The reference model of competitiveness factors for SME medical sector

The paper presents the issue of SME competitiveness in terms of determining their competitive position on the market. The proposed reference model, focused on the evaluation of the competitiveness of a selected group of SMEs on the market of medical services, was developed to support strategic decision-making. The usefulness of the model is verified in the process of determining the competitive position of a selected group of participants, applying research methods of strategic analysis. Relationships, observed during the study, occurring between the competitiveness factors and the competitive position taken by a company, provide knowledge, whose utilization directs the company's business to improving its market performance, organizational and economic conditions.     

Assessing market power in the U.S. commercial banking industry under deregulation

This study attempts to investigate market power in the U.S. commercial banking industry since the U.S. government began to deregulate the banking sector in the early 1990s using the static Bresnahan–Lau model (SBLM) and dynamic Bresnahan–Lau model with error corrections (DBLEC). In particular, panel unit root and panel cointegration techniques are utilized to examine the dynamic model. The empirical results of the SBLM show that the banking industry is highly competitive. The empirical results of DBLEC also suggest that the commercial banking industry is close to being perfectly competitive in the short run. By contrast, the adjustment speeds of the supply and demand sides towards the long-run equilibrium are quite slow in that market, which implies that the U.S. commercial banks enjoy a certain degree of long-run market power.     

A new energy model to capture the behavior of energy price processes

Owing to the vague fluctuation of energy prices from time to time, a new energy model, which considers both the mean-reverting behavior and the long memory property, is proposed in this paper. Since the problem of estimating parameters, in discrete time for this model, plays a central role in forecast inference, the problem of estimating the unknown parameters has been dealt with for the fractional Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process observed discretely. The asymptotic properties of these estimates are also provided. The numerical simulation results confirm the theoretical analysis and show that our method is effective. To show how to apply our approach in realistic contexts, an empirical study of energy in China, namely Daqing crude oil, is presented. The empirical results seem reasonable when compared to the real data.     

中国地区经济增长差距的成因分析

通过综合现有的经济理论并结合中国经济实际，建立储蓄增长、投资增长与经济增长关系的理论模型，同时采用Ｇｒａｎｇｅｒ因果检测检验各地区三者间关系，并与模型结论比较。结果表明，东部地区的三者关系与模型结论基本一致，即投资增长、经济增长及储蓄增长间存在良性循环；而中部地区投资效率低下、西部地区资本供给不足，致使中西部经济中的三者良性循环被迫中断或被低水平恶性循环取代，从而导致地区经济差距急剧扩大。     

The persistence of innovation: a panel data investigation on manufacturing firms

This paper represents a contribution to empirical debate on the persistence of innovation in the firm, by exploiting an innovative panel database that, for the first time, links three waves of the Italian Community Innovation Survey with an administrative data source providing economic and financial information for firms in the Italian manufacturing sector, 1996–2003. By using both a dynamic logistic model and a Granger causality approach, we show that in order to innovate successfully it is much more important to have an adequate flow of profits during an appropriate time span rather than high profits only during one period before innovation. Our causality tests prove the existence of a dynamic interaction between innovation and profitability: successful innovation can, in the short run, generate the profitability conditions that can then enhance the financial resources needed to reinvest in new technological opportunities, thus causing the firm to persist in its innovative behaviour. We have also shown that another important source of persistence is represented by past innovative experience. A firm with consolidated innovative behaviour would have a higher probability of future successful innovation with respect to a firm that occasionally (or accidentally) innovates. Persistence in innovation enables a firm to take advantage of substantial technological and organizational learning effects, which improve with time.     

TESTING FOR STATIONARITY WITH A BREAK IN PANELS WHERE THE TIME DIMENSION IS FINITE

In this paper, we consider the case of finite time dimension in the panel stationarity tests with structural breaks. By fixing T, the finite sample properties of the tests for both micro (T small and N large) and macro (both T and N large) panel data are generally greatly improved. More importantly, the derivation of the tests for finite T and , as opposed to joint asymptotic where N and simultaneously, avoids the imposition of the rate condition making the test valid for any (T, N) blend. Four models corresponding to the usual combination of breaks are considered. The asymptotic distributions of the test are derived under the null hypothesis and are shown to be normally distributed. Their moments for T fixed are derived analytically employing Ghazal’s corollary 1. The case with unknown breaks is also considered. The proposed tests have generally empirical sizes that are very close to the nominal size. The Monte Carlo simulations show that the power of the test statistics increases substantially with N and T.     

Flexibility at the Margin and Labor Market Volatility in OECD Countries*

We study the business‐cycle behavior of segmented labor markets with flexibility at the margin (e.g., just affecting fixed‐term contracts). We present a matching model with temporary and permanent jobs (i) where there is a gap in the firing costs associated with these types of jobs and (ii) where there are restrictions in the creation and duration of fixed‐term contracts. We show that a labor market with ``flexibility at the margin'' increases the unemployment volatility with respect to one that is fully regulated. This analysis yields new insights into the interpretation of the recent volatility changes witnessed in the OECD area.     

Consumption smoothing in Russia1

Using a panel from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (1994–2004), this paper investigates to what extent Russian households have been able to maintain their living standards while suffering income shocks. Consumption smoothing is modelled by means of an equilibrium correction mechanism, which disentangles short‐run dynamics and long‐run equilibrium adjustments. GMM estimation is used to control for individual household effects in the presence of dynamics. Additionally, we differentiate between food and non‐food consumption, positive and negative shocks, rural and urban areas, and several levels of poverty risk. We find that dynamics are important in the consumption equation, and that estimates are sensitive to imputation errors in home food production. No strong claims can be made regarding heterogeneity in smoothing behaviour.     

Informal Caregiving and the Retirement Decision

The probability of providing informal care grows with one's own age. While labor market effects due to caregiving are moderate, they could be concentrated in the years close to retirement. Therefore, I investigate whether care in the previous year leads to retirement in the year after by using German Socio‐Economic Panel data from 2001 to 2009 and discrete‐time hazard models. The effect of care on the retirement decision is indeed much higher than its effect on the labor or working hours of middle‐aged individuals. Women are affected to a larger extent but the retirement decision of men also reacts to their caregiving obligations.     

Prenatal care: Mechanisms and impacts on infant health and health care utilization

We estimate that prenatal care has positive impacts on health measured at birth, shifts the distribution of future health care utilization away from inpatient care, and find that some of these impacts likely come from an informational mechanism. We also find well child visits are used in a complementary fashion with emergency department care in the production of infant health, suggesting that factors beyond barriers to access may drive the demand for emergency care. Finally, we find differential impacts of prenatal care across racial groups with evidence that the information mechanism may be particularly important for black mothers.