Jointness in production and farmers' willingness to supply non-marketed ecosystem services

This paper highlights how farmers' willingness to supply non-marketed ecosystem services (ES) is influenced by whether or not the non-marketed ES are produced jointly with agricultural products. When marketed products and non-marketed ES share some production inputs the production relationships between the two may be complementary, competitive or substitutive. Using a cost minimization framework, it is shown how complementary relationships lead to costless voluntary provision of non-marketed ES (typically the case for ES that are supportive of provisioning ES for marketed farm products). It is also shown how competitive production relationships lead to provision of non-marketed ES at lower cost than when non-marketed ES are direct substitutes for farm products or are produced outside of agriculture. The paper closes by showing how the minimum willingness to accept (WTA) payment for ES that are complementary/competitive is less than or equal to the minimum WTA for the same ES produced in substitute or independent production relationships.     

An integrated analysis of the effects of local water institutions on irrigated agriculture outcomes in the arid western United States

Irrigation water rights and their governance structures constitute the foundation of local water institutions and profoundly influence water resource allocations, irrigated agricultural productivity and other consumptive water uses in the arid climate zones. This article explores the regional structures of irrigation water rights and water governance and empirically analyses the priority effects of water rights on irrigated agriculture at the micro level in Idaho, an arid and semiarid state in the western United States. We integrate a unique data set of water rights and water supplies with agricultural features and environmental characteristics into our empirical analysis. Results indicate that seniority in water resources allocation has significant, positive effects on both the average crop revenue and crop water use efficiency. Local water rights structures differ significantly in seniority and water sources from region to region. In response to the heterogeneity in local water rights structures, the aforementioned effect of allocative priority of water rights on average crop revenue per hectare and crop water productivity varies significantly, reaching up to an 87% difference, when measured across regions. In addition, the priority effects of water rights are nonlinear, which reflects the influence of historical patterns of water rights establishment on water institutions to date.     

Hospital economic impact from hemostatic matrix usage in cardiac surgery

Objective:

Improved health outcomes can result in economic savings for hospitals and payers. While effectiveness of topical hemostatic agents in cardiac surgery has been demonstrated, evaluations of their economic benefit are limited. This study quantifies the cost consequences to hospitals, based on clinical outcomes, from using a flowable hemostatic matrix vs non-flowable topical hemostatic agents in cardiac surgery.

Research design and methods:

Applying clinical outcomes from a prospective randomized clinical trial, a cost consequence framework was utilized to model the economic impact of comparator groups. From that study, clinical outcomes were obtained and analyzed for a flowable hemostatic matrix (FLOSEAL, Baxter Healthcare Corporation) vs non-flowable topical hemostats (SURGICEL Nu-Knit, Ethicon–Johnson &; Johnson; GELFOAM, Pfizer). Costing analyses focused on the following outcomes: complications, blood transfusions, surgical revisions, and operating room (OR) time. Cardiac surgery costs were analyzed and expressed in 2012 US dollars based on available literature searches and US data. Comparator group variability in cost consequences (i.e., cost savings) was calculated based on annualized impact and scenario testing.

Results:

Results suggest that if a flowable hemostatic matrix (rather than a non-flowable hemostat) was utilized exclusively in 600 mixed cardiac surgeries annually, a hospital could improve patient outcomes by a reduction of 33 major complications, 76 minor complications, 54 surgical revisions, 194 transfusions, and 242?h of OR time. These outcomes correspond to a net annualized cost consequence savings of $5.38 million, with complication avoidance as the largest contributor.

Conclusions:

This cost consequence framework and supportive modeling was used to evaluate the hospital economic impact of outcomes resulting from the usage of various hemostatic agents. These analyses support that cost savings can be achieved from routine use of a flowable hemostatic matrix, rather than a non-flowable topical hemostat, in cardiac surgery.     

The effect of buyer behaviors on preferred customer status and access to supplier technological innovation: An empirical study of supplier perceptions

Buying firms are increasingly looking to suppliers for technological innovations that enhance the competitive position of their new products. However, extant research provides limited guidance on how buying firms may gain access to suppliers' innovative technologies. To address this gap in the literature, we draw from social exchange theory to posit sequential relationships among buyer behaviors, preferred customer status, and supplier's willingness to share technological innovations. We test our assertions by applying structural equation modeling statistical analyses to survey response data from 233 sales personnel of production good suppliers in the U.S. automotive industry. Whereas our results show that two buyer behaviors – early supplier involvement and relational reliability – positively affect preferred customer status, a third behavior – share of sales – has no effect. In turn, we find that preferred customer status is positively associated with supplier's willingness to share new technology with the buyer. Further, our findings indicate that preferred customer status fully mediates the benefits exchanged within a buyer–supplier relationship. Hence, our study highlights why buyers seeking innovations should take care that their behavior is appropriate for managing suppliers' perceptions. Accordingly, our results provide specific guidance to buyers as to how they may increase their access to suppliers' new technologies.     

Business cycle asymmetry via occasionally binding international borrowing constraints

This paper illustrates how occasionally binding credit constraints can be quantitatively important to delivering business-cycle asymmetries. An empirical exercise suggests that countries display some business-cycles asymmetries, and an open-economy real business-cycle model is assessed where an international borrowing constraint binds occasionally. In the model, downward movements with a slack constraint are sharper and quicker than upward movements with a binding constraint, and this can deliver asymmetry over the business cycle. The model is calibrated to Canadian data and suggests that a necessary ingredient for asymmetry is a high initial level of foreign debt.     

Informational efficiency with ambiguous information

This paper proves the existence of fully revealing rational expectations equilibria for almost all sets of beliefs when investors are ambiguity averse and have preferences that are characterized by Choquet expected utility with a convex capacity. The result implies that strong-form efficient equilibrium prices exist even when many investors in the market make use of information in a way that is substantially different from traditional models of financial markets.     

Macroeconomic and bank-specific determinants of non-performing loans: the case of baltic states

Empirica - This study examines selected macroeconomic and bank-specific determinants of non-performing loans (NPLR) for a panel of 21commercial banks from the Baltics States (Estonia, Latvia and...     

DOES GNP EXAGGERATE GROWTH IN “ACTUAL” OUTPUT? THE CASE OF THE UNITED STATES

Measures of national product can be misleading because there is nonmarket production. There are also distortions due to transactional activities, which are expenditures to support transactions, not actual output consumed. For 1950–89, this study recalculates output for the United States, adjusting for transactional activities and nonmarket production. Due to relatively rapid growth in transactional activities, GNP overstates output growth in the 1950s; because there was slow expansion of transactional activities in the early 1970s, GNP understates actual output. Since 1974, increases in transactional activities and shifts to market production lead GNP to exaggerate improvement of "actual" output per capita.     

Labour Rents,Adjustment Costs and the Cost of US Steel Trade Restraints in the 1980s

Recent studies have compared labour gains from protection in import-competing industries with the costs of protection and found that those gains are not large enough to justify trade restraints. This study utilizes a new empirical technique for estimating the costs and benefits of protection in a partial equilibrium framework, and provides a complete and consistent accounting of labour benefits including both labour rents and adjustment costs saved. We find that a small steel tariff could have generated net welfare gains for the US in the 1980s, even though actual protection through Voluntary Restraint Agreements generated net welfare losses.