning more and more to high‐dimensional optimization to handle the deluge of big data. Once a model is formulated, its parameters can be estimated by optimization. Because model parsimony is important, models routinely include non‐differentiable penalty terms such as the lasso. This sober reality complicates minimization and maximization. Our broad survey stresses a few important principles in algorithm design. Rather than view these principles in isolation, it is more productive to mix and match them. A few well‐chosen examples illustrate this point. Algorithm derivation is also emphasized, and theory is downplayed, particularly the abstractions of the convex calculus. Thus, our survey should be useful and accessible to a broad audience.     

Successful programs wanted: Exploring the impact of alignment

Alignment between formulation and implementation of business strategy can be important for achieving successful programs. The authors have explored the development of a program management alignment theory. Statistical testing showed that interaction between the study model variables was found to be multidimensional, complex, and subtle in influence. Thus, the authors conclude that programs have both deliberate and emergent strategies requiring design and management to be organized as complex adaptive systems. Program life‐cycle phases of design and transition were often formed from an unclear and confusing strategic picture at the outset, which can make those phases difficult to control. Learning was established as an underlying challenge. The study model demonstrated continuous alignment as an essential attribute contributing toward successful delivery. This requires program design and structure to adopt an adaptive posture.     

Boardroom centrality and firm performance

Firms with central boards of directors earn superior risk-adjusted stock returns. A long (short) position in the most (least) central firms earns average annual returns of 4.68%. Firms with central boards also experience higher future return-on-assets growth and more positive analyst forecast errors. Return prediction, return-on-assets growth, and analyst errors are concentrated among high growth opportunity firms or firms confronting adverse circumstances, consistent with boardroom connections mattering most for firms standing to benefit most from information and resources exchanged through boardroom networks. Overall, our results suggest that director networks provide economic benefits that are not immediately reflected in stock prices.     

The Structure of the American Economy

We explore the relationship between input–output accounts and the national revenue function. The generalized inverse of an economy's technology matrix carries information relating changes in endowments with changes in outputs; its transpose relates output prices and factor prices. Our primary theoretical contribution is to derive an economy's revenue function for an arbitrary Leontief technology. Our main empirical contribution is to compute the national revenue function for the American economy in 2003 and to describe its properties. We implement our ideas using two different models: one where all factors are mobile and another with sector‐specific capital.     

Underwriting the elderly: the utility of DWR, part II

Cognitive function is an important predictor of mortality in the elderly. Over the past few years, an increasing number of life insurance companies have incorporated screening for cognitive impairment into the underwriting process at older ages. Many different test instruments provide a measurement of cognitive function. Among these, the 10 word delayed word recall test (DWR) offers the best opportunity to study mortality directly, because of a long history of use in long-term care risk assessment. This article revises and extends a previous report published in the Journal in 2006 looking at the relationship between DWR score and mortality.     

Identification and information in monotone binary models

This paper considers binary response models where errors are uncorrelated with a set of instrumental variables and are independent of a continuous regressor v$v$, conditional on all other variables. It is shown that these exclusion restrictions are not sufficient for identification and that additional identifying assumptions are needed. Such an assumption, introduced by Lewbel [Semiparametric qualitative response model estimation with unknown heteroskedasticity or instrumental variables. Journal of Econometrics 97, 145–177], is that the support of the continuous regressor is large, but we show that it significantly restricts the class of binary phenomena which can be analysed. We propose an alternative additional assumption under which β$\beta$ remains just identified and the estimation unchanged. This alternative assumption does not impose specific restrictions on the data, which broadens the scope of the estimation method in empirical work. The semiparametric efficiency bound of the model is also established and an existing estimator is shown to achieve that bound. The efficient estimator uses a plug-in density estimate. It is shown that plugging in the true density rather than an estimate is inefficient. Extensions to ordered choice models are provided.     

Health care reform: universal access is feasible and necessary

While other industrial nations' health care systems have their own problems, they have more leeway to address those problems than does the United States, which spends twice as much on per capita health care as the average for other industrial capitalist democracies yet ranks average or below average in many comparative measures of health care quality. In fact, the authors of this article argue that international experience shows that assurance of universal access through expanded government involvement could provide savings while actually improving the quality of U.S. health care. In addition, universal access would recognize health care as a basic human right, not a commodity to be bartered in the marketplace and allocated based on class, race and social position.