When prices hardly matter: Incomplete insurance contracts and markets for repair goods

This paper looks at markets characterized by the fact that the demand side is insured. In these markets, a consumer purchases a good to compensate consequences of unfavorable events, such as an accident or an illness. Insurance policies in most lines of insurance base indemnity on the insured's actual expenses, i.e., the insured would be partially or completely reimbursed when purchasing certain goods. In this setting, we discuss the interaction between insurance and repair markets by focusing, on one hand, upon the development of prices and the structure of markets with insured consumers, and, on the other hand, the resulting backlash on optimal insurance contracting. We show that even in the absence of ex post moral hazard the extension of insurance coverage will lead to an increase in prices as well as to a socially undesirable increase in the number of repair service suppliers if repair markets are imperfect.     

Does the reliability of institutions affect public good contributions? Evidence from a laboratory experiment

Reliable institutions, i.e., institutions that live up to the norms that agents expect them to keep foster cooperative behavior. We experimentally confirm this hypothesis in a public goods game with a salient norm that cooperation was socially demanded and corruption ought not to occur. When nevertheless corruption attempts came up, groups that were told that ‘the system’ had fended off the attempts made considerably higher contributions to the public good than groups that learned that attempts only did not affect their payoffs or that were not exposed to corruption at all.     

A model of wage and employment effects of service offshoring

This paper develops a two‐sector model of trade in goods and intermediate tasks that differ in tradability and skill intensity. A skill‐abundant country with high productivity is shown to offshore more unskilled tasks than skilled tasks, without relying on a particular correlation structure between tradability and skill intensity. With putty‐clay technology that allows retraining in the long run, transition from the non‐offshoring to the offshoring equilibrium generates wage and employment effects that switch from negative to positive as tradability declines, with the switches occurring at a higher degree of tradability for skilled tasks. This is consistent with the empirical literature.     

Kreps & Scheinkman with Product Differentiation

Kreps and Scheinkman (1983)’s celebrated result is that in a two-stage model of a market with homogeneous products in which firms noncooperatively pick capacities in the first stage and set prices in the second stage, the equilibrium outcome is that of a one-shot Cournot game. This note derives capacity best response functions for the first stage and extends the Kreps and Scheinkman result to the case of differentiated products.     

四川省全要素生产率的测算及分析

本文运用索洛余值法计算了1978—2007年四川省全要素生产率,对四川省的产出增长进行了分阶段分解和源泉核算。研究发现,四川省经济增长主要依靠要素投入。因此,要转变当前四川省的经济增长方式,就要进行科技创新和制度创新,同时加快农村劳动力转移和产业结构调整。     

Macroeconomic transitions and the transmission mechanism: Evidence from Turkey

This paper investigates changes to the macroeconomic transmission mechanism in Turkey following a major reform of monetary policy in the early 2000s. We use a Threshold VAR (TVAR) framework to test for and then estimate a model with endogenous transitions between regimes. We detect two regimes, with a clear transition between them in 2003–4. The pre-reform regime is characterized by high inflation, passive monetary policy and persistent responses to shocks. The post-reform regime is characterized by low inflation, active and credible monetary policy and markedly less persistent responses to shocks. Using a model that contains sufficient variables to capture diverse transmission mechanisms, working through the real exchange rate, domestic credit and monetary policy, we find evidence of sharp changes in transmission mechanisms. Post-reform, the response of Turkey to macroeconomic shocks has changed to be similar to those in other modern, market-orientated economies.     

Troubling tradeoffs in the Human Development Index

The 20th Human Development Report introduced a new version of its famous Human Development Index (HDI), which aggregates country-level attainments in life expectancy, schooling and income. The main change was to relax the past assumption of perfect substitutability between its components. Most users will not, however, realize that the new HDI has also greatly reduced its implicit weight on longevity in poor countries, relative to rich ones. By contrast, the new HDI's valuations of extra schooling are now very high—many times the economic returns. An alternative index is proposed that embodies less troubling tradeoffs while still allowing imperfect substitution.     

阅读难易程度与信息披露质量——基于易读衡量和关联因素视角的分析

当前信息披露传递的质量与效率正受到多方利益相关者的日益关注,其中披露信息阅读难易程度的相关研究由此开始得以重视。文章系统梳理比较了国内外易读性衡量及研究的方法与发展趋势,进而从信息提供者和信息使用者的角度,探讨企业操纵信息披露阅读难易程度的关联因素与后续效应,并提出未来在财经领域强化信息披露阅读难易程度相关研究的思路与建议。     

Integrating service and design: the influences of organizational and communication factors on relative product and service characteristics

The aim of this study is to identify the organizational and communication antecedents, and evaluate the consequences on relative product and service characteristics, of the use of service-sourced information by product designers during new product development. An empirical study of 121 product design managers demonstrates that a firm’s market orientation is improved by a healthy working relationship between product designers and service employees. Such a relationship motivates designers to use service-sourced information disseminated to them, enhancing both product and service characteristics of the new offering. The authors discuss how communication channels and information content affect the information use of product designers. Product designers value written information most. Information use does not relate to the frequency of receiving verbal or electronic information. Information about product ergonomics positively influences product designers’ perceptions of the information, whereas information on product aesthetics negatively influences their perceptions.

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