Product Standards and the Economics of Time

It is increasingly common for policy makers to evaluate product standards in cost-benefit terms. However, such evaluations focus on the product itself rather than the product in use. The possible impact of the standard on consumers’ use of time is therefore overlooked. As a result, cost-benefit relationships could be systematically misrepresented.     

Validating the international tourist role scale

This study was designed to validate the international tourist role scale and the three dimensions it revealed. The purpose of this attitudinal scale was to measure the tourist role typology. United States adult outbound tourists flying with 11 major airlines returned useful questionnaires. This study validated the role scale as a reliable one that properly identified three conceptual dimensions of international tourist typology and successfully provided measures of tourists’ novelty-seeking preferences on the three dimensions. The study demonstrated, however, that the scale would measure the novelty-seeking preferences of international tourists more effectively if it were supplemented by other measures.     

Preventives Versus Treatments Redux: Tighter Bounds on Distortions in Innovation Incentives with an Application to the Global Demand for HIV Pharmaceuticals

Kremer and Snyder (Q J Econ 130:1167–1239, 2015) show that demand curves for a preventive and treatment may have different shapes though they target the same disease, biasing the pharmaceutical manufacturer toward developing the lucrative rather than the socially desirable product. This paper tightens the theoretical bounds on the potential deadweight loss from such biases. Using a calibration of the global demand for HIV pharmaceuticals, we demonstrate the dramatically sharper analysis achievable with the new bounds, allowing us to pinpoint potential deadweight loss at 62% of the global gain from curing HIV. We use the calibration to perform policy counterfactuals, assessing welfare effects of government policies such as a subsidy, reference pricing, and price-discrimination ban. The fit of our calibration is good: we find that a hypothetical drug monopolist would price an HIV drug so high that only 4% of the infected population worldwide would purchase, matching actual drug prices and quantities in the early 2000s before subsidies in low-income countries ramped up.     

Introduction to the Special Issue on “The Intersection Between Industrial Organization and Healthcare Economics”

This article introduces the special issue on the intersection between industrial organization and healthcare economics. This intersection has received increasing research interest, growing from 2% of the industrial-organization literature in 1991 to 6% in 2016. We describe the nine included articles, which cover a range of healthcare markets that include hospital services, insurance, and pharmaceuticals.     

Economics at the Antitrust Division: 2017–2018

This article describes some of the work of Antitrust Division economists over the past year, with a focus on modeling. It begins by illustrating the mapping from evidence to prediction using tools for assessing the effects of mergers using Bertrand, Cournot, and auction models. It then turns to two hot topics in competition policy: the implications of claims of increasing margins for merger enforcement and the validity of claims of increasing concentration. Finally, it considers how mergers affect prices in bargaining models.     

The Influence of Children on Family Life Cycle Spending Behavior: Theory and Applications

This study examines the effect of children on family consumption decisions during different stages of the life cycle. An empirical model that incorporates both continuous measures of adult equivalence and a flexible functional form is used. Results indicate that durables, food eaten (purchased) away from home, and adult clothing are luxury goods for two-child families. Economies of scale are noted for food and shelter expenditures. Two-child families substitute out of expenditures for meals eaten away from home, adult clothing, and other goods and services to meet increased demand due to the children's presence.