Environmental Taxation and Vertical Cournot Oligopolies: How Eco-industries Matter

This article specifies what an optimal pollution tax should be when dealing with a vertical Cournot oligopoly. Polluting firms sell final goods to consumers and outsource their abatement activities to an environment industry. It is assumed that both markets are imperfectly competitive. Thus, the tax is a single instrument used to regulate three sorts of distortions, one negative externality and two restrictions in production. Consequently, the optimal tax rate is the result of a trade-off that depends on the firms’ market power along the vertical structure. A detailed analysis of Cournot-Nash equilibria in both markets is also performed. In this context, the efficiency of abatement activities plays a key-role. It gives a new understanding to the necessary conditions for the emergence of an eco-industrial sector.      

Competition Policy: What are the Costs and Benefits of Measuring its Costs and Benefits?

Summary  Competition authorities are increasingly measuring the effects of their enforcement actions, seeking a robust justification for the proliferation of competition policy. We highlight the importance of identifying the right counterfactual against which to measure effects, and set out the relevant categories of costs and benefits. We then explore how a balance can be struck between the benefits and inherent limitations of these measurement exercises. Relatively crude analyses of cartel action benefits can be sufficient to achieve public legitimacy for competition policy. Assessing the effects of merger and conduct inquiries is often ambiguous, but could be used to improve decision-making processes. Director and Managing Consultant, respectively, at Oxera, Oxford and London. The valuable comments of Fod Barnes, Kerry Hughes and an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors alone.     

Understanding the Economic Factors Influencing Farm Policy Preferences

A survey conducted in Mississippi, Texas, Indiana, and Nebraska elicited producers' preferences for various farm policy changes. This permitted examination of the diversity of preferences that single-state studies have not allowed. Five policy choices, including deficiency payments, loan programs, crop insurance, export programs, and disaster payments were examined. Logit model results predicting producer preferences for each of the five dichotomous policy choices are reported. Explanatory variables based on expected utility theory such as risk aversion, price and yield variability, and price–yield correlation are significant in various models.     

Tourism as an alternative source of regional growth in Portugal: a panel data analysis at NUTS II and III levels

The role of tourism is of vital economic importance, particularly for small countries with a privileged geographical location and favourable weather conditions. This paper examines the importance of tourism as a conditioning factor for higher regional growth in Portugal by employing the conditional convergence hypothesis of Barro and Sala-i-Martin, associated with the endogenous growth theory. The panel data estimation approach provides evidence of the positive impact of tourism (through the accommodation capacity) on the growth in per-capita income among the Portuguese regions, increasing the rate of convergence. Therefore, tourism can be considered as an alternative source for stimulating higher regional growth in Portugal, if the supply characteristics of this sector are improved.     

A market model of analysts’ opinions to explain changes in the dispersion of opinions

The demand for and supply of analysts’ opinions in this model yield an equilibrium that demonstrates how the information content of the opinions reacts to changes in exogenous parameters. The model also shows how changes in the parameters make analysts’ opinions more or less dispersed; for example, a decline in investor risk aversion, a decrease in market volatility, and an increase in information costs can lead to analysts’ opinions becoming more similar. Recognizing how exogenous factors can affect the supply and demand of analysts’ opinions gives additional insights into questions concerning what may appear to be herd behavior by analysts and also the relationship between forecast dispersion and information content. (JEL: G29, C71)     

Immobiliencontrolling — Optimierung der immobilienbezogenen Kosten durch Gründung einer Generalmietgesellschaft

Ohne Zusammenfassung Dipl.-Ing. (univ.) Michael Belau ist Director und Head of Rental Management Dipl.-Wirtschaftsing. (FH) Michael Schildger ist Vice President und Head of Finance Dr. Verena Sturm ist Manager Corporate Real Estate Services     

PHYSICIANS' COST SHIFTING BEHAVIOR: MEDICAID VERSUS OTHER PATIENTS

Much of the debate about rising health care costs in the United States centers on the notion of "cost shifting." Cost shifting is loosely defined as charging one set of patients a higher price to offset losses on another set of patients. One aspect of the cost shifting debate that the empirical work has ignored is whether or not doctors—as opposed to hospitals—practice cost shifting. The analysis here investigates this question using the Physicians' Practice Costs and Income Survey, 1983–1985 (PPCIS, expanded version)
Using variation across states in Medicaid reimbursements, the analysis finds that lower Medicaid reimbursements tend to lower the fees physicians charge, contradicting the standard cost shifting story. Evidence also suggests that lower Medicaid reimbursements tend to cause physicians to treat fewer Medicaid patients. These results are consistent with profit maximizing behavior for physicians and also with the hypothesis that physicians exert some monopoly power.