Monoline Restrictions, with Applications to Mortgage Insurance and Title Insurance

Insurance firms in the United States generally operate on a multiline basis, meaning that they provide coverage for two or more insurance lines, such as auto and homeowner insurance. Most states, however, require that firms offering mortgage or title insurance operate on a monoline basis, meaning that an insurance firm may provide coverage against only one type of risk. This paper investigates the conditions under which monoline restrictions represent efficient regulatory policy. Monoline requirements are an intriguing issue because multiline insurance firms receive the diversification benefit that the firm’s capital is available to pay insurance claims on any of its lines. The paper shows, however, that the specific features of the mortgage and title insurance lines create a special case in which monoline restrictions may represent efficient regulatory policy.     

The Effects of Taxes and Advertising Restrictions on the Market Structure of the U.S. Cigarette Market

A dynamic oligopoly model of the cigarette industry is developed to study the effects of anti-smoking policies on the market structure of the U.S. cigarette industry. Firms are modeled as competing in price and advertising in a dynamic game. Two commonly used anti-smoking policies – advertising restrictions and tobacco tax increases – are evaluated using calibrated parameters. The simulation results show that in the long run both advertising restrictions and tax increases can successfully reduce the smoking rate. However, advertising restrictions reduce the smoking rate mainly in an indirect way through their impact on the concentration of the market, while tax increases reduce the smoking rate directly and have little effect on the concentration of the market. In addition, in the short run, advertising restrictions have a much smaller effect on reducing the smoking rate than tax increases.     

Housing Rental Contracts and Adverse Selection with an Application to the Rent-Own Decision

A model of rental housing is developed in which landlords cannot observe the utilization rate of their tenants. As a result of this imperfect information, an adverse selection problem exists where high utilization households have an incentive to conceal their type in order to obtain more favorable contract terms. Consequently, the market equilibrium must satisfy a self-selection constraint, which imposes certain restrictions on the set of contracts that will be offered by landlords. These restrictions are examined in detail, and their implications for a household's decision to rent or own its housing are derived.     

The impact of economic reforms on R&D by the Indian seed industry

Declining support for public research and advances in technology and new forms of legal protection have induced more private agricultural research. In developing countries, this has sparked a debate about appropriate policies regarding private research. In this context, we examine empirically the consequences of reforms in India’s seed policies which loosened various restrictions on the private sector. The period since the reforms has shown a remarkable increase in R & D effort and an increase in the number of private technology suppliers . We argue these changes were largely due to policy reforms.     

CONTINUOUS CROSS SUBSIDIES AND QUANTITY RESTRICTIONS*

This article provides a model of loss leader pricing and quantity restrictions for a competitive multiproduct industry when individual consumers have continuous (and independent) demands for the set of available goods. Utilizing a generalization of the model proposed by Bliss [1988] , we demonstrate the importance of consumer heterogeneity for the existence of cross subsidies when there is complete information and individual consumers have smooth, downward sloping demands. Continuous cross subsidies arising from consumer heterogeneity are also shown to exist in Hotelling models. Our use of continuous rather than ‘unit’ demands allows us to analyze issues related to welfare, which in turn exposes a strong incentive for the firm to place binding quantity restrictions on consumers. We also show how the presence of quantity restrictions can be used to distinguish between continuous cross subsidies arising from heterogeneous consumers versus those arising from classic demand complementarity with homogeneous agents.     

Dental Hygiene Regulation and Access to Oral Healthcare: Assessing the Variation across the US States

Regulations in many US states prevent dental hygienists (DHs) from fulfilling their potential to improve oral healthcare. Wing et al. found that stringent practice regulations lower DH wages and reduce access to care. We add licensure regulations to the analysis and estimate the simultaneous effect of licensure and practice restrictions on the DH labour market and access to care. The results are consistent with licensure restrictions reducing employment, practice restrictions reducing wages, and wage and employment rates jointly influencing the prevalence of dental office visits. These results suggest that in order to significantly improve access to oral healthcare, states need to consider how their entry and practice regulations interact to influence outcomes.     

The Welfare Effect of Advertising Restrictions in the U.S. Cigarette Industry

The welfare effect of advertisingrestrictions in the U.S. cigarette industry dependsupon the impact of advertising on consumer and producer surplus, the transfer to consumers for being exposed to utility-reducing advertising, and smoking externalities. We estimate a demand equation and a supply relation simultaneously and use the parameter estimates to generate predictions of the impact of advertising restrictions on social welfare. Our results show that advertising restrictions benefit producers by limiting competition and generating higher industry profits, and such restrictions lower social welfare if the external cost of cigarette smoking is sufficiently low.     

