the impact of usury ceilings on consumer credit usury regulation is a topic with a long history of discussion nevertheless the debate over the merits of usury regulation continues to the present day in the early part of the 1980s the rapid rise in nominal interest rates swung the debate in favor of the opponents of usury ceilings during this period a quarter of the states enacted legislation which largely eliminated their usury ceilings on consumer credit however with the return of lower interest rates in the middle part of the decade the argument for low usury ceilings gained increasing support and as a result several states lowered their usury ceilings on some types of credit the first formal economic model of the impact of usury ceilings was outlined by blitz and long 8 their insightful analysis has led researchers to focus on two hypotheses concerning the impact of usury ceilings on consumer credit hypothesis 1 usury ceilings reduce the quantity of credit obtained by high risk borrowers

strategic trade policy intellectual property rights protection and north south trade abstract in this paper we analyze the issue of optimal tariffs when the northern and southern firms compete in quantities in an imperfectly competitive northern market and there are potentially varying degrees of intellectual property rights ipr violation by the south ipr violation is reflected through the leakage of technological knowledge spillovers from the northern to the southern firm creating unit cost reduction it is shown that optimal tariffs in this framework are always higher than in the simple duopoly model since they serve here not only as profit shifting devices but also as instruments that influence domestic innovative activity generate scale economies and countervail the ipr violation of the south the other notable difference from the standard duopoly model is that positive tariffs may be desirable from the world welfare point of view

the earnings and human capital of american jews this paper analyzes the earnings and returns from human capital investments of second generation american jews compared with non jews jewish men have 16 percent higher earnings other things the same a 20 percent higher rate of return from schooling and a steeper experience earnings profile these patterns persist even after controlling for occupation self employment status and geographic concentration in the new york area there are no systematic differences among jews by parents country of birth the findings suggest that american jews are more productive in creating and using human capital and that this has encouraged greater investments in human capital

a parsimonious model for forecasting gross box office revenues of motion pictures the primary objective of this paper is to develop a parsimonious model for forecasting the gross box office revenues of new motion pictures based on early box office data the paper also seeks to provide insights into the impact of distribution policies on the adoption of new products the model is intended to assist motion picture exhibitor chains retailers in managing their exhibition capacity and in negotiating exhibition license agreements with distributors studios by allowing them to project the box office potential of the movies they plan to or currently exhibit based on early box office results it is also of interest to practitioners in other software industries e g music books cd roms where the distribution intensity is highly variable over the product life cycle and is an important determinant of new product adoption patterns the model and its extensions are of interest to academic researchers interested in modeling distribution effects in new product adoption as well as forecasters looking for ways to leverage historical data on related products to forecast the sales of new products we draw upon a queuing theory framework to conceptualize stochastically the consumer s movie adoption process in two steps the time to decide to see the new movie and the time to act on the adoption decision the parameter for the time to decide process captures the intensity of information intensity flowing from various information sources while the parameter for the time to act process is related to the delay created by limited distribution intensity and other factors our conceptualization extends existing new product forecasting models which assume that consumers act instantaneously on the motivating information they receive about the new product the resulting model is parsimonious yet it accommodates a wide range of adoption patterns in addition the stochastic formulation allows us to quantify the uncertainty surrounding the expected adoption pattern in the empirical testing we focus on the most parsimonious version of the modeling framework boxmod i a model that assumes stationarity with respect to the two shape parameters that characterize the adoption process the model produces fairly accurate early forecasts using at most the first three weeks of data for calibration and the predictive performance of the model compares favorably with benchmark models we propose extensions of the basic model that account for more realistic non stationary distribution intensity patterns including a wide release pattern that relies on intensive distribution and promotion and a platform release pattern that involves a gradual buildup of distribution intensity finally we present an adaptive weighing scheme that combines initial parameter estimates obtained from a meta analysis procedure with estimates obtained from early data to produce forecasts of box office revenues for a new movie when little or no box office data are available an important finding from the empirical testing is that motion picture box office revenue patterns display remarkable empirical regularity we find that there are only three classes of adoption patterns and these can all be represented within the basic model by using a two parameter exponential or erlang 2 probability distribution or a three parameter generalized gamma distribution we also find that cumulative box office revenues can be predicted with reasonable accuracy often within 10 of the actual using as little as two or three data points however our attempts to predict revenue patterns without any sales data meet with limited success while the scale parameter can be estimated reasonably well from a historical database of parameter values we find that it is considerably more difficult to predict the shape parameters using historical data the parsimony we seek in developing the model comes at the cost of several limiting assumptions we assume that the time to decide subprocess and the time to act subprocess are independent which may not be the case if decisions on continued exhibition by retailers are endogenously related to box office revenues over the life cycle in the basic model formulation we also assume that the time to act process can be represented by an exponential distribution which may not always be the case while we provide some empirical evidence to support these assumptions further research could relax these and other assumptions to enrich the basic model although this would entail some loss in parsimony

