normal markets market imperfections and energy efficiency abstract the conventional distinction between economic and engineering approaches to energy analysis obscures key methodological issues concerning the measurement of the costs and benefits of policies to promote the adoption of energy efficient technologies the engineering approach is in fact based upon firm economic foundations the principle of lifecycle cost minimization that arises directly from the theory of rational investment thus evidence that so called market barriers impede the adoption of cost effective energy efficient technologies implies the existence of market failures as defined in the context of microeconomic theory problems of imperfect information and bounded rationality on the part of consumers for example may lead real world outcomes to deviate from the dictates of efficient resource allocation a widely held contrary view that the engineering view lacks economic justification is based on the fallacy that markets are normally efficient

equity in the finance of health care some international comparisons this paper presents the results of a ten country comparative study of health care financing systems and their progressivity characteristics it distinguishes between the tax financed systems of denmark portugal and the u k the social insurance systems of france the netherlands and spain and the predominantly private systems of switzerland and the u s it concludes that tax financed systems tend to be proportional or mildly progressive that social insurance systems are regressive and that private systems are even more regressive out of pocket payments are in most countries an especially regressive means of raising health care revenues

an evaluation of univariate time series earnings models and their generalization to a single input transfer function the development of statistical models for accounting earnings has been an evolving process earlier studies used simple index and or naive models e g ball and brown 1968 and brown and kennelly 1972 because of the lack of tools to deal with formal time series later dopuch and watts 1972 ball and watts 1972 and others employed formal time series models to annual earnings and collins and hopwood 1980 brown and rozeff 1979 foster 1977 griffin 1977 and watts 1975 did the same with quarterly earnings while this research has produced some conclusions with respect to the time series properties of earnings and how these may be used in predicting earnings brown and rozeff 1978 and then collins and hopwood 1980 recently provided evidence that financial analysts can produce forecasts more accurate than those based on the arima models alone this suggests that other information may be useful in providing estimates of future earnings when incorporated with knowledge of the time series properties of earnings the purpose of this study is twofold a we first evaluate the models used in past studies of quarterly time series of earnings in order to determine whether they are systematically misspecified due to the omission of other information which is implicitly contained in a market earnings index the evidence suggests that the misspecification exists and b we introduce a transfer function model which utilizes the timeseries properties of both the index and earnings numbers this model is obtained based on both theoretical derivation and inspection of data

transfers in cash and in kind theory meets the data we review theoretical explanations for in kind transfers in light of the limited empirical evidence after reviewing the traditional paternalistic arguments we consider explanations based on imperfect information and self targeting we then discuss the large literature on in kind programs as a way of improving the efficiency of the tax system and a range of other possible explanations including the samaritan s dilemma pecuniary effects credit constraints asymmetric information amongst agents and political economy considerations our reading of the evidence suggests that paternalism and interdependent preferences are leading overall explanations for the existence of in kind transfer programs but that some of the other arguments may apply to specific cases political economy considerations must also be part of the story

energy conservation investment do consumers discount the future correctly we argue that the apparently high discount rates attributed to investors making energy conservation investments are not irrational or the result of some market failure rather they may result from an investor recognizing that many conservation investments entail substantial sunk costs in the presence of these costs and uncertainty over future conservation savings consumers should use a higher hurdle rate for investment than if there were no uncertainty simulations suggest that the hurdle rate should be about four times greater than the standard rate an implication of our model is that tax subsidies for the purchase of conservation capital are likely to be ineffective we discuss alternative policy approaches which are more likely to increase energy efficient investment namely mandatory efficiency standards and energy taxes

climate policy without tears cge based ancillary benefits estimates for chile this study examines a hithertoneglected set of benefits from climate policy viz the reduction in emissions of localair pollutants and the associated healthbenefits in this case for residents ofsantiago de chile by using an economy widemodel we are able to compare these monetisedbenefits to the direct costs of carbonabatement thereby determining the scope for no regrets co2 reductions sensitivityanalysis is performed in recognition of theuncertainty surrounding certain key parameterand exogenous variable values notably households willingness to pay wtp forreduced mortality and morbidity risk and thesubstitution elasticities among energy sourcesand between energy and other inputs ourresults suggest that even with the mostconservative assumptions low wtp lowelasticities chile could reduce co2emissions by almost 20 from the 2010 baselinewith no net welfare loss though a 10 reduction is closer to optimal if insteadchile were to target a 20 reduction inparticulate concentrations a particulate taxwould incur slightly lower costs than anequivalent carbon tax to achieve the samehealth benefits while the latter is asecond best method of addressing localpollution the welfare loss of choosing thisinstrument could be fully compensated by carboncredit sales at a world market price of 20 tc

