capital structure ownership and capital payment policy the case of hospitals this study examines effects of pertinent features of hospital capital payment policies on hospital capital structure decisions in a one period stochastic value maximization model separate models are developed for for profit and not for profit hospitals hospital debt to assets ratios are analyzed empirically using a cross section of data from the american hospital association although the effect on capital structure of hospital reliance on cost based reimbursement cannot be signed theoretically in both for profit and not for profit cases a higher cost based share leads to higher leverage factors associated with high bankruptcy risk e g earnings volatility cause hospitals to take on less debt the hospital industry exhibits two prominent characteristics that have unique implications for its capital structure first the majority of hospitals are organized as private not for profit nfp institutions since there is no applicable corporate income tax any risk of bankruptcy might imply that the nfp hospital would select an all equity hospital structure yet it is a stylized fact that almost all nfp hospitals have debt obligations at the same time there exists a sizeable minority of hospitals operated by government or as for profit organizations forprofit hospitals are subject to all tax privileges and obligations applicable to forprofit enterprises in other sectors thus the industry provides a laboratory for analysis of the effect of ownership on organizations capital structures a second unique feature of the industry is that almost all hospital revenue is derived from public and private insurers waldo et al 21 at least until very recently insurers in this industry paid hospitals on either a retrospective cost or

economic growth convergence and agricultural economics after nearly two centuries of lagging behind the industrial countries growth in many developing countries has surged since the early 1990s this outperformance has major implications for almost all areas of agricultural economics and if continued will likely do so into the future this article aims to identify the key ways in which the changes in rich and poor country growth rates matter for agricultural economists as a basis for formulating better research agendas a key impact arises through sharp increases in demand for agricultural resources as demand for livestock products increases this changing structure of food demand has important implications for nutrition studies and policies with the emergence of a double burden of malnutrition on the supply side growth in developing countries tends to increase domestic food supply which is also boosted by increases in research and development spending growth in developing countries both stimulates and benefits from increases in infrastructure investment evaluation of which requires new analytical tools negative impacts include the contribution of increased demand for livestock products to global greenhouse gas emissions in terms of trade policy growth in developing country is tending to lead to convergence of agricultural policies with the pattern of assistance seen in today s developed countries raising concerns about the future need to deal with collective action problems particularly those that increase the volatility of world prices

demand elasticities for food products in brazil a two stage budgeting system the object of this article is to estimate demand elasticities for a basket of staple food important for providing the caloric needs of brazilian households these elasticities are useful in the measurement of the impact of structural reforms on poverty a two stage demand system was constructed based on data from household expenditure surveys pof produced by ibge the brazilian bureau of statistics in 1987 88 and 1995 96 we have used panel data to estimate the model and have calculated income own price and cross price elasticities for eight groups of goods and services and in the second stage for 11 sub groups of staple food products we estimated those elasticities for the whole sample of consumers and for two income groups

el salvador s agricultural sector macroeconomic policy agrarian change and the environment abstract this paper argues that current agricultural policy in el salvador is failing to further the goals of macroeconomic growth and stability sustainable livelihood security and environmental sustainability macroeconomic policy has turned relative prices sharply against agriculture the plight of the rural poor has been exacerbated by continuing inequities in the agrarian structure the breakdown in rural livelihoods and limited access to land and other assets is accelerating environmental degradation suggested alternative policies such as more favorable price policies agrarian reform and environmental restoration would promote sustainable development by capitalizing on the complementarity among growth poverty reduction and consolidation of peace

the design of the university system abstract this paper compares the organisation of the university sector under unregulated private provision with the structure which would be chosen by a welfare maximising government it studies a general equilibrium model where students attend university to earn higher incomes in the labour market and universities teach them and carry out research each university chooses its tuition fee to maximise the amount of resources it can devote to research research bestows an externality on society government intervention needs to balance labour market efficiency considerations which would tend to equalise the number of students attending each university with considerations of efficiency on the production side which suggest that the most productive universities should teach more students and carry out more research we find that government concentrates research more that the private market would but less than it would like to do if it had perfect information about the productivity of universities it also allows fewer universities than would operate in a private system

the supply of charity services by nonprofit hospitals motives and market structure this article studies provision of charity care by private nonprofit hospitals we demonstrate that in the absence of large positive income effects on charity care supply convex preferences for the nonprofit hospital imply crowding out by other private or government hospitals extending our model to include impure altruism rivalry provides a possible explanation for the previously reported empirical result that both crowding out and income effects on indigent care supply are often weak or insignificant empirical analysis of data for hospitals in maryland provides evidence of rivalry on the supply of charity care

semiparametric estimation and consumer demand this paper considers the implementation of semiparametric methods in the empirical analysis of consumer demand the application is to the estimation of the engel curve relationship and uses the british family expenditure survey household composition is modelled using an extended partially linear framework this is shown to provide a useful method for pooling non parametric engel curves across households of different demographic composition c 1998 john wiley sons ltd

tricks with hicks the easi demand system we invent implicit marshallian demands which combine desirable features of hicksian and marshallian demands we propose and estimate the exact affine stone index easi implicit marshallian demand system like the almost ideal demand aid system easi budget shares are linear in parameters given real expenditures however unlike the aid easi demands can have any rank and its engel curves can have any shape over real expenditures easi error terms equal random utility parameters to account for unobserved preference heterogeneity easi demand functions can be estimated using gmm or three stage least squares and like aid an approximate easi model can be estimated by linear regression

estimating the value and distributional effects of free state schooling the effects of free of charge state education on income distribution are often studied by allocating government education outlays to households assuming that these outlays equal the benefit which households attach to state schooling this paper proposes a demand analysis approach to estimating the true value of state education as perceived by consumers and uses the results to assess the inefficiency of public provision empirical analysis based on data from cyprus suggests that state schooling costs twice the amount households are willing to pay for the implications of this finding for the equality and anti poverty effects of state education are illustrated

