A guide to understanding long-term care insurance

Long-term care insurance is an increasingly popular benefit that has a number of advantages for both employers and employees. This coverage can protect employee assets and retirement savings and can be offered as a tax-free benefit if the plan is qualified. The premiums can be tax-deductible to employees, and the benefit is portable, since the policy is owned by the employee.     

A policy model to analyze macroprudential regulations and monetary policy

We construct a small‐open‐economy, new Keynesian dynamic stochastic general‐equilibrium model with real financial linkages to analyze the effects of financial shocks and macroprudential policies on the Canadian economy. The model incorporates rich interactions between the balance sheets of households, firms and banks, long‐term household and business debt, macroprudential policy instruments and nominal and real rigidities and is calibrated to match dynamics in Canadian macroeconomic and financial data. We study the transmission of monetary policy and financial and real shocks in the model economy and analyze the effectiveness of various policies in simultaneously achieving macroeconomic and financial stability. We find that, in terms of reducing household debt, more targeted tools such as loan‐to‐value regulations are the most effective and least costly, followed by bank capital regulations and monetary policy, respectively.     

A guide to the computation of stationarity tests

In this paper we compare ways of computing stationarity tests. We show that whereas some of the procedures recommended lead to inconsistency of the tests, it is still possible to compute a test with good properties in finite sample in terms of empirical size and power. The guidance suggested in the paper is illustrated by testing for the purchasing power parity hypothesis in some developed countries.

Dynamic scoring: A back-of-the-envelope guide

This paper uses the neoclassical growth model to examine the extent to which a tax cut pays for itself through higher economic growth. The model yields simple expressions for the steady-state feedback effect of a tax cut. The feedback is surprisingly large: for standard parameter values, half of a capital tax cut is self-financing. The paper considers various generalizations of the basic model, including elastic labor supply, general production technologies, departures from infinite horizons, and non-neoclassical production settings. It also examines how the steady-state results are modified when one considers the transition path to the steady state.     

The Strategy-Technology Firm Fit Audit: A guide to opportunity assessment and selection

Both seminal and recent advances in the fields of management of technology, strategy and entrepreneurship are integrated to produce a multi-dimensional decomposition based model for evaluation of the appropriateness of an opportunity to a given entity. The resultant Strategy-Technology Firm Fit Audit model provides established firm decision makers a resource to provide decision support of potential opportunities. Six case studies are used to illustrate the use of the model to identify situations in which opportunities offer a good or poor fit for the organization under consideration. In addition to providing decision support for internal product innovation decisions, merger and acquisition decisions, open innovation decisions such as joint ventures, pre-competitive collaborations and strategic supply chain partnerships; the model is also useful for entrepreneurial teams, institutional investors, commercial development professionals, angels or venture capitalists that are considering the potential of a new venture.     

The philosophy of modeling and futures research : A guide to different models

The concept of inquiry systems as originally formulated by Churchman is an exceedingly powerful one. Each inquiry system can be construed as an archetypal or generic kind of model structure that applies generally throughout all of the sciences. Recent development in the logic of argumentation and symbolic logic show how, paradoxically enough, the model structure of each inquiry system can itself be modeled in terms of the first-order predicate calculus. The result is a “model of models.” More important and more fundamental still, the effort shows the tremendous assumptions that must be bought if one is to warrant belief in any particular inquiry model.     

Multi-dimensional screening:: A user's guide

Multi-dimensional screening models have many potential applications but economists have so far been hindered by the considerable technical difficulties involved in their resolution. This paper studies the simplest formulation of the general screening model, and we provide a complete solution to this case. We then show how this model can be applied to multi-product nonlinear pricing and to multi-product monopoly regulation. Finally, we discuss how the model has been applied to other economic situations of interest, including auction design and optimal taxation.