Impact of data trade restrictions on IT services export: A cross-country analysis

Trade in digital goods and services have witnessed increasing growth in recent years, accompanied by a corresponding increase in data flows across national boundaries. At the same time, governments around the world have enacted data policies that restrict such cross border data flows in their effort to claim sovereignty over data generated from within their countries. However, scholars have long proclaimed that any restrictions to the Internet and associated digital trade will have serious economic consequences. Given this context, we analyze the impact of data policies that impose restrictions on digital trade, specifically on cross border data flows. We construct Market Data Restrictions Index (MDRI), that measures the data restrictions faced by an exporting country from their trade partners. We use a variation of random effect model on a panel data set consisting of 60 countries that contribute to more than 50 percent of IT services export during the period 2006–2017. The results indicate that apart from variables such as Foreign Direct Investment, and Service Value Added, the MDRI of partner countries has a moderate negative effect on IT services export. If countries move from liberal policies to stringent data restrictions, the economies of the country that exports its ICT services to these partner countries is affected substantially. Hence government regulators shall be cautious in imposing stringent data restrictions as it affects global digital trade.     

Local Ownership Restrictions, Entry Mode Choice, and FDI Performance: Japanese Overseas Subsidiaries in Asia

This study examines the moderating effects of a host government's local ownership restrictions on the linkage between the choice of foreign entry mode and its performance, using a sample of 917 Japanese foreign subsidiaries in Asia. The study focuses on two foreign entry modes, joint ventures (JVs) and wholly-owned subsidiaries (WOS), and two performance measures, financial performance and termination rate. The results suggest that the extent of local ownership restrictions is negatively and significantly associated with the financial performance of WOS, whereas it does not directly influence that of JVs. There is no clear association between the extent of local ownership restrictions and the termination rate for the JV and WOS samples.     

在PC机上架设个人Internet服务器

介绍了在基于Windows2000Professional平台的PC机上,采用动态域名解析技术架设个人Internet服务器。通过安装Apache,Serv＿UFTPserver等软件并进行正确设置,可以提供www服务和FTP服务。因此使自己或他人可以远程访问个人PC机中的数据,实现信息交流与共享。同时克服了专业Internet服务器所提供的免费空间的各种限制,从而可以采用最新的网络编程技术,在PC机上来构建自己的Internet动态网站。     

Consequences of unintended food policies: Food price dynamics subject to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Israel’s imposition of military security measures in the Palestinian territories as a consequence of the long-lasting violent conflict between them has negative economic effects on all parties concerned. One crucial outcome is the limited ability to carry out trade, which brings about welfare losses. Conflict-induced policies such as security measures can result in sizable unintended externalities that shape the markets of and the trade in food. We assess the dynamics of daily wholesale prices of food produced in Israel and the West Bank that is traded between them and is therefore subject to restrictions on movement. To do so, we suggest a regime switching cointegration model which is estimated using a novel extension of the Johansen estimation method. We find that the two major wholesale markets of the two regions are integrated with regard to these main trading products. Deviations from price equilibria are quickly adjusted. The model suggests that movement restrictions temporarily cut off markets from each other. Implications of conflict-induced closures for welfare depend on the direction of trade and are harming both Palestinian and Israeli consumers.     

Exclusivity in licensing alliances: using hostages to support technology commercialization

We examine why exclusivity provisions are used in licensing alliances, and when restrictions in licensing scope (e.g., by product or geography) accompany these exclusivity provisions. We find broad support for the proposition that these features are associated with the contractual challenges of allying with licensees when they contribute valuable complementary capabilities toward the commercialization of licensed technologies. Evidence from our data suggests that exclusivity is used as a contractual hostage to safeguard licensee investments in complementary assets and to enable contracting over early stage technologies. Scope restrictions are employed to balance the tradeoffs between the value creation made possible by licensee complementary capabilities and the transactional hazards entailed in working exclusively with licensees. Our results also suggest that scope restrictions and other formal safeguards may be substitute mechanisms for managing similar transactional concerns in licensing alliances. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Measuring Employment Security in Europe Using Surveys of Employers

Using results from surveys in which employers were questioned about their freedom to shed staff, we develop a measure of employment security in Europe. We seek to identify which institutional factors are correlated with the responses of employers and find that they appear to reflect the strength of legal restrictions and trade unions and the prevalence of atypical employment. Our results are used to compile an index of employment security that has both a temporal and a cross‐country dimension.     

