Abstract. The Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) is the primary measure of inflation in the euro area, and plays a central role in the policy deliberations of the European Central Bank (ECB). The ECB defines its Treaty mandate of price stability as '… a year‐on‐year increase in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the euro area of below 2%[…] to be maintained over the medium term.' Among the rationales given for defining price stability as prevailing at some positive measured inflation rate is the possibility that the HICP as published incorporates measurement errors of one sort or another that may cause it to systematically overstate the true rate of inflation in the euro area. This paper reviews what currently is known about the scope of measurement error in the HICP. We conclude that given the vague conceptual framework of the HICP, the scant research on price measurement issues in the EU and the ongoing improvements in the HICP, there is very little scientific basis at this time for a point (or even an interval) estimate of a positive bias in the HICP. 相似文献
Central to so many accounts of post-war Japan, the keiretsu corporate groups lacked economic substance from the start. Conceived by Marxists committed to locating "domination" by "monopoly capital," they found an early audience among western scholars searching for evidence of culture-specific group behavior in Japan. By the 1990s, they had moved into mainstream economic studies, and keiretsu dummies appeared in virtually all econometric regressions of Japanese industrial or financial structure. Yet the keiretsu began as a figment of the academic imagination, and they remain that today. Regardless of the keiretsu definition used, cross-shareholdings within the "groups" were trivial, even during the years when keiretsu ties were supposedly strongest. Neither does membership proxy for "main bank" ties. Econometric studies basing "keiretsu dummies" on the available rosters produce predictably haphazard and unstable results. In the end, the only reliably robust results are the artifacts of the sample biases created by the definitions themselves. 相似文献
Harrington (1988) and more recent papers by Heyes and Rickman (1999), Livernois and McKenna (1999), and Heyes (1996) have attempted to explain how a relatively large fraction of firms are thought to be in compliance with environmental regulations despite the fact that expected penalties for these violations are deemed rather low. This paper offers an alternative explanation for the interesting paradox by incorporating costly and uncertain litigation. 相似文献
In general, synergies across license valuations complicate the auction design process. Theory suggests that a simple (i.e., non-combinatorial) auction will have difficulty in assigning licenses efficiently in such an environment. This difficulty increases with increases in fitting complexity. In some environments, bidding may become mutually destructive. Experiments indicate that a properly designed combinatorial auction is superior to a simple auction in terms of economic efficiency and revenue generation in bidding environments with a low amount of fitting complexity. Concerns that a combinatorial auction will cause a threshold problem are not borne out when bidders for small packages can communicate. 相似文献
Time paths of carbon dioxide emissions intwenty-one industrial countries are examinedfrom 1960–1997 to test for stochastic andconditional convergence. Both panel unit roottests and cross-section regressions areperformed. Overall, we find significantevidence that CO2 emissions haveconverged. 相似文献
The paper provides a selective and critical review of the literature on purchasing power parity and real exchange rates, with special reference to the literature of the last two decades. 相似文献
We provide a framework for analyzing two-sided markets that allows for different degrees of product differentiation on each
side of the market. When platforms are viewed as homogenous by sellers but heterogeneous by buyers, we show that “competitive
bottlenecks” arise endogenously. In equilibrium, platforms do not compete directly for sellers, instead choosing to compete
indirectly by subsidizing buyers to join. Sellers are left with none of the gains from trade. Despite this, it is sellers
who choose to purchase from multiple platforms (multihome). Finally, the role of exclusive contracts to prevent multihoming
is explored.
We are very grateful to Jose Miguel Abito for research assistance, and to the editor and a referee for helpful comments. 相似文献
Aims: Percutaneous closure of a patent foramen ovale (PFO) is known to lower the risk of recurrent stroke in patients with a cryptogenic stroke. However, the economic implications of transcatheter PFO closure are less well known. From a UK payer perspective, a detailed economic appraisal of PFO closure was performed for prevention of recurrent ischemic stroke in patients with a PFO who had experienced a cryptogenic stroke.
Materials and methods: A Markov cohort model was constructed using a 5-year time-horizon with a patient mean age of 45.2 years, reflecting the characteristics reported in the REDUCE trial. Transition probabilities, clinical inputs, costs, and utility values were ascertained from published and national costing sources. Total costs, incremental costs, quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios were calculated, utilizing a discount rate of 3.5%. A range of univariate and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were also performed.
Results: When applying a willingness-to-pay (WTP) threshold of £20,000/QALY in accordance with NICE guidelines, PFO closure compared with antiplatelet therapy alone showed a beneficial cost/QALY of £18,584, attained at 4 years. Applying discount rates of 0% and 6% had a negligible effect on the base-case model findings. PFO closure demonstrated a 76.9% probability of being cost-effective at a WTP threshold of £20,000/QALY at a 5-year time-horizon.
Limitations: This model focused specifically on UK stroke patients and typically enrolled young (mean age <65 years old) patients. Hence, caution should be taken when comparing data vs non-UK populations, and it remains unclear how older patients might have affected cost-effectiveness findings, as the risk of paradoxical embolism can persist as patients age.
Conclusion: Percutaneous closure of a PFO is cost-effective compared with antiplatelet therapy alone, underlining the economic benefits potentially afforded by this treatment in selected patients. 相似文献
This paper uses data from the 1991 National Maternal and Infant Health Survey to estimate propositions derived from a model
of intrahousehold allocation, wherein parents engage in a consumption activity (smoking) that produces own utility, while
generating environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) that harms their children’s health. We find a statistically significant negative
association between sample mothers‘ assessed health of their children and the children’s daily exposures to ETS. Mothers’
average annual willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a 1-hour-per-day reduction in child ETS exposure (about a 17% decrease in daily
exposure) is about $150. WTP estimates for respondent mother and child health status further suggest that smoking mothers
on average value their child’s health roughly 55% higher than their own health.
Helpful comments and suggestions by Scott Atkinson, Donald Kenkel, and two anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged.
Marcy Agee and Stefanos Nastis provided valuable research assistance. Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provided
financial support through Grant#R82871601, the research has not been subjected to the Agency’s required peer and policy review
and therefore does not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency 相似文献