potential impacts of electricity price changes on price formation in the economy a social accounting matrix price modeling analysis for turkey recent reforms in the turkish electricity sector since 2001 aim to introduce a tariff system that reflects costs this is expected to affect the production and consumer prices of electricity the changes in electricity prices are then reflected in production costs in other segments of the economy subsequently producer and consumer prices will be affected the potential impact of the changes in electricity prices that the ongoing electricity reforms in turkey will bring about may have important implications on the price formation in economic activities and the cost of living for households this paper evaluates the potential impacts of changes in electricity prices from a social accounting matrix sam price modeling perspective it is found that based on the estimated price multipliers that prices in the energy producing sectors mining and iron and steel manufacturing sectors would be affected more severely than the remaining sectors of the economy consumer prices are affected slightly less than producer prices

modelling household energy expenditures using micro data this paper is concerned with the empirical modeling of domestic demand for energy in the united kingdom at the level of the individual household a two stage budgeting model of household demand for energy conditional on durable ownership is developed at the first stage income is allocated between energy and nonenergy consumption while at the second stage energy expenditure is disaggregated the second stage allocation is assumed to be between gas electricity and a composite good other fuels estimation takes place using a sample of some 50 000 households drawn from the annual u k family expenditure survey for the years 1972 83 a source that has not been fully exploited in the analysis of energy demand to date copyright 1989 by royal economic society

reformulating taxes for an energy transition abstract an energy transition toward clean energy sources would reduce environmental impacts one proposal to trigger this energy transition uses economic instruments particularly environmental taxes this research studies the potential impact of taxes on electricity on the environment and the economy using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model for spain with energy and environmental extensions we assess their current impact on gdp growth energy use and a set of different pollutant emissions then we propose a reform that would foster an energy transition toward clean energies and assess their economic and environmental impact we find that only taxing the production of electricity by coal oil and natural gas can be better for the environment and economy than taxing all forms of electricity production in a revenue neutral context moreover the production of electricity by biomass though considered renewable is an important source of pollutant emissions and in these terms should have less importance in an energy transition

elasticities of demand for gasoline in canada and the united states abstract fluctuations in the world price of oil the concern with greenhouse gas emissions and the efforts to revive the 1997 kyoto protocol have resulted in renewed interest in the estimation of elasticities of demand for gasoline in this paper a complete system of demand equations is estimated including an equation for the demand for gasoline canadian family expenditure famex and united states consumer expenditure cex survey data are used household level data permits estimation of elasticities for various household groups also differences in demand responsiveness to own price and income changes are estimated for different regions in canada and the united states demand is found to be own price and income inelastic on the whole as reported in earlier studies there is also variation in these elasticities across regions of canada and the united states however larger differences are observed with respect to household size and housing tenure than to region of residence

carbon tax simulations using a household demand model abstract the main objective of this paper is to analyse consumer response and welfare effects due to changes in energy or environmental policy to achieve this objective we formulate and estimate an econometric model for non durable consumer demand in sweden that utilises micro and macro data in the simulations we consider two revenue neutral scenarios that both imply a doubling of the co2 tax one that returns the revenues in the form of a lower vat and one that subsidise public transport one conclusion from the simulations is that the co2 tax has regional distribution effects in the sense that household living in sparsely populated areas carry a larger share of the tax burden

explaining the relative decline of agriculture a supply side analysis for indonesia the relative decline of agriculture in growing economies is a central feature of economic development and a major influence on agricultural policies the literature on the causes of this decline has focused on the relative price effects arising from demand factors especially engel s law rather than on supply side influences such as changes in relative factor endowments and differential rates of technical change this article develops a simple structural model of the transformation of the indonesian economy applying an error correction mechanism to capture the dynamics resulting from disequilibria and the costs of adjustment the decline in agriculture s share of gross domestic product is found to be caused much less by the relative price effects typically emphasized in the literature than by capital accumulation and rapid technical change in agriculture

enter at your own risk hmo participation and enrollment in the medicare risk market we examine hmo participation and enrollment in the medicare risk market for the years 1990 to 1995 we develop a profit maximization model of hmo behavior which explicitly considers potential linkages between an hmo s production decision in the commercial enrollee market and its participation and production decisions in the medicare risk market our results suggest that the payment rate is a primary determinant of hmo participation while the price of a supplemental medicare insurance policy positively affects hmo medicare enrollment we also find empirical support for the existence of complementarities in the joint production of an hmo s commercial and medicare products

a policy agenda for pro poor agricultural growth abstract sub saharan africa and parts of south asia are likely to hold large numbers of very poor rural people into the foreseeable future although both history and theory suggest a pre eminent role for agricultural growth in poverty reduction in poor agrarian economies such growth today faces new difficulties many of these difficulties are endogenous to today s poor rural areas others result from broader processes of global change but some are due to changes in the dominant policy environment emphasizing liberalization and state withdrawal examination of 20th century green revolutions suggests that active state interventions were important in supporting critical stages of agricultural market development unfortunately such interventions benefits in institutional development are easily overlooked whereas their high costs are much more visible policy implications are discussed

an analysis of short run response of export and domestic agriculture in sub saharan africa abstract short run responses of export and domestic shares of total agricultural output to changes in stocks of domestic savings sav development assistance oda private foreign commercial capital pfx and other variables is investigated a profit function approach is used time series data for 19 sub saharan african countries are pooled into three panels using similarities in changes in economic policy regime statistical evidence suggests that for the panel of countries that were undertaking liberalized economic reforms the slope coefficients of some of the variables in the models have changed significantly between 1970 1980 and 1981 1993 for the 1981 1993 period the impacts of oda pfx and sav on export and domestic shares were different for this panel the effect of increases in agricultural labor was different across the three panels there is also evidence that productivity growth in the export agriculture sub sector is negative in all the groups it is recommended that to halt the decline in export share of agricultural output in the group of countries that have undertaken substantial improvements in economic policy environment efforts must be made to reduce the negative impact of domestic savings and agricultural labor while at the same time working to reduce the bias of development assistance against food security

