Imperfect competition law enforcement

Competition policy is a subject of often heated debate. Competition authorities, seeking to prevent or battle anticompetitive acts in complex cases to the best of their abilities, regularly find themselves advised by rival economic theories and disputed empirical analyses. As a consequence, there is a real possibility that they may occasionally err, missing true violations of competition law or finding firms liable that actually had no other intentions than good competition. In this paper, possible consequences of such imperfect competition law enforcement on firm strategies are considered. In a simple model of collusion, it is found that the incidence of anti-competitive behavior increases in both types of enforcement errors: Type II errors decrease expected fines, while Type I errors encourage industries to collude precautionary when they face the risk of a false conviction. Hence, fallible antitrust enforcement may stifle genuine competition, thus stimulating the very behavior competition policy is meant to deter. When enforcement errors are non-negligible, competition authorities run the risk of being over-zealous, in the sense that welfare is best served by an authority that is selective and conscientious in its targeting of alleged anticompetitive acts.     

Corruption in public service delivery: An experimental analysis

To improve our understanding of corruption in service delivery, we use a newly designed game that allows us to investigate the effects of the institutional environment on the behavior of service providers and their monitors. We focus on the effect of four different factors: whether monitors are accountable to the service recipients, the degree of observability of service providers’ effort, the providers’ wages and the providers’ professional norms. In accordance with theory, we find that service providers perform better when monitors are elected by service recipients and when their effort is more easily observed. However, there is only weak evidence that service providers perform better when paid more. Monitors are more vigilant when elected and when service providers are paid more. Playing the game with Ethiopian nursing students, we also find that those with greater exposure to the Ethiopian public health sector perform less well, either as provider or as monitor, when the experiment is framed as a public health provision scenario, suggesting that experience and norms affect behavior.     

Cost-effectiveness of 3-month paliperidone therapy for chronic schizophrenia in the Netherlands

Background: A new depot formulation of paliperidone has been developed that provides effective treatment for schizophrenia for 3 months (PP3M). It has been tested in phase-3 trials, but no data on its cost-effectiveness have been published.

Purpose: To determine the cost-effectiveness of PP3M compared with once-monthly paliperidone (PP1M), haloperidol long-acting therapy (HAL-LAT), risperidone microspheres (RIS-LAT), and oral olanzapine (oral-OLZ) for treating chronic schizophrenia in The Netherlands.

Methods: A previous 1-year decision tree was adapted, based on local inputs supplemented with data from published literature. The primary analysis used DRG costs in 2016 euros from the insurer perspective, as derived from official lists. A micro-costing analysis was also conducted. For the costing scenario, official list prices were used. Clinical outcomes included relapses (treated as outpatients, requiring hospitalization, total), and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs). Rates and utility scores were derived from the literature. Economic outcomes were the incremental cost/QALY-gained or relapse-avoided. Model robustness was examined in scenario, 1-way, and probability sensitivity analyses.

Results: The expected cost was lowest with PP3M (8,781€), followed by PP1M (10,325€), HAL-LAT (11,278€), RIS-LAT (11,307€), and oral-OLZ (13,556€). PP3M had the fewest total relapses/patient (0.36, 0.94, 1.39, 1.21, and 1.70, respectively), hospitalizations (0.11, 0.46, 0.40, 0.56, and 0.57, respectively), emergency room visits (0.25, 0.48. 0.99, 0.65, and 1.14, respectively) and the most QALYs (0.847, 0.735, 0.709, 0.719, and 0.656, respectively). In both cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analyses, PP3M dominated all other drugs. Sensitivity analyses confirmed base case findings. In the costing analysis, total costs were, on average, 31.9% higher than DRGs.

Conclusions: PP3M dominated all commonly used drugs. It is cost-effective for treating chronic schizophrenia in the Netherlands. Results were robust over a wide range of sensitivity analyses. For patients requiring a depot medication, such as those with adherence problems, PP3M appears to be a good alternative anti-psychotic treatment.     

