Gender and the demand for medical care

The consumption of a set of diverse medical services is analysed in an effort to determine the sources of high utilization by women.Unlike previous studies of gender and the demand for medical services,the range of services investigate allows us to draw conclusions about the influence of physicians as agents.We use a modified version of the almost-ideal demand model in the emperical analysis which,unlike the double-log quadratic, or linear demand models, is consistent with constraints imposed by economic theory.Through decomposition of the variance, it was found that if women reported the same series of health indicators as men. their use of most services would fall below that of men.     

Effects of income distribution in an inverse demand system: evidence from Chinese household survey data

This study provides an empirical analysis of the impact of changes in income distribution on food demand in China using data from China Health and Nutrition Survey. A new parametric form of an inverse demand system is introduced and estimated taking into account reported zero consumption. This new form is a natural extension of recent works that accommodate the incorporation of income distribution into the system and imposition of global regularity conditions in estimation. Our results generally indicate that the distribution of households across income groups is important in determining food demand in China and that a movement towards a more equal income distribution in China will stimulate the demand for vegetable, fruit, fish and eggs.     

Using FRED data to teach price elasticity of demand

In this article, the authors discuss the use of Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) statistics to teach the concept of price elasticity of demand in an introduction to economics course. By using real data in its computation, they argue that instructors can create a value-adding context for illustrating and applying a foundational concept in economics. Additionally, this pedagogical strategy contributes to developing an expected proficiency for economics majors related to “interpreting and manipulating data” (Hansen 2009, 2012). The authors provide step-by-step instructions on how to use FRED to compute the price elasticity of demand for motor vehicle fuels and gasoline as well as examples of in-class discussion questions and take-home assignments related to this instructional technique.     

Elasticity of demand,price and time: lessons from South Africa's plastic-bag levy

Policy makers in many countries have perceived plastic-bag litter as a problem, and have used a variety of regulatory tools to address it. South Africa's current legislation on plastic-bags came into effect on 7 May 2003. It increased the thickness of the plastic used, charged a small levy and required that bags be sold rather than distributed gratis. These regulations sharply reduced consumption of plastic bags in the short term, but unlike the Irish and Danish levies have failed to curb their use meaningfully in the long run. It is suggested that the initial sharp fall in use of bags was a result of loss aversion rooted in an endowment effect (the bags having long been a free good). Once consumers became accustomed to paying for bags, demand slowly rose to its historic levels.     

On the effect of income and relative price on demand for health care: EC evidence

This paper demonstrates that the relative price of health care could be used to explain the conflicting results of the empirical studies which attempt to measure the income elasticity of demand. Our empirical results, based on a conventional model and cross-national data set for the EC, show that whereas health care may be labelled as a luxury good, the large income effect can be interpreted as merely offsetting the price effect.     

Health insurance and the demand for medical care: evidence from a randomized experiment.

We estimate how cost sharing, the portion of the bill the patient pays, affects the demand for medical services. The data come from a randomized experiment. A catastrophic insurance plan reduces expenditures 31 percent relative to zero out-of-pocket price. The price elasticity is approximately -0.2. We reject the hypothesis that less favorable coverage of outpatient services increases total expenditure (for example, by deterring preventive care or inducing hospitalization).     

Forecasting demand for a newly introduced product using reservation price data and Bayesian updating

Forecasting demand during the early stages of a product's life cycle is a difficult but essential task for the purposes of marketing and policymaking. This paper introduces a procedure to derive accurate forecasts for newly introduced products for which limited data are available. We begin with the assumption that the consumer reservation price is related to the timing with which the consumer adopts the product. The model is estimated using reservation price data derived through a consumer survey, and the forecast is updated with sales data as they become available using Bayes's rule. The proposed model's forecasting performance is compared with that of benchmark models (i.e., Bass model, logistic growth model, and a Bayesian model based on analogy) using 23 quarters' worth of data on South Korea's broadband Internet services market. The proposed model outperforms all benchmark models in both prelaunch and postlaunch forecasting tests, supporting the thesis that consumer reservation price can be used to forecast demand for a new product before or shortly after product launch.     