royalties vs fees how do firms pay for foreign technology abstract the theoretical determinants of technology licensing contracts have been extensively studied but empirical evidence is scarce we assemble a data set of all the foreign technology licensing agreements entered into by manufacturing firms in india between 1989 and 1993 industry firm and contract characteristics are used to explain differences between the forms of payment in licensing contracts our findings support theoretical arguments licensing contracts are more likely to use royalties when sales are relatively high while increased volatility of sales and greater profitability favor fixed fee contracts we also find that firms are more likely to use output based payments to control the sale and diffusion of r d or brand intensive know how to unaffiliated firms

imports domestic production and transnational vertical integration a theoretical note suppose a developing country has the choice of importing cars i or producing them at home in a subsidiary s of a transnational company or in a domestic firm under a licensing l contract from a transnational which ties the import of components from the latter if the criterion of national benefit is given by consumer surplus under i or s and by consumer surplus plus the profits of the domestic firm under l we compare the benefits from the alternative regimes i s or l under different market structure assumptions in most cases the regime s seems to dominate the conclusions are then modified by pointing to factors excluded from the basic model

a model of educational investment decisions from a probit model of enrollments estimates of the expected net present value of post secondary education are developed for a sample of high school graduates based e xclusively on individual expectations of the relevant costs and benefits at the time of the enrollment decision the results are very plausible and consistent w ith rate of return estimates from studies which rely on ex post income data thi s suggests that students have rational expectationsand relatively good informat ion about future employment opportunities and other factors which determine the returns to educational investment copyright 1987 by mit press

sacrifice and stigma reducing free riding in cults communes and other collectives this paper presents an economic analysis of religious behavior that accounts for the continuing success of groups with strange requirements and seemingly inefficient prohibitions the analysis does not presuppose any special motives for religious activity rather religion is modeled as a club good that displays positive returns to participatory crowding the analysis demonstrates that efficient religions with perfectly rational members may benefit from stigma self sacrifice and bizarre behavioral restrictions the model also addresses sacrifice in nonreligious social clubs fraternities communes political parties work groups and families

religiosity and earnings management international evidence from the banking industry using an international sample of banks we study how differences in religiosity across countries affect earnings management given that religiosity is a major source of morality and ethical behavior it may reduce excessive risk taking and act as deterrence for earnings manipulations therefore we predict lower earnings management in societies that have higher religiosity consistent with expectations our cross country analysis indicates that religiosity is negatively related to income increasing earnings management for loss avoidance and just meeting or beating prior year s earnings we also find that religiosity reduces income increasing earnings management through abnormal loan loss provisions in additional tests we document that religiosity increases the information value of bank earnings with both earnings persistence and cash flow predictability being enhanced by higher religiosity for the crisis period analysis i e 2007 2009 our evidence shows that banks in countries with higher religiosity exhibit lower probability of reporting asset deterioration and lower probability of having poor performance

birth order schooling and earnings birth order effects are posited by many to affect earnings and schooling we show how such effects can be interpreted to shift either the earnings possibility frontier for siblings or parental preferences we find empirical evidence for birth order effects on age adjusted schooling and on earnings for young u s adults though the latter is not robust for all specifications the examination of intrahousehold allocations suggests that these birth order differences occur despite parental preferences or prices by birth order favoring later borns apparently because of stronger endowment effects that favor firstborns

religion and income heterogeneity between countries this paper tests whether the behaviour of households in different countries is homogeneous with respect to the influence of religion on income the violation of the homogeneity assumption would have two consequences first results based on country studies might not be applicable to other countries second one should be careful when pooling cross country data in this type of research data at household level from the european and world values survey are pooled for 25 western countries we estimate simultaneously an income and a religion equation to correct for the endogeneity of religiousness we find that estimation outcomes are different for low and high income countries whereas church membership is found to have a positive effect on income for high income countries this effect is negative for low income countries this result is robust to denominational distribution participation effects and alternative measures of religiousness

religious adherence and county economic growth in the us abstract we estimate a barro type conditional convergence model using religious adherence data from the american religious data archive to analyze independent effects of church adherence rates on economic growth in the united states at the county level per capita income growth is modeled as a function of initial per capita income initial human capital stock and a set of control and related variables including religious adherence religious diversity and regional indicator variables we also investigate the independent effects of three main denominations namely catholics evangelical christians and mainline christians on county economic growth our results indicate that the religious adherence in general is significantly greater than zero and not beneficial for us county income growth we find mixed results for effects of various denominations

