A tale of minorities: evidence on religious ethics and entrepreneurship

Does Protestantism favour entrepreneurship more than Catholicism does? We provide a novel way to answer this question by comparing Protestant and Catholic minorities using Swiss census data. Exploiting the strong adhesion of religious minorities to their denomination’ ethical principles and the historical determination of the geographical distribution of denominations across Swiss cantons, we find that Protestantism is associated with a significantly higher propensity for entrepreneurship. The estimated difference ranges between 1.5 and 3.2 % points, it is larger the smaller the size of the religious minority, it is mainly driven by prime age male entrepreneurs and it stands up to a number of robustness checks. No effects are found when comparing religious majorities, suggesting that the implications of religious ethical norms on economic outcomes emerge only when such norms are fully internalized.     

State dependence and unobserved heterogeneity in the employment transitions of the over-50s

This paper examines employment transitions among men and women in the UK aged between 50 and the state pension age. We use a fourth order Markov model to estimate quarterly transitions while allowing for potential endogeneity of initial conditions. The results reject exogeneity of initial conditions and show the importance of state dependence. We compare the results to those obtained with a younger sample and find evidence of a sorting process over the life-cycle whereby men’s employment transitions are increasingly characterized by state dependence while, for women, unobserved heterogeneity becomes more important. We discuss some potential policy implications of the results.     

Economic burden of hospital malnutrition and the cost–benefit of supplemental parenteral nutrition in critically ill patients in Latin America

Abstract

Aim: Disease-related malnutrition (DRM) is a prevalent condition that significantly increases the risk of adverse outcomes in hospitalized patients, particularly those with critical illness. Limited data is available on the economic burden of DRM and the cost–benefit of nutrition therapy in high-risk populations in Latin America. The aims of the present study were to estimate the economic burden of DRM and evaluate the cost–benefit of supplemental parenteral nutrition (SPN) in critically ill patients who fail to receive adequate nutrient intake from enteral nutrition (EN) in Latin America.

Methods: Country-specific cost and prevalence data from eight Latin American countries and clinical data from studies evaluating outcomes in patients with DRM were used to estimate the costs associated with DRM in public hospitals. A deterministic decision model based on clinical outcomes from a randomized controlled study and country-specific cost data were developed to examine the cost–benefit of administering SPN to critically ill adults who fail to reach ≥60% of the calculated energy target with EN.

Results: The estimated annual economic burden of DRM in public hospitals in Latin America is $10.19 billion (range, $8.44 billion–$11.72 billion). Critically ill patients account for a disproportionate share of the costs, with a 6.5-fold higher average cost per patient compared with those in the ward ($5488.35 vs. $839.76). Model-derived estimates for clinical outcomes and resource utilization showed that administration of SPN to critically ill patients who fail to receive the targeted energy delivery with EN would result in an annual cost reduction of $10.2 million compared with continued administration of EN alone.

Limitations: The cost calculation was limited to the average daily cost of stay and antibiotic use. The costs associated with other common complications of DRM, such as prolonged duration of mechanical ventilation or more frequent readmission, are unknown.

Conclusions: DRM imposes a substantial economic burden on Latin American countries, with critically ill patients accounting for a disproportionate share of costs. Cost–benefit analysis suggests that both improved clinical outcomes and significant cost savings can be achieved through the adoption of SPN as a therapeutic strategy in critically ill patients who fail to receive adequate nutrient intake from EN.     

Mixed tempered stable distribution

In this paper, we introduce a new parametric distribution, the mixed tempered stable. It has the same structure of the normal variance–mean mixtures but the normality assumption gives way to a semi-heavy tailed distribution. We show that, by choosing appropriately the parameters of the distribution and under the concrete specification of the mixing random variable, it is possible to obtain some well-known distributions as special cases. We employ the mixed tempered stable distribution which has many attractive features for modelling univariate returns. Our results suggest that it is flexible enough to accommodate different density shapes. Furthermore, the analysis applied to statistical time series shows that our approach provides a better fit than competing distributions that are common in the practice of finance.     