the effects of for profit status and system membership on the financial performance of hospitals this research examines whether for profit status or system membership is significantly related to the financial performance of hospitals panel data containing 573 observations of florida hospitals for 1984 through 1987 are used in a fixed effects regression model the results indicate that it is system membership rather than forprofit status that is significantly related to better financial performance for profit status is unrelated to overall financial performance system hospitals have higher revenues per admission but not higher expenditures per admission than independent hospitals the findings are consistent with the hypothesis that expanding hospital systems target locations and services that are potentially profitable

is dumping socially inefficient abstract this paper investigates an efficiency implication of medicare s prospective payment system pps on the utilization of united states veterans affairs va hospital inpatient services by elderly veterans there is empirical evidence to suggest that non va hospitals are reacting to pps by increasingly shifting veterans they expect may be high cost to va hospitals we define as efficient allocations that would occur if hospitals acted as perfect agents of the patient then we show that some shifting would still occur if allocations were efficient this is because va and non va hospitals operate under different budget regimes and within each diagnosis related group veterans with different levels of illness severity and different non va insurance packages will self select into va and non va hospitals we derive conditions of severity under which different hospital types become attractive to particular patients

a life cycle consistent empirical model of family labour supply using cross section data this paper estimates a utility maximising model of the joint determination of male and female labour supplies using a sample of married couples from the u k family expenditure survey the emphasis is on the estimation of within period preferences that are consistent with intertemporal two stage budgeting under uncertainty however the approach we adopt provides an alternative method of estimating certain aspects of life cycle behaviour to the fixed effects constant approach of heckman and macurdy 1980 macurdy 1981 and browning deaton and irish 1985 moreover it relaxes some of the underlying restrictions that are implicit in these constant models under uncertainty

economic growth convergence and world food demand and supply in projecting global food demand to 2050 much attention has been given to rising demand due to the projected population increase from the current 7 4 billion to more than 9 billion an increasingly important source of the increase in food demand is per capita demand growth induced by rising income per person since the proportion of income spending on food decreases as incomes rise growth in global food demand will be greater if incomes grow faster in developing countries than in high income countries such a pattern of income convergence has become established in recent years making it important to assess the implications for food demand and supply using a resource based measure of food that accounts for the much higher production costs associated with dietary upgrading this paper concludes that per capita demand growth is likely to be a more important driver of food demand than population growth between now and 2050 using the middle ground international institute for applied systems analysis shared socioeconomic pathway projections to 2050 which assume continued income convergence the paper finds that the increase in food demand 102 percent would be roughly a third greater than without convergence 78 percent since the impact of convergence on the supply side is much more muted convergence puts upward pressure on world food prices partially offsetting a baseline trend toward falling world food prices to 2050

best nonparametric bounds on demand responses this paper uses revealed preference inequalities to provide the tightest possible best nonparametric bounds on predicted consumer responses to price changes using consumer level data over a finite set of relative price changes these responses are allowed to vary nonparametrically across the income distribution this is achieved by combining the theory of revealed preference with the semiparametric estimation of consumer expansion paths engel curves we label these expansion path based bounds on demand responses as e bounds deviations from revealed preference restrictions are measured by preference perturbations which are shown to usefully characterize taste change and to provide a stochastic environment within which violations of revealed preference inequalities can be assessed

how serious is the aggregation problem an empirical illustration heterogeneity in consumer behaviour may create problems with aggregation across consumers if so we may not be able to make correct inferences about behaviour based on aggregated data however using micro estimates to predict aggregate demand responses to policy changes may also create a bias if not aggregated properly this may sound like a catch 22 situation but it is not as it is possible to calculate both micro and aggregate demand responses based on microdata the size of the aggregation bias is an empirical question in this article we show how to calculate theoretically consistent aggregate demand responses we use both micro and macro data for norwegian household electricity consumption to illustrate the magnitude and direction of different aggregation biases we find considerable aggregation biases in particular when estimating with macro data

carbon pricing and energy efficiency improvement why to miss the interaction for developing economies an illustrative cge based application to the pakistan case abstract carbon energy taxes and energy efficiency improvement are studied well in the recent years for their potential adverse impacts on economy especially for lost production and international competitiveness and rebound effects however little attention has been paid to investigate them jointly which can not only prevent fall of energy services cost and thereby rebound effect but reduce the associated macroeconomic costs this study thus employs a 20 sector cge model to explore separately the impacts of carbon tax and its coordinated implementation with energy efficiency improvement on the pakistan economy the country underwent enormous pressure of energy security issues as well as climate change fallouts in the last couple of years and can be regarded as a suitable candidate for energy environmental conservation policies to be considered at a broader context with more concrete efforts the simulation results show that the impact of carbon tax on gdp is negative but resulting reductions in pollutant emissions are relatively high moreover the gdp is expected to grow comparatively positive when analyzed with improvements in energy efficiency with even higher decline in energy consumption demand and so emissions this simultaneous economic and environmental improvement would thus have positive implications regarding sustainable development of the country

quantifying the severity of fuel poverty its relationship with poor housing and reasons for non investment in energy saving measures in ireland fuel poverty has generally been calculated by quantifying the number of households spending in excess of 10 of income on home heating this definition has a number of significant practical and scientific limitations this paper employs self reported data to calculate the severity of fuel poverty in ireland to identify chronic fuel poor households from occasional sufferers it also assesses domestic energy efficiency levels ireland is a useful case study as it demonstrates the highest variations in seasonal mortality and morbidity in northern europe both of which are associated with fuel poverty ireland is also experiencing extreme difficulties meeting its environmental emissions targets in light of recent spectacular economic growth reducing fuel poverty would lower energy related emissions assisting policy makers achieve these challenging targets furthermore little empirical research has been undertaken on fuel poverty in ireland this paper identifies key social groups at risk by conducting detailed socio economic and socio demographic analyses the relationship between fuel poverty and adverse housing conditions damp condensation is also examined moreover the reasons behind householders not investing in energy saving measures are reported the results show that ireland suffers from similar levels of fuel poverty as the uk with low income households suffering the greatest the key policy implications are outlined

