Sharing health risk and income risk within households: evidence from Japanese data

The question of which household members should consume medical services, and in what quantities, is examined by using Japanese household-level data. Two key concepts are employed, health risk and income risk, and whether family heads or dependants bear these risks investigated. Health risk is the risk that a household member falls ill, while income risk is the risk that future household income decreases. It is found that both heads and dependants make fewer visits to doctors as household size increases. It is also found that only dependants visited doctors less frequently following the reform of the public health insurance system, which raised the co-payment rate of family heads from 10% to 20%. These findings imply that heads and dependants share health risk but dependants bear income risk.     

Bootstrapping R and adjusted R in regression analysis

In this paper, using the bootstrap method, we consider to estimate the standard errors of R² and which are measures of their precision, and to construct their confidence intervals. It is shown by Monte Carlo experiments that the bootstrap standard errors are considerably accurate estimates of the exact ones. It is also shown that although the bootstrap 95% confidence interval of R² do not include the true value of the parent coefficient of determination in some particular cases, such a phenomenon does not occur when is used.     

On core stability, vital coalitions, and extendability

If a TU game is extendable, then its core is a stable set. However, there are many TU games with a stable core that are not extendable. A coalition is vital if there exists some core element x such that none of the proper subcoalitions is effective for x. It is exact if it is effective for some core element. If all coalitions that are vital and exact are extendable, then the game has a stable core. It is shown that the contrary is also valid for matching games, for simple flow games, and for minimum coloring games.     

Unemployment in Australia: Duration and Recurrent Spells*

Using a parametric technique. this paper estimates average completed duration of unemployment for several age and sex categories. It shows that the use of Labour Force Survey data leads to underestimates due to the presence of recurrent unemployment. When allowance is made, using A BS Persons Looking for Work and Labour Force Experience data, it is shown that new entrants to unemployment in 1981 could expect to remain unemployed for nearly six months. For teenagers evidence is presented to suggest that, contrary to current economic thought, teenagers may on average be unemployed for longer periods per spell and may have less experience of recurrent spells than their counterparts. It also shows that changes in the unemployment rate are dominated by changes in duration.     

What is macroeconomic causality?

The paper aims to develop an adequate account of macroeconomic causality. It discusses the definition that is central to Woodward’s interventionist account and the definitions that can be extracted from Hoover’s remarks on privileged parameterization and from the potential outcome approach that Angrist and Kuersteiner have introduced into macroeconomics more recently. The definition to be defended can be regarded as the gist that is common to all three definitions when they are relieved of overly restrictive conditions. It says (roughly) that X causes Y if and only if there is a possible intervention on X that changes Y, where X and Y stand for macroeconomic aggregates, where an intervention is understood as a manipulation of an intervention variable I that satisfies conditions requiring that I be a cause of X, and that there be no confounders of X and Y, and where an intervention variable is either a variable or a parameter.     

Organizations as constitutional systems

Four theoretical approaches to the study of organizations that can be identified in the relevant literature are compared: Thegoal paradigm, theexchange paradigm, thenexus of contracts paradigm, and theconstitutional paradigm. It is argued that the latter provides the more fruitful theoretical perspective in that it reconciles an individualist methodology with an account of organisations as corporate actors, as units of collective action. I would like to thank Richard E. Wagner for helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft.     

Figures of mockery. The cultural disqualification of physiocracy (1760–1790)

Abstract

By studying seriously a literature generally dismissed by the historians of economics – satires, tales, theatrical works, pamphlets, poems, and songs that mock with humour the physiocrats, their fellow-travellers, and their doctrines – this paper reveals what was made of them and their ideas, who did this, and the underlying whys and wherefores. Three major forms of critiques are considered. The first, that of a Church (the Encyclopédistes) fighting a rising heresy (the physiocrats), concludes that the fanaticism of the latter is incompatible with the virtues of tolerance that must characterise the true philosophes. In the second form, the Encyclopédistes and the Économistes are assimilated. Both led to the destruction of the old taxonomy of society and even to death, to famine and to a chaos of transgression. The third form concerns the dubious parallel between the y-king of ancient China and the Tableau économique. These three types of cultural writings capture and explain something new – physiocratic political economy – thanks to well-known mental constructs. It stages characters and facts in order to give meaning to events the causes of which are difficult to explain. It is, beyond all the irony and mockery, an attempt to understand and to defuse new fears resulting from this incredible endeavour to change reality.     

How are preferences revealed?

Revealed preferences are tastes that rationalize an economic agent's observed actions. Normative preferences represent the agent's actual interests. It sometimes makes sense to assume that revealed preferences are identical to normative preferences. But there are many cases where this assumption is violated. We identify five factors that increase the likelihood of a disparity between revealed preferences and normative preferences: passive choice, complexity, limited personal experience, third-party marketing, and intertemporal choice. We then discuss six approaches that jointly contribute to the identification of normative preferences: structural estimation, active decisions, asymptotic choice, aggregated revealed preferences, reported preferences, and informed preferences. Each of these approaches uses consumer behavior to infer some property of normative preferences without equating revealed and normative preferences. We illustrate these issues with evidence from savings and investment outcomes.     

Superior regulatory regimes in theory and practice

A substantial body of recent research finds thatprice-cap regulation is superior tocost-based regulation in that many of the distortions associated with the latter are reduced or eliminated entirely. We prove that the hybrid application ofcost-based and price-cap regulation that characterizes current regulatory practice in the United States telecommunications industry may generate qualitative distortions greater in magnitude than those realized undercost-based regulation. It follows thatprice-based regulation in practice may be welfare-inferior tocost-based regulation. The analysis further reveals that the firm subject to this modified form ofprice-based regulation may have incentives to engage in pure waste.     

