Why the rich may favor poor protection of property rights

In unequal societies, the rich may benefit from shaping economic institutions in their favor. This paper analyzes the dynamics of institutional subversion by focusing on the public protection of property rights. If this institution functions imperfectly, agents have incentives to invest in private protection of property rights. The ability to maintain private protection systems makes the rich natural opponents of public property rights and precludes grass-roots demand to drive the development of the market-friendly institution. The economy becomes stuck in a bad equilibrium with low growth rates, high inequality of income, and wide-spread rent-seeking. The Russian oligarchs of 1990s, who controlled large stakes of newly privatized property, provide motivation for this paper. Journal of Comparative Economics 31 (4) (2003) 715–731.     

Holocaust concentration camp memorial sites: an exploratory study into expected emotional response

This study explored Dutch people's expected intensity of emotional responses of a potential visit to a concentration camp memorial site in the Netherlands. A total of 1050 online panel members participated in a questionnaire that contained a 33-item emotion scale. Results reveal that individuals with a closeness to the Holocaust expect to feel most emotions more intensely, specifically emotions that are traditionally considered ‘positive’, such as pride, love, joy, inspiration, excitement and affection. Overall, respondents expect to feel disgust, shock, compassion and sadness the strongest. Those who look from the viewpoint of the offenders mainly expect to feel emotions that are traditionally considered ‘negative’, whereas those who took the point of view of the victims also expect a more ‘positive’ emotional reaction to the visit. Managerial implications address aspects of education, storytelling and authenticity.     

Property,redistribution, and the status quo: a laboratory study

Experimental Economics - We report experimental evidence showing a positive effect of redistribution on economic efficiency via the self-enforcement of property rights, and identify which status...     

Structured low-rank matrix completion for forecasting in time series analysis

This paper considers the low-rank matrix completion problem, with a specific application to forecasting in time series analysis. Briefly, the low-rank matrix completion problem is the problem of imputing missing values of a matrix under a rank constraint. We consider a matrix completion problem for Hankel matrices and a convex relaxation based on the nuclear norm. Based on new theoretical results and a number of numerical and real examples, we investigate the cases in which the proposed approach can work. Our results highlight the importance of choosing a proper weighting scheme for the known observations.     

Second-Hand Markets and Intrasupply Chain Competition

We consider a monopolistic supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer (service provider) who in addition to selling new durables, buy and resell used ones. The supply chain provides services for both new and used goods. Accordingly, consumers incur service charges for all types of goods. This study is motivated by the modern trend in cell phone businesses where retailers commence buying used phones from customers willing to upgrade their phones. The used phones are then refurbished and resold along with the services. The question that this trend gives rise to is how the interaction with the secondary market affects the performance of the supply chain in terms of its intracompetition and thereby its profit. We show that for a wide range of service rates, the second-hand market coordinates the supply chain by either reducing the double marginalization effect or by offsetting it with extra profits gained by servicing the used goods. This, however, does not imply that both parties always improve their profits. Furthermore, we find that when the service rates are low, the supply chain would be better off if the goods were not durable thereby precluding the very existence of the second-hand market.     

How Genes Modulate Patterns of Aging-Related Changes on the Way to 100: Biodemographic Models and Methods in Genetic Analyses of Longitudinal Data

In this article we clarify mechanisms of genetic regulation of human aging and longevity traits. The objective of this article is to address the issues in previous research of not reaching a genome-wide level of statistical significance and lack of replication in the studies of independent populations. We performed GWAS of human life span using different subsets of data from the original Framingham Heart Study cohort corresponding to different quality control procedures, and we used one subset of selected genetic variants for further analyses. We used a simulation study to show that this approach to combining data improves the quality of GWAS with FHS longitudinal data to compare average age trajectories of physiological variables in carriers and noncarriers of selected genetic variants. We used a stochastic process model of human mortality and aging to investigate genetic influence on hidden biomarkers of aging and on dynamic interaction between aging and longevity. We investigated properties of genes related to selected variants and their roles in signaling and metabolic pathways and showed that the use of different quality control procedures results in different sets of genetic variants associated with life span. We selected 24 genetic variants negatively associated with life span and showed that the joint analyses of genetic data at the time of biospecimen collection and follow-up data substantially improved significance of associations of 24 selected SNPs with life span. We also showed that aging-related changes in physiological variables and in hidden biomarkers of aging differ for the groups of carriers and noncarriers of selected variants. The results of these analyses demonstrated benefits of using biodemographic models and methods in genetic association studies of these traits. Our findings showed that the absence of a large number of genetic variants with deleterious effects may make substantial contribution to exceptional longevity. These effects are dynamically mediated by a number of physiological variables and hidden biomarkers of aging. The results of these research demonstrated benefits of using integrative statistical models of mortality risks in genetic studies of human aging and longevity.     

Macroprudential policy and the inward transmission of monetary policy: The case of Chile,Mexico, and Russia

This paper studies whether domestic macroprudential policy may attenuate the inward transmission of monetary policy shocks from the United States to domestic bank lending growth in three emerging market economies—Chile, Mexico, and Russia. Identification relies on banks’ heterogeneous exposure to prudential policies and the fact that foreign monetary policy shocks are exogenous from the perspective of these economies. After analyzing the effects of the aggregate domestic prudential policy stance, we focus on specific prudential policies targeting mortgage and consumer loans, as well as foreign‐currency deposits. Although our overall results are mixed, we find evidence that the strength of international monetary policy spillovers varies depending on the stance of domestic macroprudential policy. In particular, a tighter reserve requirement stance over foreign‐currency deposits in Chile dampens the effect of an international monetary policy shock on domestic local‐currency lending, but reinforces that on foreign‐currency lending, whereas in Russia, it dampens the effect on both local‐currency and foreign‐currency lending, although to different degrees. Prudential policies targeting the asset side of banks’ balance sheets, such as mortgage loans or consumer credit, are found to amplify international monetary policy spillovers in some cases and attenuate it in others, depending on the country context.     

Publish or teach? Analysis of the professor's optimal career path

This paper analyzes how faculty members dynamically allocate their efforts between improving their research and teaching skills, taking into account the organizational structures and incentives implemented by academic institutions. The model builds on the assumption that organizational structures have an impact on the nature of spillover effects between teaching and research competencies. We analyze the dynamic equilibrium under unilateral and bilateral spillovers, using the no-spillover case as a benchmark. The bilateral spillover case is the most appealing as it achieves the highest overall performance; however, the nature of the equilibrium and the career paths can be quite different depending on the parameters of the problem such as the obsolescence of competencies or the strength of the spillover effect. This finding provides interesting insights on what could be the most productive configuration of a higher education institution.