an aggregator model of canadian export supply and import demand responsiveness the aggregate canadian technology is modeled by a gnp function with four export and four import components included by the use of aggregator functions and a two stage estimation process the recently developed symmetric generalized mcfadden functional form is used at both the aggregator and gnp function levels the aggregate export own price elasticity is found to be 1 67 in 1970 while the import own price demand elasticity is 1 62 increases in the prices of both imports and labor are found to decrease the supply of exports while exports are found to be complementary to the output of domestic sales supply

income distribution impacts of climate change mitigation policy in the susquehanna river basin economy we examine the cost side income distribution impacts of a carbon tax in the susquehanna river basin srb region of the united states utilizing a computable general equilibrium model we find the aggregate impacts of a 25 ton carbon tax on the srb economy are likely to be negative but modest an approximately one third of 1 reduction in gross regional product grp in the short run and double that amount in the long run however unlike many previous studies we find that the carbon tax is mildly progressive as measured by income bracket changes per capita equivalent variation and gini coefficient changes based on expenditure patterns the dominant factors affecting the distributional impacts are the pattern of output income and consumption impacts that affect lower income groups relatively less than higher income ones an increase in transfer payments favoring lower income groups and decreased corporate profits absorbed primarily by higher income groups

pricing behavior of non profit agencies the case of blood products abstract in this study we examine the pricing behavior of a non profit agency the american national red cross blood service units two alternative hypotheses are presented one in which the agency maximizes profits and one in which output is maximized subject to a breakeven constraint following a general approach developed by eckstein and fromm pricing equations for separate blood products are applied to cross sectional data from red cross blood centers to determine the impact of demand cost competition and subsidy variables the impact of these variables in particular the impact of the fixed subsidy on price is shown to be consistent with the output maximizing model

the contributions of angus deaton angus deaton was awarded the 2015 sveriges riksbank prize in economic sciences in memory of alfred nobel for his analysis of consumption poverty and welfare this article reviews his contributions to economics

welfare comparison under exact aggregation new econometric model of aggregate consumer behavior in the united states and to apply this model to the analysis of impacts of alternative economic policies on the welfare of individual consuming units the model incorporates time series data on quantities consumed prices the level and distribution of income and demographic characteristics of the population it also incorporates cross section data on the allocation of consumer expenditures for households with different demographic characteristics our econometric model is based on the theory of exact aggregation developed by lau 1977a c this theory makes it possible to dispense with the notion of a representative consumer in constructing models of aggregate consumer behavior one of the most remarkable implications of lau s theory of exact aggregation is that systems of demand functions for individuals with common demographic characteristics can be recovered uniquely from the system of aggregate demand functions using the individual demand functions we can analyze the impact of economic policy on consumer welfare

reimbursing health plans and health providers efficiency in production versus selection the tradeoff between an insurer s or medical provider s incentives to select good risks and to produce efficiently is governed by the supply price analog to the demand price tradeoff between moral hazard and risk aversion under a variety of models the optimum supply price is a mixture of capitation and fee for service payments empirical literature shows that pure capitation payment leaves strong incentives for selection that are acted upon the presence of contracting costs in a rothschild stiglitz model means a limited pooling equilibrium can exist and that poor risks will not be at their preferred outcome

the changing effects of competition on non profit and for profit hospital pricing behavior abstract has the nature of hospital competition changed from a medical arms race in which hospitals compete for patients by offering their doctors high quality services to a price war for the patients of payors this paper uses time series cross sectional methods on california hospital discharge data from 1986 1994 to show the association of hospital prices with measures of market concentration changed steadily over this period with prices now higher in less competitive areas even for non profit hospitals regression results are used to simulate the price impact of hypothetical hospital mergers

simple tests of distributional effects on macroeconomic equations the presence of distributional effects in macroeconomic equations is shown to coincide with nonlinearity in micro behavioral relationships parameters estimated with aggregate data as in representative agent models contain distributional biases that are not measurable using aggregate data alone tests for distributional effects and other measures of the extent of aggregation problems are derived using distributional data observed over time significant distributional effects are noted for a model of annual aggregate u s commodity expenditure data a static model that accommodates individual heterogeneity is found to be statistically equivalent to a simply dynamic model that accommodates first order autocorrelation

how revealing is revealed preference this lecture address the following two key criticisms of the empirical application of revealed preference theory when the rp conditions do not reject they do not provide precise predictions and when they do reject they do not help characterize the nature of irrationality or the degree direction of changing tastes recent developments in the application of rp theory are shown to have rendered these criticisms unfounded a powerful test of rationality is available that also provides a natural characterization of changing tastes tight bounds on demand responses and on the welfare costs of relative price and tax changes are also available and are shown to work well in practice

resource use and technological progress in agriculture a dynamic general equilibrium analysis we analyze the global effects of economic and population growth and the impact of a slowdown in agricultural total factor productivity tfp on agriculture and forest resources using a dynamic multi region computable general equilibrium model with land use and cover detail given the current consensus about the growth of the world economy our results suggest that food security will not be threatened and agricultural activities will not encroach on forest resources over the next decade a slowdown in agricultural tfp growth might lead to higher crop prices in all regions with south east asia facing the steepest increases a slowdown in agricultural tfp growth also might be accompanied by higher conversion rates of forestland to farmland as well as by greater environmental or ecological damages on the remaining forestland

is agriculture the engine of growth we seek to address formally the question raised by gardner 2003 in his elmhirst lecture as to the direction of causality between agricultural value added per worker and gross domestic product gdp per capita using the granger causality test in the panel data analyzed by gardner for 85 countries we find overwhelming evidence that supports the conclusion that agricultural value added is the causal variable in developing countries while the direction of causality in developed countries is unclear we also examine further the use of the granger causality test in integrated data and provide evidence that the performance of the test can be increased in small samples through the use of the bootstrap

the political economy of agricultural protection east asia in an international perspective kym anderson and yujiro hayami allen and unwin australia japan research centre australian national university london sydney boston 185 pp

quality and outside capacity in the provision of health services abstract this paper studies the effects of non contractibility of investment on the choices made by a health authority and a hospital which supplies a specific service non contractibility determines inefficiencies compared with any pareto efficient outcome the quality of the service chosen by the hospital is too low and the health authority relies too much on outside providers

