Technical progress in Joan Robinson's view: an attempt at systematisation and formalisation

This paper deals with Joan Robinson's contributions to the issue of technical progress and her attempts at treating this subject in accordance with the Keynesian theory of employment and income distribution, mainly in the long run. The paper aims to review this aspect of her work and to establish a systematisation and a formalisation of her approach. At the same time, the paper exposes the problems she faced—but did not always solve. Looking through her main contributions, the paper concludes that she used different criteria for the classification of innovations and that they depended on the specific situations described by the models in which she used the classification.     

Consumption volatility and financial openness

Economic theory predicts that the integration of financial markets lowers the volatility of consumption. In this article, we study long-term trends in the consumption volatility of the G7 countries. Using different measures of financial openness, we find evidence that greater financial openness has been associated with lower consumption volatility. However, volatility of consumption relative to output has not declined.     

Has Labor Income Become More Volatile? Evidence from International Industry‐Level Data

Changes in labor market institutions and the increasing integration of the world economy may affect the volatility of capital and labor incomes. This article documents and analyzes changes in income volatility using data for 11 industrialized countries, 22 industries and 35 years (1970–2004). The article has four main findings. First, the unconditional volatility of labor income has declined in parallel to the decline in macroeconomic volatility. Second, the industry‐specific, idiosyncratic component of labor income volatility has hardly changed. Third, cross‐sectional heterogeneity is substantial. If anything, the labor incomes of high‐ and low‐skilled workers have become more volatile relative to the volatility of capital incomes. Fourth, the volatility of labor income relative to the volatility of capital income declines in the labor share. Trade openness has no clear‐cut impact.     

Learning Why More Learning Takes Place in Some Classrooms Than Others

Abstract. The relatively poor average performance of German students on the recent PISA international evaluations of 15- and 16-year-olds' literary skills (2000) and mathematical skills (2003) and the wide variation in performance, with low-income students scoring particularly poorly, have led to calls for reforms of the German educational system. Understanding why students in some classrooms learn more than do those in other classrooms is an important first step in considering alternative reform strategies. Possible explanations include differences in teacher quality, class sizes and peer groups, and also differences among the types of secondary schools that parents select for their children. This paper illustrates a set of techniques that are useful in examining the roles these factors play in predicting why, net of family background and prior achievement, the average achievement of children in some classrooms is much higher than that of children in other classrooms. We illustrate the use of these techniques with a dataset from Bogotá, Colombia, that has two attractive properties. First, some teachers teach multiple classes of students. Second, students are enrolled in schools in two sectors (public and private). Application of the techniques described in this paper could shed light on the reasons why the average academic achievement of German students attending some schools is much higher than that of German students attending other schools.     

Disentangling barriers to internationalization

Abstract. Recent literature on multinational firms has focused on low productivity as a barrier to the internationalization of firms. But labour market frictions or financial constraints may also hamper internationalization. In order to assess the importance of these barriers, we present new empirical evidence on the extensive and intensive margin of exports and foreign direct investment (FDI) based on micro‐level data of German firms. First, we find a positive impact of firm size and productivity on firms’ international activities. Second, labour market frictions can constitute barriers to foreign activities. Third, self‐reported financial constraints have no impact on firms’ internationalization decisions. JEL classification: F23, G2     

Banking Sector Performance in Latin America: Market Power versus Efficiency

Since the mid‐1990s the banking sector in the Latin American emerging markets has experienced profound changes due to financial liberalization, a significant increase in foreign investments, and greater merger activities often occurring following financial crises. The wave of consolidation and the rapid increase in market concentration that took place in most countries has generated concerns about the rise in banks' market power and its potential effects on consumers. This paper advances the existing literature by testing the market power (Structure–Conduct–Performance and Relative Market Power) and efficient structure (X‐ and scale efficiency) hypotheses for a sample of over 2500 bank observations in nine Latin American countries over 1997–2005. We use the Data Envelopment Analysis technique to obtain reliable efficiency measures. We produce evidence supporting the efficient structure hypotheses. The findings are particularly robust for the largest banking markets in the region, namely Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Finally, capital ratios and bank size seem to be among the most important factors in explaining higher than normal profits for Latin American banks.     

