Negative effects of competition in a medical-service market

A market for medical care is characterized by uncertain, but inelastic demand and a ‘soft budget constraint’. We assume that in such a market, government decides on giving licenses to different private institutions to provide medical service. In this paper we present an argument as to why competition has a negative effect on social welfare and therefore government should only provide one license. We also explain why in such a market the profit-maximizing institutions install too high a capacity in comparison to a social optimum.     

The relationship between major-league sports’ official sponsorship announcements and the stock prices of sponsoring firms

This study presents analysis of the impact of “official product” sports sponsorships with the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Hockey League (NHL), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) on the stock prices of sponsoring firms. The primary finding of the study is that, in the main, announcements were accompanied by increases in shareholder wealth. The 53 sponsors analyzed experienced mean increases in stock valuations of about $257 million. A multiple regression analysis of firm-specific stock price changes and selected corporate and sponsorship attributes indicates that official product sponsorships with the NBA, NHL, and PGA and those with smaller market shares were associated with the largest gains in share prices. Although corporate cashflow (a proxy for agency conflicts) is statistically unrelated to shareholder approval, sponsorships by high-technology companies were associated with stronger stock price reactions than otherwise. Finally, product congruence with the sponsored sport was positively related to changes in stock prices. T. Bettina Cornwell (b.cornwell@business.uq.edu.au) is Professor of Marketing and Leader of the Marketing cluster in the UQ Business School at the University of Queensland, Australia. She was formerly Professor of Marketing in the Fogelman College of Business and Economics at the University of Memphis. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas. Her research focuses on promotion and consumer behavior, especially with regard to international and public policy issues. Other articles on the topic of sponsorship-linked marketing have recently appeared in theJournal of Advertising, the Journal of Advertising Research, theJournal of Business Research, andPsychology & Marketing. Stephen W. Pruitt (pruittst@umkc.edu) is the holder of the Arvin Gottlieb/Missouri Endowed Chair of Business Economics and Finance in the Henry W. Bloch School of Business and Public Administration at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He received his Ph.D. from Florida State University. He has published more than 45 articles, most of which employ event study methodologies, in journals such as theJournal of Finance, theJournal of Political Economy, Financial Management, theJournal of Public Policy and Marketing, and theJournal of Advertising Research. John M. Clark (clarkj@cba.usm.edu) is an assistant professor of finance at the University of Southern Mississippi. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Alabama. His research interests include options and other derivatives, investments, and the impact of real events upon the stock prices of corporations. His work has appeared in scholarly outlets such as theJournal of Advertising Research, theFinancial Review, and theJournal of Business Ethics.     

Stable matchings and preferences of couples

Couples looking for jobs in the same labor market may cause instabilities. We determine a natural preference domain, the domain of weakly responsive preferences, that guarantees stability. Under a restricted unemployment aversion condition we show that this domain is maximal for the existence of stable matchings. We illustrate how small deviations from (weak) responsiveness, that model the wish of couples to be closer together, cause instability, even when we use a weaker stability notion that excludes myopic blocking. Our remaining results deal with various properties of the set of stable matchings for “responsive couples markets”, viz., optimality, filled positions, and manipulation.     

Response style corrected market segmentation for ordinal data

Survey data collected for market segmentation studies is typically ordinal in nature. As such, it is susceptible to response styles. Ignoring response styles can lead to market segments which do not differ in beliefs, but merely in how segment members use survey answer options and which possibly occur in addition to the belief segments. We propose a finite mixture model which simultaneously segments and corrects for response styles, permits heterogeneity in both beliefs and response styles, accommodates a range of different response styles, does not impose a certain relationship between the response style and belief segments, and is suitable for ordinal data. The performance of the model is tested using both artificial and empirical survey data.     

Tracheotomie bei Kindern

Indikationen, Durchführung, Komplikationen - Dank des medizinischen Fortschritts überleben immer mehr p?diatrische Patienten die intensivmedizinische Behandlung. Ein Teil von ihnen bleibt jedoch danach chronisch krank und bedarf medizinischer Ma?nahmen. So kann anhaltende respiratorische Insuffizienz die Anlage eines Tracheostomas erforderlich machen. Etwa 3% aller intensivpflichtigen Kinder erhalten eine Tracheotomie.     

Federalism and decentralization—a critical survey of frequently used indicators

The economic effects of federalism are unclear: some papers find that federalism has strong positive effects on a number of economically relevant variables, others find negative effects. The results often crucially hinge on the proxies for federalism used. In this paper, we critically survey the existing indicators for both federalism and fiscal decentralization. We argue that federalism is a constitutional institution, whereas decentralization is the outcome of a policy choice, and that the two ought to be systematically distinguished because decentralization can also occur in nonfederally structured states. We further argue that institutional details are very important with regard to federalism and that dummy variables usually capture only very specific aspects of these institutional details. We use factor analysis to test whether the latent variables behind the observed indicators support these assumptions. More than two important factors are derived, implying that a more fine-grained differentiation beyond simply “‘federalism” and “decentralization” might be in order. The correlations of the most important proxies for various aspects of federalism and decentralization with a number of quasi-exogenous variables, as well as with institutional variables, are usually rather modest.     

携手应对社会保障和审核可靠性的挑战

第四届中欧企业社会责任圆桌会议提供了一个很好的机会,让大家可以讨论中国企业社会责任方面的重要议题。除了我们在这次会议讨论的主题,我想要强调,这个会议本身就是讨论中国快速发展的企业社会责任历程中重要的组成部分。这个以企业社会责任为主题的圆桌会议早于2007年之前已经开始召开了,在过去几年中相继举办。