Consumer demand for meat and the evaluation of agricultural policy

This study utilizes an econometric model of equilibrium in the U.S. livestock and feedgrain markets to investigate a number of questions of economic methodology and policy. Both nonlinear consumer demand equations that obey the constraints of neoclassical demand theory and a model of supply are used. This approach allows for the measurement of the effects on consumer welfare of actual government policies. In particular, the model is employed to analyze the welfare effects of an actual policy situation — the sale of U.S. grain to the Soviet Union in the third quarter of 1972.     

The impact of the residency teaching model on the efficiency of the emergency department at an academic center

The residency teaching model is often cited as a source of inefficiency in the healthcare system. We build a simulation model of an Emergency Department (ED) at a large urban academic hospital. Using historical data and a natural experiment involving residents in the ED, we show that residents in fact increase throughput and lower service and waiting times compared to not being there at all.     

Heterogeneous labor skills,the median voter and labor taxes

This paper analyzes the median voter?s most preferred sequences of labor taxes in the standard neoclassical growth model. We consider an infinite horizon economy in which agents are heterogeneous with respect to both initial wealth and labor skills. We start by providing a set of sufficient conditions for the existence of a Condorcet winner. We then characterize the most preferred tax sequence by the median agent. First, we show that marginal labor taxes depend directly on the absolute value of the distance between the median and the mean value of the skills? distribution. Second, we find that in contrast to the intuition stemming from standard representative agent economies, labor taxes are more volatile and counter-cyclical taxation (e.g., increasing taxes in recession) might be optimal depending on the correlation between inequality and TFP. To assess the quantitative relevance of these findings, we calibrate the model economy to six countries and find that counter-cyclical labor taxation is optimal for all but the US.     

Change and the development of entrepreneurial networks over time: a processual perspective

Although it is now well established that networks contribute to entrepreneurship by extending the individual entrepreneurial asset base of human, social, market, financial and technical capacity, little work, empirical or theoretical, has examined the dynamics of networking processes in a temporal framework. Drawing on evidence from three longitudinal case studies of entrepreneurs operating in the oil industry in the North East of Scotland, this paper presents an extensive empirical investigation into network transformation over time. We are thus able to chart networks in their historical contingency. This chronological lens allows us to view patterns in network continuity and change and enables us to develop a rich conceptual framework. The study demonstrates that networks are vital living organisms, changing, growing and developing over time. Yet set in their history, networks are much more than an extension of the entrepreneurial asset base. Our data shows how a reconceptualization of the nature of networking is called for; one which privileges an understanding of the relational dynamic as a structural configuration representing the social construction of the entrepreneurial environment. Thus our conceptualization proposes that networks actually create the environment, as it is understood and operated by the entrepreneur, and that consequently the networking process is the enactment of the environment.     

Swedish tribalism and Tanzanian entrepreneurship: preconditions for trust formation

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between entrepreneurship and the structure of the periphery. The objective is to reach an understanding of the entrepreneurial process within the context of the periphery, which is traditionally seen as a poor environment. The paper considers the concept of peripherality and identifies a process of gravitation that drains higher order services towards the core. However, this deterministic model does not correspond with the realities of the Scottish Highlands. The paradox is that new businesses are being created that appear to use old redundant peripheral values such as tradition. It is argued that it is the social construction of the periphery that produces this post-modern change. The qualitative methodology indicates the emergence of a new spatial paradigm of aesthetic consumption. Two indicative case studies are presented which show that entrepreneurship is the creation and extraction of value from the environment. Their businesses are the commodification of non-material and aesthetic values. Further analysis of these data demonstrates that entrepreneurs interpret their own version of the environment, rather than merely reacting to it. In turn, they enact this interpretation which forms the basis of their businesses.     

The serial correlation structure for a random process with steps

Summary We derive the detailed correlation structure for the simple “staircase model”: a process where white noise is superimposed on a deterministic step function that has equal rises and equal treads. It turns out that this structure is an immediate generalisation of that for a linear trend (which, for discrete data, can be alternatively considered as a step function with equal rises and unit treads). We compare the structure obtained with that for a random walk, and those for a subset of other ARIMA(p, 1,q) models, and those of general ARIMA(p, d, q) processes withd>1.