Does multimarket contact facilitate tacit collusion? Inference on conduct parameters in the airline industry

We provide empirical evidence that multimarket contact facilitates tacit collusion among airlines using a flexible model of oligopolistic behavior, where conduct parameters are modelled as functions of multimarket contact. We find (i) carriers with little multimarket contact do not cooperate in setting fares, whereas carriers serving many markets simultaneously sustain almost perfect coordination; (ii) cross‐price elasticities play a crucial role in determining the impact of multimarket contact on equilibrium fares; (iii) marginal changes in multimarket contact matter only at low or moderate levels of contact; (iv) assuming firms behave as Bertrand‐Nash competitors leads to biased estimates of marginal costs.     

Crop Insurance as a Strategy for Adapting to Climate Change

Financial insurance for extreme events can play an important role in hedging against the implications of climate change. This paper combines a comprehensive estimation strategy and a unique panel dataset to study the role of financial insurance in farmers' welfare under uncertainty. Data are drawn from a large Italian farm panel dataset. We find that (i) demand for insurance products is likely to increase in response to climatic conditions, and (ii) that the use of insurance reduces the extent of risk exposure. We also find that farms growing more crops are less likely to adopt the insurance scheme. This confirms what is found in the theoretical literature. Crop diversification can be a substitute for financial insurance in hedging against the impact of risk exposure on welfare.     

Outsourcing and Vertical Integration in a Competitive Industry

We develop a partial equilibrium, perfectly competitive framework of a (potentially) vertically integrated industry. There are three types of firms: upstream firms that use primary factors to produce an intermediate good; downstream firms that use primary factors and intermediate goods to produce a final good; and vertically integrated firms that do both. We establish conditions under which vertically integrated firms exist and outsource (part of) the production of the intermediate input. We study the changes in industry configurations resulting from changes in costs and demand.     

Risk-type density diagrams by crash type on two-lane rural roads

The research presented here aims to plot density diagrams per road crash risk type to identify all possible scenarios where driving is less than safe. The starting point was the prediction of injury crash rate on horizontal homogeneous segments of two-lane rural roads for three main injurious crash types (head-on/side collisions, rear-end crashes, and single-vehicle run-off-road crashes) as observed on the network. A careful analysis of the database shows that a wide variety of factors appear to be influenced or associated with the crash dynamic, as follows: the road scenario (combination of infrastructure and environmental conditions found at the site at the time of the crash), mean lane width, the horizontal curvature indicator (measurement of the curvature change rate), and mean speed. Crashes recorded from 2003 to 2010, of which 1597 were injurious, and 645 resulted only in damage to property, were analyzed on more than 3700?km of road network in Southern Italy. Generalized estimating equations with a negative binomial distribution were implemented. Risk-type density charts were plotted to thoroughly identify all possible combinations of existing explicative variables producing hazardous conditions on the road. The different shades in the diagrams represent different ranges of injurious crash rates: the white band shows low levels, while a black band shows high values. It is not possible to consider working on an explanatory variable to reduce hazardous conditions on the road network without also considering how this variation might affect the influence of the remaining explanatory variables on crash phenomena and, consequently, on the predictive model. The risk maps make it possible to keep under control in a simple and immediate approach the way each variable as a result of variations of a part or of all.     

Green Polities: Urban Environmental Performance and Government Popularity

Ascertaining whether local election results are driven by incumbents' performance while in office or mechanically reflect constituencies' ideological affiliation and macroeconomic conditions is crucial for evaluating the alleged accountability‐enhancing property of decentralization. On the basis of a unique score of urban environmental performance and the results of all elections held in the major Italian cities over a decade, we investigate the role of local (fiscal and environmental) vs. national issues in municipal elections. Although the empirical evidence points to a strong ideological attachment and a somewhat weaker “fiscal conservatism,” it reveals that media reported environmental rankings have an impact on the popularity of city governments.     

Advertising and search engines. A model of leadership in search advertising

We analyze the role of leadership in a multi-sided market as search advertising, assuming quantity competition and different entry conditions (with barriers to entry or endogenous entry). The model can be microfounded taking into account network effects, multi-homing on the advertising side and scale in search. If there are barriers to entry and the network effects are strong, there is an incentive for the leader to exploit them and attract more consumers to monopolize advertising. Under barriers to entry, the leading platform has also a strategic incentive to exploit scale in search, to manipulate search results to divert search traffic from other platforms, and to introduce limits to multi-homing, with the aim of expanding its market share and deny scale to competitors.     

