Le Pont de Londres: Interactions between monetary and prudential policies in cross‐border lending

Using two unique confidential datasets summarizing the cross‐border lending of banks in France and the UK, we examine whether recipient‐country prudential policies can help to reduce the spillover effects of euro‐area (EA) monetary policy. We address this question from a novel angle, focused on the role of international financial centres, by considering differences in bank size and location (lending from French headquarters vs. from French affiliates located in the UK). For small French banks that lack a presence in international financial centres, the response of direct cross‐border lending from France to EA monetary policy is partially offset by recipient‐country prudential policy. For larger banks, however, the offsetting effect applies only to lending that passes through foreign affiliates located in London. This suggests the existence of a “London Bridge”: banks adapt their flows to the UK conditional on EA monetary policy and global prudential policies; and from their UK affiliates to third‐party countries in a manner that depends on local prudential settings.     

An experimental study of blind proficiency tests in forensic science

We conducted a series of sender?Creceiver experiments to study the consequences of implementing a regime of blind proficiency tests in forensic science to reduce error rates and improve the criminal justice system. Senders are our surrogate for forensic laboratories and receivers, for the judge or jury. Our experimental surrogate (random audits with a penalty) for blind proficiency tests reduced sender error rates by as much as 46% depending on the level of experimentally induced bias. When penalties improve information quality, receiver error rates fell by as much as 26% depending on the level of the sender bias. We also find that the penalty must be large relative to the payoff to induce the reduction in errors. Our results suggest that a regime of blind proficiency testing has the potential to reduce forensic science errors.     

STICKY WAGE, EFFICIENCY WAGE AND KEYNESIAN UNEMPLOYMENT

Abstract.  This paper provides a model of involuntary unemployment by combining the insights of the sticky wage theory and the efficiency wage theory. It implies that employed workers tend to supply more effort in response to economic downturns. Thus, a negative shock to an economy has intriguing impacts on the unemployment. The model also shows that a negative demand shock may have a relatively small effect on output since changes in work effort serve to partially mitigate the effects of the shock. Moreover, it yields some implications that complement the existing 'work sharing' literature.     

The effect of a magazine’s free digital content on its print circulation: Cannibalization or complementarity?

We examine how offering digital content affects demand for print magazines. Using a searchable website archive, we measure the digital content offered by a sample of US consumer magazines from 1996 to 2001. We find strong evidence that digital content cannibalizes print sales. On average, a magazine’s print circulation declines about 3–4% when it offers a website. However, the effect varies with the type of digital content offered. Offering digital access to the entire contents of the current print magazine reduces print sales by about 9%. We find no evidence that digital content complements print magazines. These results are robust to including controls for unobserved magazine, category, and time effects, as well as controls for the impact of contemporaneous price changes and other factors.     

Ideology, markets and money

Contemporary economic theory is considered in terms of the science/ideologydistinction. Marx's critique of Hegel is then used to derivea demarcation criterion that sharply separates scientific knowledgefrom ideology. This critique interprets Hegelian methodologyas fundamentally ideological because it understands realityin terms of abstract thought and then hypostatises that thoughtas reality. This process is more generally treated in termsof Marx's theory of value and money, in which money really doesdo what Hegelian logic purports to do. The consequences of consideringMarxian theory in this way provide some purchase on the logicand limitations of contemporary economic theory.     

Innovation and Performance: Benchmarking Australian Firms

This article empirically analyses the link between innovation and performance using a sample of large Australian firms, with a specific aim of developing benchmarking tools. Innovation is measured by firms' investment in R&D and applications for patents, trademarks and designs. An innovation index is constructed to provide one method of benchmarking. The index incorporates a firm's innovative activities into a single figure after accounting for firm size. The index provides a ranking of the most innovative firms in Australia. A second method of benchmarking uses a stochastic production frontier. This type of analysis identifies the firms which are located closest to a ‘best practice innovation frontier’.     

Medication,equipment, and supply costs for common interventions providing extended post-surgical analgesia following total knee arthroplasty in US hospitals

Aims: To estimate the cost to hospitals of materials (i.e. medications, equipment, and supplies) required to administer common interventions for post-surgical analgesia after total knee arthroplasty (TKA), including single-injection peripheral nerve block (sPNB), continuous peripheral nerve block (cPNB), periarticular infiltration of multi-drug cocktails, continuous epidural analgesia, intravenous patient-controlled analgesia (IV PCA), and local infiltration of bupivacaine liposome injectable suspension (BLIS).

Materials and methods: This analysis was conducted using a mixed methods approach combining published literature, publicly available data sources, and administrative data, to first identify the materials required to administer these interventions, and then estimate the cost to the hospital of those materials. Medication costs were estimated primarily using the Wholesale Acquisition Costs (WAC), the cost of reusable equipment was obtained from published sources, and costs for disposable supplies were obtained from the US Government Services Administration (GSA) database. Where uncertainty existed about the technique used when administering these interventions, costs were calculated for multiple scenarios reflecting different assumptions.

Results: The total cost of materials (i.e. medications, equipment, and supplies) required to provide post-surgical analgesia was $41.88 for sPNB with bupivacaine; $756.57 for cFNB with ropivacaine; $16.38 for periarticular infiltration with bupivacaine, morphine, methylprednisolone, and cefuroxime; $453.84 for continuous epidural analgesia with fentanyl and ropivacaine; $178.94 for IV PCA with morphine; and $319.00 for BLIS.

Limitations: This analysis did not consider the cost of healthcare providers required to administer these interventions. In addition, this analysis focused on the cost of materials and, therefore, did not consider aspects of relative efficacy or safety, or how the choice of intervention for post-surgical analgesia might impact outcomes such as length of stay, re-admissions, discharge status, adverse events, or total hospitalization costs.

Conclusions: This study provided an estimate of the costs to hospitals for materials required to administer commonly used interventions for post-surgical analgesia after TKA.     

Firepower: Geopolitical Cultures in the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT

The human control of fire is a relatively neglected part of the discussion of the contemporary transformation of the planet. Thinking about it in terms of geopolitics is a way to link climate adaptation, extinction and the possibilities of extending traditional analyses of political ecology to the global scale. Such thinking is explicitly rejected as the appropriate premises for foreign policy action by the Trump administration which poses American greatness in terms of traditional understandings of firepower. This clash of geopolitical cultures is now key to global politics, where dramatic landscape transformation, related species extinctions as well as climate change results directly and indirectly from human control of combustion. Firepower is a matter of military technology as well as, in the form of fossil fuel combustion, the essential energy source that fuels the global economy. Focusing on combustion as a key geophysical force in contemporary geopolitics offers useful insights into the Anthropocene discussion and, in particular, the two planetary boundaries of climate change and biodiversity loss, which are key to contemporary efforts at global environmental governance.     

The ABC of complementary products mergers

We present a simple model where mergers benefit consumers, harm outsiders and, depending on the shape of demand, can be profitable for insiders (and where mergers do not involve cost synergies).