common marketing agency as a device for facilitating collusion in a variety of markets firms voluntarily and independently delegate control over certain aspects of marketing to common agents in this article we present an explicit model of agency delegation where firms noncooperatively select agents name output prices and choose compensation schemes we exhibit an equilibrium in which all strategic variables not merely the marketing choices delegated to agents but prices as well are selected perfectly cooperatively this cooperative equilibrium is very simple and attractive each firm sets the collusive output price and employs a commission scheme to compensate the agent although each

intellectual property rights and developing country agriculture abstract theoretical studies indicate that the welfare of the developing countries might either be improved or damaged by the strengthening of their own intellectual property rights net gains through their agricultural sectors will be positive if the payoff from new innovations is sufficiently different as compared to the technology exporting countries scattered evidence supports the hypotheses that agricultural r d is responsive to iprs in developing countries but there is also evidence that developed country technology is sufficiently appropriate for developing countries as to offer substantial free rider gains however without iprs it seems unlikely that the agricultural productivity rates in developing countries can begin to catch up with those in developed country agriculture

at the movies the economics of exhibition contracts i introduction the literature on profit sharing stresses asymmetric information profit sharing occurs when a party has private information that cannot be credibly revealed or when a party s actions cannot be observed economists avoid taste based explanations such as risk sharing stigler and becker 1977 and other factors that may lead to sharing such as measurement costs we describe a real world sharing contract that is widely used the movie exhibition contract and argue that asymmetric information is not the main cause of sharing two explanations based on difficulties with forecasting revenue fit the facts better the first is that movie distributors studios or independent distributors and exhibitors theater owners are both risk averse and exhibition contracts are designed to share risk the second is that the sharing rules accompanied by ex post adjustments economize on measurement costs transaction costs and long term relationships also affect contractual practices we use an original data set of 2 769 exhibition contracts to inform our models and test hypotheses the data includes all contracts involving 13 theaters owned by wehrenberg theatres a prominent st louis exhibitor over roughly two years our models explain the sharing that occurs and the conditions that lead to adjustments and our findings may be relevant for other contracting environments our explanations for the features of exhibition contracts complement those of de vany and eckert 1991 and de vany and walls 1996 who emphasize that difficulties with forecasting demand necessitate the use of short term contingency rich contracts some other work on nonexhibition aspects of the movie business also compares asymmetric information models to alternatives ravid 1999 tests and rejects a model of asymmetric information at the project selection stage ravid and basuroy 2004 consider risk aversion at the project selection stage chisholm 1993 1997 and weinstein 1998 compare principal agent models to alternatives in studies of contracts between studios and talent in the next subsection we describe the basic features of modern exhibition contracts after that we describe how the sharing rules evolved over time and argue that asymmetric information does not explain the sharing rules section ii contains our models section iii contains our empirical work and section iv concludes the modern movie exhibition contract the unit of analysis is a single movie in a single theater a theater is a building that may contain multiple auditoriums although there is typically a boilerplate contract between each distributor and exhibitor that specifies general conditions that apply to all individual contracts terms such as sharing rules and run lengths vary by movie and theater a typical run ends after four to eight weeks but the run may be adjusted after early revenues are observed and holdover clauses may be used to extend the run as long as revenue is sufficiently high de vany and eckert 1991 and de vany and walls 1996 attribute adjustable runs to imprecise forecasts we focus on explaining the peculiar revenue sharing rule that is common in modern contracts some contracts are aggregate deals in which each side s percentage share remains fixed throughout the run but most are sliding scale deals in a sliding scale deal each week the distributor gets the maximum of two possible payments 1 90 of the movie s weekly ticket revenue over the house nut which is a flat payment to the exhibitor 2 a floor payment some percentage of the weekly ticket revenue that typically declines according to a sliding scale as the weeks go by perhaps 70 in the first week 60 by the third week and as low as 30 at the end of the run if the parties anticipate that revenue might peak in the second or later weeks which can occur when the movie opens before a holiday weekend for example the contract includes a best weeks clause that ensures that the high floor payments are associated with the high demand weeks

detecting and removing discrimination under equal opportunities policies abstract this paper surveys part of the recent voluminous literature on the economics of discrimination focusing on two key questions first how should discrimination be measured and can in fact unambiguous estimates be derived as the basis for detecting where discrimination is present and setting in train measures to eliminate it second to what extent has the implementation of equal opportunities legislation improved the relative standing of women and minority workers in the labour force this section includes a discussion of the likely effects of recent changes in the law such as the equal value amendment in the uk or the introduction of comparable worth in the usa the survey concludes that our ability to detect discrimination at all precisely is still rudimentary and consequently policy measures are likely to be inefficient for this reason

