Multidimensional Screening in Insurance Markets with Adverse Selection

Bundled coverage of different losses and distinct perils, along with differential deductibles and policy limits, are common features of insurance contracts. We show that, through these practices, insurers can implement multidimensional screening of insurance applicants who possess hidden knowledge of their risks, and thereby reduce the externality cost of adverse selection. Competitive forces drive insurers to exploit multidimensional screening, enhancing the efficiency of insurance contracting. Moreover, multidimensional screening allows competitive insurance markets to attain pure strategy Nash equilibria over a wider range of applicant pools, resolving completely the Rothschild–Stiglitz nonexistence puzzle in markets where the perils space is sufficiently divisible.     

A Framework for Reconsidering the Lake Wobegon Effect

The Lake Wobegon Effect (LWE) describes the potential measurement-error bias introduced into survey-based analyses of education issues. Although this effect potentially applies to any student-report variable, the systematic overreporting of academic achievements such as grade point average is often of preeminent concern. This concern can be easily circumvented if official records data are available; however, many researchers can only access student-reported data. In this article, the authors examine whether using student-survey data in place of official records data meaningfully biases regression estimates. They motivate their contribution by noting a useful statistical feature of overreporting on bounded variables such as grade point average. Specifically, the misreports will be negatively correlated with the true grade point average, yielding a form of nonclassical measurement error that actually counteracts the bias. The authors connect this observation to reliability ratios used in labor economics, which are simple ways to adjust for attenuation bias, when needed. In two applications, we find that it is unnecessary to correct for the LWE bias because it is so small.     

The Size of Firms and R&D Investment

We construct an industry-equilibrium model in which it is costly for consumers who have previously purchased from one firm to switch to competitors. This gives firms a certain degree of market power over their established customers. The equilibria we identify under these conditions have the following properties: (1) there is a nontrivial size distribution of firms, although firms are intrinsically identical, (2) larger firms make higher profits, (3) larger firms spend more on R&D, (4) larger firms charge (on average) lower prices, and (5) profits are positively correlated over time. These properties match empirical regularities concerning the manufacturing and retail sectors in the U.S. economy.     

Applications of parks management information systems

The paper presents a conceptual model of an integrated management information system for municipal parks maintenance and operations. Research efforts in management information systems are presented in three categories: Business Research, Federally Sponsored Research, and Park and Recreation Systems Research. A case is made for further empirical research, the development of normative models, and evaluative criteria in an attempt to realize the full potential of electronic data processing in parks and recreation.     

Paradox,accounting values,and intelligible regulation

Expected utility theory, which includes estimating the probabilities of uncertain future outcomes, is the classical model for rational economic decision making, and, by implication, rational valuation and financial reporting regulation. In Wittgensteinian terms it is a ‘hinge’ of the language game in which these practices are embedded. When rendered explicit, however, this ‘hinge’ appears to be formally incoherent. The exploration of this problem has consequences for all of our arguments over the epistemological underpinnings of accounting reports – whether realist, representational, constructivist, or otherwise.Arguably, there are two complementary primitive models that underlie real-world probability estimation. Taken together, they generate a version of Goodman's inductive paradox (other versions of which also arise for non-inductive empirical generalisation). This, in its turn, is related to Kripke's paradox, which arises when we try to give behavioural accounts of rule following, and so of participation in a language game.This paper explicates this type of paradox in the context of commercial decision making, and considers its consequences. The existence of paradoxes should render the system that generates them completely incoherent, but (paradoxically …) they seem to be generated by any attempt to give complete accounts of some of the normative fundamentals which underlie linguistic practice – such as truth-telling, validity and rule-following.Whether or not these paradoxes represent a serious threat to the coherence of the empirical or behavioural sciences, it might be objected that commercial decision making methods and financial regulation rarely aspire to the kind of rigour that these disciplines attempt to achieve. Part of the argument of this paper will be that the intelligibility of commercial language suggests an approach to these paradoxes which is not obvious from more traditional philosophical perspectives.The intentionality of belief renders certain belief claims by participants in a shared language game incorrigible (within the game), in the sense that they can be doubted only by doubting the seriousness or quality of participation. If certain statements about rule following and word meaning have this same quality, then there is a way of avoiding the consequences of Goodman's and Kripke's paradoxes, and of sterilising the probability estimation paradox for any playable commercial language game.     

Capitalism in China

Communist China, in contrast to Russia and other East European states, has a long tradition of markets. Arthur Seldon welcomes the increasing honesty with which the Chinese Government, under Deng Xaio-Ping (right), is rejecting centralised control.     

AUTHORITY: A MONOPOLY RUNNING AMOK IN BUSINESS1

This article show why Authority ‐ in the form of the Competition Commission ‐ produces harmful consequences when it seeks to impose idealised notions of competition on real‐world markets. The recent anti‐trust measures taken against Microsoft are a classic example of such regulatory failure. Paradoxically, monopolistic behaviour is characteristic of the provision of services by the public sector but draws no response from those authorities charged with curbing monopoly power.     

Statistical Analysis of Choice Experiments and Surveys

Measures of households' past behavior, their expectations with respect to future events and contingencies, and their intentions with respect to future behavior are frequently collected using household surveys. These questions are conceptually difficult. Answering them requires elaborate cognitive and social processes, and often respondents report only their “best” guesses and/or estimates, using more or less sophisticated heuristics. A large body of literature in psychology and survey research shows that as a result, responses to such questions may be severely biased. In this paper, (1) we describe some of the problems that are typically encountered, (2) provide some empirical illustrations of these biases, and (3) develop a framework for conceptualizing survey response behavior and for integrating structural models of response behavior into the statistical analysis of the underlying economic behavior.     

The Campus Parking Game: A Demonstration of Price Discrimination and Efficiency

This article presents a classroom game that allows students to directly experience the welfare improvements that can result from price discrimination. The demonstration uses a very familiar decision-making scenario, campus parking, to introduce the concept of price discrimination as well as reinforce the concepts of opportunity cost, consumer surplus, and search costs. This game can be used in a variety of classes, including principles, intermediate theory, industrial organization, or environmental economics, and can be conducted in a 50-minute class period with follow-up discussion in the next class.