Plea bargaining: on the selection of jury trials

We consider a model of the criminal court process, focusing on plea bargaining. A plea bargain provides unequal incentives to go to trial because innocent defendants are more willing to plead not guilty. We show that the court process implements the preferences of the person or group who is most concerned about wrongful conviction. If a prosecutor is more concerned about wrongful conviction than the jury, the prosecutor can shape the defendant pool at trial so that jurors act according to prosecutor’s preferences against judicial mistakes. Our model also connects insights from strategic jury models that usually omit plea bargaining with the actual criminal court process where most cases are resolved through plea bargaining. As an example, we show that the inferiority of the unanimity rule established in Feddersen and Pesendorfer (Am Polit Sci Rev 92(1):23–35, 1998) persists in spite of the addition of plea bargaining.     

Patterns of technology life cycles: stochastic analysis based on patent citations

Patent analysis has been considered as an effective means of estimating phases of a technology life cycle. However, previous studies have not considered the dynamic and idiosyncratic aspects of a technology’s progression since they were based on deterministic methods, mainly fitting s- or double s-shaped curves to patent application counts. Moreover, previous methods cannot be executed at the individual patent level. We propose a stochastic technology life cycle analysis to trace the phases of a technology’s progression based on patent citations and identify the patterns of technology life cycles at the individual patent level. At the heart of the proposed approach are a hidden Markov model to estimate the probability of a system being at a certain hidden state from observation and cluster analysis to group a set of objects according to their similarities. A case study of patents about laser technology in lithography is presented.     

Explorations - Introduction: Towards Lesbian,Gay, and Bisexual Perspectives in Economics: Why and How They May Make a Difference

The economics profession has only recently begun to include research on lesbians and gay men, but we argue that a lesbian economics has long existed, with documentation of anti-lesbian discrimination, discussion of its private and social costs, and practical work for change. This tradition, along with the newer traditions built upon work with gay men and bisexual people, provides a basis for feminists to expand work in economics on lesbian and gay issues. The articles in the symposium propose ideas for future research, for learning from other disciplines, and for creating a more welcoming academic climate.     

An alternative approach for portfolio performance evaluation: enabling fund evaluation relative to peer group via Malkiel’s monkey

We propose an implementable portfolio performance evaluation procedure that compares a portfolio with respect to the portfolios constructed by an infinite number of Malkiel’s blindfolded monkeys, or equivalently the whole enumeration of all possible portfolios. We argue that this approach exhibits two main advantages. First, it does not require any benchmark portfolios because a portfolio is being compared to an infinite number of portfolios. Second, it is market condition invariant. Since the market conditions are already reflected in the portfolio performances of an infinite blindfolded monkeys, our measure of portfolio performances is invariant to volatile market conditions.     

Regulation and welfare: evidence from paragraph IV generic entry in the pharmaceutical industry

This article estimates welfare effects of accelerated generic entry via Paragraph IV challenges. Using data from 2000–2008 for hypertension drugs in the United States, we estimate demand using a random‐coefficients logit model. We find consumers gain $42 billion whereas producers lose $32.5 billion from entry. This modest $9.5 billion gain in social welfare is consistent with our observation that overall consumption does not increase after entry—generic sales displace branded sales, shifting surplus downstream from producers to consumers, insurance companies, and retailers. We demonstrate significant cross‐molecular substitution and discuss challenges in determining what fraction of downstream surplus actually goes to consumers.     

Towards a hybrid model? A systematic review of human resource management research on Chinese state-owned enterprises (1993–2017)

Abstract

Over the past two decades, there has been a proliferation of research on human resource management (HRM) in Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as a result of the wide-reaching state-sector reform of the late 1980s. This article aims to provide a systematic review of literature on this topic and capture the nature of HRM in Chinese SOEs, both in research and practice. The article draws on 178 studies from 43 English academic journals over a period of 25?years (1993–2017). In analysing this literature and by taking stock of theoretical frameworks, research methods, themes and analysis of academic articles in this area, we have gained a number of insights. The study has found that the research methods used have shifted from qualitative and interpretive methodology toward quantitative and sophisticated modelling. A further insight is that there has been a relatively heavy reliance on institutional theory in the earlier studies reviewed, and since then a switch towards organizational behaviour perspectives. The level of analysis has moved from macro to micro level and thematic foci have become more diverse and complex. We highlight a number of avenues, theoretical and empirical, for future studies in this field.