Panic in the plains: agricultural markets and the panic of 1893

Nearly every previous study of the 1893 bank panic acknowledges its regional concentration in the Western states yet few provide any in-depth study of what caused such a distinct regional pattern. Here, I recast the 1893 crisis as having its origins in agricultural markets and then spreading to Western banks that were highly exposed to agricultural shocks. Negative shocks to agricultural yields and the relative importance of the wheat crop for specific states emerge as important explanations for the regional pattern of bank closures and thus for the panic itself.

The role of productive failure in 3D printing in a middle school setting

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - In this research we explore the pedagogical affordances associated with the use of a 3D printer in a middle school classroom...     

ON THE PREDICTABILITY OF GROWTH IN EARNINGS PER SHARE

Arguments are given to support the hypothesis that corporate earnings per share are predictable by simple forecasting models. If income numbers have predictable properties, growth is predictable and theories of corporate valuation become more credible. Notions that EPS growth are completely unpredictable are disputed.     

Healthcare utilization and costs with fixed-source versus variable-source tacrolimus in patients receiving a kidney transplant

Abstract

Aims: Switching drug manufacturers in transplant patients may require an increased intensity of therapeutic monitoring, leading to additional healthcare visits, associated laboratory tests, and perhaps hospitalizations. As real-world studies examining the interchangeability of tacrolimus from different manufacturers are limited, the purpose of this study was to examine the healthcare resource utilization (HRU) and economic impact of tacrolimus-switching in kidney transplantation.

Materials and methods: This cross-sectional, retrospective study examined HRU and healthcare costs (HCCs) among patients with a kidney transplant who were prescribed tacrolimus from fixed-source (FS) vs variable-source (VS) manufacturers using claims data from the large US health plan Humana from October 1, 2012, to December 31, 2013.

Results: Overall, 1,024 patients were identified (FS: n?=?674, 66%; VS: n?=?350, 34%). The number of therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) events for the VS group was 13% greater than for the FS group after controlling for demographics, comorbidity score, and number of medications (incidence rate ratio?=?1.13, p?=?.033). Adjusted total HCCs were 9% lower for VS (US$28,054 vs US$30,823, p?=?.045). In the unadjusted analysis, VS had greater emergency department (ED) utilization (45% vs 35%, p?<?.002). In the VS group, the mean (standard deviation [SD]) number of days from manufacturer switch to first outpatient visit was 23.8 (33.6), and the number of days (SD) to first TDM event was 43.6 (56.2).

Limitations: Study limitations include the lack of availability of many transplant-specific variables within the Humana database, potential errors/omissions in claims coding, and restriction of cross-sectional data examination to a 1-year period.

Conclusions: VS patients had greater TDM and lower total HCCs. Further research is warranted to understand the drivers of ED use among the VS group, and to determine factors associated with delayed TDM after regimen modification. Opportunities may exist to improve the quality of care for patients receiving immunosuppressant treatment with tacrolimus.     

Shark bytes: message sensation value and emotional appeals in shark diving websites

Websites designed to promote risky activities provide a novel context for studying the role of emotional appeals and message sensation value (MSV) in risk messages in order to ultimately understand the type of messages that motivate people to engage in risk behaviors. Framed in theories of message design and emotion, this study investigates representations of threat, efficacy, and the extent to which risk messages appeal to a range of positive and negative emotions through the examination of 53 shark diving websites using content analysis and computer generated linguistic analysis. Results indicate that few websites provide explicit threat information (i.e. severity and susceptibility) but many do present implicit threats. Efficacy-related messages were present on all websites. Positive emotion was more common than negative emotion and there is little representation of the traditional components of MSV. Implications for theory development and communication about risk-seeking are addressed.     

Asymmetry of information flow between volatilities across time scales

Conventional time series analysis, focusing exclusively on a time series at a given scale, lacks the ability to explain the nature of the data-generating process. A process equation that successfully explains daily price changes, for example, is unable to characterize the nature of hourly price changes. On the other hand, statistical properties of monthly price changes are often not fully covered by a model based on daily price changes. In this paper, we simultaneously model regimes of volatilities at multiple time scales through wavelet-domain hidden Markov models. We establish an important stylized property of volatility across different time scales. We call this property asymmetric vertical dependence. It is asymmetric in the sense that a low volatility state (regime) at a long time horizon is most likely followed by low volatility states at shorter time horizons. On the other hand, a high volatility state at long time horizons does not necessarily imply a high volatility state at shorter time horizons. Our analysis provides evidence that volatility is a mixture of high and low volatility regimes, resulting in a distribution that is non-Gaussian. This result has important implications regarding the scaling behavior of volatility, and, consequently, the calculation of risk at different time scales.     

Father Knows Best: Using Adam Smith to Teach Transactions Costs

Adam Smith's moral philosophy can be used to introduce economics students to the important idea of transactions costs. The author provides a brief background in this article to Smith's moral philosophy and connects it to the costs of transacting in a way that fits easily into the standard principles of microeconomics classroom. By doing so, instructors can also demonstrate to students that there are connections between ethical behavior and market outcomes.     

Information in the U.S. Treasury Term Structure of Interest Rates

We provide evidence of a significant change in the information content of the U.S. Treasury term structure of interest rates over the last 20 years. We apply a regression approach to measure the information in forward interest rates and introduce both a curve fitting method and an alternative data source. We find more information in the recent U.S. Treasury term structure about future interest rates than about expected holding period returns. These results document a significant departure from prior empirical findings.     

The Impact of Maternity Minimum Stay Mandates on Hospitalizations: An Extension

Due to concerns about the health impacts of deliveries with short postpartum hospital stays, many states—and later the federal government—passed mandates regulating the minimum length of hospitalizations insurance policies had to cover. We use the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project-National Inpatient Sample to analyze whether these mandates have differential impacts on various groups of patients. We find that mandates do have a differential impact based on race and hospital size. These differential effects, however, are not equally present in all analyzed discharge groups.     

Collective action and market formation: An integrative framework

Research Summary : While extant research recognizes the importance of collective action for market formation, it provides little understanding about when and to what extent collective action is important. In this article, we develop a novel theoretical framework detailing what collective action problems and solutions arise in market formation and under what conditions. Our framework centers on the development of market infrastructure with three key factors that influence the nature and extent of collective action problems: perceived returns to contributions, excludability, and contribution substitutability. We apply our framework to diverse market formation contexts and derive a set of attendant propositions. Finally, we show how collective action problems and solutions evolve during market formation efforts and discuss how our framework contributes to strategic management, entrepreneurship, and organization literatures. Managerial Summary : This article lays out the key considerations that players operating in new markets should contemplate when making nontrivial investments in those spaces. As collective action problems can thwart efforts to establish new markets, we ask: When and under what conditions should market players collaborate rather than act independently? And if players collaborate, how should they coordinate to establish a new market? To address these research questions, we develop a novel generalizable framework of collective action in market formation. Our framework assesses the presence and type of collective action problems that hinder market formation and identifies potential solutions tied to those collective action problems.