Opting Out of Public Insurance: Is It Socially Acceptable?

The privatization of social services is being increasingly discussed. The market of social services is often characterized by market failures, like informational asymmetries, externalities, distributional problems, which all justify public intervention. But the quality of services provided by public authorities or by private insurers in the context of health insurance is different and could be observable. The public reimbursement of health care is often conditional on rules, like the choice of the physician or the hospital, that induce a disutility of using social insurance instead of private insurance. An alternative solution to a complete privatization is to allow some individuals to opt out. We can imagine that the government allows and even in some cases favors part of the population leaving the public health insurance system. We analyze the situations where the opting out is welfare improving. We then study the optimal policy depending on the characteristics of the economy considering a Rawlsian criterion.     

The “Machine contribution” in the European scene

The long-term financing of social security faces considerable problems which give rise to the question whether wages can and should continue to serve as the only assessment basis for social security contributions. The calculation of, at least, the employers’ contributions on a broader value added based foundation seems to offer a plausible alternative: human labour is being replaced more and more by technology: its value added could be used for financing social security. What would be the economic effects of such a “machine contribution” on employment, competitiveness and growth?     

Innovation strategy and the patenting behavior of firms

This paper investigates whether firms’ innovation strategies affect their patenting behavior, as measured by both the probability of having a patent portfolio and the number of active patents held. Three main dimensions of an innovation strategy are taken into account: the relative importance of basic research, applied research and development work in total R&D activities, the product or process orientation of innovation efforts, and the extent to which firms enter into collaborative R&D with other institutions. The major findings can be summarized as follows: (1) taking into account the various dimensions of an innovation strategy turns out to approximate the patenting behavior of firms better than the traditional Schumpeterian hypotheses related to firm size and market power; (2) there is a positive relationship between the patent portfolio of firms and an outward-oriented innovation strategy characterized by R&D partnerships with external organizations - scientific institutions and competitors in particular; (3) process-oriented innovators patent less than product-oriented innovators; (4) a stronger focus on basic and applied research is associated with a more active patenting behavior; (5) firms that perceive high barriers to innovation (internal, risk-related or external barriers) have smaller patent portfolios; (6) the perceived limitations of the patent system do not significantly influence the patenting behavior, suggesting that firms patent for other strategic reasons than merely protecting innovation rents.     

The prospect of online communication in the event of a disaster

In modern society, enormous amounts of information are instantly exchanged, and topics shift rapidly. People desire and share information to foster a sense of membership in their societies. The trend of Internet communication is present in many types of groups. During the circumstances of disasters, the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and Tsunami and Typhoon Haiyan (local name, Yolanda) in the Philippines in 2013, social networking services (SNS) constituted a considerably effective method for sharing/exchanging information about the significance of the disaster, confirming family members’ and friends’ whereabouts, locating shelters, relief, food and goods rationing, and so on. Not only did individuals seek/provide information, but government agencies also utilized the social media channels to communicate with the public. Hence, developing and adopting communication in a virtual space were considerably effective for decision-makers in providing emergency services. This study examined SNS users’ accounts based on discretionary decisions during two major disasters: the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011 and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013. In the case of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011, government agencies and NPOs actively utilized SNS functions, whereas the mass media distributed information during Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013.     

Not all international assignments are created equal: HQ-subsidiary knowledge transfer patterns across types of assignments and types of knowledge

Drawing on 50 semi-structured interviews in a case study of a Belgian multinational and its foreign subsidiary in Poland, we develop new insights into how using different types of international assignments (long-term expatriation, short-term expatriation, short-term inpatriation) allows a HQ-subsidiary dyad to transfer different types of knowledge (declarative, procedural, axiomatic, relational), both from and to HQ, during and after the assignment. We show how each type of assignment acts as a unique knowledge transfer channel, and why it is critical that HQ-subsidiary dyads use an appropriate combination and sequence of international assignments reflecting their specific knowledge transfer needs.     

Strategies for knowledge use in R&D and their implications for innovative performance

We argue that research on R&D strategy and on the use of external knowledge in R&D in particular should differentiate between distinct uses of external knowledge. We distinguish between uses of external knowledge for replication (using knowledge as is) vs. for compounding (building on acquired knowledge by combining it together with internally developed knowledge). We theorize about the respective innovative performance implications of these two strategies and compare them with a self-reliant strategy of internal R&D. We also elaborate contingencies for each strategy, pertaining to firm capabilities and cooperation. We test our predictions using a large sample survey of Dutch innovators in multiple industries. Our findings indicate that compounding firms perform better than replicating firms when the share of sales that consists of innovations that are new to the market is assessed, but they do not outperform firms with an internal R&D strategy. Furthermore, these differences disappear when the share of sales consisting of less novel innovations is studied. This research demonstrates the importance of distinguishing between R&D strategies that replicate vs. compound external knowledge.     

Debt, deficits and finite horizons: The stochastic case

We introduce aggregate uncertainty and complete markets into Blanchard's (1985) perpetual youth model. We derive a simple expression for the pricing kernel that can be used to close a variety of equilibrium models in which the set of agents changes over time.