the effects of male and female labor supply on commodity demands we examine the effects of male and female labor supply on household demands and present a simple and robust test for the separability of commodity demands from labor supply using data on individual households from six years of the uk fes we estimate a demand system for seven goods which includes hours and participation dummies as conditioning variables allowance is made for the possible endogeneity of these conditioning labor supply variables we find that separability is rejected furthermore we present evidence that ignoring the effects of labor supply leads to bias in the parameter estimates

when can carbon abatement policies increase welfare the fundamental role of distorted factor markets abstract this paper employs analytical and numerical models to assess the welfare effects of a revenue neutral carbon tax and nonauctioned carbon emissions permits taking into account preexisting tax distortions in factor markets the presence of preexisting taxes significantly raises the general equilibrium costs of both policies this cost increase is much greater under emissions permits since this policy does not generate revenues to reduce distortionary taxes under our central estimates emissions permits cannot increase welfare unless environmental damages exceed about 18 per ton of carbon in contrast an appropriately scaled carbon tax is welfare improving so long as environmental damages are positive

are co2 taxes regressive evidence from the danish experience abstract denmark today carries one of the heaviest environmental tax burdens in the world bringing in around 10 of public revenues while evaluations have shown that the danish co 2 and other environmental taxes work as an effective measure to reduce emissions a considerable barrier to increased use of these instruments today seems to be a widespread perception of their socially adverse effects in this article it is demonstrated that co 2 taxes imposed on energy consumption in households as well as in industry do in fact tend to be regressive and therefore have undesirable distributional effects this holds especially for taxes imposed directly on households to analyze this we apply national consumer survey statistics in combination with input output tables

the distributional implications of a carbon tax in ireland we study the effects of carbon tax and revenue recycling across the income distribution in the republic of ireland in absolute terms a carbon tax of 20 tco2 would cost the poorest households less than 3 week and the richest households more than 4 week a carbon tax is regressive therefore however if the tax revenue is used to increase social benefits and tax credits households across the income distribution can be made better off without exhausting the total carbon tax revenue

behavioural differences among hospitals it is ownership or location by about 1988 the consensus among leading health economists was that no meaningful differences existed among hospitals of differences owernership form and this position was embraced by the antitrust division of the us department of justice but behavioural differences among hospitals of different among hospitals of different owernership has continued to be a matter of both academic and judicial interest recent empirical studies have concluded that real differences do exist while many earlier studies reached the opposite conclusion this contradiction in finding over time as competition intensified is exactly opposite to what expense preference theory would predict we examine this apparent paradox using a very general test of behavioural differences by hospital ownership we find that the omission of location specific variables can lead to biased estimates of ownership effects and that no significant behavioural differences exist among private california hospitals in 1986 90 when this source of o

water competition through the water energy nexus assessing the economic impacts of climate change in a mediterranean context abstract the impacts of climate change on water resources availability are expected to be adverse especially in drier climate regions such as the mediterranean increased water scarcity will exacerbate competition for water resources not only between sectors but also between countries sharing transboundary river basins due to the mutual dependence of the energy sector on water resources and of the water services provision sector on energy inputs the water energy nexus is acknowledged as a major challenge for the near future with hydropower representing one of the most direct links in this nexus the aim of this paper is to assess the economy wide impacts of the concurrent effects of climate change driven impacts on water availability and the sectoral and regional competition for scarcer water resources in order to accomplish that goal an integrated modelling approach is developed where a computable general equilibrium model including raw water as a production factor is linked to times pt a bottom up model of the energy sector a case study is provided for the mediterranean country of portugal results for 2050 show that macroeconomic impacts are significant and encompass important inter sectoral differences that in turn depend on the degree of competition between sectors impacts are stronger when water consumption by spanish sectors is considered as this intensifies water scarcity in portugal thus the paper allows to gain insight in the broader water energy economy nexus and the additional costs that the dependence on water resources availability in transboundary river basins represents to an economy both aspects being of utmost importance for climate adaptation and energy policy making

nonprofit organizations revised theory and new evidence it is apparent that comprehensive analysis requires at least some application of elementary axioms from the economics of politics or public choice one of these implies that because of asymmetric costs of political participation some suppliers of goods and services usually do better for themselves out of lobbying and organization than do others moreover for the same reason dispersed consumers would appear to do worst of all legislation and policy on nonprofit organization seems to be one of many examples of this phenomenon in this case however the supply side lobbyists are aided by an ancient and deep seated popular prejudice against profit making the man in the street has apparently not yet fully grasped the point that so long as competition is possible the profit inducement acts as a continued incentive to minimize costs constantly and indiscriminately to condone pejorative language against profits is to create a climate that results in legislation giving unprecedented new profit opportunities via not for profit organizations and such increased rewards can result in social harm rather than social gain granted there may be cases that justify nonprofits in some circumstances preston 1988 the fact remains that the costs of separating and monitoring these cases at least at federal level would appear to be overwhelming the nonprofit system that is usually advocated calls for a federal general tax exemption yet the value of this advantage is the same to all nonprofit firms whereas we need to know the extent of the particular social benefits generated in each particular case so as to give tailor made government assistance and since in very many instances the social benefits are negative the government s shotgun approach appears highly questionable

a lower vat rate on electricity in portugal towards a cleaner environment better economic performance and less inequality abstract this article addresses the budgetary economic distributional and environmental impact of increasing the vat on electricity in portugal the analysis is carried out in the context of a new multi sector multi household dynamic general equilibrium model simulation results suggest that a permanent increase from 6 to 23 improves the public budget and albeit marginally co2 emissions but it leads to detrimental economic and distributional effects as the economy in portugal begins to recover after the great financial crisis and the budgetary situation becomes less constraining pressure is mounting for this vat increase to be reversed this mixed bag of results is an important element for the debate reverting to a lower vat is desirable as it would improve economic performance and have positive distributional effects the question is how to compensate for the loss of tax revenues to offset the adverse budgetary effects of a lower vat we consider several revenue raising strategies our simulation results suggest that an offsetting increase in either the general vat tax rate or the tax on petroleum products would yield more favorable effects from all relevant perspectives economic distributional and environmental while mostly keeping intact the budgetary benefits

