Disruptive Innovation in the Nordic Countries＇ Healthcare Systems

The Nordic healtheare model is recognized to be one of the most innovative in the world. Here billions of USD are annually invested in developing new treatments, drugs, robots etc. to diagnose and cure diseases. Nevertheless, this study establishes that there is a fundamental shortcoming in the system that supports healthcare innovation： It is strongly biased towards micro-level innovation projects focusing on new products, alternative processes, and new financial solutions. The problem with this approach to support new projects is that the results are created as inventions within the system thus lacking holistic perspectives. This has consequently contributed with increasing costs that are out of proportion with existing budgets. Therefore this study seeks to analyze the current understanding of the Nordic healthcare system from a business model perspective. Here other aspects of the healthcare system are explored to determine if they could be redesigned to promote new types of innovation projects. The purpose of undertaking this task is to challenge the established patterns of the current healthcare innovation support practices. Here the vertical innovation process （VIP） framework, which is a systematic radical innovation model that seeks macro-level outcomes based on standalone inventions （see more below）, is applied to analyze the current state-of-the-art in Nordic healthcare innovation projects. The results determine that very little attention is given to rethink and redesign the healthcare system at a macro-level, and it is discussed that stand-alone inventions ought to be rethought into the entire healthcare system to create a larger impact. Finally, it is argued that existing performance measures are inappropriate to foster projects that innovate the existing system： New measuring points should be developed to promote macro-level projects and to avoid the current rapid increase of costs in the Nordic healthcare system.     

Distress rentals and the land rental market as a safety net: contract choice evidence from Tigray,Ethiopia

Rural households in the semiarid Northern Ethiopian highlands are net buyers of food. Crop failure due to erratic and unpredictable rainfall occurs frequently and leads to food shortages and income shocks. The renting out of land may be one of the coping responses of households exposed to shocks. We developed a theoretical household model for poor landlord households capturing their contract choice response to downside production shocks. We tested econometrically whether contract choice may depend on poverty, capital constraints, production risk and random shocks. The multinomial logit model estimates show that poor households experiencing random shocks are more likely to choose fixed‐rent contracts as a distress response to shocks, suggesting that fixed‐rent contracts may be used to meet immediate needs, but at the expense of future incomes. We also found that fixed‐rent contracts are preferred when ex ante production risk is low, while sharecropping is more likely where production risk is high. Finally, we found an indication that the choice of a fixed‐rent contract as a coping response to shocks comes as a last resort after all other means of coping are exhausted.     

Impacts of Low-Cost Land Certification on Investment and Productivity

New land reforms are again high on the policy agenda and low-cost, propoor reforms are being tested in poor countries. This article assesses the investment and productivity impacts of the recent low-cost land certification implemented in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, using a unique household and farm-plot-level panel data set, with data from before and up to eight years after the reform. Alternative econometric methods were used to test and control for endogeneity of certification and for unobserved household heterogeneity. Significant positive impacts were found, including effects on the maintenance of soil conservation structures, investment in trees, and land productivity.     

Formalisation of land rights: Some empirical evidence from Mali, Niger and South Africa

In this paper, we re-interpret three cases of research previously carried out in Mali, Niger and South Africa in light of the recent debate about formalisation of land rights that has emerged since the publication of Hernando de Soto's ‘Mystery of Capital’. The Malian case shows that lack of broad access to formalisation processes in high-pressure areas may play into the hands of those with power, information, and resources. The case also demonstrates that timing of formalisation efforts in urban areas characterised by rapid expansion is crucial in terms of distributive outcomes. The Nigerien case demonstrates how impending formalisation led to a scramble for land and increased conflicts in a context of institutional competition and limited administrative capacity. The South African case shows that the very process of surveying and registering rights may also change the rights themselves. Formalisation procedures may also amplify the tension between individual and communal rights, and boost privatisation.     

Alternatives to local content requirements in resource-rich countries

This paper discusses whether and to what extent resource-rich developing countries should introduce local content policies, i.e. requirements to include local inputs in petroleum extraction activities of multinational corporations. We argue that local content needs to be seen as a public expenditure question, since local content requirements increase multinational costs, and hence reduce the taxes which can be extracted from these companies. This implies that there are opportunity costs in imposing local content requirements, since the forgone taxes can be used in others ways which could potentially do more to improve development prospects. Moreover, past experiences of resource-rich developing countries suggest that local content policies can exacerbate key problems of patronage and rent-seeking which resource rents generate, increasing the chance that the resource wealth will prevent rather than help development. These arguments suggest that an optimal local content policy in the context of flawed institutions is a more limited one than those typically pursued by developing countries with recently discovered petroleum reserves. Using qualitative data from Tanzania, a country with recent discoveries of substantial natural gas deposits, we analyze why local content tends to become such a central issue in debates and policy processes, despite its potentially problematic aspects.     

Within-group heterogeneity and group dynamics: analyzing exit of microcredit groups in Angola

The effect of within-group heterogeneity on the survival of social groups is theoretically ambiguous. A greater diversity of ideas, experience, and networks can have a positive effect on members’ benefits from group membership, but diversity also creates a potential for conflict. This paper analyzes the relation between heterogeneity and exit of microcredit groups, using data from Angola. The results suggest that the form of group heterogeneity matters. Fragmentation in terms of social identities, or more specifically religious-linguistic fractionalization, is associated with a greater probability of group exit. Within-group economic inequality, however, is associated with a decrease in the probability of exit, but at a diminishing rate.     

How Effective are WTO Disciplines on Domestic Support and Market Access for Agriculture?

A new round of trade negotiations through the World Trade Organization (WTO) was launched in 2001. One of the major aims of the Doha Development Round is to reduce agricultural protection and impose greater discipline on domestic agricultural subsidies, particularly those that are the most trade distorting. In this article, we examine whether the proposed WTO modalities for agriculture will actually achieve this aim in Norway, which ranks among the top providers of government assistance for agriculture. Norway has a complex system of farm subsidies buttressed by substantial import protection. The extent to which its agricultural support policies will have to change in response to new WTO disciplines provides an important indication of how successful these are likely to be. We find that Norway will probably be able to sustain its current agricultural activity and production levels while staying within the new WTO rules. Following recent practice in some other WTO members, Norway will be able to reduce its notified support without making real changes in some of its programmes. However, there will have to be a shift from market price support, which is paid for by consumers through higher food prices, to budgetary support paid by taxpayers. This could generate increased domestic pressure for policy reform.     

ASYMPTOTIC BEHAVIOR OF DISTRIBUTION DENSITIES IN MODELS WITH STOCHASTIC VOLATILITY. I

We study the asymptotic behavior of distribution densities arising in stock price models with stochastic volatility. The main objects of our interest in the present paper are the density of time averages of a geometric Brownian motion and the density of the stock price process in the Hull–White model. We find explicit formulas for leading terms in asymptotic expansions of these densities and give error estimates. As an application of our results, sharp asymptotic formulas for the price of an Asian option are obtained.