What if your patient's insurance is bogus?

It's a possibility you'll have to consider from now on. Because of legal loopholes, dozens of outfits have started selling counterfeit coverage.     

What if the Fed had been an inflation nutter?

A structural rational expectations model of US monetary policy is used to make a counterfactual experiment of a strongly inflation averse Federal Reserve Bank. Results for US interest rates, output, and inflation over 1965–1999 are discussed.     

What if people value nature? Climate change and welfare costs

We introduce temperature shocks and preferences for environmental quality in a real business cycle model with natural resources. Temperature anomalies are transmitted to the business cycles via their negative effects on output and agents’ utility. Our findings suggest that permanent and temporary weather shocks propagation and their welfare implications depend crucially on whether agents value environmental quality. A permanent increase in temperature reduces output with damages reaching up to 1.61% of GDP. Agents who value environmental quality experience a higher temporary welfare gain when facing a negative weather shock, but welfare drops faster as the economy returns to equilibrium. Temperature anomalies amplify the (negative) effect of climate change on natural resources use and welfare.     

What (if any) are the returns to computer use?

Using North American data, we revisit the question first broached by Krueger (1993 Krueger, AB. 1993. How computers have changed the wage structure: evidence from microdata. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108: 33–60. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and re-examined by DiNardo and Pischke (1997 DiNardo, JE and Pischke, J-S. 1997. The returns to computer use revisited: have pencils changed the wage structure too?. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112: 291–303. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) of whether there exists a real wage differential associated with computer use. Employing a mixed effects model with matched employer–employee data to correct for the fact that workers and workplaces that use computers are self-selected, we find that computer users enjoy an almost 4% wage premium over nonusers. Failure to correct for worker and workplace selection effect leads to a more than twofold overestimate of this premium.     

What if they take it all? Heterogeneous impact of sickness absence reform

I investigate the effect of sickness absence reform in the Czech Republic, which reduced benefits paid during the first three days of sickness absence to zero. I find a substantial decrease in the incidence of sickness absence, which is about 15 percent of the pre‐reform mean. I find that workers in occupations with high flexibility and fewer routine tasks are more likely to reduce their sickness absences.     

What if women earned more than their spouses? An experimental investigation of work-division in couples

Female specialization on household work and male specialization on labor-market work is a widely observed phenomenon across time and countries. This absence of gender neutrality with respect to work-division is known as the “work-division puzzle”. Gender differences regarding characteristics (preferences, productivity) and context (wage rates, social norms) are generally recognized as competing explanations for this fact. We experimentally control for context and productivity to investigate preferences for work-division by true co-habiting couples, in a newly developed specialization task. Efficiency in this task comes at the cost of inequality, giving higher earnings to the “advantaged” player. We compare behavior when men (or women) are in the advantaged position, which corresponds to the traditional (or power) couple case where he (or she) earns more. Women and men contribute equally to the household public good in all conditions. This result allows us to rule out some of the standard explanations of the work-division puzzle.     

Markets,Morality and Climate Change: What,if Anything,is Wrong with Emissions Trading?

This article explores whether emissions trading is morally defensible To do so it examines three different kinds of moral consideration Which might be used to judge emissions trading. The first kind makes what I term an ‘ethical’ objection, and holds that utilising market instruments to combat climate change is inherently objectionable. I examine three versions if this ‘ethical’ argument but find none persuasive. The remainder of the article considers two additional moral considerations, both of which appeal to principles of justice. Drawing on these it argues that emissions trading can be morally defensible but only it it meets these two demanding moral criteria. First, the costs of emissions trading should be shared equitably. The paper examines what this might mean and criticises the leading account of what constitutes a just distribution of emissions Second, emissions trading must make an appropriate contribution to climate mitigation. A number of ways in which current emissions trading schemes signally fail to meet this second criterion are then noted. The article concludes that emissions trading schemes could in principle be morally defensible but only if new schemes are introduced or existing schemes are radically redesigned in line with the principles outlined in the article.     

ERM crisis in retrospect: What if a European central bank had been in existence before 1992?

This paper explores whether policy coordination or a single monetary policy implemented earlier would have kept the U.K. in the process of European monetary integration. On the basis of the pre-ERM crisis empirics by Douven and Plasmans (1996), a counterfactual game simulation approach is used, and five scenarios are established for comparison with the actual historical records. The final answer is negative.     

What to do in globalised economies if global governance is missing? The vicarious role of competition in social responsibility

In this article, we present a model that seeks to illustrate mechanisms that have fostered the diffusion of socially responsible corporate practices with specific reference to Fair Trade. We do so with a simple standard Hotelling approach of competition on product differentiation between a profit-maximising producer (PMP) and a “socially responsible” not for profit “fair trader” (FT) over prices and (costly) “socially and environmentally responsible” features of their products. We show that, under reasonable conditions concerning consumers’ costs of ethical distance, the fair trader’s entry into the market triggers the partial adoption of socially responsible practices by the profit-maximising competitor. We finally compare the ethical choices of the two players with the optimal ones of a domestic benevolent planner. Our findings show that competition between the fair trader and the PMP leads to a level of transfers to marginalised producers in the South, which is above the optimal level fixed by a planner maximising the welfare of the consumers in the North. This finding shows that the competition in social responsibility triggered by fair traders partially compensates for the lack of global governance and global institutions properly representing marginalised producers.     

Damned if you do,damned if you do not—Reduced Climate Impact vs. Sustainable Forests in Sweden

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the potential goal conflict between two of Sweden's environmental objectives: Sustainable Forests and Reduced Climate Impact – or, more precisely, the conflict between forest conservation and the supply of wood fuel. To accomplish this, we use a forest sector model that includes the suppliers and major users of roundwood. The econometric results, based on a data set that spans 40 years, show that all the own price elasticities have the expected signs. Among the three forestry products, the supply and (long-term) demand of forest fuel seems to be most sensitive to a price change. In a second step, the estimated model is used to simulate the effect of increased forest conservation – the Sustainable Forest objective – on the supply of wood fuel. If oil is used as a substitute, Swedish emissions of greenhouse gases will increase by almost 0.92 percent, which indicates a clear conflict with the Reduced Climate Impact objective.