determinants of agriculture s relative decline thailand during economic development agriculture declines as a proportion of aggregate national output a number of theoretical explanations for this phenomenon have been advanced in the economic literature but their relative historical significance has not been clear this paper develops an econometric methodology to analyze this issue and applies it to time series data for thailand the study investigates the importance of relative commodity prices factor endowments and technical progress as explanations for changing sectoral gdp shares of agriculture manufacturing and services it is concluded that the movement in thailand s aggregate factor endowment relative to labor was the most important determinant of agriculture s relative decline

distributional and regional economic impact of energy taxes in belgium we analyse the macroeconomic and distributional effects of increased oil excises in belgium by combining a regional computable general equilibrium cge model with a microsimulation framework that exploits the rich detail of household level data the link between the cge model and the microlevel is top down feeding changes in commodity prices factor returns and employment by sector into a microsimulation model the results suggest that policymakers face an equity efficiency trade off driven by the choice of revenue recycling options when the additional revenue is used to raise welfare transfers to households the reform is beneficial for lower income groups but output levels decrease in all regions however when the energy tax revenue is used to lower distortionary labour taxes the tax shift is slightly regressive in this case national gdp is hardly affected but regional production levels diverge the impact of the environmental tax reform on income distribution depends strongly on changes in factor prices and welfare payments whereas sector composition is an important determinant for regional impact variation

accounting for agricultural decline with economic growth in taiwan abstract in this paper we propose an empirical model to decompose the evolution of the agricultural gdp share of taiwan into three components price changes factor endowment changes and technological change the full sample period is 1967 to 1997 the data were first tested to assess whether the time series are nonstationary and cointegrated after confirming their nonstationarity and cointegrated relation ship we then employ an error correction model ecm in the empirical estimation to capture the dynamic as well as long run equilibrium relationship among those economic variables the results suggest that relative prices have a positive influence on the share of agriculture in gdp in both the long run and the short run an increase in capital per unit of labor on the other hand is associated with a smaller agricultural share this result is consistent with the rybczynski theorem technical change has been biased in favor of this sector the strong negative impact of the change in factor endowments seems to dominate any possible positive effect of relative prices and technical change this result makes a strong case for a heckscher ohlin type model as a basis of understanding the development of the taiwanese economy

an integrated economic and distributional analysis of energy policies most public policies particularly those in the energy sphere have not only efficiency but also distributional effects however there is a trade off between modelling approaches suitable for calculating those impacts on the economy for the former most of the studies have been conducted with general equilibrium models whereas partial equilibrium models represent the main approach for distributional analysis this paper proposes a methodology to simultaneously carry out an analysis of the distributional and efficiency consequences of changes in energy taxation in order to do so we have integrated a microeconomic household demand model and a computable general equilibrium model for the spanish economy we illustrate the advantages of this approach by simulating a revenue neutral reform in spanish indirect taxation with a large increase of energy taxes that serve an environmental purpose the results show that the reforms bring about significant efficiency and distributional effects in some cases counterintuitive and demonstrate the academic and social utility of this approximation

sectoral effects of a green tax reform in portugal abstract economic downturn coupled with serious and persisting environmental problems require a new regulation system to tackle these problems the portuguese government created the commission for the green tax reform in 2014 following the guidelines of the european union in the sense that fiscal policy should contribute to public budget consolidation and sustainable growth the commission was commissioned to propose a simplification of taxation in order to promote economic competitiveness environmental sustainability and the efficient use of resources the aim of this paper is to present the results from one of the teams that have contributed to the commission for the green tax reform we have followed the european commission guidelines in order to simulate a green tax reform with a static general equilibrium model and aligned to the political context we found that i it is possible to enjoy a positive double dividend ii to achieve improvements in the energy trade balance and energy independence and iii to reduce the energy intensity of the portuguese economy

profit variability in for profit and not for profit hospitals this paper proposes two tests of the hypothesis that not for profit hospitals nfps behave differently than for profit hospitals the profit variability test states that the profits of an nfp will be less variable over time than profits of a for profit hospital if the nfp maximizes utility subject to a profit constraint the second test examines whether nfp profits respond less to change in exogenous factors such as medicare reimbursement rates than profits of for profit hospitals both tests performed on panel data from 1983 to 1988 support the hypothesis that nfps behave differently than for profit hospitals

intergenerational effects of a green tax reform for a more sustainable social security system abstract green tax reforms are popular in some circles not only because of their direct effect on reducing pollution but also because their revenue capacity may allow to reduce other more distortionary taxes despite their potential benefits the political implementation of green tax reforms is not straightforward changes in environmental taxes have different intergenerational effects which need to be taken into account when considering their political support among a country s population in this paper we analyze the economic and intergenerational welfare effects of introducing a green tax reform to ameliorate the spanish social security system we consider two types of energy taxes an energy consumption tax and an energy input tax we find that both types of reforms are favored by young individuals but rejected by older generations the number of generations supporting the reform depends crucially on the disutility that individuals derive from pollution suggesting that an increase in environmental awareness may be needed for green tax reforms to be politically viable

nitrogen tax and set aside as greenhouse gas abatement policies under global change scenarios a case study for germany the ambitious climate policy objectives of the cop21 agreement require the design and the implementation of effective and efficient policy instruments the effectiveness and efficiency of agricultural abatement options depend on regional climate and natural conditions changes in the global economy global agricultural markets and regional agricultural production thus the assessment of abatement options requires consideration of the global scale the market scale and the regional producer scale we investigate two abatement options discussed controversially in literature both have been partially applied to reduce environmental pollution from agriculture a tax on nitrogen and the obligatory set aside of agricultural land our study provides an assessment of the ecological effectiveness and the economic efficiency of both abatement options under different global scenarios in our policy analysis we combine three applied policy simulation models to develop an integrated economic model framework this model framework considers the global the national and the regional scale and consists of the global general equilibrium model dart bio the partial equilibrium model capri and the regional supply model raumis in the different global scenarios the results show that both abatement options create relatively high marginal abatement costs and that the maximally reached abated greenhouse gas emissions represent only 15 of the quantity required to fulfill the policy targets compared to the obligatory set aside option the nitrogen tax is in both scenarios the more efficient policy with respect to impacts on production and environment a nitrogen tax is less forecastable than the obligatory set aside option our study illustrates the relevance of considering global economic and market change in the assessment of producer targeting environmental policies

