The technological determinants of long‐run inequality

I explore the effect of skill‐biased technological change and unbiased technological progress on long‐run inequality using a theoretical model in which the supply of skilled and unskilled workers is endogenous. The main assumption of the model is that young agents can finance their education and become skilled workers by borrowing against their future income on an imperfect credit market. I show that whenever the rate of unbiased technological progress is sufficiently high there is no steady‐state inequality, independent of the degree of skill bias. If instead the rate of unbiased technological progress is low, then the long‐run skill premium increases with the technological skill bias. Therefore, similarly to the short run, in the long run higher technological skill bias may cause higher inequality. However, contrary to the short run, in the long run unbiased technological progress is more important than technological skill bias in determining inequality. I also discuss how the efficiency of the educational technology and the degree of financial development affect long‐run inequality.     

Experimental evidence on tax salience and tax incidence

Although a basic theoretical principle in public economics assumes that individuals optimize fully with respect to the introduction of a tax, a growing body of research is proving that several heuristics are in place when people take decisions. We re‐examine the well known liability side equivalence principle in the light of the concept of salience. While these two topics have been extensively investigated in isolation, this paper innovates on the previous literature in that it focuses on their joint effects. Is tax incidence dependent on whether the subjects face a salient rather than a nonsalient tax? Does the salience of a tax exert a different effect depending on who is legally committed to bear the tax burden? We address these questions through a laboratory experiment in which one unit of a fictitious good is being traded through a double‐auction market institution. Based on a panel data analysis, our contribution shows that point of collection matters and determines the economic incidence of tax. Additionally, we find that the joint effect of salience and statutory incidence does not alter the informative efficiency, but has a positive effect on buyers’ allocational efficiency when the tax is levied on sellers.     

A Capital Controversy in Early Twentieth Century: Veblen vs. Clark

This article aims to assess the debate between John Bates Clark and the “old” institutionalist scholars — Thorstein Veblen, above all — with particular reference to the nature of capital and the functioning of the labor market. Although studies on both authors are numerous, relatively little attention has been paid to finding the crucial elements at the heart of their radical disagreement. A.J. Cohen (2014 Cohen, A.J. “Veblen Contra Clark and Fisher: Veblen-Robinson-Harcourt Lineages in Capital Controversy and Beyond.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 38, 6 (2014): 1493-1515.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) convincingly argues that Veblen’s attack on Clark is in the center of the capital controversy of the 1960s and 1970s. We propose an extension of this argument, based on the idea that Veblen’s attack on Clark follows three steps. First, Veblen defined capital in money terms and, at the same time, he saw it as the accumulated technological and institutional experience of a community. Second, insofar as capital cannot be reduced to a stock of physical goods, it is logically impossible to derive a function of the marginal labor productivity from the existing stock of capital. Third, insofar as the marginal productivity of labor cannot be measured, it follows that the equality between real wage and marginal labor productivity cannot logically hold. It also follows that, since it does not exist, this equality cannot be used as a basis for establishing that the equilibrium wage is a just wage.     

Economic burden of sarcoidosis in a commercially-insured population in the United States

Background: Sarcoidosis is a multi-system inflammatory disorder characterized by the presence of non-caseating granulomas in involved organs. Patients with sarcoidosis have a reduced quality-of-life and are at an increased risk for several comorbidities. Little is known about the direct and indirect cost of sarcoidosis following the initial diagnosis.

Aims: To provide an estimate of the healthcare resource utilization (HCRU) and costs borne by commercial payers for sarcoidosis patients in the US.

Methods: Patients with a first diagnosis of sarcoidosis between January 1, 1998 and March 31, 2015 (“index date”) were selected from a de-identified privately-insured administrative claims database. Sarcoidosis patients were required to have continuous health plan enrollment 12 months prior to and following their index dates. Propensity-score (1:1) matching of sarcoidosis patients with non-sarcoidosis controls was carried out based on a logistic regression of baseline characteristics. Burden of HCRU and work loss (disability days and medically-related absenteeism) were compared between the matched groups over the 12-month period following the index date (“outcome period”).

Results: A total of 7,119 sarcoidosis patients who met the selection criteria were matched with a control. Overall, commercial payers incurred $19,714 in mean total annual healthcare costs per sarcoidosis patient. The principle cost drivers were outpatient visits ($9,050 2015 USD, 46%) and inpatient admissions ($6,398, 32%). Relative to controls, sarcoidosis patients had $5,190 (36%) higher total healthcare costs ($19,714 vs $14,524; p?p?p?Background: Sarcoidosis is a multi-system inflammatory disorder characterized by the presence of non-caseating granulomas in involved organs. Patients with sarcoidosis have a reduced quality-of-life and are at an increased risk for several comorbidities. Little is known about the direct and indirect cost of sarcoidosis following the initial diagnosis.

Aims: To provide an estimate of the healthcare resource utilization (HCRU) and costs borne by commercial payers for sarcoidosis patients in the US.