some economics of global warming the greenhouse effect itself is simple enough to understand and is not in any real dispute what is in dispute is its magnitude over the coming century its translation into changes in climates around the globe and the impacts of those climate changes on human welfare and the natural environment these are beyond the professional understanding of any single person the sciences involved are too numerous and diverse demography economics biology and the technology sciences are needed to project emissions atmospheric chemistry oceanography biology and meteorology are needed to translate emissions into climates biology agronomy health sciences economics sociology and glaciology are needed to identify and assess impacts on human societies and natural ecosystems and those are not all there are expert judgments on large pieces of the subject but no single person clothed in this panoply of disciplines has shown up or is likely to this article makes an attempt to forecast the economic and social consequences of global warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases and attempting to prevent it

technical evidence for assessing the performance of markets affecting energy efficiency abstract this paper focuses on the empirical basis for skepticism about the effectiveness of the market mechanism in promoting cost effective energy efficiency improvements we present a framework for evaluating engineering economic evidence on the diffusion of energy efficiency improvements and then present a series of examples within this framework that provide evidence for the existence of market imperfections related to energy efficiency we conclude with a challenge to economists policy analysts and technologists to take this empirical evidence seriously and sponsor further collaborative research in this area

barriers to industrial energy efficiency investments in greece abstract this paper sets out to investigate the main determinants of industrial decision making process with respect to energy efficiency investments based on a survey among greek industries in the empirical analysis probit models are employed the results support that an energy saving campaign should regard industries as subgroups with different needs and different managerial aspects the importance of qualified employees is also established from this survey an energy conservation framework would be more effective if the diffusion of information with regard to industrial energy saving investments is based on investment in human capital

strategies for cost effective carbon reductions a sensitivity analysis of alternative scenarios analyses of alternative futures often present results for a limited set of scenarios with little if any sensitivity analysis to identify the factors affecting the scenario results this approach creates an artificial impression of certainty associated with the scenarios considered and inhibits understanding of the underlying forces this paper summarizes the economic and carbon savings sensitivity analysis completed for the scenarios for a clean energy future study iwg 2000 its 19 sensitivity cases provide insight into the costs and carbon reduction impacts of a carbon permit trading system demand side efficiency programs and supply side policies impacts under different natural gas and oil price trajectories are also examined the results provide compelling evidence that policy opportunities exist to reduce carbon emissions and save society money

the role of corporate reputation and employees values in the uptake of energy efficiency in office buildings although office market actors in the united kingdom show a growing interest in energy efficiency the pace of takeup of energy efficient office features is slow previous studies have highlighted the roles of limited direct financial costs and benefits efficiency gaps and market barriers in limiting the rate of technology adoption this study provides further evidence on the importance of these factors but the primary contribution is focused on the role of corporate reputation and on the importance of individuals values in shaping corporate behaviour the paper presents a theoretical framework to explain environmental decision making in firms and we present qualitative evidence drawing from sixteen semi structured individual and group interviews with office market stakeholders in london glasgow and edinburgh the research finds that companies despite gradually becoming more energy conscious still regard energy costs as a negligible part of their business costs nevertheless an increasingly important driver is the reputational gain obtained by corporate businesses implementing sustainable practices all the interviewees agreed that the pace of change in the office market is slow and that only further policy interventions will accelerate it

