AIDS and economic growth: A human capital approach

Using a model that combines growth and health capital equations this study analyses the impact of HIV/AIDS on economic growth. The econometric results indicate that the epidemic's effects have been substantial; in Africa the marginal impact on income per capita of a 1% increase in HIV prevalence rate is minus 0.59%. Even in countries with lower HIV prevalence rates the marginal impacts are non-trivial. Hence while the human and social costs of the HIV/AIDS epidemic are major causes for concern, these results indicate that the macroeconomic affects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic are important.     

Correcting for On-Site Sampling in Random Utility Models

This study demonstrates how the joint distribution of a set of conditional trip counts to a system of recreation-sites can be adjusted for on-site sampling. An econometric approach is proposed that addresses both the size-biased distribution of the sampled visits and the weighted distribution of reported visits to ancillary destinations in a multivariate random utility framework. Estimation results indicate that uncorrected models produce biased estimates of trip counts and welfare measures. The empirical application examines jet skiing in the Lake Tahoe region.     

Sterling and the Euro

The question of whether and when sterling should join Economic and Monetary Union is likely to be one of the key battlegrounds in the next election campaign. In this article, Erik Britton and Scott Livermore argue that there is no clear economic case in favour of sterling's entry to EMU. However, if as the government asserts – the political will to join exists, steps could be taken now, adjusting the mix of macroeconomic policy, to ensure that convergence was likely shortly after the next election.     

Travel behavior within Canada’s older population: a cohort analysis

The unprecedented demographic change of the aging Canadian society has raised numerous questions, including the provision of health care and the national pension plan to an increasingly large older population. Surprisingly, however, there is little Canadian literature regarding the travel behavior of its older population, an oversight that this paper addresses. Using the 1986, 1992, and 1998 General Social Surveys and pseudo-cohort methods, this paper addresses changing driving behavior among older Canadians, and compares the ‘old’ and ‘transitional old’ to younger-aged cohorts. Results indicate that while older Canadians undertake fewer trips, and travel for different reasons than those in the labor force, their reliance upon the private automobile for transportation is no less significant. Specifically, we demonstrate that the number of trips by car with older drivers increase over the study period as the population ages.     

Cross-Cultural Business Research: Introduction to the special issue

As markets become increasingly global, an understanding of the world's cultures is imperative. This special issue consists of nine articles devoted to increasing our understanding of culture. It follows the 11th Cross-Cultural Research Conference, which was held in Puerto Rico in December 2005. An open invitation to conference participants and other interested researchers resulted in 56 submissions for the special issue. Articles chosen were subjected to several rounds of double-blind reviews and revisions. They cover a variety of topics including vacationing, managerial competency appraisal, horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism, consumer services, cultural conditioning, electronic word-of-mouth, the global hip-hop culture, ethical attitudes, and impulse buying behavior.     

Strategyproof sharing of submodular costs:budget balance versus efficiency

Summary. A service is produced for a set of agents. The service is binary, each agent either receives service or not, and the total cost of service is a submodular function of the set receiving service. We investigate strategyproof mechanisms that elicit individual willingness to pay, decide who is served, and then share the cost among them. If such a mechanism is budget balanced (covers cost exactly), it cannot be efficient (serve the surplus maximizing set of users) and vice-versa. We characterize the rich family of budget balanced and group strategyproof mechanisms and find that the mechanism associated with the Shapley value cost sharing formula is characterized by the property that its worst welfare loss is minimal. When we require efficiency rather than budget balance – the more common route in the literature – we find that there is a single Clarke-Groves mechanism that satisfies certain reasonable conditions: we call this the marginal cost pricing mechanism. We compare the size of the marginal cost pricing mechanism's worst budget surplus with the worst welfare loss of the Shapley value mechanism. Received: October 26, 1998; revised version: December 3, 1999     

Information Diffusion Effects in Individual Investors' Common Stock Purchases: Covet Thy Neighbors' Investment Choices

We study the relation between households' stock purchases andstock purchases made by their neighbors. A ten percentage pointincrease in neighbors' purchases of stocks from an industryis associated with a two percentage point increase in households'own purchases of stocks from that industry. The effect is considerablylarger for local stocks and among households in more socialstates. Controlling for area sociability, households' and neighbors'investment style preferences, and the industry composition oflocal firms, we attribute approximately one-quarter to one-halfof the correlation between households' stock purchases and stockpurchases made by their neighbors to word-of-mouth communication.     

Testing for Processor Market Power in the Markets for Cattle and Hogs in Canada

Deviations of livestock input prices from processor marginal value product are usually interpreted as an indication of the application of market power by the meat packing industry. However, market power depends on economic conditions that can influence the behavior of meat packers in the market for cattle and hogs. An industry-level translog profit function is applied to data on the Canadian finished cattle and hog markets and industry-wide oligopsony market power functions are estimated. The estimates suggest beef packers exercised a small but sustained amount of market power in the Canadian finished cattle market from 1978 to 1997. This is not the case in the market for hogs, which was competitive from 1960 to 1997. Application of market power in packers'purchases of farm animals decreased with increases in the utilization of domestic supply of slaughter animals and with increased levels of livestock exports. Livestock productivity increases appear to have significantly enhanced oligopsony power in packers'purchases of farm animals. The analysis suggests that beef processors may exert market power when cattle prices are relatively higher.