a welfare analysis of global patent protection in a model with endogenous innovation and foreign direct investment abstract this paper constructs a north south quality ladder model in which foreign direct investment fdi is determined by the endogenous location choice of firms and examines analytically how strengthening patent protection in the south affects welfare in the south strengthening patent protection increases the south s welfare by enhancing innovation and fdi but it also allows the firms with patents to charge higher prices for their goods which decreases welfare however the model shows that the former positive welfare effect outweighs the latter negative effect moreover introducing the strictest form of patent protection in the south that is harmonizing patent protection in the south with that in the north may maximize welfare in the south as well as in the north further a similar result can also be obtained in a nonscale effect model

intellectual property rights violations and spillovers in north south trade abstract the article examines the role of technological spillovers when northern and southern firms compete in quantities on the common world market and when only the northern firm is supposed to conduct innovative activity the intensity of spillovers is interpreted as an indicator of the strength of intellectual property rights ipr protection in this light the paper reconsiders the questions raised in the recent economic analysis of ipr protection in north south relations when and whether the southern countries benefit in welfare terms from protecting ipr how the north fares in this story how large is the conflict between the north and south and what is the optimal level of ipr protection at the world level the paper shows that the common belief that the south generally benefits from relaxing ipr protection while the north is worse off does not carry over in the applied duopoly model with spillovers in this respect the congruence of interests between north and south with respect to southern ipr protection regime should not be an exceptional or even impossible state of affairs

education and ethnicity in canada an intergenerational perspective ethnic and intergenerational aspects of human capital investment are explored levels of and cross sectional returns to education across ethnic groups in canada are estimated and large differences observed for men a positive correlation exists between ethnic group average years of education and its return we also find large negative correlations between ethnic group average educational outcomes and the previous generation s fertility suggesting a role for home production as a complement to formal education and supporting models of child quantity quality trade offs very slow intergenerational convergence in ethnic group level educational and labor market outcomes is also observed

bose einstein dynamics and adaptive contracting in the motion picture industry audiences discover what films they like and spread the word information feedback produces bose einstein dynamics in the motion picture box office revenue distribution information cascades generate box office hits and flops the revenue distribution evolves recursively over the run as a mixture of the opening and a stochastic competition among films the motion picture run is decentralized adaptive and self organizing semistationary admission prices local information and contingency rich contracts match the film rental price and the supply of theatrical engagements to demand copyright 1996 by royal economic society

trips trade and technology transfer a north south model of unintentional technology transfer is developed where the stringency of southern patent protection provides the institutional backdrop for a strategic game in a high tech goods market the appropriability regime is set endogenously and combines elements of imperfect southern patent protection with the protection afforded by market made northern technology masking less stringent protection of northern intellectual property can work much like other strategic trade policies therefore developed countries appear to be right in demanding discussion of intellectual property rights in gatt

the economic effects of intellectual property right infringements in this article the authors use data from a small but varied sample of u s companies to examine the static welfare consequences of foreign infringement of u s intellectual property rights in five industry sectors they estimate that infringement causes profit losses for the legitimate u s suppliers that are at least one percent as great as their total sales that the static gains to consumers are more than half as great as the losses of legitimate producers and might exceed these losses and that the losses of the legitimate producers exceed the profits of infringers they also find that legitimate producers spend relatively little to combat foreign infringement less than 4 percent as much as their losses from such infringement copyright 1990 by the university of chicago

