An Interactive Microcomputer Program for Teaching the Impacts of Alternative Policy Sets in the Market for a Single Commodity

The authors describe a computer program in which students define alternative policy sets and compare their effects on the welfare of producers, consumers, and the public sector. A policy set may be a single tax or quota or a mix of taxes, subsidies, quotas, and/or price supports implemented at various points in the marketing chain.     

The low effect of perceived risk in the relation between hedonic values and purchase intention

ABSTRACT

This research seeks to identify the influence of perceived risk in the purchase intention environment regarding innovative technological products, and also to understand how brand trust reduces the expected impact of this risk due to the hedonic and utilitarian characteristics influencing purchase intention. Quantitative research was carried out and analysed through structural equation modelling, where the influence of perceived risk on utilitarian value and purchase intention was identified, as well as the influence of brand trust in reducing this risk. The conceptual implications of the study describe as the perceived risk moderates hedonic features less compared to utilitarian features regarding purchase intention, thus demonstrating that emotional relationships are less affected by this risk. The managerial implications suggest that devices with utilitarian characteristics should be more carefully planned according to their brand and complexity, while hedonic products do not require brand trust to guarantee consumers’ purchase intention in the current innovative scenario.     

Price discovery in dual‐class shares across multiple markets

This paper proposes a new measure of price discovery that uses the spectral decomposition. The methodology is especially important in the context of large price systems, such as interest rate parities with spot and futures contracts or dual‐class shares in multiple markets. We employ high frequency data to study price discovery in dual‐class Brazilian stocks and their ADRs. We find that the foreign market is at least as informative as the home market and that shocks in the dual‐class premium entail a permanent effect in normal times, but transitory in periods of financial distress     

Foreign direct investment in services and manufacturing productivity: Evidence for Chile

This paper examines the impact of substantial foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in producer service sectors on the total factor productivity (TFP) of Chilean manufacturing firms. Positive effects are obtained in firm fixed effects instrumental variables regressions and show that forward linkages from FDI in services explain 7% of the observed increase in Chile's manufacturing users' TFP. Our findings also suggest that service FDI fosters innovation activities in manufacturing. Moreover, we show that service FDI offers opportunities for laggard firms to catch up with industry leaders.     

Black-White Disparities in Test Scores: Distributional Characteristics

This paper investigates the distributional characteristics of racial differences in mathematics achievement, with particular attention to the potential influence of unexplained, and possibly unwarranted, racial differentials in rates of school suspension. It is well known that black students consistently score lower than whites on achievement tests, on average, even after controlling for family and schooling factors. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort, we decompose the racial gap in mathematics test scores from the Peabody Individual Achievement Test-Revised (PIAT-R) into a component due to racial differences in underlying characteristics and another component that is unexplained by differences in measured characteristics. We account for the possible endogeneity of suspensions in our analysis and show that the portion of the racial gap that is unexplained differs between the top and the bottom of the test score distribution. Our results suggest that researchers should pay more attention to the problem of concentration of black students among those at the bottom of the distribution and their scarcity among those at the top of the test score distribution to better understand the factors that account for the observed disparities.     

Are price limits on futures markets that cool? Evidence from the Brazilian Mercantile and Futures Exchange

This article investigates the impact of price limits on theBrazilian futures markets using high frequency data. The aimis to identify whether there is an ex ante cool-off or magneteffect. For that purpose, we examine a tick-by-tick data setthat includes all contracts on the São Paulo stock indexfutures traded on the Brazilian Mercantile and Futures Exchange(BM&F) from January 1997 to December 1999. The results indicatethat, altogether, there is a dominant cool-off effect in playand that the latter is much stronger for the floor rather thanceiling price. This explains why we observe more hits to theceiling rather than to the floor in our sample despite the factit covers one of the most turbulent periods for emerging markets.We then build a trading strategy that accounts for the cool-offeffect in the conditional mean so as to demonstrate that thelatter has not only statistical but also economic significance.The Sharpe ratio is indeed way superior to the buy-and-holdbenchmarks we consider.     

