Testing the relationship between competition and efficiency in banking: A panel data analysis

The relationship between competition and efficiency in the banking sectors of five EU countries is investigated using Granger-type causality test estimations. We find positive causation between market power and efficiency, whereas the causality running from efficiency to competition is weak.     

On the relationship between GDP and health care expenditure: A new look

In this paper we analyze the relationship between income and health expenditure in 31 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. We focus on the differences between short and long term elasticities and we also check the adjustment process of health care expenditure to changes in per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and its cyclical and trend components. In both cases, we test if results differ in countries with a higher share of private expenditure on total health expenditure. Econometric results show that the long-run income elasticity is close to unity, that health expenditure is more sensitive to per capita income cyclical movements than to trend movements, and that the adjustment to income changes in those countries with a higher share of private health expenditure over total expenditure is faster.     

Understanding the relationship between poverty and children's health

Throughout the world, children from poor households have worse health than children from wealthier households. There are numerous channels through which such disparities may arise. For designing programs to improve children's health, it is important to identify, for example, whether these disparities arise from differences in pre-natal health inputs and behaviors (nutrition, alcohol and tobacco use during pregnancy), or differential health inputs following birth. We explore these issues for Russia, where children's health is particularly poor. We find that large health disparities between rich and poor originate largely from differences in pre-natal nutrition and alcohol use.     

Nonlinear relationship between health care expenditure and its determinants: a panel smooth transition regression model

This paper employs a panel of 16 OECD countries over the period 1975–2009 to reexamine the health care expenditure (HCE)-income relationship by considering a lagged ratio of public expenditures on health as the transition variable in panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) models. PSTR models can capture the heterogeneity of any individual country, provide more detailed information for policy makers of an individual government, and resolve the insufficient observations problem that frequently appears in annual country-level data. Our empirical results indicate that the relationship between HCE and its determinants, including income, time (trend), and age structure variables, is nonlinear and varies with time and across countries. The time (trend) variable—a proxy for technical progress in health care—has a non-linear impact on HCE. Ignoring the variables—technological change of health care and age structure of population—will result in over-estimates of the income elasticities of HCE. Moreover, HCE behaves as a necessity good, and the income elasticity increases when the five-period lagged ratio of public expenditures on health increases. Clearly, the ratio of government financing on health plays an important role in influencing HCE.     

Some empirics of the bivariate relationship between average subjective well-being and the sustainable wealth of nations

The World Bank's Millennium Capital Assessment (MCA) has provided per capita estimates of total wealth and its major subcategories for a large number of countries. In this article, these macro-level estimates are used to explore bivariate cross-country ‘wealth–happiness’ relationships, focussing on issues of appropriate functional form, parameter stability and outliers. For comparative purposes, ‘income–happiness’ relationships are also explored. Total wealth turns out to be strongly related to Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, due to the importance of produced and intangible capital, but not to natural capital. In contrast, when the most natural capital intensive countries are excluded as outliers, a strong relationship emerges between Subjective Well-Being (SWB) and natural capital, especially amongst high income countries. In these countries, natural capital seems to be an important wealth correlate of SWB, despite accounting for only a very small proportion of total wealth.     

Work excitement in nursing: an examination of the relationship between work excitement and burnout

The results of this study found a significant relationship between burnout and the Work Excitement Model. This suggests that utilization of the Work Excitement Model by health care organizations may reduce nursing burnout and improve productivity and quality of care.     

A correlated bivariate Poisson jump model for foreign exchange

This paper develops a new bivariate jump model to study jump dynamics in foreign exchange returns. The model extends a multivariate GARCH parameterization to include a bivariate correlated jump process. The conditional covariance matrix has the Baba, Engle, Kraft, and Kroner (1989) structure, while the bivariate jumps are governed by a Correlated Bivariate Poisson (CBP) function. Using daily data we find evidence of both independent currency specific jumps, as well as jumps common to both exchange rates of the Canadian dollar and Japanese Yen against the U.S. dollar. The paper concludes by investigating a time-varying structure for the arrival of jumps that relaxes the assumption of constant and bounded jump correlation imposed by the CBP function.I am indebted to two anonymous referees and the editor, Baldev Raj for helpful suggestions. I am also grateful for helpful comments from Adolf Buse, Ramazan Gencay, Rehim Kilic, John Maheu, Alex Maynard, Denis Pelletier, Denise Young, and seminar participants at the Tenth Annual Symposium of the Society for Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics (SNDE), Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta 2002; the Midwest Econometrics Group (MEG) Meetings, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City 2001; Canadian Economics Association (CEA) Meetings, McGill University 2001.     