wage discrimination across ethnic groups evidence from israel i introduction wage differentials and occupational segregation have been intensively studied and well documented in the economic literature empirical analyses have demonstrated differences by gender and ethnicity and theoretical studies have attempted to explain the results polachek 1975 1993 leads the group that emphasizes human capital differences in explaining wage differences and segregation while bergmann 1974 1986 is in the forefront of a second group of scholars who claim that discrimination is the major source of inequality of wages and occupations in the united states race differentials in earnings and racial segregation decreased dramatically during the 1960s and the 1970s but sex differentials did not in 1980 the duncans 1955 segregation index calculated by fuchs 1989 across 503 occupations was about 30 for blacks versus whites and about 60 for men versus women 1 fuchs 1989 also showed that by 1980 the wage differential between white and black men 15 percent was less than half the difference between white men and white women 40 percent polachek and siebert 1993 137 39 present data showing that in 1990 the pay of u s women averaged 65 to 90 percent of that of men depending on the occupational category the gap has been relatively constant but there is some evidence that it has been narrowing in recent years they also find that earning ratios by occupation in the u k are very similar to parallel ratios in the u s chiswick 1983a 1983b and carlson and swartz 1988 among others examine earnings of ethnic minorities they find that most ethnic groups fare quite poorly compared to the white population but a few minorities jews chinese and japanese do as well or even better than the white majority the earnings gap for most groups declined over the 1960s and the 1970s and the portion of that gap that might be assignable to discrimination also declined in this study we examine ethnic wage differentials discrimination and segregation in the israeli labor market israel provides a tailor made setting for ethnic studies since its jewish population 4 335 million in 1993 consists of people with a large diversity in their countries of origin the first wave of jewish immigrants following the establishment of the state of israel in 1948 were holocaust survivors from europe or refugees from the predominantly moslem countries of north africa the middle east and yemen others came from north and south america western europe south africa and australia to live a more meaningful jewish life in the homeland israel encouraged and assisted these immigrants as part of an active pro immigration ideology and policy the main wave of immigration arrived in the late 1940s and early 1950s as friedlander 1975 shows between 1948 and 1952 the jewish population in israel increased from about 630 000 to nearly one and a half million an annual average growth rate of over 24 percent later there were three significant waves of immigration the first occurred at the beginning of the 1960s with annual immigration reaching an average of 57 000 per year an increase of 2 percent per year in population the second occurred in 1972 73 when 55 000 immigrants arrived annually an annual population increase of 1 7 percent the third large wave began in august 1989 with a massive influx of immigrants from the former u s s r generating about a 10 percent increase in the population in the years 1990 93 the absolute figures are 199 516 immigrants in 1990 176 100 in 1991 77 057 in 1992 and 66 145 in 1993 israel central bureau of statistics 1994 in 1991 about 15 000 ethiopian jews also arrived in israel the major ethnic division in israel is based on the country of origin although jews of various origins speak a number of different languages and perceive themselves as having some distinctive ethnic characteristics the main distinction is between jews originating from asia and africa excluding south africa easterners and those from america europe south africa and australia westerners

people s opium religion and economic attitudes since max weber there has been an active debate on the impact of religion on people s economic attitudes much of the existing evidence however is based on cross country studies in which this impact is confounded by differences in other institutional factors we use the worldvalues surveys to id entify the relationship between intensity of religious beliefs and economic attitudes controlling for country fixed effects we study several economic attitudes towardcooperation the government working women legal rules thriftiness andthe market economy we also distinguish across religious denominations differentiating on whether a religion is dominant in a country we find that on average religious beliefs are associated with good economic attitudes where good is defined as conducive to higher per capita income andgrowth yet religious people tendto be more racist andless favorable with respect to working women these effects differ across religious denominations overall we find that christian religions are more positively associatedwith attitudes conducive to economic growth r 2003 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classification a1 e0 n4 z1

licensing versus direct investment a model of internalization by the multinational enterprise a firm must decide whether to serve a foreign market by exporting building a foreign branch plant or licensing the production to an existing foreign producer the existence of reputations implies that any licensing agreement must provide a licensee with the incentive to maintain the reputation this creates a motive for the firm to internalize transactions by building a branch plant i e by becoming a multinational the model reflects a more general notion that the inability of the firm to control a licensee s agent s actions can provide incentives for multinational activity the paper explores the determinants of the firm s mode of operation as well as the consequences of certain government policies

a comparison of optimal tariffs and welfare under no lobbying domestic lobbying and domestic foreign lobbying whether and what type of the lobbying induced trade policies can improve the domestic welfare we show that as compared to the case of no lobbying and the case of domestic lobbying the domestic foreign lobbying may achieve the lowest tariff and may also realise the highest welfare for the domestic country our finding provides a theoretical explanation to the prevalent lobbying competition between asian firms and us firms in usa recently we argue that the domestic foreign lobbying may contribute to a freer trade in the domestic country and lobbying competition may be one of the strongest forces pushing for trade liberalisation

patent protection imitation and the mode of technology transfer abstract this paper analyzes a model in which a firm endowed with a new technology can choose between exports licensing and direct investment as entry modes in a foreign market i endogenize the vintage of the transferred technology and allow for imitation by the licensee subsidiary production and exports circumvent imitation but involve higher costs for the innovating firm the firm can strategically use the vintage of the technology to deter imitation by the licensee as a result transfers to affiliates might be of later vintage than technologies sold to outsiders through modification of the imitation costs the host country s system of patent protection influences the mode of technology transfers which in turn affects the welfare of the recipient economy

religion religiosity and educational attainment evidence from the compulsory education system in england this paper investigates the effect of religion on the educational attainment of pupils in their final year of compulsory education in england the results show that pupils that identify with any re

the less extreme the more you leave radical islam and willingness to migrate summary this paper studies radical islam as a determinant of individuals willingness to migrate surprisingly despite its relevance in the political debate this topic has not been investigated empirically in the literature in order to fill this gap we develop a model of the decision to migrate focusing in particular on the role played by cultural traits more specifically we focus on radical islam as a deterrent for migration following berman 2003 we define radical islam as a set of ideologies also referred to as political islam holding that islam should guide not only personal life but also social and political life in our model more radical values imply a higher psychological cost of migrating this cost derives from the fact that connections with socio religious friends and neighbors are generally not maintained after migration thus deterring individuals from migrating mayers 2000 we then test empirically the predictions of the model using individual level data from the second 2010 11 and third 2012 14 waves of the arab barometer our results suggest that ceteris paribus more radical individuals are less willing to migrate this finding is robust to alternative specifications of the model and to the use of instrumental variables and propensity score matching aimed at addressing the potential endogeneity of radical islam the result is also qualitatively unchanged when using aggregate data on actual outflows of migrants