an international comparison of hospital efficiency does institutional environment matter the consensus among many health economists is that no meaningful performance differences exist among for profit and non profit hospitals in the us but this topic has continued to be a matter of academic judicial and public policy interest a similar debate has ensued internationally regarding the potential efficiency gains from privatization of public enterprises in this paper we examine empirical evidence from the public highly regulated norwegian hospital sector and the private highly competitive and unregulated california hospital sector to ascertain whether institutional environment and level of market competition significantly affect the degree of productive efficiency in hospitals we compare and discuss the productive efficiency of four similar sets of hospitals operating in different institutional and competitive environments the four samples are carefully matched in the dimensions of sample size hospital size and average lengths of stay heterogeneity in output definition is used to co

taxation of multiple greenhouse gases and the effects on income distribution a case study of the netherlands current economic instruments aimed at climate change mitigation focus on co2 emissions only but the kyoto protocol refers to other greenhouse gases ghg as well as co2 these are ch4 n2o hfcs pfcs and sf6 taxation of multiple greenhouse gases improves the cost effectiveness of climate change mitigation it is not yet clear however what the effect is of multigas taxation on the distribution of the tax burden across income groups this paper examines and compares distributional effects of a co2 tax and a comprehensive tax that covers all six ghg of the kyoto protocol the study concentrates on the netherlands in the year 2000 we established tax rates on the basis of marginal abatement cost curves and the dutch policy target the distributional effects have been determined by means of environmentally extended input output analysis and data on consumer expenditures our results show that taxation of multiple ghg improves not only the cost effectiveness of climate change mitigation but also distributes the tax burden more equally across income groups as compared to a co2 tax these findings are relevant for the debate on the role of non co2 ghg in climate change mitigation

energy equity and the future of the fuel poor abstract a warm and adequately lit home is considered a basic need together with access to energy consuming appliances ranging from a fridge to a tv an underlying tenet of sustainable energy is that such basic needs should be affordably met yet low incomes energy inefficient housing and appliances and high energy costs mean that roughly 10 per cent of uk households many of them elderly or with young children fail to attain this basic standard these households which would need to spend more than 10 per cent of their income to attain adequate energy services are officially defined as fuel poor their cold poorly equipped homes lead to chronic cold related health conditions exacerbate social isolation and may undermine educational achievement in addition rural areas have a disproportionately high incidence of fuel poverty this review examines the current distribution of energy consumption its social impacts and the opportunities to address fuel poverty through improvements to the housing stock it will then consider potential future developments

the welfare effects and the distributive impact of carbon taxation on italian households in this work the welfare effects and the distributive impact on italian households of the italian carbon tax are calculated the carbon tax has been introduced in italy at the beginning of 1999 asking for smooth increases over a number of years in the prices of most fossil fuels its welfare effects have been calculated using true cost of living index numbers and the compensating variation the parameters have been obtained through estimation of a complete almost ideal demand system using households data from 1985 to 1996 the welfare loss turns out to be quite substantial and affects italian households in a non negligible way but the distribution of welfare losses across different levels of total monthly expenditures does not allow sustaining the regressivity of carbon taxation as the effect becomes bigger as we move up the income distribution this evidence might encourage the use of carbon taxes at least in the transport sector as cost effective instruments of environmental policy especially after the ratification of the kyoto protocol on climate change

the demand for health some new empirical evidence this paper presents some new estimates of the pure investment and pure consumption models of the demand for health in contrast to previous studies the paper presents parameter estimates of both reduced form and structural demand for health care equations the latter which are obtained by treating health capital as a latent variable in a recursive equation system provide a safer way of checking the consistency of the model s predictions with the data the present analysis of the pure consumption model differs from previous analyses in its recognition of the dependency of the shadow price of initial assets on the entire lifetime profiles of the model s exogenous variables the paper also explores the implications in terms of reliability of parameter estimates of the failure on the part of previous studies to recognize this

what do we learn about consumer demand patterns from micro data the aim of this paper is to assess the importance of using micro level data in the econometric analysis of consumer demand to do this we utilize a time series of repeated cross sections covering some 4 000 households in each of 15 years employing a number of different aggregation procedures we conclude that aggregate data alone are unlikely to produce reliable estimates of structural price and income coefficients however once certain aggregation factors as well as trend and seasonal components are included an aggregate model is not necessarily outperformed across all demand equations in terms of forecasting ability jel d12 c52 c31 the purpose of this paper is to develop a complete consumer demand system based on a time series of individual household data and to use it to measure the biases introduced into the study of consumer de mand behavior when aggregate data are used in place of the appropriate microeco nomic data we assess the suitability of ag gregate data through the impact on income and price elasticities and by evaluating the ability of both micro and aggregate based models to forecast aggregate consumer de mand the biases introduced by the use of aggregate data depend upon the way that household characteristics interact with in come and price effects and on departures of demand systems from linearity we explore the structure of microeconomic demand sys tems and the role of household characteris tics in the behavior of consumer demand both for the light this may shed on the pattern of future demands and for the im plications this behavior has for issues of aggregation consumer demand patterns typically found in micro data sets vary considerably across households with different household characteristics and with different levels of income we model this variability by making intercept and slope parameters in the budget share equations of our demand sys tem depend on household characteristics and by allowing for nonlinear total log expenditure terms in fact in theory consistent demand systems it is total ex penditure rather than disposable income that is allocated across goods we find that this general framework leads to a well specified data coherent demand system which is a quadratic extension of the popu lar almost ideal model of angus s deaton and john muellbauer 1980 the micro level estimates are shown to be sensitive to the treatment of endogeneity of total expen diture and to the specification of interaction terms with household characteristics in ad dition this specification is also shown to possess many attractive features for the evaluation of aggregate models

