Banking and the Macroeconomy in China: A Banking Crisis Deferred?

The downturn in the world economy following the global banking crisis has left the Chinese economy relatively unscathed. This paper develops a model of the Chinese economy using a DSGE framework with a banking sector to shed light on this episode. It differs from other applications in the use of indirect inference procedure to test the fitted model. The model finds that the main shocks hitting China in the crisis were international and that domestic banking shocks were unimportant. However, directed bank lending and direct government spending was used to supplement monetary policy to aggressively offset shocks to demand. The model finds that government expenditure feedback reduces the frequency of a business cycle crisis but that any feedback effect on investment creates excess capacity and instability in output.     

Schumpeterian competition in heterogeneous oligopolies

The modeling of Schumpeterian competition as a process of innovation, imitation and selection was first presented by Nelson/Winter (1982) in a simulation study and further analyzed in a similar but general analytical formulation by Iwai (1984a, 1984b). Their results concerning the relations between the combination of the different forces of Schumpeterian competition and market structure respectively the distributions of profits are interesting, but restricted to competitive markets. Comparing rules of thumb and satisficing for the Ramp;D decisions the present study analyzes the process of Schumpeterian competition in a heterogeneous oligopoly. Firstly, the authors find for the Ramp;D-concentration relation results contrary to the traditional interpretation of Schumpeter. Secondly, Iwai’s (1984a, 1984b) qualitative results hold in this less restrictive modeling.     

Can microcredit reduce vulnerability to poverty? Evidence from rural Vietnam

Extant literature has extensively explored microcredit's impacts, confirming its essential role in poverty alleviation. However, most studies focus on poverty measures that exclusively emphasize current poverty status without adequately addressing the potential of falling into or remaining in poverty. Furthermore, the role of credit services in helping the poor in rural areas appears to be underexamined in the literature. To address this knowledge gap, this study investigates whether rural microcredit can reduce household vulnerability to poverty. A theoretical framework is developed to capture the mechanism by which microcredit borrowing has a vital role in household businesses and impacts the probability of being poor in the future. The Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey data set from 2008 to 2016 is used to explore this issue. The findings indicate that rural Vietnam's access to microcredit significantly reduces vulnerability to poverty. Moreover, better-off households are seemingly the most effective at using microcredit, whereas the opposite is found among worse-off households. These results are found to be robust using the propensity score matching method.     

Global Navigation Satellite System based tolling: state-of-the-art

Road pricing or road user charging may be understood as an economic concept regarding direct charges applied for using roads. Different pricing paradigms may be distinguished mainly refering to pricing of congested, non-expandable urban networks as well as pricing of expandable, uncongested (principally, interurban) road infrastructure. Numerous technologies within Intelligent Transport Systems can provide support in efficiently applying various charging mechanisms. Recently, among others, tolling systems have been deployed that rely on the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). The purpose of this paper is to discuss the state-of-the-art of using GNSS technology in road user charging.     

Model-Based Decision Support in Manufacturing and Service Networks

In this paper, we sketch some of the challenges that should be addressed in future research efforts for model-based decision support in manufacturing and service networks. This includes integration issues, taking into account the autonomy of the decision-making entities in face of information asymmetry, the modeling of preferences of the decision makers, efficiently determining robust solutions, i.e. solutions that are insensitive with respect to changes in the problem data, and a reduction of the time needed for model building and usage. The problem solution cycle includes problem analysis, the design of appropriate algorithms and their performance assessment. We are interested in a prototypical integration of the proposed methods within application systems, which can be followed up with field tests of the extended application systems. We argue that the described research agenda requires the interdisciplinary collaboration of business and information systems engineering researchers with colleagues from management science, computer science, and operations research. In addition, we present some exemplifying, illustrative examples of relevant research results.     

Design and evaluation of road pricing: state-of-the-art and methodological advances

This article provides an in-depth review of the state-of-the-art and describes methodological advances in the design and evaluation of road network pricing schemes. A number of paradigm shifts from the two polar cases of the marginal social cost pricing of road traffic congestion and revenue-maximizing road toll pricing are analyzed, as induced by the need to address realistic design complexities and constraints. The crucial role of the joint consideration of pricing strategies with optimal capacity provision and several network management measures is manifested and an integrated evaluation framework is suggested to incorporate a wide range of road pricing impacts into the scheme design process.     

Real-world healthcare resource utilization related to migraine treatment failure: a panel-based chart review in France,Germany, Italy,and Spain

Abstract

Aims: This retrospective chart review examined the six-month migraine-related healthcare resource use (HRU) among European patients who had ≥4 migraine days per month and previously failed at least two prophylactic migraine treatments.

Methods: Neurologists, headache specialists, and pain specialists in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain who treated ≥10 patients with migraine in 2017 were recruited (April–June 2018) to extract anonymized patient-level data. Eligible physicians randomly selected charts of up to five adult patients with clinically-confirmed migraine, ≥4 migraine days in the month prior to the index date, and had previously failed at least two prophylactic migraine treatments. Treatment failure was defined as discontinuation due to lack of efficacy and/or tolerability. Demographic and disease characteristics as of the index date, and migraine-related HRU incurred during the 6-month study period, were recorded.

Results: A total of 104 physicians contributed 168 charts for patients (63% female). On average, patients were 38?years old and failed 2.3 prophylactic treatments as of the index date. During the study period, 83% of patients had ≥1 outpatient visit for migraine in the physician’s office, and 27% went to the ER/A&E. Approximately 5% of patients were hospitalized for migraine, with an average of one hospitalization and an average length of stay of 3 days. Approximately 39% of patients had ≥1 blood test, 22% had ≥1 magnetic resonance imaging, 17% had ≥1 electroencephalogram, and 13% had ≥1 computerized tomography scan. Visits to other healthcare providers were common.

Limitations: This study is subject to the limitations of chart review studies, such as errors in data entry.

Conclusions: Across four European countries, the HRU burden of migraine among patients who previously failed at least two prophylactic treatments was high, indicating a need for more effective prophylactic treatments to appropriately manage migraine and reduce the HRU burden attributable to this common disorder.