trade related intellectual property rights north south trade and biological diversity in the trade related intellectual property rights trips agreement of gatt 1 january 1995 it was agreed to harmonise intellectual property rights ipr on an international level and to include the option for patent protection for all life forms such as plants and animals article 27 3 b patenting however leads to considerable conflicts between international trade and protection of biological diversity which can be illustrated by the example of seed production we make use of a three stage game to show the strategic incentives for implementation of two different property rights regimes patents and farmers rights on competition and biodiversity we show that the southern government has no incentive to acknowledge international patents even if farmers rights do exist the northern producer will always dominate in the output market if patents are applied but without farmers rights biodiversity will not be maintained by the southern government thus total payoff of the northern firm is maximized if both ipr regimes are implemented however if only farmers rights are valid biodiversity will be maximal

licensing versus direct investment implications for economic growth we develop a symmetric two country model of foreign direct investment fdi that captures the internalization decision and its implications for both the rate and magnitude of innovations when mode choice licensing versus fdi is fixed a subsidy to multinational production increases the rate but decreases the size of innovations when mode can switch the rate and size of innovations both increase provided the subsidy is not too large although innovation size decreases for industries where firms already were choosing fdi innovation size increases for industries where firms switch from licensing to fdi because multinationals choose larger innovations than licensors 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

dynamic common agency a general model of dynamic common agency with symmetric information is considered the set of truthful markov perfect equilibrium payoffs is characterized and the efficiency properties of the equilibria are established a condition for the uniqueness of equilibrium payoffs is derived for the static and the dynamic game the payoff is unique if and only if the payoff of each principal coincides with his marginal contribution to the social value of the game the dynamic model is applied to a game of agenda setting

technology transfer under asymmetric information licensing contracts for newly patented innovations are observed to vary along several dimensions including the form and size of the payment to the inventor fixedfee versus some output based royalty the degree of exclusivity and the division of rents in this article we show that theform of the contract can be explained by two problems in technology exchange the superiority of a licensor s precontractual information about the economic value of the innovation and thefact that sharing this information with the licensee mayfacilitate imitation we show that a licensor signals her technology type with an output based payment or royalty and may leave some of the rents with the licensee conditions under which exclusive license contracts linear and nonlinear and nonexclusive linear contracts are used to transfer technology are identified

multinationals multi plant economies and the gains from trade a general equilibrium model of a multinational enterprise based on economies of multi plant operation is developed these economies are modelled as arising from the existence of a joint input whose productivity in each production facility is independent of the number of facilities maintained by a firm the multinational thus offers the world increased technical efficiency by eliminating the duplication of the joint input that would occur with independent national firms since this technical efficiency may come at the expense of increased market power the full determinants of home country host country and world welfare are considered

welfare effects of global patent protection this paper uses a simple model of invention and patent protection to examine the welfare effects of extending patent protection from the country where invention takes place to another country that is only a consumer of invented products it is shown that while the welfare of the inventing country certainly rises with the extension of patent protection that of the other country probably falls and may well fall by more than the increase in welfare of the inventing country in particular as patent protection is extended to a larger and larger portion of the world the effect on the welfare of the world as a whole of extending it to the rest of the world becomes negative

intellectual property piracy in a north south context empirical evidence the protection of intellectual property rights ipr has been a contentious issue for more than 20 years industrialized nations have moved to knowledge based economies and simultaneously trade barriers have fallen making intellectual property ip vulnerable adding to this vulnerability are conflicting international institutional environments belief systems and economic realities the debate over ipr protection has become a significant global trade issue pitting the net technology producing north against the net technology consuming south with this in mind there has been much debate about the impact of alternative ipr regimes tight or loose on the welfare of southern economies policy makers in both the south and the north search for arguments to convince recalcitrant southern countries to follow the northern model of strict ipr regimes the south faced with a dilemma searches for arguments to justify looser regimes or convince its populace that tighter regimes are in the best interest of the nation the objective of this research is to add empirical clarity about the welfare impacts of weak ipr on the firm and host country to this end we employ a novel methodological design and unique context the research design is deductive in that we use the empirical setting of pioneer argentina s a a seller of bioengineered agricultural seeds to test the existing theory of weak ipr impacts in a north south context