Duration of sudden stop spells: A hazard model approach

Using a hazard‐based duration model, we analyze the determinants of the duration of a period of sudden stop, which is defined as a drop in capital inflow by two standard deviations, for at least two consecutive quarters. The hazard model estimates the conditional probability that the country exits the sudden stop today given that it experienced one until the end of last period. We find that a higher ratio of foreign exchange reserves to short‐term external debt shortens the duration of sudden stops. We also find that a higher global economic growth rate tends to shorten sudden stop spells. Our results are robust to various alternative specifications.     

A discrete-time hazard model of lottery adoption

This paper uses conventional logit probablitities to estimate a discrete-time hazard model of lottery adoption. The data set consists of a time-series of cross-sections on states in the US. Our findings suggests that politicians are more likely to support the decision. A lottery is more likely to be adopted of ther is a favourable climate for gambling in the state and if a bordering state has adopted a lottery.     

A bivariate zero-inflated count data regression model with unrestricted correlation

This paper proposes a computationally simple bivariate zero-inflated count data regression model with an unrestricted correlation pattern. An application to data with excess of zeros on the demand for health services is given.     

A percolation model of eco-innovation diffusion: The relationship between diffusion, learning economies and subsidies

An obstacle to the widespread adoption of environmentally friendly energy technologies such as stationary and mobile fuel cells is their high upfront costs. While much lower prices seem to be attainable in the future due to learning curve cost reductions that increase rapidly with the scale of diffusion of the technology, there is a chicken and egg problem, even when some consumers may be willing to pay more for green technologies. Drawing on recent percolation models of diffusion, we develop a network model of new technology diffusion that combines contagion among consumers with heterogeneity of agent characteristics. Agents adopt when the price falls below their random reservation price drawn from a lognormal distribution, but only when one of their neighbors has already adopted. Combining with a learning curve for the price as a function of the cumulative number of adopters, this may lead to delayed adoption for a certain range of initial conditions. Using agent-based simulations we explore when a limited subsidy policy can trigger diffusion that would otherwise not happen. The introduction of a subsidy policy seems to be highly effective for a given high initial price level only for learning economies in a certain range. Outside this range, the diffusion of a new technology either never takes off despite the subsidies, or the subsidies are unnecessary. Perhaps not coincidentally, this range seems to correspond to the values observed for many successful innovations.     

Testing the principle of ‘growth of the fitter’: The relationship between profits and firm growth

This paper is an empirical investigation of the evolutionary principle of ‘growth of the fitter’. Previous studies suggest that growth does not discriminate between firms according to their fitness, when this latter is proxied by productivity. We use the profit rate (operating surplus/value added) as a proxy for fitness and explore its influence on subsequent growth rates by tracking 8405 French manufacturing firms over the period 1996–2004. We overcome problems of unobserved firm-specific effects, persistence and endogeneity by using the ‘system GMM’ estimator developed by Blundell and Bond [Blundell, R., Bond, S., 1998. Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models. Journal of Econometrics 87, 115–143]. Whilst non-parametric plots do not reveal any obvious relationship between profit rates and subsequent growth, regression analysis identifies a small positive influence. Considering the reciprocal influence of growth on profit rates, positive and significant results suggest that ‘Penrose effects’ are not a dominant feature of firm dynamics.     

