What do interest rates reveal about the functioning of real business cycle models?

This paper begins by documenting the extent to which the predictions of standard Real Business Cycle (RBC) models are incompatible with observed movements in real interest rates. The main finding of the paper is that extending the baseline model to include habit persistence in consumption and adjustment costs to capital significantly improves the model's empirical performance. In our evaluation of the model's performance, we take special care of estimating and testing predictions of the model using both moments drawn directly from the data and moments calculated after identifying shocks to the stochastic trend.     

Multilateral Comparison of Cost Structures in the Input–Output Tables of Japan,the US and West Germany

This paper presents a multilateral comparison of relative levels and structures of costs of production in Japan, the US and West Germany. The analysis is carried out by using harmonized input–output tables, which are converted at US prices by using adjusted sectoral purchasing power parities. A new accounting methodology is derived from recent developments of index number theory, whereas the chosen multilateral comparison procedure gives results that are invariant with respect to the order of the pairs of countries examined.     

Hybrid governance and governance performance in industrial purchasing relationships

Hybrid governance arrangements (e.g. joint action, long-term contracting and vertical coordination) feature regularly as an effective response to inter-firm dependence in the literature of business-to-business relationships. However, current empirical work has paid little attention to whether such governance arrangements really do improve governance efficacy and reduce transaction costs. The present study focuses on the governance efficacy of vertical coordination in industrial business-to-business relationships. Building on transaction costs arguments, the author examines whether vertical coordination is an effective means for adapting to inter-firm dependence, realized as the substantial employment of specific assets.Empirical findings from a survey of 170 industrial supplier–buyer relationships demonstrate that when asset specificity reaches a certain level, greater vertical coordination reduces ex post transaction costs significantly. On the other hand, this efficacy pattern is modest or non-existent in relationships with low asset specificity.The research findings support the basic TCA assumption that the performance of hybrid governance arrangements is highly dependent on a situation of substantial inter-firm dependence with subsequent small-number conditions.     

基于资产专用性的企业融资决策研究

本文采用Williamson的思路,建立了资产专用性与交易成本、生产成本因素在内的综合交易成本分析模型。分析发现,相对于债务融资而言,股权融资有利于避免按市场规则强行清算带来的专用性资产价值损失,运用包络定理证明专用性程度高的资产具有削减生产成本的作用,专用性程度高的资产以股权融资为佳。     

网络化对高校“两课”教学的影响及其对策

计算机国际互联网在全球范围内的迅速发展和普及,改变了人们的思维和行为习惯,冲击着当代大学生的文化生活、思想观念和世界观,冲击着高校“两课”教学。高校“两课”教师应顺应潮流,主动占领思想政治工作的新阵地,加强高校“两课”教学改革,提高“两课”教学水平。     

Double Moral Hazard,Monitoring, and the Nature of Contracts

generalized double-sided moral-hazard model, with risk-averse parties who mutually monitor each other (to get a reasonable idea of outcome/effort). The model considers trade-off between monitoring costs and moral hazard costs, which are endogenously determined by the extent of monitoring. Using this model, we formally prove a generalized version of Coase's conjecture – that the optimal contract minimizes the agency and risk costs. We then show how varying assumptions about the feasibility or cost of monitoring of the outcome or the worker's effort lead to different contracts being optimal. The analysis is then used to explain the nature of contracts observed in practice under many different situations. We will give an explanation as to why industrial workers typically work under wage contracts, while share contracts are common in agriculture and will explain why profit sharing is more common for senior managers than for the production workers. Received September 19, 2000; revised version received October 30, 1997     

Transport development and the evolution of economic geography

In this paper, based on the recent advances in the new economic geography (e.g., Fujita et al. [12]), we analyze impacts of transport costs on the spatial patterns of economic agglomeration. We first identify prototypes from the existing models, and explain the mechanism of how transport costs influence the balance between economic forces of agglomeration and dispersion. We then investigate the transformation of the agglomeration/dispersion patterns given gradually decreasing transport costs for different goods.Received: Received: July 2004 / Accepted: January 2005, Accepted: Received: July 2004 / Accepted: January 2005, JEL Classification: R12Tomoya Mori: Correspondence toThe authors are grateful to David Bernstein, Tatsuo Hatta, Komei Sasaki, Tony E. Smith, and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments. This research is partly supported by The Grant in Aid for Research 08403001 of Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in Japan, the Murata Science Foundation, and WESCO Civil Engineering Technology Foundation.     