Public Procurement, Market Integration, and Income Inequalities

Aggregate demand externalities are the source of the cumulative processes of the new economic geography. In this paper these externalities drive the endogenous emergence of the pattern of international specialization in integrating economies. A distinguishing feature of this work is that it considers two aspects of market integration simultaneously: reduction of trade costs, and liberalization of the public procurement market. The first dimension has been widely studied. Adding the second dimension, which is on the policy agenda of the WTO and the EU, yields insights concerning the pattern of international specialization, income inequalities, and welfare.     

Assessing performance and value-creation capabilities in Lean healthcare: insights from a case study

ABSTRACT

Lean thinking is increasingly being applied worldwide. Yet its actual impact is still a puzzle, particularly when a ‘full-implementation approach’—which entails the adoption of a strategic approach to Lean dissemination on policy deployment procedures—is used. Focusing on the healthcare sector, this paper presents and tests a comprehensive measurement framework for Lean interventions. The paper explains how Lean testing can help decision-makers to solve managerial issues related to Lean initiatives.     

Putable common stock

The underpricing of initial public offerings is a well-documented phenomenon in the financial literature. The purpose of this paper is to show how this empirical regularity could be solved by an appropriate choice of financing instruments, namely, by an intelligent mix of common stocks and put options. The latter additional instrument, modeled in this paper as a lump sum paid by insiders of the firm to outsiders, helps alleviate the asymmetry of information existing between insiders and outsiders of the corporation, allowing good firms to sell the package they offer at the full information value.     

A model of dumping and protectionism in the United States

Zusammenfassung Dumping und Protektionismus in den Vereinigten Staaten-ein Modell. — Der Autor untersucht die Beziehung zwischen Antidumpingma\nahmen und dem neuen Protektionismus, reformuliert und erweitert die Theorie des Dumping und sch?tzt ein Modell mit simultanen Gleichungen, um die Ursachen und Wirkungen von Antidumpingma\nahmen in den Vereinigten Staaten zu überprüfen. Der empirische Test des Modells zeigt, da\ die Durchdringung des amerikanischen Marktes mit Importwaren negativ korreliert ist mit dem Prozentsatz der erfolgreichen Antr?ge auf Antidumpingma\nahmen, aber positiv mit der überbewertung des Dollar und dem Grad an Offenheit der US-Wirtschaft. Die Zahl der registrierten Antidumpingantr?ge steht in direktem Verh?ltnis zum wirtschaftlichen Wachstum der Vereinigten Staaten im Vergleich zu anderen Industriel?ndern, und der Prozentsatz der erfolgreichen Antidumpingantr?ge ist negativ korreliert mit der Handelsbilanz, der H?he des Volkseinkommens und der Anzahl der registrierten Antidumpingantr?ge.

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Résumé Un modèle du dumping et du protectionisme aux Etats-Unis. — Cette étude examine les relations entre l’action anti-dumping et le nouveau protectionisme, revise et étend la théorie du dumping et estime un modèle d’équations simultanées pour examiner les causes et les effets de l’action anti-dumping aux Etats-Unis. Le test empirique du modèle démontre que la pénétration de l’importation dépend (i) de sens inverse du rapport des requêtes anti-dumping déposées, mais couronnées de succès et (ii) de sens positif de la surévaluation du dollar et du degré que l’économie américaine est ouverte. Le nombre des requêtes anti-dumping déposées dépend directement du croissance économique des Etats-Unis en relation aux autres pays industriels. Le rapport des requêtes anti-dumping dépend de sens inverse de la balance commerciale, du niveau du produit domestique et du nombre des requêtes anti-dumping déposées.

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Resumen Un modelo de dumping y proteccionismo para los EE UU. — Este trabajo examina la relatión entre una medida antidumping y el nuevo proteccionismo, reformula y extiende la teoria del antidumping y estima un modelo de ecuaciones simultáneas para estudiar las causas y efectos de medidas antidumping en los EE UU. El test empirico del modelo muestra (1) que la penetration con importaciones esta inversamente relacionada con el porcentaje de peticiones antidumping exitosas registradas y afectadas positivamente por la sobrevaluación del dólar y el grado de apertura de la economia de los EE UU, (2) que el numéro de peticiones antidumping registradas esta relacionado directamente con el credimiento de los EE UU relativo al de otros pa?ses industriales, y (3) que el porcentaje de peticiones antidumping exitosas está inversamente relacionado con el balance comercial, el nivel de ingreso nacional real y el núméro de peticiones antidumping registradas.