Health care utilization and self-assessed health: specification of bivariate models using copulas

The discernment of relevant factors driving health care utilization constitutes one important research topic in health economics. This issue is frequently addressed through specification of regression models for health care use (y—often measured by number of doctor visits) including, among other covariates, a measure of self-assessed health (sah). However, the exogeneity of sah within those models has been questioned, due to the possible presence of unobservables influencing both y and sah, and because individuals’ health assessments may depend on the quantity of medical care received. This article addresses the possible simultaneity of (sah, y) by adopting a full information approach, through specification of the bivariate probability function (p.f.) of these discrete variables, conditional on a set of exogenous covariates (x). The approach is implemented with copula functions, which afford separate consideration of each variable margin and their dependence structure. The specification of the joint p.f. of (sah, y) enables estimation of several quantities of potential economic interest, namely features of the conditional p.f. of y given sah and x. The adopted models are estimated through maximum likelihood, with cross-sectional data from the Portuguese National Health Survey of 1998–1999. Estimates of the margins’ parameters do not vary much among different copula models, while, in accordance with theoretical expectations, the dependence parameter is estimated to be negative across the various joint models.     

The relationship between the markets for health insurance and medical malpractice insurance

This article evaluates the interdependence of medical malpractice insurance markets and health insurance markets. Prior research has addressed the performance of these markets, individually, without specifically quantifying the extent to which they are linked. Increasing levels of health insurance losses could increase the scale of potential malpractice claims, boosting medical malpractice losses, or could embody an improvement in medical care quality, which will reduce malpractice losses. Our results for a state panel data set from 2002 to 2009 demonstrate that health insurance losses are negatively related to medical malpractice insurance losses. An additional dollar of health insurance losses is associated with a $0.01–$0.05 reduction in medical malpractice losses. These findings have potentially important implications for assessments of the net cost of health insurance policies.     

Childbirth and poverty in Europe: A dynamic bivariate approach

We use the 2015–2018 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions panel data and a dynamic bivariate probit model to estimate the impact of childbirth on the risk of poverty in 25 European countries. We model both poverty and childbirth mechanisms, identifying genuine state dependence and accounting for feedback effects from past poverty to childbirth. We find that childbirth slightly increases the risk of poverty in Europe, but some heterogeneities emerge at the country level. When disentangling the effects of childbirth conditional on past poverty status, it appears that childbirth determines redistributive effects possibly induced by welfare systems. We find evidence of genuine state dependence and suggests that discouraging factors induced by the experience of poverty itself has increased over time. The risk of poverty is triggered by the presence of dependent members in the household, while education and employment stability are helpful to combat poverty.     

OLI范式与跨国并购之动因

对外直接投资（FDI）有两种方式：新建投资（greenfieldinvest-ment）与跨国并购（cross-borderM&A）。从20世纪80年代中期开始，跨国并购逐渐取代新建投资，成为FDI的主要方式。到1999年，国际生产增长的80%都是通过跨国并购来实现的。那么是什么原因促使跨国公司在进行FDI时越来越多地选择跨国并购呢？对外直接投资理论从20世纪60年代海默的垄断优势理论到邓宁的国际生产折衷理论（OLI范式），在产业组织理论、交易费用理论的基础上，已经形成了一套比较成熟的理论。然而，跨国并购作为企业对外直接投资的一种新趋势，对外直接投资…     

On the relationship between oil price and exchange rates: A wavelet analysis

We may find numerous works in the existing literature regarding the cohesion between oil prices and exchange rates, yet an exact shape of the relationship remains undefined. By restoring to wavelet analysis and using a rich database from Japan, this study contributes to the literature by investigating the said relationship within the time–frequency space. Over the time horizon, it is being established that the strength of the relationship between oil price and exchange rate keeps changing. If the Bank of Japan needs to control the exchange rate, it should give proper importance to shocks on oil prices, while formulating exchange rate policy.     

A systems approach to the relationship between consumption and wealth

The single-equation approach to the determination of consumption, due to Hendry and von Ungern-Sternberg (HUS), is extended to a multi-equation system which links decisions on consumption and the components of wealth. The original HUS approach has proved to be a very durable one, being applicable to a number of countries and macroeconomic models. This approach is extended to allow a role for rates of return as well as income, and it is shown how this extension results in an error correction system. The empirical analysis used is based on Johansen's maximum likelihood extension of the co-integration approach of Engle and Granger.