An analysis of health expenditure on a microdata population basis

The objective of this paper is to analyse the hospitalisation and the pharmaceutical expenditures of a population. To do so, we will use cross-sectional information for the year 2004, referring to the whole population of one of the seventeen autonomous communities that make up the Spanish public health system, namely, Aragón. Given the important proportion of null expenditures, a model that takes into account the censored nature of the data must be specified. In our case, the model we choose is Heckman's (1979) selection model. The results are conclusive. i) Age, being a pensioner and being of Spanish nationality positively influence the generation of both types of expenditure; ii) on the contrary, the distance from the health centre to the hospital affects them negatively; iii) sex notably influences the generation of both types of expenditure, women generating higher level of expenditures; iv), in both cases, significant differences appear associated with the zone to which the user belongs; and v) we have also found that pharmaceutical expenditure depends significantly on the doctor who is prescribing.     

Investments in consumer relationships: a critical reassessment and model extension

This study is a critical reassessment and extension of De Wulf et al.'s (2001) framework investigating retail investments in consumer relationships. Their initial model relates four types of relationship marketing efforts to perceived relationship investment, in turn influencing relationship quality and ultimately behavioural loyalty. Based upon signalling theory, we extend this model by introducing product and service efforts as additional antecedents. Moreover, in contrast to the use of self-reported measures in the initial model, we apply customer database information in order to measure the construct of behavioural loyalty. Based upon 187 consumers reporting on their relationship with a Belgian apparel retailer, the SEM results provide guidelines for retailers how to increase the quality of their relationships with consumers by strengthening consumers' perceptions of relationship investment.     

French Retirement Reforms and Intragenerational Equity in Retirement Duration

As most developed countries, France has gone over the last 20 years through a process of pension system reforms, mainly aiming at increasing the average retirement age, through increasing the required number of contribution years or through postponing legal (minimal and/or normal) ages. Public debates over which lever should be preferred have been paramount in France, with concerns focusing on redistribution issues between high wage high life-expectancy and low-wage low life-expectancy workers. In this paper, we empirically address this issue by simulating the differentiated impacts of the past French reforms on average retirement ages across wage quartiles. Our simulations show that increasing the required duration criterion—as was done by the 1993 and 2003 reforms–have redistributive impact as regards retirement age, while increasing the normal age—as was done by the 2010 reform—has a counter-distributive impact. The redistributive impact on average of the required duration criterion however only holds thanks to the fact that disabled workers—most of them in the lowest wage quartile—are exempted from it. Last, increasing minimal age has ambiguous impacts according to gender: redistributive among women but counter-distributive among men.     

Evaluación de la conversión a café orgánico usando la metodología de opciones reales

Since the deregulation of the coffee market in 1989, price crises are proof of the uncertainty and risk around coffee growers’ income, particularly for small producers who, in the case of Mexico, have taken action such as the conversion of their traditional crops into the organic production system which, besides the ecological priority, allows them to get a higher income than from conventional coffee. In this document we model as real investment options (RIO) the possibility of conversion from one system into the other one also including the feasibility of abandoning this strategic decision.     

Role of Retailer Positioning and Product Category on the Relationship Between Store Brand Consumption and Store Loyalty

Recent empirical evidence regarding the relationship between store brand purchase and store loyalty suggests a nonmonotonic relationship (inverted U): positive up to a certain store brand consumption level, after which it becomes negative. To investigate this idea further, this research analyzes the role of (1) the retailer's competitive positioning, and specifically its price positioning, and (2) the product category. On the one hand, the more price oriented the retailer's positioning, the more favorable is the relationship between store brand consumption and store loyalty. The threshold level of store brand purchasing at which the relationship becomes negative occurs later, and this negative relationship is less prominent. On the other hand, the relationship between store brand consumption and store loyalty appears to differ across product categories as a consequence of several factors, including perceived risk. The relationship therefore appears more favorable for risky categories. An empirical study of ten retailers that adopt different price positions corroborates these propositions.     

A multi-process second-order latent growth curve model for subjective well-being

This article proposes a new approach to modelling longitudinal perceptions of subjective well-being (SWB). Several measures have been proposed in the literature to assess SWB and its determinants. Statistical approaches adopted include ordered probit models, fixed and random effects models and cross-lagged structural equation models. The British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) is a longitudinal national representative survey and contains several measures of SWB. Using BHPS data from 2002 to 2005, this article considers two main latent dimensions of life satisfaction: satisfaction with leisure and satisfaction with material issues. The latent trajectories of these two latent life satisfaction dimensions are simultaneously modeled in Mplus, using a multi-process, second-order latent growth curve model. Significant determinants of leisure and material satisfaction growth trajectories include socio-demographic characteristics, number of children in the household, number of hours worked per week, income and perceived health status.     

Integration Among Asia‐Pacific and International Stock Markets: Common Stochastic Trends and Regime Shifts

Are stock markets in the Asia‐Pacific region integrated with each other and with the US and Japan? The paper examines a number of common stochastic trends among stock prices in the US, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. If integration exists it is a fairly recent phenomenon. Institutional and economic considerations suggest the same is true so that a single common stochastic trend among Asian and North American markets is a recent phenomenon. The reason is that the stock markets studied were only recently sufficiently liberalized to permit some form of integration to emerge. Also, not only was the 1987 stock market crash significant, but the 1991 Gulf War also signalled a turning point in the degree of stock market integration among the countries studied.     

Exploitation- and exploration-based innovations: The role of knowledge in inter-firm relationships with distributors

Learning capacity is a critical factor for a firm’s innovation and competitiveness. This study explores the issue of how knowledge in inter-firm relationships with distributors influences manufacturers’ exploitation- and exploration-based innovations and performance. The empirical model examines the effect of three different types of knowledge-related issues in inter-firm relationships: (i) the acquisition of substantial knowledge (about products, technology, or markets) from distributors; (ii) the learning about collaborating with each distributor as the relationship evolves; and (iii) the general firm’s knowledge about managing distributors. A model of learning—innovation—performance is developed and tested in a sample of 201 firms in the food and beverages sector. The results reveal that: (i) knowledge about managing distributors promotes continuous learning from them; (ii) learning to collaborate is critical, as it favours knowledge acquisition and both types of innovations (exploitation- and exploration-based); (iii) learning from distributors weakens firms’ tendency to stress one type of innovation strategy over another; and (iv) knowledge in inter-firm relationships with distributors affects performance in a completely mediated way, that is, through innovation. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed in the conclusion of the paper.