Impact of copula choice on the modeling of crop yield basis risk

A number of problems in agricultural economics involve modeling joint distributions for which the assumption of multivariate normality may not be warranted. Yet, very little work has been conducted evaluating competing methods for modeling joint dependence. We develop a simulation framework to evaluate the bias and efficiency impacts of copula choice in the context of evaluating county‐to‐farm basis risk. The results suggest significant differences in performance across various copulas and approaches. The findings have important implications for risk analysis, insurance, and policy modeling problems in agriculture regarding the selection of method to model dependence among random variables.     

Risk arbitrage opportunities in petroleum futures spreads

This article investigates the long-term pricing relationship among crude oil, unleaded gasoline, and heating oil futures prices, and finds that these commodities futures prices are cointegrated. The study finds that the spreads between crude oil and its end products are stationary. Furthermore, this article investigates the risk arbitrage opportunities in three types of popularly traded petroleum futures spreads and finds that historically profitable risk arbitrage opportunities existed and were statistically significant. However, one cannot be certain that these opportunities still exist. The research also finds that moving averages are valid test variables for measuring spreads. Statistical and tabular constructions are used to illustrate findings. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Jrl Fut Mark 19: 931–955, 1999     

Diffusion of Minimally Invasive Procedures across Hospitals and Traits of Fast Adopting Hospitals

The quality and cost of hospital care depends not only on what technologies have been developed, but on how quickly the most promising and cost-effective technologies diffuse across hospitals. Some technologies are high-cost when they are first introduced into the health care system, but improve in cost-effectiveness as doctors use the technologies and innovate. Some such examples are minimally invasive procedures, which have become more common in recent years. We sought to better understand what hospital characteristics are associated with fast adoption of four minimally invasive procedures (appendectomy, lobectomy, hysterectomy and colectomy). Our findings show that a hospital’s adoption of minimally invasive procedures in one type of procedure (e.g., lobectomy) is not predictive of that hospital’s probability of adopting minimally invasive procedures in another procedure type (e.g., zero appendectomies). The only hospital characteristic consistently correlated with adoption for three of the four procedure types was the extent that the hospital’s geographic neighbors had adopted minimally invasive technology for that particular procedure. These findings regarding peer effects fall in line with conclusions about diffusion from the development literature.     

The JEC Revisited: Did Debt Undermine Stability?

The Joint Executive Committee (JEC), one of the most studied cartels in all of economics, was at best partially successful at maintaining collusion. The railroad cartel faced frequent breakdowns and re-contracting efforts. This paper considers the effects that large capital debt may have had on the members of the JEC. The JEC is compared to the express cartel of the period in which all firms were creditors. The latter had no breakdowns during the same period. It is shown through a small modification in an oligopolistic supergame that debt-burdened firms are less likely to maintain a stable cartel agreement than a cartel of creditors, a result that is consistent with the experience of these two cartels.

Economic evaluation of rituximab in addition to standard of care chemotherapy for adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Aims: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is an aggressive form of leukemia with a poor prognosis in adult patients. The addition of the monoclonal antibody rituximab to standard chemotherapy has been shown to improve survival in adults with ALL. However, it is unknown whether the addition of rituximab is cost-effective. The objective was to determine the economic impact of rituximab in addition to standard of care (SOC) chemotherapy vs SOC alone in newly-diagnosed Philadelphia chromosome-negative, CD20-positive, B-cell precursor ALL.

Methods: A decision analytic model was constructed, based upon the Canadian healthcare system. It included the following health states over a lifetime horizon (max ≈60 years): event-free survival (EFS), relapsed/resistant disease, cure, and death. SOC was either hyper-CVAD or the Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) ALL consortium. EFS, overall survival, and serious adverse event (SAE) rates were derived from a large randomized controlled trial. Costs of the model included: first-line treatment and administration, disease management, second-line and third-line treatment and administration, palliative care, and SAE-related treatments. Inputs were sourced from provincial and national public data, the literature, and cancer agency input.

Results: Quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) increased by 2.20 QALYs with rituximab in addition to SOC. The resulting mean Incremental Cost-Effectiveness Ratio (ICER) was C$21,828/QALY. At a willingness-to-pay threshold of C$100,000/QALY, the probability of being cost-effective was 98%. Decision outcomes were robust to the probabilistic and deterministic sensitivity analyses, including the SOC backbone as either hyper-CVAD or DFCI.

Limitations: The results of this analysis are limited by generalizability of the chemotherapy backbone to Canadian practice.

Conclusions: For adults with ALL, rituximab in addition to SOC was found to be a cost-effective intervention, compared to SOC alone. The addition of rituximab is associated with increased life years and increased QALYs at a reasonable incremental cost.     

Economists tackle the challenges of a pandemic

Business Economics - The COVID-19 pandemic radically and rapidly changed the world, including the world of business economists. Eight NABE members employed in a wide variety of fields discuss how...     

The existence of gender‐specific promotion standards in the U.S.

This paper is motivated by the claim that promotion probabilities are lower for women than men. Using data from the 1984 and 1989 National Longitudinal Youth Surveys, this paper tests this claim and two related hypotheses concerning training and ability. It is found that females are less likely to be promoted than males, and females receive less training than males. The relationship between promotion and gender varies across occupations, however, suggesting that the alleged glass ceiling faced by women and other minorities in the workplace is not uniform across all labor markets. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Crises and confidence: Systemic banking crises and depositor behavior

We show that individuals who have experienced a systemic banking crisis are 11 percentage points less likely to use banks in the U.S. than otherwise similar individuals who emigrated from the same country but did not live through a crisis. This finding is robust to controlling for exposure to other macroeconomic events and to various methods for addressing potential bias due to migrant self-selection. Consistent with the view that personal experience plays an important role in decision-making, the effects are larger for individuals who were older and more likely to have had wealth entrusted to the banking system at the time of the crisis and for people who experienced crises in countries without deposit insurance.     

The professionalisation of selling and the transformation of a family business: Kenrick & Jefferson, 1878–1940

Abstract

This article shows that innovation in sales management at a West Midlands SME in the early twentieth century matched contemporary best practices, and that it occurred in parallel with significant developments in sales education at both the University of Birmingham and the region’s colleges. In looking not only at a smaller company than those examined previously by historians of selling but also at what is referred to as the surrounding sales ecosystem, the article contributes to our understanding of a more dynamic sales environment, supported by a more purposeful educational provision, than has hitherto been understood to have existed.     

The semiconductor silicon industry roadmap: Epochs driven by the dynamics between disruptive technologies and core competencies

The resource-based perspective has done much to identify idiosyncratic firm attributes that may be a principal source of competitive advantages. Unfortunately, there has been little systematic industry evidence to support the strategic importance of core competence, nor has there been much work on the temporal or cumulative nature of core capabilities within an industrial setting. Further, little or no research has been performed demonstrating how the advent of technological discontinuities or disruptive technologies plays a part in creating epochs in technology competency development and the roadmap of an industry. In this study, we analyze the evolutionary and cumulative nature of core capabilities and their interactions with technological discontinuities from a market-driven perspective. We have studied the evolution of 167 firms through the 50-year history of the semiconductor silicon industry. Over time, there were several structural shifts in the necessary competencies through the advent of disruptive technologies. In the last 30 years, however, the change in the required competencies has been more cumulative in nature. We summarize this in a roadmap detailing the epochs in the semiconductor silicon industry.