Limitations on the growth of computer-communication services

The author examines current and potential limitations to the growth of computer communications in the USA in relation to user learning costs; regulatory restrictions on rate of return and regulatory policy concerning depreciation allowances; the structure of computer-communication networks; and regulatory limitations on the provision of services.     

An experiment on cash and in-kind transfers with application to food assistance programs

The impact of providing food assistance in kind (via food, stamps, or restricted debit cards) vs. cash has long been a subject of debate. Prior efforts to causally identify the effects of the two types of transfers have been hindered by concerns over non-random selection into assistance programs, misreporting of program benefits, and identification of inframarginal households who, theoretically, should treat cash and in-kind transfers identically. This paper reports the results of an economic experiment designed to cleanly test some conceptual issues associated with in-kind vs. cash giving in a lunchroom meal setting. Given current debates about the healthiness of food assistance recipients’ diets, we also consider the impacts of placing restrictions on in-kind transfers that either prohibit soda purchases with the transfer or require the transfer be spent on fruits and vegetables. Overall, we find that, as theory predicts, in-kind transfers have the same effect on food expenditures as an unrestricted cash transfer for inframarginal consumers, and for extramarginal consumers, food expenditures are higher for in-kind than cash transfers. Participants also respond to the fruit and vegetable restriction as theory would predict. However, in contrast to the theoretical prediction, the soda restriction reduces soda expenditures for more than half the inframarginal consumers.     

Cable as choice

The major benefit that cable TV has to offer the UK customer is choice. The question is: should choice be limited in any way? Vested interests in the television and film industry are pressing for restrictions on two ‘no go’ areas-live sport and first release films. Gareth Locksley argues that there is no case for restrictions, and that choice will benefit the television and film industries and the consumer.     

Change at the Checkout: Tracing the Impact of a Process Innovation

Barcode scanners, introduced in the early 1970's, were a foundational process innovation in the grocery supply chain. By 1984 scanners had been installed in 10% of food stores in the U.S. Fixed‐effect analysis of city‐level price data shows that scanners reduced prices of groceries by at least 1.4% in their first decade. The results are consistent with prior estimates of labor saving by scanners. Early adopters and adopters in states that imposed fewer restrictions on complementary process innovations contributed disproportionately to the price decreases.     

Railroads and Price Discrimination: The Roles of Competition, Information, and Regulation

I evaluate railroad price discrimination in three periods: 1870–1886, before the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act; 1945–1975, when rates were regulated but railroads faced extensive intermodal competition; and 1980–2010, after the passage of major regulatory reforms. While price discrimination was widespread in each period, the specific practices varied as the nature of competition, regulation, and the information available to decision-makers changed. The Act focused heavily on price discrimination, and limited some practices while encouraging others. One major weakness of the Act was the restrictions that were imposed on pricing practices that could lead to cost reductions and productivity improvements.     

Preferences of Scotch malt whisky consumers for changes in pesticide use and origin of barley

In a case study related to Scotch malt whisky production, this study analyses consumers’ perceptions and preferences regarding two aspects that have emerged in the debate on sustainable production and consumption, and on environmentally responsible food choice, namely (i) the use of pesticides in agriculture, and (ii) the provenance of food ingredients. We carried out a choice experiment to investigate preferences and estimate Willingness to Pay of Scotch malt whisky consumers for pesticide use restrictions and the potential impact on the production of one of its essential ingredients, barley. Using latent class models, we find that about half of the respondents are non-demanders with respect to both attributes, and only a third of the sample population are willing to pay for further pesticide restrictions. Demand for more environmentally responsible production of Scotch malt whisky is therefore limited, indicating that in the case of Scotch malt whisky, consumers are not likely to be key to driving sustainable production. With respect to barley provenance, being able to claim a 100% Scottish product could be a plausible commercial option for some producers to pursue in a competitive market. Methodologically, the scale-adjusted latent class model proved to be successful in uncovering preference heterogeneity and its sources, in including non-demanders in the analysis and in accounting for differences in scale amongst respondents.     

Export restrictions – Do consumers really benefit? The wheat-to-bread supply chain in Serbia

Our approach combines price transmission and gross margin analysis at different stages of the wheat-to-bread supply chain. Results suggest that the effects of export restrictions on the end consumer prices for bread, and thus food price inflation, heavily depend on the price behavior of the intermediates. In contrast to theory, consumers in Serbia experienced welfare losses despite comprehensive governmental market interventions. In particular, consumers were confronted with increasing flour and bread prices, which cannot be fully explained by increasing production costs, whereas mills, bakeries and retailers increased their profits. Thus, export controls in combination with high price volatility in the supply chain have to be considered as a further factor driving food price inflation.