Optimal social security claiming behavior under lump sum incentives: Theory and evidence

Many Americans claim Social Security benefits early, though this leaves them with lower monthly payments throughout retirement. We build a lifecycle model that closely tracks claiming patterns under current rules, and we use it to predict claiming delays if, by delaying benefits, people were to receive a lump sum instead of an annuity. We predict that current early claimers would defer claiming by a year given actuarially fair lump sums, and the predictions conform with respondents' answers to a strategic survey about the lump sum. In other words, such a reform could provide an avenue for encouraging delayed retirement without benefit cuts or tax increases. Moreover, many people would still defer claiming even for smaller lump sums.     

The 1996 FAIR Act: Measuring the Impacts on Land Leasing

Using a 1997 survey of Arkansas farm operators, Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Act impacts on changes in cropping mixes on leased land, operator attitudes concerning the sharing of FAIR Act benefits with landlords, and changes in leasing arrangements due to the FAIR Act are investigated. Operators indicated that the FAIR Act caused cropping-mix changes on 24% of surveyed leases. Although some operators believe that landlords disproportionately benefit from the FAIR Act, about three-quarters feel that there was no change or had no opinion. Similarly, we find little evidence that leasing arrangements changed as a result of the FAIR Act.     

Stochastic differential equation modeling the prevalence of rare chronic diseases with an application to systemic lupus erythematosus

In this article we describe a system of stochastic differential equations to model the age‐specific prevalence of rare chronic diseases from incidence and mortality rates. As an application, the age profile of the prevalence of systemic lupus erythematosus in England and Wales in1995 is calculated. The results are in good agreement with the observed epidemiological measures.     

Economic Analysis at the Federal Communications Commission, 2012–2013

Pointing to the role of economic analysis, this article reviews major Federal Communications Commission actions and initiatives that are related to universal service support in high-cost areas that are served by price-cap incumbent local exchange carriers, special access policy, secondary market spectrum transactions, spectrum reassignments, and rules that govern interoperability among certain licensees in the 700 MHz band and spectrum ownership. Also discussed are activities of the recently created Technology Transitions Policy Task Force and challenges to communications policy that are posed by the transition to voice over internet protocol interconnection.     

The Behaviour of the Firm under Alternative Regulatory Constraints

We review the case for intermediate power incentive regulation such as sliding scale when the regulator is badly informed and the firm's profits have a shadow resource cost. We then evaluate a number of different regulatory regimes including sliding scale in terms of productive and allocative efficiency. We find that the sliding scale principle can be applied quite generally—to dividends, profits or rate of return and that it has attractive economic properties.     

Long-Term Climate Treaties with a Refunding Club

Environmental and Resource Economics - We show that an appropriately-designed “Refunding Club” can simultaneously solve both free-riding problems in mitigating climate...     

The emergence of management controls in an entrepreneurial company

The dilemma faced by founders of entrepreneurial companies is how to scale their business while staying in control. While the accounting literature has found that financial controls are important to rapidly scale a business, we do not know how these controls emerge in entrepreneurial companies in relation to other management controls. Using a case study of an entrepreneurial company that rapidly scaled its business, this study examines the management controls that emerged to become a package of controls. We highlight the importance of the management control package remaining in balance, with controls working together interdependently in a complementary fashion.     

Local Administration Reform in Estonia: Alternatives from an Economic Point of View

As the Estonian experience with local taxes has turned out in the last decade small rural municipalities have not been able to profit from the right to collect local taxes. Tax collecting and administrative costs have been too high. Therefore the local administrative system did not succeed and developed into a grants-in-aid system during the transition process. But from an allocational point of view such a development is not satisfactory. Incentives for local governments to save taxpayers' money and to seek new industrial establishments intensively are lacking. Only an administrative system characterised by institutional competition can solve these problems. In this article the advantages of institutional competition between local jurisdictions in Estonia are discussed. Additionally, a concrete system of competing enlarged counties is recommended.