Base consumption levels and fixed costs

Conditioning variables on consumer choices are conventionally included in demand functions additively. We identify the underlying utility maximisation problem. There must be base consumption levels efficiently set which vary with the conditioning variables. A special case is quasi-homothetic preferences.     

Social Protection in a Crisis: Argentina's Plan Jefes y Jefas

The article assesses the impact of Argentina’s main socialpolicy response to the severe economic crisis of 2002. The programwas intended to provide direct income support for families withdependents and whose head had become unemployed because of thecrisis. Counterfactual comparisons are based on a matched subsetof applicants not yet receiving program assistance. Panel dataspanning the crisis are also used. The program reduced aggregateunemployment, though it attracted as many people into the workforcefrom inactivity as it did people who otherwise would have beenunemployed. Although there was substantial leakage to formallyineligible families and incomplete coverage of those who wereeligible, the program did partially compensate many losers fromthe crisis and reduced extreme poverty.     

Riding the waves of family firm internationalization: A systematic literature review,integrative framework,and research agenda

Despite the proliferation in research efforts, family firm (FF) internationalization scholarship suffers from fragmentation, theoretical limitations, and empirical indeterminacy, leaving important facets unexplored. This article’s purpose is to unpack how this body of research has evolved over time and interfaces international business (IB) theory. We conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering the last 30 years of research and comprising 134 articles. Our study contributes to this corpus of knowledge by identifying and discussing four evolutionary waves of FF internationalization research. We further advance an integrative framework that offers a comprehensive understanding of the state-of-the-art as well as promising avenues for future research at the intersection of IB and FFs.     

A Note on Capital IQ's Credit Line Data

Empirical work in finance is increasingly using Capital IQ's detailed data on capital structure. We compare the Capital IQ credit line data to hand‐collected data for a random sample of firms. Missing values in Capital IQ are prevalent, so the data set underreports the importance of corporate credit lines. When data are reported, Capital IQ often differs from hand‐collected credit line activity. We suggest methods for correcting the errors in the Capital IQ data, note which portions of the data are most reliable, and quantify the effects of Capital IQ's underreporting by examining the tradeoff between cash and lines of credit.     

The supply of qualified nurses: a classical model of labour supply

The need to ensure adequate numbers of nurses is a key requirement of the current modernization of the UK NHS. However, it is unclear how effective wages are as an instrument to maintain or increase the nursing workforce, both in terms of absolute numbers and in the number of whole time equivalents. This study sets out to estimate a classical model of labour supply for British qualified married or cohabiting nurses and midwives, looking at both the participation decision and the hours of work supplied. Data are from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey over the years 1999–2000. Participation and hours of work are found to be inelastic with respect to own wage. These results suggest that increasing the wage would only have a moderate effect on labour supply. Interestingly, there is no significant statistical difference between having a child of nursery age (3–4) and having a child of school age (5–15) on participation and hours supplied. This suggests that recent policy initiatives to increase female labour force participation, through the provision of free nursery places, has been successful. Preliminary analysis of a split private and public sector sample suggests that hours supplied are completely inelastic with respect to wages in the public sector.     

“Authors’ Reply: Financial and Demographic Risks of a Portfolio of Life Insurance Policies with Stochastic Interest Rates: Evaluation Methods and Applications,” Maria Giuseppina Bruno,Emanuela Camerini and Alvaro Tomassetti,October 2000 - Discussion by Fabrizio Cacciafesta

Abstract

This paper presents and compares different risk classification models for the annual number of claims reported to the insurer. Generalized heterogeneous, zero-inflated, hurdle, and compound frequency models are applied to a sample of an automobile portfolio of a major company operating in Spain. A statistical comparison between models is performed with the help of various specification tests (Score and Hausman tests for nested models, Vuong test or information criteria for nonnested ones). Interesting results about claiming behavior are obtained.     

Time-consistency of risk measures: how strong is such a property?

Decisions in Economics and Finance - Quite recently, a great interest has been devoted to time-consistency of risk measures in its different formulations (see Delbaen in Memoriam Paul-André...     

Representation of the penalty term of dynamic concave utilities

In the context of a Brownian filtration and with a fixed finite time horizon, we provide a representation of the penalty term of general dynamic concave utilities (hence of dynamic convex risk measures) by applying the theory of g-expectations.     

Belief heterogeneity and survival in incomplete markets

In complete markets economies (Sandroni in Econometrica 68:1303–1341, 2000), or in economies with Pareto optimal outcomes (Blume and Easley in Econometrica 74:926–966, 2006), the market selection hypothesis holds, as long as traders have identical discount factors. Traders who survive must have beliefs that merge with the truth. We show that in incomplete markets, regardless of traders’ discount factors, the market selects for a range of beliefs, at least some of which do not merge with the truth. We also show that impatient traders with incorrect beliefs can survive and that these incorrect beliefs impact prices. These beliefs may be chosen so that they are far from the truth.