Tobacco and alcohol: complements or substitutes?

The question of whether alcohol and tobacco are consumed as complements or substitutes is crucial for determining the side-effects of anti-smoking policies. Numerous papers have empirically addressed this issue by estimating demand systems for alcohol and tobacco, and subsequently calculating cross-price effects. However, this traditional approach is often seriously hampered by insufficient price variation observed in survey data. We, therefore, suggest an alternative instrumental variables approach that statistically mimics an experimental study and does not rely on prices as explanatory variables. This approach is applied by means of German survey data. Our estimation results suggest that a reduction in tobacco consumption results in a moderate reduction in alcohol consumption. It is demonstrated that this implies that alcohol and tobacco are complements. Hence, we conclude that successful anti-smoking policies will not result in the unintended side-effect of an increased (ab)use of alcohol.     

Political pressures and the credibility of regulation: can profit sharing mitigate regulatory risk?

When price-cap rules determine the structure of prices for a long period, they suffer a credibility problem and introduce an element of risk especially if a firm’s profits are “too large”. Profit sharing may be seen as a device to pre-determine price adjustments and thus to decrease regulatory risk. We analyse the effects of profit sharing on the incentives to invest, using a real option approach. Absent credibility issues, a well designed profit sharing system may be neutral relative to a pure price cap. With regulatory risk, profit sharing is preferable to a pure price-cap one, if it intervenes for high enough profit levels.

Is a Policy of Free Movement of Workers Sustainable?

In this paper, we study the costs and benefits of the adoption of a policy of free movement of workers. For countries to agree on uncontrolled movements of workers, short‐run costs must be outweighed by the long‐term benefits of better labor‐market flexibility and income smoothing. We show that such a policy is less likely to be adopted when workers are more impatient and less risk‐averse, when production technologies display stronger decreasing returns, and when countries trade a significant share of their products.     

Product standards, trade disputes, and protectionism

Abstract.  Disputes over national product standards are a major source of tension in international trade negotiations. The usual pattern is that exporters challenge new product standards as a 'disguised barrier to trade.' The paper develops a two‐country political agency model of standard setting. It is shown that there exists a political equilibrium in which the importing country on average applies a more stringent standard than the exporting country. This difference can be due either to a too lax standard in the exporting country or a too stringent standard in the importing country. JEL classification: F18, F13, D72     

The future of in-store technology

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science - This paper introduces a conceptual framework for understanding new and futuristic in-store technology infusions. First, we develop a...