Patterns of care and burden of chronic idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura in Brazil

Aims: Although several therapeutic options are available for chronic immune thrombocytopenic purpura (cITP), little is known about the treatment of cITP in Brazil.

Materials and methods: A multi-center, retrospective chart review, observational study was designed to describe the treatment patterns, clinical burden, resources use, and associated costs for adult patients diagnosed with cITP and treated in public and private institutions in Brazil. Patient charts were screened in reverse chronological order based on their last visit post January 1, 2012. (All costs were calculated using 1.00 USD?=?3.9571 BRL, from February 2016.)

Results: Of 340 patient charts screened, 50 patients were eligible for inclusion in the study. Single-drug therapy (prednisone, dexamethasone, or dapsone) was the most commonly used treatment, followed by combination therapies (azathioprine?+?prednisone, azathioprine?+?prednisone?+?danazol, and prednisone?+?dapsone). Splenectomy was performed in 22% of patients after at least first-line treatment. Platelet count and number of bleeding episodes at diagnosis were 31,561.1/mm³ (SD?=?±26,396.1) and 40 episodes, respectively; in first-line, 92,631.1/mm³ (SD?=?±79,955.3) and 19 episodes, respectively; in second-line, 96,950.0/mm³ (SD?=?±76,476.4) and 17 episodes, respectively. Private system patients had a higher median cost compared to public system patients (USD 17.49/month, range?=?0–2,020.77 vs USD 9.51/month, range?=?0–192.64, respectively).

Limitations: This study does not allow conclusions for causal explanations due to the cohort study design, and treatment patterns represent only the practices of physicians who have agreed to participate in the study.

Conclusions: The data indicate that available therapeutic strategies for second- and third-line therapies appear to be limited.     

A comparison of regret-based and utility-based discrete choice modelling – an empirical illustration with hospital bed choice

There is some concern that the unobserved preference heterogeneity in random utility maximization theory-based discrete choice experiment modelling is an important source of error variability. The randomness in utility is often interpreted as interpersonal preference heterogeneity but it can also be intrapersonal random variation in preferences. We compare utility maximization and regret minimization-based choice models’ sensitivity to individual heterogeneity, examine differences between two consecrated models and validate with empirical illustrations. We use frequency of category (public, semi-private, and private) of bed chosen from Swiss cross-sectional datasets (2007–2012) to compare two approaches – utility maximization and regret minimization by applying multinomial logit (MNL) models in regard to the variances in utility (regret) function, goodness-of-fit and predicted marginal effects (pseudo-elasticity) of additional payment. We find parameters with the same sign and estimates with almost same order of magnitude in both the approaches. The statistical significance of attribute effects is consistent in all variants of utility -based MNL models while effects of different attributes are significant only in heteroskedastic extreme value (HEV) variant of regret-based MNL models. This empirical illustration suggests that HEV variant of regret-based models perform better in capturing attribute effects in choice behaviour.     

Becoming a preferred customer one step at a time

A preferred customer is a buying organization who receives better treatment than other customers from a supplier, in terms of product quality and availability, support in the sourcing process, delivery or/and prices. The decision to become a preferred customer implies a continuous commitment by the purchaser to a complex, expensive and often uncertain process. It is important to use a strategic approach, as well as appropriate tactics. Based on well-known models on the development of buyer-supplier relationship, on customer portfolio analysis and on the emergent literature in customer attractiveness and preferred customer status, we suggest four steps to become – and remain – a preferred customer: initial attraction, performance, engagement and sustainability. The process takes the perspective of a buyer willing to obtain the preferential status and focuses on the strategies and tactics that could influence the supplier's decision of granting this status. The proposed process considers that the supplier is continuously comparing the value offered by the customer to its expectations, and to the value offered by other customer relationships.