Combining Census and Survey Data to Trace the Spatial Dimensions of Poverty: A Case Study of Ecuador

Poverty maps provide information on the spatial distributionof living standards. They are an important tool for policymakers,who rely on them to allocate transfers and inform policy design.Poverty maps are also an important tool for researchers, whouse them to investigate the relationship between distributionwithin a country and growth or other economic, environmental,or social outcomes. A major impediment to the development ofpoverty maps has been that needed data on income or consumptiontypically are available only from relatively small surveys.Census data have the required sample size but generally do nothave the required information. This article uses the case ofEcuador to demonstrate how sample survey data can be combinedwith census data to yield predicted poverty rates for the populationcovered by the census. These poverty rates are found to be preciselymeasured, even at fairly disaggregated levels. However, beyonda certain level of spatial disaggregation, standard errors riserapidly.     

Competition for versus on the Rails: A Laboratory Experiment*

European countries and Japan are contemplating more competition in passenger rail service. In the Netherlands, the Ministry of Transport was assigned responsibility for making a recommendation to Parliament for choosing between competition for the rails and competition on the rails. The Ministry commissioned the experiments reported here to acquire better understanding of the properties of the alternative policies. Competition on the rails involves allocation of rights to use station and time‐slot routes by price bids in a combinatorial auction. Competition for the rails involves allocation of rights to regional monopolies by fare‐structure bids for supplying a prespecified minimum schedule.     

THE PRICING OF EQUITY CARVE‐OUTS DURING THE 1990s

We examine the level of underpricing and characteristics of equity carveouts (ECOs) from 1990 to 1998 (the 1990s) and from 1999 to 2000 (the bubble period). For a sample of 458 ECOs, we find a mean initial return of 8.75% for the 1990s and 47.76% for the bubble period. The results suggest that, similar to other initial public offerings (IPOs), ECOs have been more willing to accept underpricing through time because of an increased importance in analyst coverage and the increased use of spinning, the practice where investment bankers allocate IPOs to high‐profile customers to garner potential future business.     

A Reexamination of Real Stock Returns,Real Interest Rates,Real Activity,and Inflation: Evidence from a Large Data Set

Using the informational sufficiency procedure from Forni and Gambetti (2014) along with data from McCracken and Ng (2014), we update the results of Lee (1992) and find that his vector autoregression (VAR) is informationally deficient. To correct this problem, we estimate a factor augmented VAR (FAVAR) and analyze the differences once informational deficiency is corrected with an emphasis on the relationship between real stock returns and inflation. In particular, we examine Modigliani and Cohn's (1979) inflation illusion hypothesis, Fama's (1983) proxy hypothesis, and the “anticipated policy hypothesis.”     

The Empirical Average Cost of Capital: A New Approach to Estimating the Cost of Corporate Funds

The authors develop a new way to measure the cost of capital, called the empirical average cost of capital (or “EACC”), which is consistent with existing methods of calculating the weighted average cost of capital, but uses information from the firm's financial statements and requires fewer and less subjective inputs. The authors’ model relies on the concept of economic profit while using data from the period 1990‐2012 on net operating profits and total capital to estimate the EACC at both the individual company and industry‐wide levels. Estimates of the EACC and rolling quarterly forecasts of future net operating profits for a single company, McDonald's, for its related industry, and for 57 other U.S. industries are compared to five conventional “textbook” estimates of the weighted average cost of capital published by Ibbotson Associates. The authors find that the EACC yields forecasts of future net operating profit after taxes that compare favorably to those of the five published measures of the weighted average cost of capital, as well as the average and median of these measures.     

Crowdsourcing and open source software participation

Crowdsourcing is a phenomenon involving the use of volunteers to accomplish a goal or objective (often work). Individuals, businesses, and government agencies find it possible to harness the participation of volunteers to design products and complete project work. Simply stated, Open Source Software (OSS) is crowdsourcing applied to software development. OSS-based systems have become an important source of computing products, through operating systems such as Linux, Web services through Apache, or desktop environments such as Gnome. This study affords a through literature review developed within a discussion of the common motivations and relationships between crowdsourcing and OSS. It contributes to the literature by providing useful insights which researchers and organizations can utilize to leverage crowdsourcing and OSS concepts in addressing their efforts.     

Targeted population health management can help a hospital grow market share

In 2005, St. Luke's Hospital in Chesterfield, Mo., launched the "Passport to Wellness" program to help employers reduce preventable illnesses by providing access to screenings, health education, health coaching, disease management, and healthy lifestyle programs. The program was designed to influence consumer choice of hospitals and physicians and influence health insurance purchasing decisions. St. Luke's program also met goals created by local businesses, including identifying health risks of each employer's workforce and reducing health-related costs.