The effects of repeated soil wetting and drying on lowland rice yield with system of Rice Intensification (SRI) methods

In lowland rice farming, water management is the most important practice that determines the productivity of other inputs, e.g. nutrients, herbicides, pesticides, farm machinery, microbial activity, mineralization rates. Deliberate flooding or poor drainage that keeps soil saturated is detrimental to crops and degrades soil quality. This study evaluated whether rice grain yield could be increased relative to continuous flooding by using the management practices of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). The effects of SRI's repeated wetting and drying cycles plus different plant populations were investigated at Sapu Research Station in The Gambia, on an alluvial soil between 2000 and 2002. The water management practices proposed for SRI were found to be beneficial to rice growth. At 20 cm spacing, average grain yield with SRI practice was 7.3 t ha^?1 compared with 2.5 t ha^?1 under continuous flooding. At 30 cm spacing SRI practice yielded 6.6 t ha^?1, while under continuous flooding, grain yield was only 1.7 t ha^?1. Even wider spacing did not produce higher yield. At 40 cm spacing, SRI management gave 4.7 t ha^?1, while continuous flooding yielded 1.3 t ha^?1. Thus overall, SRI practices gave better results than continuous flooding. This was probably as a result of increased nutrient availability and superior growing conditions which enhanced physiological development and grain yield. Rewetting dry soil reportedly facilitates nitrogen mineralization. The phenomenon of having a flush of nitrogen mineralization occurring after rewetting dry soil was first reported by Birch in 1958. This intensive pathway of nitrogen mineralization and nitrogen availability has potential to increase lowland rice yields in ways consistent with sustainable agricultural production.     

Ex Ante Evaluation of Drought‐Tolerant Varieties in Eastern and Central Africa

This study presents a model to estimate potential benefits of drought‐tolerant varieties of maize, sorghum and millet in Kenya, Uganda and the Amhara region of Ethiopia. In addition to the benefits from mean yield increases, the model takes into account risk benefits associated with yield‐stabilising varieties. Ex ante estimates provided for different drought zones and for different household types within drought zones of each country suggest that drought resistance generates substantial benefits from both mean yield improvements and yield variance reductions for both consumers and small, medium and large producers.     

Brain metastases in non-small cell lung cancer patients on epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors: symptom and economic burden

Objective: This study describes the symptom and economic burden associated with brain metastases (BM) in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) receiving epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs).

Methods: This retrospective study included adults with ≥2 medical claims, within 90 days, for lung cancer and ≥1 administration of EGFR-TKIs. Based on ICD-9 codes, patients were stratified into cohorts by type of metastases (BM, other metastases [OM], or no metastases [NM]), and by when the metastasis diagnosis occurred (synchronous or asynchronous).

Results: The population (synchronous BM [SBM]?=?24, synchronous OM [SOM]?=?23, asynchronous BM [ASBM]?=?15, asynchronous OM [ASOM]?=?49, NM?=?85) was mostly female (57%), average age 69 years (SD?=?11). SBM patients experienced more fatigue and nausea/vomiting compared with SOM and NM patients and more headaches and loss of appetite than NM patients. ASBM was associated with more fatigue, nausea/vomiting, headaches, pain/numbness, altered mental status, and seizures than NM, and more headaches and pain/numbness than ASOM. SBM patients experienced a greater increase in per-member-per-month all-cause total healthcare costs after diagnosis ($20,301) vs SOM ($9,131, p?=?.001) and NM ($2,493, p?=?.001). ASBM’s cost increase between baseline and follow-up ($7,867) did not differ from ASOM’s ($4,947, p?=?.195); both were larger than NM ($2,493, p?=?.001 and p?=?.009, respectively).

Limitations: EGFR mutation status was inferred based on EGFR-TKI treatment, not by molecular testing. Patients were from US commercial insurance plans; results may not be generalizable to other populations.

Conclusions: Among patients with EGFR-TKI-treated NSCLC, patients with BM experienced more symptoms and, when diagnosed synchronously, had significant increases in total medical costs vs patients with OM and NM. Therapeutic options with central nervous system activity may offer advantages in symptomatology and costs in EGFR-mutated patients with BM.