Ramsey Pricing and Regulator's Social Welfare Weights: An Empirical Application

The paper aims at uncovering the implicit regulator's social welfare weights within a generic Ramsey pricing structure allowing for distinct weights. The methodology is applied to U.S. water utilities for residential and non-residential water services, implying that the weights were virtually identical and thus no cross-subsidies occurred across those goods.     

Bundling, Competition and Quality Investment: A Welfare Analysis

We investigate how bundling affects investment in product quality, and derive welfare implications. A monopolist in a primary market competes with a rival in a complementary market. Bundling is the monopolist’s preferred strategy, since it either extracts surplus from the rival’s investment, or forces the rival to provide low quality. Bundling may reduce welfare without foreclosing the rival, but improves welfare when preventing undesirable investment. Since prohibiting bundling is not appropriate, we introduce a price test for bundled offers that preserves efficiencies from both bundling and quality investment, thereby improving welfare relative to the ‘do-nothing’ scenario. We consequently argue that this test should be applied whenever possible.     

Credit Rationing and Government Loan Programs: A Welfare Analysis

Asymmetric information about borrower default probabilities may lead to inefficient credit rationing of low-risk borrowers in otherwise competitive markets. In a simple model having these properties, we show that some types of government loan programs, such as loan guarantees issued through lenders, might improve economic efficiency. But the incentive for high-risk borrowers to misrepresent their loan quality is worsened by other government loan programs, notably those that try to target aid directly to rationed borrowers. As such, cost-effective programs may increase inefficiency. This surprising result highlights the need to conduct model-specific policy analyses, as opposed to analyses based on model-free performance indicators.     

对采用A＋B值法确定工程项目评标标底的分析

科学、有效、公正、合理的评标方法在工程招标中成功应用，对于保证工程质量、压缩建设成本，缩短建设工期，都将起到重要的作用。近几年，许多地区的水利水电工程在招标时，采用了量化评标和A B确定招标标底的方法，其具体做法也各不相同，作者对此作了阐述和分析，并对今后的招标工作提出了建议。     

Measuring Welfare from Ambulatory Surgery Centers: A Spatial Analysis of Demand for Healthcare Facilities

This paper studies competition between healthcare facilities, particularly between hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers (ASC's), in the market for outpatient surgery. The goal is to answer questions about the existence and magnitude of welfare gains earned from the use of ASC's. These questions are relevant to current policy debates about the usefulness of ASC's. I calculate welfare by specifying a multinomial logit model of consumer demand for healthcare facilities, and estimating structural elements of demand functions. Total elimination of ASC's results in between 10.2 and 28.1 minutes of welfare loss per patient surgery.     

Industrial Relations, Social Pacts and Welfare Expenditures: A Cross-national Comparison

Industrial relations and welfare state are interrelated. On the basis of time‐series data for 20 OECD countries, this paper discusses and tests the impact of industrial relations on social expenditures, including ‘social pacts’ as a means of combining wage moderation and welfare state reforms. The findings suggest that industrial relations have an impact mainly through the differential effects of distinct bargaining systems: a minor impact results from their externalities. The major impact ensues from their differing degrees of politicization, leading to higher expenditures in the case of peak‐level arrangements, as compared to more decentralized systems. Hence, the widely assumed potential of social pacts for welfare state reforms has been exaggerated.     

Microsoft's Pricing of Windows: A Reply to Reddy,Evans, Nichols,and Schmalensee

Despite arguments to the contrary, PCheterogeneity may go a long way towardexplaining why the price ofWindows might be as low as it is.     

Risk and Return to Housing, Tenure Choice and the Value of Housing in an Asset Pricing Context

Homeowners do not diversify their risky home equity because of fixed costs of issuing securities and information costs. An asset pricing model is developed for homeowners with the undiversifiable home equity asset. Homeowner value and house value to diversified landlords are compared, and a tenure choice equation is developed. We demonstrate the existence of a rational expectations equilibrium under appropriate conditions.     

企业社会责任与企业价值的相关性研究--来自沪市上市公司的经验证据

作者以我国上海证券交易所2003年521家上市公司为样本，研究了企业社会责任活动与企业价值的相关性问题。结果表明，从当期看。承担社会责任越多的企业。企业价值越低；但从长期看，根据关键利益相关者理论与社会资本理论。承担社会责任并不会降低企业价值。同时，本文的研究也表明资产规模、负债比率、重污染行业因素与企业承担社会责任活动显著正相关；财务状况或其他状况异常的ST类公司、前一年的盈利能力与企业承担社会责任活动显著负相关。     