Effects of wholesaler concentration on retailers by format: evidence from Japanese brand-level price data

Using unique brand-level wholesale price data, this article examines how purchase prices of commodities for retailers are influenced by wholesale concentration. Compared with studies focusing on retail prices, little empirical work has measured the impact of wholesale concentration on wholesale prices. Economic theory suggests that the sensitivity of purchase price in response to degree of wholesale concentration is smaller for large retail formats than for small retail formats in the presence of intra-format retail competition. To test the validity of the theoretical implication, I measure the impact of the concentration on purchasing prices for retailers by format. Empirical findings support the hypothesis that the large retail format tends to draw advantageous purchase prices when wholesalers become increasingly oligopolistic.     

Permanent prices,expected price changes,and the demand for money

This paper investigates the empirical validity of the distinction between measured and permanent prices for cash balance decisions. The use of permanent prices has been advocated by Friedman over twenty five years ago, but the idea has received little attention in the literature. Using Canadian quarterly data, we find that the permanent price hypothesis yields meaningful estimates of the demand for money, but it does not appear to contribute significantly to our understanding of cash balance decisions. A number of assumptions about the relationship between the elasticities of income, price, and price change expectations are tested as well.     

Dynamic monopoly production,inventory, and price policy under sophisticated demand

In this paper a dynamic demand surface arises out of a consumer intertemporal utility maximization problem. The monopolistic firm uses this dynamic demand surface to formulate its optimal price, production, and inventory policy.     

Invariance, price indices and estimation in almost ideal demand systems

Two issues are addressed in this paper. First, we explore the issue of price index invariance in the linearized Almost Ideal demand system. We establish that the Stone index, which lacks invariance, and the recently proposed invariant Laspeyres, Paasche and Tornqvist indices all generate biased and inconsistent estimators. Monte Carlo evidence shows that invariance does not necessarily lead to better estimates of price and income elasticities insofar as the Stone and Paasche indices are unambiguously inferior to the Laspeyres and Tornqvist indices, especially if prices are not strongly positively correlated. Second, we examine the merits of the widely used conditional ML estimator of the non-linear Almost Ideal system in which a prior value is chosen for the “subsistence” parameter. We find that the bias and trace mean square error increases induced by conditional estimation are modest. The choice between the linearized and the non-linear models favors the latter although in some cases linear methods are as good as non-linear. First Version Received: January 1999 / Final Version Received: March 2000     

The response of aggregate demand to income,money supply,and price level

The response elasticities of (nominal) aggregate demand to the price level and to other nominal variables (e.g., money supply) are both positive but smaller than one. Aggregate demand is less/as responsive to real income than/as to the price level in the short/long run. Real aggregate demand is less/as responsive to real income than/as nominal aggregate demand is to the price level in the short/long run. Some uses of these results are indicated.     

Trust,risk and time preferences: evidence from survey data

The paper shows that time preferences and risk preferences are key covariates of self-reported trust. They both predict negatively a measure of generalized trust; however, risk aversion is positively correlated with an index of particularized trusting behaviour (which refers to the circle of known people).     

The non-linear impact of oil price on the oil demand

ABSTRACT

A panel smooth transition regression model was adopted to analyse the non-linear impact of oil prices on oil demand. Data for 42 countries was obtained from the International Energy Agency for the time period spanning from January 1990 to June 2017. The results indicate that a threshold value does exist. Furthermore, when the oil price was lower than this threshold value, a positive relationship between oil price and oil demand was observed. When the price of oil was higher than the threshold value, however, a negative relationship between price and demand was found.     

Disentangling supply and demand shifts: the impacts on world salmon price

To understand price changes, one must determine the relative impact of supply and demand shifts on price. Conditional on predetermined supply and demand elasticities, we retrieve yearly shifts in regional supply and demand. The relative impact on price from each supply and demand shift is determined through an equilibrium displacement model (EDM). This procedure is applied on a yearly basis for the world salmon market in the period 2002 to 2011. The results indicate a large variation in demand and supply growth both over time and between regions. While average annual price impacts from supply or demand shifts from most regions are not statistically significant, price impacts from supply or demand shifts for specific periods are detected in all but one region. This indicates that the use of smooth trend indicators is likely to be inappropriate for measuring supply and demand shifts and their impacts on price. The procedure presented in this article can be a useful instrument for determining the relative impacts of supply and demand shifts on price in any market with unstable price behaviour.