estimation of complete demand systems from household budget data the linear and quadratic expenditure systems in this paper we explore two issues in empirical demand analysis the estimation of complete systems of demand equations using household budget data section i and the incorporation of demographic characteristics into such systems section ii although there are numerous studies which use time series data to estimate complete demand systems and many which estimate engel curves from household budget data there are virtually none which combine budget data from different periods to estimate complete systems since each budget study corresponds to a single price situation one might conjecture that estimation of complete systems would not be possible unless budget studies were available from a large number of periods this is incorrect in section i we argue that interesting complete demand systems can be estimated from a small number of budget studies despite the limited price variability represented in such data to demonstrate this we use budget study data for two periods to estimate a pair of related demand systems the familiar linear expenditure system les and a quadratic expenditure system qes a generalization of les in which the demand equations are quadratic in total expenditure the inclusion of demographic variables in the analysis of household consumption patterns is desirable because there are likely to be systematic differences in the consumption behavior of households with different demographic characteristics but the effects of demographic characteristics have seldom been studied within the framework of complete demand systems in section ii we propose translating as a general method for incorporating demographic variables into complete systems of demand equations this method has not previously been discussed as a general technique for bringing demographic variables into demand systems although it has been employed in several studies to improve the estimates of the les and the qes presented in section i we reestimate these two systems using translating to incorporate family size

hospital profits the effects of reimbursement policies this paper provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the effect of cost based reimbursement cbr on hospital costs and charges it takes issue with previous analyses which have treated cbr as paying economic costs plus a mark up and have concluded that the mark up is too small to significantly distort hospital decision making the basic thesis here is that if reimbursement is based on costs accounting costs become a price to cost paying patients and will be optimized to maximize revenue a hospital serving both cost and charge paying private patients can set two price schedules accounting profits ratio of charges to costs are not a measure of economic profit but of relative prices to these two groups of patients in the absence of constraints from regulation or patient co payment the optimum level of accounting costs would be infinite in practice the medicare reimbursement formula links allowable costs to charges received from charge paying patients this formula creates incentives for the hospital to raise charges above the single price profit maximizing monopoly level this inflationary effect of the medicare formula does not presuppose that medicare pays less than full cost the empirical analysis of hospital laboratory costs and charges generally supports the predictions for other departments the conclusions are consistent but more tentative because of data limitations overall evidence suggests minimal cross subsidy between cost and charge paying patients comparisons of cost and charge levels in for profit voluntary non profit and government hospitals are presented but it is emphasized that inferences about relative efficiency and profitability cannot be drawn from accounting data given the incentives created by cbr

quadratic engel curves and consumer demand this paper presents a model of consumer demand that is consistent with the observed expenditure patterns of individual consumers in a long time series of expenditure surveys and is also able to provide a detailed welfare analysis of shifts in relative prices a nonparametric analysis of consumer expenditure patterns suggests that engel curves require quadratic terms in the logarithm of expenditure while popular models of demand such as the translog or the almost ideal demand systems do allow flexible price responses within a theoretically coherent structure they have expenditure share engel curves that are linear in the logarithm of total expenditure we derive the complete class of integrable quadratic logarithmic expenditure share systems a specification from this class is estimated on a large pooled data set of u k households models that fail to account for engel curvature are found ro generate important distortions in the patterns of welfare losses associated with a tax increase

carbon taxes with exemptions in an open economy a general equilibrium analysis of the german tax initiative abstract sectoral exemptions from environmental regulation are applied in many countries to avoid adverse adjustment effects in specific industries the problem with exemptions is that they can make environmental policy more costly our paper analyzes the welfare costs of exemptions in environmental policy together with the issue of unilateral carbon taxes in an open economy several countries within the eu have introduced or contemplated unilateral taxes to reduce anthropogenic co2emissions taxes which are unilaterally imposed in an open economy can have significant impacts on production and employment of energy and export intensive industries to save jobs by maintaining international competitiveness most co2taxation schemes include exemptions for energy and export intensive industries as a compromise between environmental objectives and employment in these sectors this paper shows that such compromises are costly as the tax base narrows the dead weight loss increases our calculations illustrate this point in the framework of a static general equilibrium model for west germany calibrated to 1990 data we evaluate the excess costs of exemptions as a means of saving jobs in specific industries relative to an alternative instrument a uniform carbon tax cum wage subsidy which achieves an identical level of national emissions and employment at a fraction of the cost

market share and the illusion of power can blue cross force hospitals to discount researchers in health care financing have claimed that large private insurers like blue cross frequently exercise monopsony power to obtain discounts from normal hospital charges they claim that the monopsony power derives from a large blue cross share of a given hospital cost shifting whereby hospitals offset the discount by raising charges to less powerful customers this paper re examines both theoretically and empirically the conditions necessary for a private insurer to extract discounts from a hospital we demonstrate that the theoretical conditions necessary for blue cross to force a discount do not exist in the indiana market using revenue data from 110 indiana hospitals we reject the traditional claim that blue cross pays less than other insurers as a function of market share

price and income elasticities of residential energy demand in germany we apply a quadratic expenditure system to estimate price and expenditure elasticities of residential energy demand electricity and heating in germany using official expenditure data from 1993 to 2008 we estimate an expenditure elasticity for electricity of 0 3988 and of 0 4055 for space heating the own price elasticity for electricity is 0 4310 and 0 5008 in the case of space heating disaggregation of households by expenditure and demographic composition reveals that the behavioural response to energy price changes is weaker stronger for low income top income households there are considerable economies of scale in residential energy use but scale effects are not well approximated by the new oedc equivalence scale real increases in energy prices show a regressive pattern of incidence implying that the welfare consequences of direct energy taxation are larger for low income households the application of zero elasticities in assessments of welfare consequences of energy taxation strongly underestimates potential welfare effects the increase in inequality is 22 smaller when compared to the application of rich and disaggregated behavioural response patterns as estimated in this paper