生命成本:关于消费函数理论的一个新假说

消费者行为究竟是收入决定还是成本决定，关系到消费函数理论的基础构建与对诸多重大消费者行为现象的理论解释。传统消费函数理论基于收入假说，忽视了不同消费者为获得同一收入需要付出不同生命成本这一关键事实。由于消费的本质意义在于满足消费者生命的需要，生命为消费付出的代价，才是消费者消费支出的理性尺度。因此，消费者消费支出的决定性影响因子并不是收入差异．而是消费者为获得一定收入付出的生命成本差异。消费者消费倾向差别的根源发生在作为生产者的生产过程，而非消费过程。文章由此提出了基于生命成本假说的消费函数理论，并构建了一个消费者一生产者相统一的消费者行为解释新框架。     

工程造价市场信息分析及其在线系统开发

了解和熟悉某地区的市场信息对工程造价咨询公司在该地区开拓市场及造价工程师在该地区从事业务十分重要。本旨在探讨如何利用当代信息技术开发一个高性能的信息系统，它能为造价工程师提供及时的、全面和准确的市场信息(以上海地区为例)。系统开发所用的方法是一种改进的生命周期法。按照该方法，首先对工造价市场进行系统分析。然后，基于系统分析的结果，对市场信息进行分类，并在分类的基础上用超本技术建立信息模型。最后，基于模型开发信息系统。     

Postauditing and Cost Estimation Applications: An Illustration of MCMC Simulation for Bayesian Regression Analysis

Often in Bayesian anlysis closed-form posteriors cannot be derived for complex models. However, it is important to be able to do Bayesian analysis relatively easily. This article presents an alternative, the more general Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation approach, which permits the efficient development of posterior distributions. MCMC simulation methods are now becoming the state of the art in numerous empirical and analytical applications in applied mathematics, biostatistics, marketing, economics, and other areas, but those methods are noticeably absent in the engineering economic analysis literature. The purpose of this article is to introduce MCMC simulation methods to the engineering economics research and practitioner community. Using postaudits and cost estimation as application areas, the article focuses on what MCMC simulation entails, its advantages, and its disadvantages and highlights the usefulness and versatility of the approach.     

Market Share Inequality,the Number of Competitors,and the HHI: An Examination of Bank Pricing

This paper seeks to determine whether the Herfindahl--Hirschman index (HHI) adequately accounts for the roles of market share inequality and the number of competitors in explaining bank deposit and loan rates. This is been done by estimating deposit-rate and loan-rate equations in which the HHI is decomposed into components that reflect share inequality and number of competitors and, alternatively, by adding measures of share inequality and the number of competitors as additional explanatory variables. Results are inconclusive in the case of deposit rates but suggest that the HHI does not give sufficient weight to the number of competitors in explaining loan rates.     

Theorizing Chinese Employment Relations Comparatively: Exchange, Reciprocity and the Moral Economy

This paper contrasts the socio-cultural systems underpinning employment relations in the West and in the Overseas Chinese case. The analysis centres on the norm of reciprocity which, whilst taken as a universal phenomena, exhibits significant cross-cultural variation. Western employment relations are characterised by a model of impersonal rational economic exchange in which individuals engage in a utility calculus. Chinese employment relations remain more fully embedded in the wider socio-cultural system of which reciprocity is a vital and integral part. Employment relations are sustained by a personalistic tacit moral order. The implications for managing employment relations in changing and multi-cultural situations are discussed. The sustainabilty of the different employment relations systems are also discussed.     

Universal Service: Competition,Interconnection, and Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System. Milton L. Miller,Jr.

Review of Industrial Organization -     

Disentangling the effects on OTT platform performance of three strategies: Pricing,M&As,and content investments

OTT streaming services have been restructuring the global multimedia industry, and there have been strategic actions and reactions among OTT players and traditional pay-TV platforms. This study found that Pricing and Content investments are key factors affecting market share and subscribership in global OTT markets, and M&As have positive effects on the two performance measures, although with less statistical confidence. OTT-specialized firms in the UK, Germany, France, Japan, and South Korea did not expand subscribers to the same extent as those in the US, but they were able to expand their market share in the UK and Germany while failing to increase it in the other three countries. Local OTT players, especially those in Europe and Asia, might need to be more strategic in coping with US-based firms’ expansion by materializing the positive interaction effects among the three strategies to increase both their subscriber base and market share.     

Return, Risk and Cost of Equity for Stock S&L Firms: Theory and Empirical Results

This study examines the current deregulated environment for and the financial position of savings and loan associations. It is argued that in a less regulated, more competitive environment managers of savings and loan associations will have to become more proficient in using financial management techniques to assure the survival and the return to profitability of their associations. One aspect of financial management is a more careful estimation of and use of the cost of equity capital, especially for the increasing number of associations that have converted from mutual to stock organizations. Different approaches to the estimation of the cost of equity capital are discussed and monthly stock prices of 35 stock savings and loan associations are used to estimate representative costs of equity capital.