The Real of Community,the Desire for Development and the Performance of Egalitarianism in the Peruvian Andes: A Materialist–Utopian Account

The paper proposes a materialist–utopian perspective for explaining the persistence of community in the Andes by drawing upon Lacanian theory and the thought of the Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui. What characterizes the Andean comunidad are not notions of belonging and identity, but the existence of a fundamental antagonism (what I call the ‘Real of community’). The argument unfolds ethnographically. Usibamba, a peasant comunidad in the central Peruvian Andes, is known as a highly egalitarian and disciplined comunidad. However, a disjunction exists between deep‐seated aspirations of justice and egalitarianism and the particularistic interests of families and individuals. This disjunction manifests itself in a contradictory, schizophrenic regime of discipline and negotiation that produces ‘split subjects’. Desiring development and the staging of theatrical performances of egalitarianism enables Usibambinos to deal with this disjunction and to present an image of unity and determination. I conclude that the comunidad persists through ‘impossible political acts’ brought about by a residual but growing category of landless comuneros who constitute ‘the part of no part’, the uncounted or unnamed.     

Rethinking determinants of ICT acceptance: Towards an integrated and comprehensive overview

In the contemporary ICT environment, we are confronted with a growing number of failing innovations. New technological innovations often fail because too much attention is still given to (technical) product-related features without taking into account the most important parameters of user acceptance. In addition, suppliers of ICT products often lack accurate insight into the distinguished profiles of their (potential) target audience. In this article theoretical considerations and empirical results on this matter are highlighted. First of all, an approach is proposed in which more traditional and often scattered vision(s) on adoption determinants are broadened into an integrated framework. The approach provides a stronger base for better targeting of (new) users of technologies. Secondly, the authors elaborate on this by rethinking these determinants with regard to later adopters. Later adopters (or even non-adopters/users) are often ignored in technology acceptance research. However, especially for policy purposes, the understanding of why people do not adopt or do not use ICT is strongly relevant in the light of the development of an inclusive information society. Both approaches are illustrated by case studies starting from a common list of nineteen ICT appropriation determinants. This framework enables to better profile both earlier and later adopters as well as it allows to formulate recommendations how to bring innovations in the market. Summarizing, this contribution offers an integrated approach on technology acceptance research by bridging the gap between a market and a policy-oriented point of view.     

The International Integrated Reporting Framework: Key Issues and Future Research Opportunities

This paper has three main aims. First, the paper introduces the concept of integrated reporting (<IR>) as described by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC). A background to the development of the <IR> concept over the 4‐year period from the inception of the IIRC in 2010 is provided, culminating in the release by the IIRC of a Consultation Draft (CD) of the <IR> framework in March 2013. Second, the paper discusses key issues currently being debated relating to the CD that the IIRC will need to resolve prior to the expected release of their <IR> framework in late 2013. This discussion is based on issues identified and reported to the IIRC by a subcommittee of the International Association for Accounting Education and Research (IAAER) comprised of international accounting academics. Finally, the paper identifies a range of potential research issues relating to the development and implementation of <IR>.     

Marketmaking Middlemen

This article develops a model in which market structure is determined endogenously by the choice of intermediation mode. There are two representative modes of intermediation that are widely used in real-life markets: one is a middleman mode where an intermediary purchases inventory from the wholesale market and resells to buyers; the other is a market-making mode where an intermediary offers a platform for buyers and sellers to meet and trade. We show that a marketmaking middleman, who adopts a mixture of these two intermediation modes, can emerge in a directed search equilibrium and discuss implications for the market structure.     

Generational accounts for Belgium: fiscal sustainability at a glance

This paper uses generational accounts to analyse the long term sustainability of Belgian public finances. We derive age-profiles of detailed tax and expenditure categories from micro data and microsimulation models, and plug them into a long run demographic projection. We assess fiscal long term sustainability under current fiscal and budgetary policy for the base year 2010, and perform simulations of counterfactuals to determine the relative contribution of the most important factors of the long run unsustainability. This update of the generational accounts for Belgium shows that, not unexpectedly, the budgetary situation in Belgium violates the intertemporal budget constraint and hence is unsustainable in the long run. The current level of explicit debt, however, only plays a minor role in explaining this sustainability problem. Ageing and the related increase in age related expenditures are the main drivers of the long run fiscal imbalance and the high level of implicit debt. We disentangle the Belgian generational accounts into their regional components and show that the major explanation for regional differences in generational accounts is not divergent demographic projections, but the wide differences in socio-economic situations, as revealed by the region specific age-profiles.