A method for constructing an intertemporal utility function from a Friedmanian consumption function

It is shown that the intertemporal utility function can be reconstructed from data on demands if they are restricted to be linear in wealth, or Friedmanian.     

A sensitivity analysis in a nonlinear Leontief model

Conclusion We have shown that in a nonlinear Leontief model where non-decreasing returns are allowed for, if some elements of the final demand vector are increased, then each activity level (i. e., gross output) goes up or remain unchanged and the maximum rate of increase in activity levels must be realized among those sectors for which the final demand is raised. It is also shown that this maximum rate of increase in activity levels is not greater than the maximum rate of increase in the final demands.It should be noted that we do not require the indecomposability ofA (x). WhenA (x) is indecomposable, the final demand vector can be allowed to be non-zero nonnegative, and we can derive a set of propositions similar to those presented in this article.     

Cooperation for Pennies: A Note on-Equilibria

It is shown that, in finitely repeated smooth games,-equilibria are capable of supporting full cooperation up to very near the end of the horizon, with very small amounts of irrationality,. Furthermore, behavior, even near the end of the horizon, is highly insensitive to the amount of irrationality assumed.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C73, L13.     

Cooperation for Pennies: A Note onε-Equilibria

It is shown that, in finitely repeated smooth games,ε-equilibria are capable of supporting full cooperation up to very near the end of the horizon, with very small amounts of irrationality,ε. Furthermore, behavior, even near the end of the horizon, is highly insensitive to the amount of irrationality assumed.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C73, L13.     

The generic existence of a core forq-rules

Summary Aq-rule is where winning coalition hasq or more of then voters. It is important to understand when, generically, core points exist; that is, when does the core exist in other than highly contrived settings? As known, the answer depends upon the dimension of issue space. McKelvey and Schofield found bounds on these dimensions, but Banks found a subtle, critical error in their proofs. The sharp dimensional values along with results about the structure of the core are derived here. It is interesting how these dimensional values correspond to the number of issues that are needed to lure previously supporting voters into a new coalition.This research was partially supported by NSF IRI 9103180. My thanks to J. Banks for informing me about this problem, to Banks and R. McKelvey for reading my 1994 working notes preparatory for writing this paper, and to S. Brams, D. Richards, M. Salles, and N. Schofield for several suggestions.     

The critical realist conception of open and closed systems

The critical realist (CR) conception of open and closed (O&C) systems is not about systems: it is about (ir)regularities in the flux of events and states of affairs. It has recently been criticised on the grounds that critical realists (CRs) should take on board ideas about the general nature of systems; recognise that genuinely open social systems would be impossible; avoid polarities or dualisms where either there are event regularities and open systems, or there are no event regularities and closed systems and accept partial regularities and partially open systems; and understand that orthodox economics is not based upon event regularities, laws or Humean empiricism. The objective of this paper is to ‘take stock’ of these recent criticisms.     

Specific vs Ad Valorem Strategic Export Subsidies with Taxation Distortion

This paper employs a model to compare the welfare between optimal specific and ad valorem export subsidies if the subsidy payment is financed by distortional taxation. It is found that the welfare under the specific subsidy regime is higher (lower) than that under the ad valorem subsidy regime if the social cost of taxation distortion is low (high). Moreover, the signs of the two optimal subsidies are also crucially dependent on this social cost. They are positive (negative) if the social cost is low (high).     

A Note on α‐Gini Measures

This note provides a characterization of α‐Gini inequality measures. These measures generalize the standard Gini index by including one sensitivity parameter α, which captures different value judgments. The α‐Gini measures are shown to be weakly decomposable and unit consistent. Weak decomposition provides within‐group and between‐group inequalities. Unit consistency keeps unchanged the ranking of two income distributions when the income units vary. It is shown that the α‐Gini measures are relevant with either “leftist” or“rightist” views.     

The Role of Keynesian Policies in Semi-industrialized Countries: theory and evidence from India

This paper examines the relevance of Keynesian policies—interpreted as those policies implied by Keynes's theoretical analysis of unemployment developed in The General Theory—for a subset of developing economies, which are called semi-industrialized countries. It draws on recent contributions in development economics to argue on theoretical grounds that Keynesian policies are relevant for semi-industrialized countries even when they are constrained by capital shortages, stagnant agricultural sectors, and foreign exchange availability. It then discusses the recent development experience of India to illustrate the empirical relevance of some of these theoretical issues.     

IS THE WIGWAM WORTH IT? A CONTINGENT VALUATION METHOD ESTIMATE FOR A SMALL‐CITY SPORTS ARENA

The public good benefits arising from an historic high school gymnasium are estimated using the contingent valuation method. While other works focus on larger cities and usually emphasize new buildings for professional teams, this study looks at an historic building for amateur sports. It is found that the benefits are small in spite of the importance of the building and high school sports in general to the history of the city. Because this gymnasium is particularly large and recognized, this would seem to give an upper bound to the value of sports arenas in cities of this size. (JEL H41, L83)     

Paper credit and the multi-personae Mr. Henry Thornton

The bicentenary celebration of the publication of Henry Thornton's An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain (1802) presents an appropriate time for a reconsideration of this great work on monetary economics. This paper highlights Thornton's criticisms of Adam Smith along with the importance that Thornton attached to the lender of last resort role of the Bank of England. It suggests that there are three Mr. Thorntons who appear in Paper Credit. The first is the concerned anti-inflationist of the first section. The second is the worried anti-inflationist of the second section of the book. Besides these, there may be a third Mr. Thornton. This persona was that of the practical banker who understood the new emerging financial architecture that had resulted in paper credit supplanting metallic money. Thornton understood this new transformation of the monetary system. It is conjectured that the existence of the usury laws, inter alia, may have prevented Thornton from fully investigating the possibility of the UK moving to a specie-less system.