the efficiency paradox bureaucratic and organizational barriers to profitable energy saving investments abstract the paradox of why profitable energy saving investments are not undertaken continues to provoke debate the underlying phenomenon might be called the efficiency paradox because it represents a case in which business firms which are often presumed or taken axiomatically to be economically efficient make decisions that do not maximize profits new data from one of the us environmental protection agency s voluntary pollution prevention programs enables this paradox to be explored statistically the data show that both the level and variation in returns to lighting upgrade investments cannot be explained by standard economic models substantial gains in energy efficiency can be achieved without sacrificing profitability both economic and organizational factors account for some of the variation in observed returns to these investments but the results suggest a need for improved and more comprehensive theories of the investment behavior of firms and other organizations

distributional effects of general population prescription drug programs in canada canadian household prescription drug expenditures are studied using the statistics canada family expenditure survey masterfiles for periods that include the introduction of provincial general population prescription drug programs budget shares for non senior households are examined over time using non parametric regres sion parametric difference in difference techniques and quantile regression methods the evidence suggests that while program effects are muted when there are high deductibles a non senior prescription drug subsidy is more redistributive than an equal cost proportional income transfer in part because of differential private health insurance coverage by income this is in contrast to previous evidence on canadian senior prescription drug subsidies jel classification 118 j42

tightening environmental standards the benefit cost or the no cost paradigm ms ff ichael porter and claas van der linde have written a paper that is interesting and to us at least somewhat astonishing it is a defense of environmental regulation indeed an invitation to more stringent regulation that makes essentially no reference to the social benefits of such regulation this approach contrasts starkly with the methods that economists and other policy analysts have traditionally used when assessing environmental or other regulatory programs the traditional approach consists of comparing the beneficial effects of regulation with the costs that must be borne to secure these benefits for environmental regulation the social benefits include the reductions in morbidity or premature mortality that can accompany cleaner air the enhanced recreational opportunities that can result from water quality improvements the increased land values that might attend the cleanup of a hazardous waste site the enhanced vitality of aquatic ecosystems that might follow reductions in agricultural pesticide use or any of the other potentially significant benefits associated with tighter standards from this benefit cost approach emerges the standard tradeoff discussed in virtually every economics textbook porter and van der linde deny the validity of this approach to the analysis of environmental regulation claiming it to be an artifact of what they see as a static mindset in their view economists have failed to appreciate the capacity of

multiple dimensions of private information evidence from the long term care insurance market we demonstrate the existence of multiple dimensions of private information in the long term care insurance market two types of people purchase insurance individuals with private information that they are high risk and individuals with private information that they have strong taste for insurance ex post the former are higher risk than insurance companies expect while the latter are lower risk in aggregate those with more insurance are not higher risk our results demonstrate that insurance markets may suffer from asymmetric information even absent a positive correlation between insurance coverage and risk occurrence the results also suggest a general test for asymmetric information

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

globalizing carbon lock in this paper extends the arguments surrounding carbon lock in elaborated in unruh energy policy 28 2000 817 30 2002 317 to countries currently undergoing industrialization it argues that for numerous reasons industrializing countries are unlikely to leapfrog carbon intensive energy development on the contrary carbon lock in may be globalizing and could further constrain climate change mitigation options it is then argued that many policy recommendations ignore carbon lock in possibly limiting their potential for successful implementation the paper then discusses four policy approaches that appear to have advantages given lock in conditions it is recognized however that relative ease of implementation does not necessarily equate with superiority instead it is merely a path dependent outcome of past development decisions pursuing policies on the basis of relative implementation ease may help address the issue of climate change but could also result in sub optimal outcomes along other dimensions of sustainable development

the changing role of government in financing health care an international perspective this paper explores the changing role of government involvement in health care financing policy outside the united states it provides a review of the economics literature in this area to elucidate the implications of recent policy changes on efficiency costs and quality our review reveals that there has been some convergence in policies adopted across countries to improve financing incentives and encourage efficient use of health services in the case of risk pooling all countries with competing pools experience similar difficulties with selection and are adopting more sophisticated forms of risk adjustment in the case of hospital competition the key drivers of success appear to be what is competed on and measurable rather than whether the system is public or private in the case of both the success of performance related pay for providers and issues resulting from wait times evidence differs within and across jurisdictions however the evidence does suggest that some governments have effectively reduced wait times when they have chosen explicitly to focus on achieving this goal many countries are exploring new ways of generating revenues for health care to enable them to cope with significant cost growth but there is little evidence to suggest that collection mechanisms alone are effective in managing the cost or quality of care jel h51 i11 i18

