A nurse-run business to improve health care for nursing home residents

The costs of health care for the rapidly growing segment of our population over age 75 are staggering. EverCare is a nurse-run business that seeks to improve cost-effectiveness and quality of health care for nursing home residents enrolled in a health maintenance organization.     

Long-run relations between private and public sector wages in Sweden

Using a maximum likelihood cointegration approach we find two long-run relationships between central government, local government, and private sector wages in Sweden. This means that there is one common trend for the three sectoral wages. Private sector wages are weakly exogenous for the estimation of the long-run relationships. This suggests that the private sector is the wage leader. Testing linear restrictions on the estimated cointegrating space, we reject stationarity for the three relative wages using likelihood ratio-tests. The hypotheses of homogeneity for the two cointegrating vectors, i.e., that wages do not diverge in the long run, is also rejected.     

Exploring interactions between real activity and the financial stance

In this paper we empirically study interactions between real activity and the financial stance. Using aggregate data we examine a number of candidate measures of the financial stance of the economy. We find strong evidence for substantial spillover effects on aggregate activity from our preferred measure. Given this result, we use a large micro-data set for corporate firms to develop a macro–micro-model of the interaction between the financial and real economy. This approach implies that the impulse responses of a given aggregate shock will depend on the portfolio structure of firms at any given point in time.     

Payments or Persuasion: Common Pool Resource Management with Price and Non-price Measures

We use lab experiments to study policies that address common pool resource overuse. We look at a price mechanism, specifically a Pigouvian subsidy, and four non-price interventions. The non-price policies are information alone, information with a normative message, communication alone, and normative messages with communication allowed. In all experiment sessions, no intervention occurs in the first seven and last seven rounds, allowing us to examine the effects of introducing and taking away a policy. The subsidy leads to near-efficient extraction, but surprisingly leads groups that were not over-extracting to also reduce extraction. This over-compliance decreases efficiency, although on net the subsidy is the most efficiency-enhancing intervention. Information provision, communication, normative appeals, and normative appeals combined with communication all reduce over-extraction (though by less than the subsidy) without exacerbating over-compliance; however, the effects of information alone and communication alone are small and not robust. The non-price policies cause a decline in over-extraction of from 0.549 (information) to 11.441 % (normative appeals with communication). These effects are of the same order of magnitude as the effects seen in major field studies of conservation messaging. The subsidy has the worst persistence properties (after the intervention ceases), while normative messages with communication have the best.     

When Bad Things Happen to the Endorsers of Good Products

We investigate how a firm's financial performance (as measured by stock returns) is influenced when celebrity endorsers become involved in undesirable events, i.e., events that have a deleterious effect on the spokespersons. We find that the stock market reaction to these events is negatively related to spokesperson blameworthiness. The lower (higher) the culpability, the higher (lower) the stock return. Interestingly, it is only those firms associated with spokespersons having high culpability that tend to experience losses in stock market value. In contrast, we find that events rated at or below the mean level of blameworthiness are associated with positive stock market returns.     

Child-resistant cigarette lighters in the United States

Abstract

On July 12,1993, the U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) published a mandatory safety standard requiring disposable and novelty cigarette lighters to be child-resistant. Annually in the United States, children under 5 years of age playing with lighters cause more than 5,000 residential fires, resulting in approximately 150 deaths and more than 1,000 injuries. The standard is expected to prevent about 100 of those fire-related deaths each year. The standard includes labeling, testing, recordkeeping, and reporting requirements for manufacturers and importers. The standard applies to lighters manufactured in the United States or imported after July 11, 1994.

A study of actual child-play fire incidents was conducted as part of the initial work on the project to develop a safety standard. The major objectives of the study were:

1) to determine the age and sex of the children starting the fires, 2) to establish the methods the children used to operate the lighters, and 3) to identify the types of lighters involved. The study was conducted by CPSC field staff with the help of fire departments around the United States. Two hundred seventy-seven fires were investigated. Major findings of the study included

? Disposable butane lighters were involved in the majority of the fires.

? The children starting the fires were primarily 3 and 4 years old.

? Male children starting the fires outnumbered female children by a ratio of 4 to 1.

? Most children used two hands to operate the lighters.

Based on the analysis of the study results, the CPSC staff concluded that child-resistant lighters could be an effective means of addressing the risk of injury and death associated with child-play fires.     

How to Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Job Market

This article conveys information and advice about the job market process for candidates completing their PhDs in economics in the United States. I discuss the mechanics of the job market process in great detail, from the preparatory work before the market starts to the steps after accepting an offer. Throughout, I answer common job market‐related questions and discuss ways to make the process more manageable and less stressful. The focus is on students from non‐top‐tier universities, although the advice applies equally well to students from top schools.