Methods: Patients with a first diagnosis of sarcoidosis between January 1, 1998 and March 31, 2015 (“index date”) were selected from a de-identified privately-insured administrative claims database. Sarcoidosis patients were required to have continuous health plan enrollment 12 months prior to and following their index dates. Propensity-score (1:1) matching of sarcoidosis patients with non-sarcoidosis controls was carried out based on a logistic regression of baseline characteristics. Burden of HCRU and work loss (disability days and medically-related absenteeism) were compared between the matched groups over the 12-month period following the index date (“outcome period”).

Results: A total of 7,119 sarcoidosis patients who met the selection criteria were matched with a control. Overall, commercial payers incurred $19,714 in mean total annual healthcare costs per sarcoidosis patient. The principle cost drivers were outpatient visits ($9,050 2015 USD, 46%) and inpatient admissions ($6,398, 32%). Relative to controls, sarcoidosis patients had $5,190 (36%) higher total healthcare costs ($19,714 vs $14,524; p?<?0.001). Sarcoidosis patients also had significantly more work loss days (15.9 vs 11.3; p?<?0.001) and work loss costs ($3,288 vs $2,527; p?<?0.001) than matched controls. Sarcoidosis imposes an estimated total direct medical cost of $1.3–$8.7 billion to commercial payers, and an indirect cost of $0.2–$1.5 billion to commercial payers in work loss.

Conclusions: Sarcoidosis imposes a significant economic burden to payers in the first year following diagnosis.     

TALKING,SEARCHING, AND PRICING*

I study the implications of interpersonal communication for incentives for consumers to acquire information and firms’ pricing behavior. Firms market a homogeneous product and choose its price; consumers acquire price information at some cost to themselves. Also, each consumer accesses the information acquired by a sample of other consumers—interpersonal communication. An exogenous increase in the level of interpersonal communication decreases the information that consumers acquire, and, when search costs are low, firms price less aggressively. In an extension, consumers may choose to invest in interpersonal communication at some cost. A decrease in the costs of interpersonal communication decreases firms’ competition.     

A Critical Review of Centrality Measures in Social Networks

Social networks are currently gaining increasing impact in the light of the ongoing growth of web-based services like facebook.com. One major challenge for the economically successful implementation of selected management activities such as viral marketing is the identification of key persons with an outstanding structural position within the network. For this purpose, social network analysis provides a lot of measures for quantifying a member’s interconnectedness within social networks. In this context, our paper shows the state of the art with regard to centrality measures for social networks. Due to strongly differing results with respect to the quality of different centrality measures, this paper also aims at illustrating the tremendous importance of a reflected utilization of existing centrality measures. For this purpose, the paper analyzes five centrality measures commonly discussed in literature on the basis of three simple requirements for the behavior of centrality measures.     

Ideenwettbewerbe als innovatives Markenbindungsinstrument

Onlinebasierte Ideenwettbewerbe mit Web 2.0-Funktionalit?ten bieten neue innovative M?glichkeiten im Online Marketing. Sie tragen dazu bei, die Bekanntheit und positive Wahrnehmung einer Marke in der ?ffentlichkeit zu st?rken. Konsumenten setzen sich intensiver mit einer Marke auseinander, was schlie?lich zu einer st?rkeren Identifikation mit der Marke und Bindung führt. Auch Swarovski, dem Kristall-Weltmarktführer, gelang durch diese Einbindung von Konsumenten der Erfolg.     

Testing measurement invariance using multigroup CFA: differences between educational groups in human values measurement

This article applies the testing procedures for measurement invariance using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA). It illustrates these procedures by investigating the factorial structure and invariance of the Portraits Value Questionnaire (PVQ, Schwartz et al.: J. Cross Cult. Psychol. 32(5), 519–542 (2001)) across three education groups in a population sample (N  =  1,677). The PVQ measures 10 basic values that Schwartz postulates to comprehensively describe the human values recognized in all societies (achievement, hedonism, self-direction, benevolence, conformity, security, stimulation, power, tradition and universalism). We also estimate and compare the latent means of the three education groups. The analyses show partial invariance for most of the 10 values and parameters. As expected, the latent means show that less educated respondents attribute more importance to security, tradition, and conformity values.     

Necessity as the mother of ‘green’ inventions: Institutional pressures and environmental innovations

Drawing on institutional theory and innovation literature, we argue that greater regulatory and normative pressures concerning environmental issues positively influence companies' propensity to engage in environmental innovation. Analysis of environment‐related patents of 326 publicly traded firms from polluting industries in the United States suggests that institutional pressures can trigger such innovation, especially in those firms displaying a greater deficiency gap (i.e., firms polluting relatively more than their industry peers). Moreover, we find that this effect is stronger when asset specificity is high, and that the availability of resources plays different roles depending on the type of pressures (regulatory vs. normative).Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.