Implications of Improved Information on Market Performance

The retail food market in Edmonton, Alberta represents an unusual market to study. The basic problem inherent in this metropolitan market area of 500,000 people, is the dominance of a single retail food chain whose food sales represent up to 65 percent of total food sales. Conventional economic theory would normally lead to the conclusion that market performance would be improved by a direct attack on the structure of the market which in turn would involve the absolution of a highly successful retail operation. However, the application of monopoly anti-trust laws was certainly not an alternative available to the research team, even if it was considered to be a feasible solution to the problem. Therefore an attempt was made by the authors to observe the impact of improved consumer market information on corporate performance. The following article documents the research and leads towards a time honored conclusion that additional market information would improve consumer welfare in a meaningful manner.     

Nader's Support: Its Sources and Concerns

Do the consumer advocates, such as Nader, have a real constituency? Where do they get their support? This study, based on a nationwide sample, investigated the extent of support for Ralph Nader and his program, and its sources. Nader was found to have substantial support, a major portion of it consisting of middle-income political liberals. Those supporting Nader were found to be active complainers and supporters of other political and social causes, suggesting that support for Nader is part of a broader pattern of activisim.     

Luft zum Atmen

Mehr Sicherheit im Umgang mit Trachealkanülen - Pflegende, die Patienten mit einer Trachealkanüle betreuen, müssen den Kanülenwechsel sicher beherrschen. Denn bei Komplikationen kann das Warten auf den Arzt katastrophale Folgen haben. Daher muss der Umgang mit den Kanülen zur Routine werden.     

Peristomale Haut beurteilen

Das Ostomy Skin Tool - Ver?nderungen der peristomalen Haut früh zu erkennen und rechtzeitig entsprechende Ma?nahmen einzuleiten, geh?rt zu den Aufgaben einer Stomafachkraft. Ein validiertes Verfahren für die Beurteilung ist das Ostomy Skin Tool.     

Not all trade restrictions are created equally

There has been great focus in the recent trade theory literature on the introduction of firm heterogeneity into trade models. This introduction has highlighted the importance of the entry/exit decision of firms in response to changes in trade barriers. However, it is typical in many of these models to use iceberg transport costs as a general form of trade barriers that can be interchangeable with ad valorem tariffs. I show that this is not always an appropriate conclusion. Specifically, I illustrate that profit for an exporter is more elastic in response to tariffs than iceberg transport costs, which affects the entry/exit decision of firms. This has implications for welfare analysis and empirical specifications.     

Should multivariate early warning systems for banking crises pool across regions?

Most extant work on prediction of banking crises has utilised global samples, which are in turn dominated by observations from middle-income countries, and rely on a single estimator. However, economic and financial structures as well as the pattern of shocks may differ substantially across regions, while a range of specifications is desirable to check robustness. Accordingly, in this paper we test the implicit pooling assumption in earlier multivariate work on Early Warning Systems using both logit and binary recursive tree specifications separately for crises in Asia and Latin America, as well as the pooled sample. Results suggest markedly different crisis determinants across regions, implying global samples are inappropriate.