social identity and preferences social identities prescribe behaviors for people we identify the marginal behavioral effect of these norms on discount rates and risk aversion by measuring how laboratory subjects choices change when an aspect of social identity is made salient when we make ethnic identity salient to asian american subjects they make more patient choices when we make racial identity salient to black subjects non immigrant blacks but not immigrant blacks make more patient choices making gender identity salient has no effect on intertemporal or risk choices

the bicausal relation between religion and income in this article the relation between religion and income is investigated using a micro dataset for the netherlands religion is measured by religious membership and by participation instead of estimating a religion equation and an income equation separately joint regression is preferred since this generally yields more efficient estimates following the single equation approach both religious measures are found to decrease income significantly and income is found to affect religion negatively however these cross effects become insignificant once the equations are estimated simultaneously in contrast the effects of socio economic characteristics on religion and income hardly differ between the approaches

preemptive patenting and the persistence of monopoly this article takes a different tack and inquires whether institutions such as the patent system create opportunities for firms with monopoly power to maintain their monopoly power the results apply to other situations such as brand identification spatial location and capacity expansion which share the characteristic that early or preemptive actions may lower the returns to potential competitors

religious participation and income the relationship between religion and income has been explored in several studies in this paper we extend this inquiry by arguing that religious participation through its effects on preferences and net earnings potential reduces participants incomes similarly we argue that high incomes discourage religious participation by encouraging individuals to substitute market work for religious activities in an empirical model we simultaneously estimate the effects of religious participation on income and income on religious participation using us state data on per capita personal income and church membership the results strongly support our hypotheses 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

differences in education and earnings across racial and ethnic groups tastes discrimination and investments in child quality viewing the united states as comprising many racial and ethnic groups it is shown that group differences in earnings schooling and rates of return from schooling are striking and that the groups with higher levels of schooling also have higher rates of return these data are shown to be consistent with a child quality investment model but they are not consistent with the hypotheses that the primary determinants of schooling level are discrimination minority group status differences in time preference discount rates or tastes for schooling group differences in fertility and female labor supply are examined as partial determinants of investment in child quality policy implications are discussed this paper was originally presented at the 1987 annual meeting of the population association of america see population index vol 53 no 3 fall 1987 p 443 excerpt

introduction to the economics of religion after a very long hiatus economists have begun again to study the relationship between economics and religion this article seeks to summarize and evaluate the principal themes and empirical findings that have appeared in some 200 recent papers on the economics of religion although some of the research concerns the economic consequences of religiosity most applies standard economic theory to the study of individual religious activity the characteristics of religious groups and the impact of regulation and competition on religious markets

an analysis of the earnings and employment of asian american men this paper analyzes the earnings and employment of chinese japanese filipino and white men born in the united states the chinese and japanese have higher levels of schooling and earnings than white men and the japanese work more weeks ceteris paribus there are no substantive group differences in these variables or in returns from schooling the filipinos have a lower level of schooling earnings employment and returns from schooling it is therefore not appropriate to view asian americans as a single disadvantaged minority group further the success of the chinese and japanese challenges conventional wisdom regarding the consequences of racial discrimination

incomplete contracts vertical integration and supply assurance this paper extends the analysis of transactions cost models of vertical integration to multilateral settings its main focus is on supply assurance concerns which arise when several downstream firms are competing for inputs in limited supply integration reduces supply assurance concerns for an integrating firm but it may increase them for others therefore to explain the scope of any firm one must consider the overall network of production and distribution relations three fundamental questions are addressed 1 what are the effects of different integration structures 2 what are the determinants of the socially efficient integration structures 3 in what way do equilibrium integration structures differ from socially efficient structures

pricing an option on revenue from an innovation an application to movie box office revenue we develop a model for valuing revenue streams from innovations the stochastic properties of revenue from innovations create a more difficult environment in which to value options than when the underlying is a security there is no initial revenue and cumulative revenue cannot decrease revenues from innovations are characterized by different lives and different rates of the resolution of uncertainty a common deterministic model for predicting revenue from an innovation is known as the bass model we embed the bass model in a gamma process resulting in a stochastic process with moments proportional to the mean of the bass model to illustrate this model we choose the valuation of options on movie box office revenue these options enable film distributors to manage the risk of a movie and they offer diversification opportunities for investors we develop the econometric methodology for ex ante parameter estimation and a bayesian updating scheme using markov chain monte carlo simulation as data after release become available call prices obtained using the maximum likelihood ml parameter estimates from the full data set closely approximate the average discounted value of ex post call payouts that would have occurred at option maturity

