Nineteenth Century Urban Market Failure?: Chadwick on Funeral Industry Regulation

This essay analyzes the regulatory theory and policy preceptions of Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890), the premier Benthamite utilitarian reformer. We focus on and analyze Chadwicks economic diagnosis of the London funeral market in the first half of the nineteenth century. In his view, externalities and market failure in both the burial and funeral service markets demanded socialization of property rights and implementation of a franchise bidding scheme. Chadwicks rationales for government intervention, including high taxes and information costs—unique, we believe, for his time—provide the basis for numerous forms of contemporary regulations at all levels in the United States today.     

Latent Demand for Urban Housing in the People's Republic of China

A new micro-data set demonstrates that, in urban China, own-built dwellings are 75% larger than state-owned dwellings. A switching regression with endogenous switching demonstrates that families with less privileged positions in the Chinese economy are more likely to inhabit own-built housing. The relationships between family characteristics and dwelling sizes in the own-built and state-owned sectors differ dramatically. However, unobserved characteristics, probably includingguanxi, play crucial roles in both. Depending on these characteristics, families in state-owned dwellings might have two-thirds more living space were they to choose own-built dwellings.     

Changing rewards in contests: Has the three-point rule brought more offense to soccer?

In the mid-nineties FIFA decided to increase from two to three the number of points assigned to the winning team of a soccer match played under traditional round-robin national leagues. Since a game of soccer can be regarded as a contest, FIFA's measure provides an interesting case-study for analysing how a change in the system of rewards (from a zero to a non-zero sum rule) may affect the contestants' equilibrium behaviour. In this paper we try to assess, both theoretically and empirically, whether FIFA's new point rule has changed soccer towards a more offensive game, in which teams adopt more risky strategies. In particular, we evaluate the “na?ve hypothesis” according to which the measure would induce every team to play always more offensively, and we explore the extent to which the change in teams' behaviour may be affected by quality differentials between teams. Our most important hypothesis is that when the asymmetry between opposing teams is large enough, an increase in the reward for victory induces the weaker team to play more defensively, rather than the opposite. By looking at a subset of matches held in the Portuguese first division league, which approximate the conditions of our model, we find support for this hypothesis. First version received: July 1999/Final version received: May 2001     

Political regimes and foreign intervention

We present a theory of endogenous political regimes that emphasizes foreign direct investment as a motive for foreign governments to either induce regime transitions or promote regime consolidations. We characterize different forms of foreign intervention and identify the conditions under which they occur. We highlight new channels through which economic factors affect political regime choices. Foreign intervention is most likely to originate from countries where the government has a substantial pro-investor bias and to be directed at destinations where FDI is highly profitable and where income inequality is high. Foreign-sponsored coups d'état are more likely to be directed at democratic governments of poor countries. In destinations where FDI is highly profitable but the domestic elite is weak, foreign intervention tends to be aimed at stabilizing dictatorships. We relate the analysis to evidence on foreign intervention from around the world.     

A comparison of citizen and “expert” preferences using an attribute-based approach to choice

This paper explores whether expert judgements can be taken as a proxy for citizen preferences for determining investment strategies for public goods. As an illustration, we focus on the provision of Public Rights Of Way (PROW) by Local Government Authorities in England. These provide rights of passage over property to those other than the owners, and little information is available on the welfare effects of changes in the provision and use of PROW. Given limited funds, reliance on expert judgement could be a cost effective alternative for decision-making compared with stated preference surveys of citizens. Two methods are compared. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to elicit expert judgement to proxy citizen preferences for different attributes of PROW. The Choice Experiment (CE) technique is then used to derive preferences directly through personal interviews with citizens. Overall it was found that judicious use of AHP by experts can, in this instance, be used to represent citizen views. However, this result may not be easily generalisable to other settings.     

Anticorruption reforms,tax evasion,and the role of harassment

We examine the impact of anticorruption reforms on tax evasion when corruption and potentially harassment are endemic among tax auditors. We find that the threat of harassment may counterintuitively boost the impact of such anticorruption reforms on tax evasion and also eliminate corruption. Specifically, a moderate anticorruption policy can discontinuously reduce tax evasion to a level even below that under no corruption. Further strengthening of such policy can nonetheless prove counterproductive and increase tax evasion. On the contrary, in the absence of harassment, a moderate anticorruption reform induces higher tax evasion and sustenance of bribery. In this case, only a large reform can reduce tax evasion and eliminate corruption.     

When do sell-side analysts switch industries they follow?

Between 1984 and 2014 over 3400 sell-side analysts changed the primary industry they followed. This article documents that analysts are more likely to change their industries when their absolute and relative forecasting accuracy in that industry is low and when the accuracy in the new industry is high. Analysts are more likely to switch industries at the beginning of their careers, after a recent change of an employing brokerage house, and if they have a history of switching industries before. Analysts are less likely to make a switch when their forecasting activity in the industry is high, when the industry is followed by many analysts and when they are employed by a top brokerage house.     

Spillover Effects of Real and Nominal Uncertainties in India

This paper examines the spillover effects and the causality between inflation, output growth and its uncertainties for India. Using monthly data for the period from April 1980 to April 2011, we estimated a bi-variate GARCH in mean with BEKK representations. This study differs from the earlier works where the parameters in the BEKK representations are estimated individually and the inferences are drawn on the basis of the individual lagged variance, covariance, and error terms from the respective equations. The empirical evidence suggests that inflation uncertainty seems to have significant negative impact on output growth and positive impact on output uncertainty and there is a positive influence of output uncertainty on the inflation. More importantly, there are spillovers and volatility transmission effects between the macroeconomic uncertainties where the volatility in output growth is significantly influenced by the shocks and volatility in inflation.

     

AGRICULTURAL POLICY ISSUE OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: THE FUTURE OF DIRECT PAYMENTS IN THE CONTEXT OF EASTERN ENLARGEMENT AND THE WTO

MOCT-MOST: Economic Policy in Transitional Economies -