The effects of macroeconomic stability on foreign trade. An analysis for Spain, 1986–2000

Two main factors underlie the rebirth of interest in the study of the influence of the real exchange rate on trade, the reduction of its volatility and the current trend towards price stability. The objective of this study is to analyse the effects of the process of nominal convergence, required of the European member states for the fulfilment of monetary integration, on foreign trade flows. The case of Spain, which is especially interesting in this context, is studied for the period 1986 to 2000. The results of estimating the aggregate functions of the export and import of goods shows how macroeconomic stability has altered the behaviour of trade with respect to the two basic determinants – income and prices – how it has caused a significant structural change in the real exchange rate and, finally, how it has laid the explanatory bases for transactions in the twenty-first century with the single currency – the euro.     

Causes of world trade growth in agricultural and food products, 1951–2000: a demand function approach

The objective of the present study is to analyse the causes of the growth of international agricultural and food trade in volume terms from 1951 to 2000. The results suggest that income growth has been the principal reason for this expansion, while exchange rate stability and the real price of agricultural products played only a minor role. Multilateral trade liberalization and trade costs, given their long-term stability, are not elements that could have stimulated their growth. Finally, the intensive liberalization of trade which took place in various economic regions, especially in Europe, became a key factor in promoting agricultural trade among the countries participating in regional trade agreements. The study results also indicate that the determinants of trade growth for these goods were different to those for other goods and other periods.     

Early Evolution of the Assumption of Non-satiation

The paper explores the mostly tacit transmission of the assumption of non-satiation from the outset of classical political economy to the advent of marginal analysis in Great Britain. The evolution of the assumption is traced back to contributions to the philosophy of mind in the early British enlightenment, which provided scientific ground not only to the economic agent's insatiable nature but also to a delusional dynamic of association that challenges the causality between acquisitiveness and pleasure. The paper claims that, because there is evidence that such delusional aspect was known to the early political economists, the assumption of non-satiation might have become a mainstay in economics not only for its scientific status but also as a result of a strategic choice that can only be explained within the political, cultural, and social context in which it was made. Had this been the case, the exportability of the assumption through time and space must be further questioned. The consistent inclusion of non-satiation in economic theories, policies, and institutions may have had extraordinary consequences, and may have nurtured rational behaviors that in fact fulfill the assumption itself.     

Decentralized trade, random utility and the evolution of social welfare

We study decentralized trade processes in general exchange economies and house allocation problems with and without money. The processes are affected by persistent random shocks stemming from agents’ maximization of random utility. By imposing structure on the utility noise term—logit distribution—one is able to calculate exactly the stationary distribution of the perturbed Markov process for any level of noise. We show that the stationary distribution places the largest probability on the maximizers of weighted sums of the agents’ (intrinsic) utilities, and this probability tends to 1 as noise vanishes.     

Estimates of foreign exchange risk premia: a pricing kernel approach

The goal of this study is to measure market prices of risk and foreign exchange risk premia. Estimations of minimum variance pricing kernels permit to determine market prices of risk, which, in an international no-arbitrage framework, allow to measure foreign exchange risk premia. Market prices of risk are time-varying and surge during financial turmoils. Foreign exchange risk premia are on average small in comparison to interest rate differentials and exhibit significant variation from the early 1970s onwards, when the Bretton Woods exchange rate system collapsed. At times, foreign exchange risk premia dominate interest rate differentials. We are indebted to Baldev Raj, Robert Kunst, the associate editor of Empirical Economics and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments. We also thank seminar participants at the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and Queen Mary University of London. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Central Bank or the Eurosystem.     

Behavioral Pragmatism: President Obama’s Approach to Unemployment

However wide the ideological distance between positive and negative prognosticators of employment growth, the pragmatic center is where the White House preferences are likely to fall. Obama??s pragmatic center may be far from the ideological center between public-private program alternatives. Instead, it is closer to the pressure center of partisan and interest-group forces that normally participate in fiscal policy-making. As a behavioral pragmatist the moderate position for Obama is found at the center of ideologically separated political competitors whatever the content of their beliefs, since content is relatively uncritical in this perspective. Pressure groups?? numbers and organizational strength define the value of their diversity more than the substance of their beliefs. For the strong believers on both political left and right the outcomes will rarely look pragmatic because they will rarely fit the traditional standards for moderation