Investment opportunities and cash holdings of firms: an empirical study on Korean firms

We find that the cash flow sensitivity of cash holdings of firms whose investment opportunities are lower is significantly higher by examining a panel data of 898 Korean firms for 1999–2014. The cash flow sensitivity of investment is also found to be lower in case of low investment opportunity. Both findings suggest that firms decide to hold cash in response to an increase in cash flow when they do not have a good investment opportunity. Precautionary motive because of financial constraints and uncertainty, and agency problems, however, are not associated with the cash flow sensitivity of cash holdings. These findings imply that it is necessary to develop new investment opportunities to encourage firms to spend more cash in Korea.     

The Economics and Bioeconomics of Folk and Scientific Classification

Synopsis This paper is the product of a collaboration between a biologist (Ghiselin 1997) who works on the philosophy of classification and an economist (Landa 1981, 1994) who works on the ‘Economics of Identity’: how and why people classify people based on identity in the context of a theory of ethnic trading networks. In developing the ‘bioeconomics’ (the synthesis of economics with biology) of classification, we crossed a number of disciplinary boundaries—anthropology, economics, sociology, biology, and cognitive psychology including evolutionary psychology’s ‘fast and frugal’ heuristics. Using a bioeconomics approach, we argue that folk classifications—the classifications used by ordinary persons—have much in common with scientific classifications: underlying both is the need for economy of information processing in the brain, for the efficient organization of knowledge, and for efficiency of information acquisition and transmission of information to others. Both evolve as a result of trial and error, but in science there is relatively more foresight, understanding, and planning.     

A cost analysis of SIR-Spheres yttrium-90 resin microspheres versus tyrosine kinase inhibitors in the treatment of unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma in France,Italy, Spain and the UK

Abstract

Background and aims: A wide range of treatment options are available for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), including systemic treatment with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) such as sorafenib and lenvatinib, immunotherapies, locoregional therapies such as selective internal radiation therapy (SIRT) and treatments with curative intent such as resection, radiofrequency ablation and liver transplantation. Given the substantial economic burden associated with HCC treatment, the aim of the present analysis was to establish the cost of using SIRT with SIR-Spheres yttrium-90 (Y-90) resin microspheres versus TKIs from healthcare payer perspectives in France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom (UK).

Methods: A cost model was developed to capture the costs of initial systemic treatment with sorafenib (95%) or lenvatinib (5%) versus SIRT in patients with HCC in Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stages B and C. A nested Markov model was utilized to model transitions between progression-free survival (PFS), progression and death, in addition to transitions between subsequent treatment lines. Cost and resource use data were identified from published sources in each of the four countries.

Results: Relative to TKIs, SIRT with SIR-Spheres Y-90 resin microspheres were found to be cost saving in all four country settings, with the additional costs of the microspheres and the SIRT procedure being more than offset by reductions in drug and drug administration costs, and treatment of adverse events. Across the four country settings, total cost savings with SIR-Spheres Y-90 resin microspheres fell within the range 5.4–24.9% and SIRT resulted in more patients ultimately receiving treatments with curative intent (4.6 vs. 1.4% of eligible patients).

Conclusion: SIR-Spheres Y-90 resin microspheres resulted in cost savings relative to TKIs in the treatment of unresectable HCC in all four country settings, while increasing the proportion of patients who become eligible for treatments with curative intent.