Statistical manipulability of social choice functions

We consider the proportion of profiles at which an anonymous neutral social choice function cannot be manipulated to any coalition's advantage. We fix the number of alternatives and consider the limit as the number of individuals goes to infinity, and assume that the limit of the fraction of all profiles in the domain is 1. We show that there is a continuous function on “profile vectors’ which gives the maximum probability of strategy-proofness, and that this is strictly between 0 and 1 for three alternatives. We also analyze a number of common social choice functions along these lines.     

Elderly consumers: problems and behaviours

The purpose of this study was to explore older consumers' problems and behaviour. Data were collected by interviewing. Responses of 150 older Wisconsin residents were analysed using chi square to determine significant differences in consumer problems and behaviour related to the demographic variables: age, sex, place of residence, marital status and education. The distribution of responses was most frequently influenced by marital status. The demographic variables of age, sex and place of residence were also found to influence the response distribution, although less frequently than marital status; there were no significant differences in responses by education. Based on the findings, recommendations are made for consumer education programmes designed specifically for older persons.     

Climate change policy, market structure, and carbon leakage

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change obliges the industrialized countries to initiate the international effort of abating anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. If such an initiative is to be taken, the associated competitive effects may lead to significant relocation of developed countries' energy-intensive production. This paper examines this issue. I adopt an oligopolistic structure combined with increasing returns to scale production technologies to represent the strategic interaction among the firms producing energy-intensive products. This representation is then embedded within a multi-regional computable general equilibrium model, which in turn is used for quantifying these relocational effects. The results suggest that significant relocation of energy-intensive industries away from the OECD may occur, depending on the type of market structure, with leakage rates as high as 130%, in which case GHG control policies in the industrialized countries actually lead to higher global emissions.     

Race,Restrictive State Abortion Laws and Abortion Demand

A disproportionately large number of abortions are performed on black and Hispanic women. This study empirically investigates whether restrictive state abortion laws differentially affect the abortion demand of white, black and Hispanic women for the year 2005. A state Medicaid abortion funding restriction significantly decreases the abortion rate of all three races. However, Hispanic women’s abortion demand is more sensitive to a Medicaid funding restriction than either white women or black women. Parental involvement laws and mandatory counseling laws have no significant impact on the abortion rates of the three racial groups. Two-visit laws are associated with a significant decrease in the abortion rate of white women, but have no significant effect on the abortion rates of black and Hispanic women.     

FDI and Income Inequality—Evidence from Latin American Economies

This paper analyzes whether foreign direct investment (FDI) has contributed to the wide income gaps in Latin America. Panel cointegration techniques as well as regression analysis are performed to assess the impact of inward FDI stocks on income inequality among households in Latin American host countries. The panel cointegration analysis typically reveals a significant and positive effect on income inequality. There is no evidence for reverse causality. The findings are fairly robust to the choice of different estimation methods, sample selection and the period of observation.     

Healthcare costs for Crohn’s disease patients treated with infliximab: a propensity weighted comparison of the effects of treatment adherence

Objective:

The objective for the research was to evaluate the direct healthcare costs for Crohn’s disease (CD) patients categorized by adherence status.

Methods:

Adult patients with ≥1 claim for infliximab and ≥2 claims for CD who were continuously insured for 12 months before and after their first infliximab infusion (index date) were identified in a 2006–2009 US managed care database. Patients were excluded if they had rheumatoid arthritis claims, received infliximab billed as a pharmacy benefit, or received another biologic drug. Patients were categorized as being either adherent or intermittently adherent to infliximab using a pre-defined algorithm. Total and component direct costs, CD-related costs, rates of surgery, and days of hospitalization were estimated for the 360-day post-index period. Propensity weighted generalized linear models were used to adjust the cost estimates for potential confounding variables.

Results:

The total propensity weighted cost for infliximab adherent patients was $40,425 (95% CI?=?[$38,686, $42,242]), compared to $41,082 (95% CI?=?[$38,163, $44,223]) for the intermittently adherent (p?=?0.71). However, adherent patients had lower total direct medical costs, exclusive of infliximab, that were $13,097 (95% CI?=?[$12,141, $14,127]) compared with $20,068 (95% CI?=?[$17,676, $22,784]) for intermittently adherent patients as a result of substantially lower hospital and outpatient costs (p?Conclusions:

Greater drug-related costs for infliximab adherent patients were offset by lower costs from hospitalization and outpatient visits. These findings indicate that adherent patients have improved clinical outcomes, at a similar aggregate cost, than patients who are only intermittently adherent to therapy.     

On the distribution of tax effects on headquarters location

This paper sheds light on the distribution of profit and personal income tax elasticities of headquarters location across 13,074 firms in 68 countries over 1999–2012. Results suggest high variability in elasticities, which is overlooked in virtually all earlier work on the matter.     

Small-sample inference with spatial HAC estimators

This paper examines the small-sample performance of spatial HAC (SHAC) estimators of the standard errors on parameters. We find that, in small to moderately-sized datasets, the use of HAC estimators may be recommended only with a relatively large degree of cross-sectional interdependence.     

Are complementary reforms a “luxury” for developing countries?

This paper investigates the impact of complementarity reforms on growth and how it depends on GDP per capita. Based on reform data for six policy areas compiled from various sources during the period 1994–2006 for over 100 countries, we compute composite indicators of reform level and complementarity. We provide qualitative justification for the existence of pair-wise complementarities among policy areas. We then use cross-section and panel data estimates to test the effect of reform level and complementarity on GDP per capita growth. We found reforms to be positively related and their dispersion (or the inverse of complementarity) negatively related to growth, controlling for initial conditions, monetary stability and other structural and institutional variables, as well as endogeneity of reform level and complementarity. We show that the effect of policy complementarity is a stronger condition for sustainable growth in developing than in advanced countries, to conclude that complementary reforms are not a ‘luxury’ for developing countries.