Why not fully spend a conditional block grant?

This paper studies a conditional block grant that Dutch municipalities receive for welfare-to-work programs. Many municipalities do not fully use this grant, although programs are beneficial for them. We argue that municipalities incur expenses to use the grant. If these costs are substantial, then it is optimal not to fully use the grant. Based on municipality-specific data on grants and actual expenditures, we estimate that municipalities have to add about 90 cents from their own resources to spend 1 euro of the grant. As a result, the conditional block grant is de facto a closed-ended matching grant.     

FAIR RETIREMENT UNDER RISKY LIFETIME*

A premature death unexpectedly brings a life and a career to their end, leading to substantial welfare losses. We study the retirement decision in an economy with risky lifetime and compare the laissez‐faire with egalitarian social optima. We consider two social objectives: (1) the maximin on expected lifetime welfare, allowing for a compensation for unequal life expectancies, and (2) the maximin on realized lifetime welfare, allowing for a compensation for unequal lifetimes. The latter optimum involves, in general, decreasing lifetime consumption profiles as well as raising the retirement age. This result is robust to the introduction of unequal life expectancies and unequal productivities.     

Hidden costs of supply management in a small market

Canada regulates its dairy and poultry industries through supply management. The supply‐management programs use target prices, production quotas and import tariff‐rate quotas to raise domestic prices. Canadian supply‐managed producers cannot export their output to world markets as exports would be considered subsidized under World Trade Organization rules. In this paper, we show that once foregone export opportunities are accounted for, supply management may no longer be beneficial to domestic producers of the supply‐managed commodities. The extent to which foregone profits from exports dominate domestic rents depends on Canada's comparative advantage, domestic market elasticities and the extent of supply management distortion in the domestic market.     

Career and collaboration patterns in tourism research

Research collaboration has become an important characteristic of contemporary academia and is of prime importance for the academic career opportunities of young scholars. For the purposes of this study research collaboration is a formal manifestation of intellectual collaboration in scientific research and involves the participation of two or more authors in the production of a joint publication. The paper reports the findings of a quantitative online survey sent to tourism scholars to explore their career and collaboration patterns in co-authored publications in tourism research. The results indicate that there are divergent perspectives on research collaboration and that collaboration characteristics change as scholars progress through their careers. The paper proposes a research career lifecycle to explain the patterns in tourism research collaboration.     

Accounting students’ choice of blended learning format and its impact on performance and satisfaction

Using online platforms to deliver educational content, some institutions have developed blended courses that combine the advantages of online instruction with traditional face-to-face (F2F) teaching. This study compares accounting student performance and satisfaction in two blended formats with similar content and design, i.e. F2F+ vs. Online+ courses. It also assesses the characteristics of students who choose the latter option over F2F+ courses. Students in four advanced accounting subjects were surveyed and their course performance was obtained. Results indicate that the main determinants of students’ decision to register for an Online+ course are retaking the course, increased weekly work hours, and belief that this type of blended course facilitates learning. Results show that students in advanced accounting courses with equivalent content and design perform similarly and have the same level of course satisfaction across course delivery formats, as hypothesized under equivalency theory.     

Capacity Investment under Demand Uncertainty: The Role of Imports in the U.S. Cement Industry

Demand uncertainty is thought to influence irreversible capacity decisions. Suppose that local demand can be sourced from domestic (rigid) production or from (flexible) imports. This paper shows that the optimal domestic capacity is either increasing or decreasing with demand uncertainty, depending on the relative level of the costs of domestic production and imports. We test this relationship with data from the U.S. cement industry, in which the difference in marginal cost between domestic production and imports varies across local U.S. markets because cement is costly to transport over land. Industry data for 1999 to 2010 are consistent with the predictions of the model. The introduction of two technologies to the production set—one rigid and one flexible—is crucial to understanding the relationship between capacity choice and uncertainty in this industry because there is no relationship between these two variables in aggregated U.S. data. Our analysis reveals that the relationship is negative in coastal districts, and significantly more positive in landlocked districts.     

Inference on vertical contracts between manufacturers and retailers allowing for nonlinear pricing and resale price maintenance

We present a model of vertical contracts between manufacturers and retailers with nonlinear pricing strategies. Using home‐scan data on bottled water produced by manufacturers and sold by retail chains in France, we estimate a structural demand and supply model allowing for two‐part tariff contracts between manufacturers and retailers. Using price‐cost margins recovered from estimates of demand parameters, we select the best supply model by performing nonnested tests, and find that manufacturers use two‐part tariff contracts with resale price maintenance. We then perform counterfactual policy simulations that restrict the use of these vertical contracts and assess welfare effects under alternative scenarios.     

Productivity and international competitiveness of agriculture in the European Union and the United States

This study looks at international competitiveness of agriculture in the European Union and the United States. The most intuitive concept is that of price competitiveness. We calculate relative prices for 11 member states of the European Union and the United States for the period 1973–2002. We assume that markets are perfectly competitive and in long‐run equilibrium, so that the observed price always equals average total cost, as measured by the cost dual to the production function. This assumption is used in our calculation of relative competitiveness and productivity gaps between the European Union and the United States and in our decomposition of relative price movements between changes in relative input prices and changes in relative productivity levels.