Global Trade Flows: Revisiting the Exchange Rate Elasticities

Open Economies Review - This paper contributes to the debate on the magnitude of exchange rate elasticities by providing a set of price and quantity elasticities for 51 advanced and emerging-market...     

Stock-specific sentiment and return predictability

This paper quantifies the impact of stock-specific news sentiment on future financial returns. Daily predictive regressions yield significant t-statistics for 7% at most of our sample of more than 1000 large stocks listed in the USA. While a few assets do run through pockets of predictability, the evidence suggests that the feedback effect is stronger in the reverse direction: returns are more likely to drive future sentiment than the other way around.     

The cost of injustice: overall justice,emotional exhaustion,and performance among entrepreneurs: do founders fare better?

Small Business Economics - In this paper, we build on the allostatic load model, developed in stress research, to explore the impact of entrepreneurs’ overall justice perceptions on emotional...     

Domestic and export performances of French firms

The French trade balance deteriorated almost continuously from the late 1990s to the early 2010s. At the macroeconomic level, French export market share deteriorated while domestic sales kept pace with domestic demand. Does this assessment apply to individual firms? Using microlevel data for French industrial firms over the period 2002–12, we explore the link between domestic and export sales. We show that export and domestic sales have a tendency, albeit slight, to move in opposite directions. This may be due to factors such as deliberate strategies to target a specific market or the presence of production constraints. Addressing the resulting endogeneity issue, our analysis shows that a positive demand shock in the domestic market also leads to an increase in exports. In particular, a 10% increase in domestic demand leads to a 4% increase in exports. This complementarity between markets seems to be driven by small firms and could reflect the existence of liquidity constraints. Increased sales in one market could lessen these constraints by facilitating funding for company development in the export market.     

Pork versus public goods: an experimental study of public good provision within a legislative bargaining framework

We experimentally investigate a legislative bargaining model with both public and particularistic goods. Consistent with the qualitative implications of the model: there is near exclusive public good provision in the pure public good region, in the pure private good region minimum winning coalitions sharing private goods predominate, and in the “mixed” region proposers generally take some particularistic goods for themselves, allocating the remainder to public goods. As in past experiments, proposer power is not nearly as strong as predicted, resulting in public good provision decreasing in the mixed region as its relative value increases, which is inconsistent with the theory.     

FERTILITY SHOCKS AND EQUILIBRIUM MARRIAGE‐RATE DYNAMICS

Female marriage probabilities were 50% higher in France in the years after World War 1, despite a large drop in the sex ratio. We develop a model of marital matching in which composition effects in the singles pool affect postdisruption matching rates. When calibrated to French data from World War 1, this mechanism explains 2/3 of the postwar rise in female marriage probabilities as the result of better composition of the pool of single men. We conclude that endogeneity issues make the sex ratio a potentially unreliable indicator of female marriage prospects.     

Optimal Redistribution with Endogenous Social Norms

In this paper, we examine the effect of social norms on redistributive policies, where social norms are reflected in the degree of work participation among the different skill classes. Participation is driven both by the material incentives and heterogeneous preferences for leisure of each skill class, and by an endogenous social norm. Results for optimal redistributive taxation show that when the social norm enters as a benefit or cost for participants, participation taxes are generally lower than in its absence. Multiple participation equilibria can occur, and an engineered shift from a low‐ to a high‐participation equilibrium can be Pareto‐improving in the long run.     

Predictors of high healthcare resource utilization and liver disease progression among patients with chronic hepatitis C

Background:

Since hepatitis C virus therapy is typically prioritized for patients with more advanced disease, predicting which patients will progress could help direct scarce resources to those likely to benefit most. This study aims to identify demographics and clinical characteristics associated with high healthcare resource utilization (HRU) and liver disease progression among CHC patients.

Methods:

Using health insurance claims (January 2001–March 2013), adult patients with ≥2 CHC claims (ICD-9-CM: 070.44 or 070.54), and ≥6 months of continuous insurance coverage before and ≥36 months after the first CHC diagnosis were included. Patients with human immunodeficiency virus were excluded. Generalized estimating equations were used to identify the demographic and clinical characteristics of being in the 20% of patients with the highest HRU. Factors predicting liver disease progression were also identified.

Results:

In the study population (n?=?4898), liver disease severity and both CHC- and non–CHC-related comorbidities and conditions were strong predictors of high healthcare costs, with odds ratios (ORs; 95% confidence interval [CI]) for ≥2 CHC-related and ≥2 non-CHC-related comorbidities/conditions of 2.78 (2.48–3.12) and 2.19 (1.76–2.72), respectively. CHC- and non-CHC-related comorbidities and conditions were also strong predictors of liver disease progression with ORs (95% CI) for ≥2 CHC-related and ≥2 non-CHC-related comorbidities and conditions of 2.18 (1.83–2.60) and 1.50 (1.14–1.97), respectively.

Limitations:

Potential inaccuracies in claims data, information or classification bias, and findings based on a privately insured population.

Conclusion:

This study suggests that CHC patients with high healthcare resource utilization have a high level of comorbidity at baseline and also that non-CHC comorbidities and conditions are strong predictors of high HRU. Non-cirrhotic CHC patients with one or more comorbidities are at high risk of progressing to cirrhosis or end-stage liver disease.