the skills and economic status of american jewry trends over the last half century the general social surveys cumulative data file is used to analyze the schooling occupational status and earnings of american jews jews are identified by a question on religion at age 16 the analysis focuses on trends within the survey period and intergenerational changes from the father to the respondent ceteris paribus jews have significantly higher levels of schooling occupational status and earnings than other whites and within the survey period there is no trend in the differential the jewish fathers also had higher levels of achievement than other fathers but the differentials increased from the father s to the respondent s generation

patent protection and r d with endogenous market structure in a model with endogenous number of innovating firms we show that whether patent protection increases r d investment is ambiguous and depends on the market demand function and the cost of r d if the market size increases with number of firms patent protection reduces r d investment if the cost of r d is sufficiently high and higher product differentiation increases the possibility of lower r d investment under patent protection if the market size does not increase with number of firms patent protection never reduces r d investment we find that welfare is lower under patent protection than under no patent protection

dynamic common agency and investment the economics of movie distribution i introduction the management of vertical relationships is one of the fundamental issues addressed by contract and organization theorists how do contract choices interact with other strategic choices what are the consequences of vertical integration answers to these questions inform management strategy and public policy this article analyzes vertical relationships and strategic behavior in the movie distribution market vertical relationships in dynamic environments have been neglected and this article is the first to analyze an infinite horizon common agency model that considers vertical integration and investment the model has two distributors studios or independent distributors and one exhibitor theater distributors can invest each period before contracting with the exhibitor a distributor s investment stochastically improves its movies the probability of having hits rises dynamic strategic interaction is particularly important in the movie business and the infinite horizon model explains several facts that cannot be addressed with a static or two period model 1 in the model distributors avoid simultaneous new hit releases and hits stay in the theater longer than flops in reality release timing and run lengths are critical choices distributors often adjust release dates to avoid competing head to head chisholm 1999 krider and weinberg 1998 reardon 1992 and run lengths depend on early performance de vany and eckert 1991 de vany and walls 1996 furthermore in equilibrium distributors appropriate the lion s share of the marginal value created by their hits this occurs because hits are rare and the exhibitor s next best alternative is to show worse movies this is consistent with real world exhibition contracts which use nonlinear revenue sharing rules that give distributors higher shares of ticket revenue when revenue is high filson et al 2005 vertical integration one distributor owning the exhibitor has implications for strategies and welfare although the article emphasizes the impacts on strategies the welfare analysis is useful because it addresses a historical debate the paramount decrees of the late 1940s and early 1950s barred distributors from owning theaters in the 1980s the u s department of justice gave distributors permission to forward integrate again several did so including some of the largest ones de vany and eckert 1991 argue that the courts erred in the original decrees but to date no formal model supports or refutes their arguments in the infinite horizon model vertical integration is privately profitable but lowers industry value the combined value of the two firms that merge rises because they appropriate value from the remaining distributor but suboptimal investment occurs so the combined value of all three firms falls additional results depend on how integration affects bargaining power if the independent distributor maintains its bargaining power then the integrated distributor increases its investment and further delays releasing its hits the integrated distributor uses its hits as threats to appropriate value from the independent distributor in response the independent distributor reduces its investment however total industry investment never falls and it rises for a wide range of investment costs higher industry investment causes more hits to reach the theater and consumer surplus rises as a result integration may improve welfare in contrast if the independent distributor loses all of its bargaining power after integration then it reduces its investment to zero the integrated distributor still increases its investment but industry investment and welfare falls other strategies also change for example the integrated distributor tends to show its own new hits in preference to the independent distributor s because it does not need to delay releasing its hits to appropriate value

catholic schools dropout rates and educational attainment this paper examines the effect of catholic schooling on high school dropout rates and educational attainment particular attention is given to the effect of selection into the catholic school sector after adjusting for self selection we find that sophomores in the catholic schools are still substantially more likely to graduate with their class it is also shown that seniors in the catholic schools are not more likely to acquire more schooling than other seniors if selection is taken into account

intellectual property rights and the mode of technology transfer abstract transferring technology in an environment where patent protection is uncertain can pose significant risks to an innovating firm s ability to appropriate rents this paper incorporates asymmetric information in a screening game where the innovating firm has the choices of licensing a new product at arm s length to a foreign firm exporting it or licensing it to a subsidiary subsidiary production avoids the risk of imitation but involves higher costs for the innovating firm the gains to the southern country from the lack of intellectual property right protection may be offset by strategic behavior by northern firms who opt for technology transfer via subsidiary or monopoly production

patent protection southern innovation and welfare in a north south trade model in a north south trade model we analyse the implications of southern patent protection on southern innovation profits and welfare southern patent protection may make the northern firm worse off and the southern firm better off by increasing the southern firm s incentive for innovation and affecting the nature of competition in the world market the impact of southern patent protection on a country s welfare and on world welfare depends on the cost of southern innovation and the degree of product substitutability we provide important insights into the outcomes of international negotiations regarding patent enforcement in the southern countries