barriers within firms to energy efficient investments abstract many investments in energy efficiency fail to be made despite their apparent profitability internal hurdle rates are often set at levels higher than the cost of capital to the firm reasons for these practices include bounded rationality principal agent problems and moral hazard the policy implication is that government can simultaneously improve overall energy efficiency and increase private sector productivity by providing informational and organizational services that go beyond the traditional regulatory framework

does competition between hospitals improve the quality of care hospital death rates and the nhs internal market payer driven competition has been widely advocated as a means of increasing efficiency in health care markets the 1990s reforms to the uk health service followed this path we examine whether competition led to better outcomes for patients as measured by death rates after treatment following heart attacks using data that until 1999 was not publicly available in any form on hospital level death rates we find that the relationship between competition and quality of care appears to be negative greater competition is associated with higher death rates controlling for patient mix and other observed characteristics of the hospital and the catchment area for its patients however the estimated impact of competition is small jel classification i1 l8 h4

inflation and the distribution of price changes across markets a causal analysis recent advances in time series methodology are applied to the investigation of causal relationships between monthly changes in the consumer price index and changes in its dispersion across different consumption categories this dispersion is associated with the degree to which relative prices are changing past inflation rates seem useful in forecasting changes in relative prices but not vice versa there is also a significant contemporaneous correlation between these series hence it is concluded that fluctuations in the inflation rate help cause fluctuations in relative prices but not vice versa unless the entire effect occurs within a month the analysis also serves to illustrate a new way to implement the granger causality concept

incentives and targets in hospital care evidence from a natural experiment performance targets are commonly used in the public sector despite their well known problems when organisations have multiple objectives and performance is difficult to measure it is possible that such targets may work where there is considerable consensus that performance needs to be improved we investigate this possibility by examining the response of the english national health service to high profile waiting time targets we exploit a natural policy experiment between two countries of the uk england and scotland to establish the global effectiveness of the targets we then use a within england hospital analysis to confirm that responses vary by treatment intensity and to control for differences in resources which may accompany targets we find that targets met their goals of reducing waiting times without diverting activity from other less well monitored aspects of health care and without decreasing patient health on exit from hospital

barriers to product returns and recovery management in a developing country investigation using multiple methods abstract there is growing recognition of the value that can be recaptured from unproductive assets resulting from returned merchandise using product returns and recovery management prrm this is important as organizations can no longer ignore or accumulate returns at the back of the warehouse this paper identifies the barriers that impede prrm among manufacturing firms in malaysia and provide useful summary data and analysis to entice firms to consider adopting pprm this study reviewed 38 journal articles which were subsequently validated through field interviews using multiple case study method the content analysis reveals that the two major obstacles are financial and resource constraints which fall within the category of internal barriers however the results of the interviews with six manufacturers in malaysia indicate that external barriers are the main obstacles that hinder the adoption of prrm thus suggesting that there may be a subtle difference between the results reported in academic research and managers perceptions of the barriers of product returns and recovery management the external barriers such as customers operational performance and perception are perceived by managers to be detrimental to the adoption of prrm which is contradictory to the academic findings in addition financial and resource constraints impede the adoption of prrm this suggests that further study should be conducted by expanding the sample size to continue to empirically explore the barriers of prrm this study helps policy makers in emerging countries in general and malaysia in particular in setting appropriate policies and strategies to improve product returns and recovery of manufacturing firms

is energy intensity important for the productivity growth of eet adopters abstract energy efficient technologies eet have attracted strong interest because of their role in reducing environmental damage their adoption however remains rather low while their impact on productivity is substantial and differentiating with respect to technological characteristics energy intensity being such an obvious characteristic could be employed to classify eet adopters thus giving rise to two heterogeneous technologies i e those corresponding to firms of low and high energy consumption hence this paper examines the impact of energy intensity on the productivity growth of firms adopting eet in varying time intervals through a metafrontier based framework while also decomposing that impact in terms of technical efficiency and scale efficiency changes the analysis is complemented by examining the role of firm specific characteristics on the productivity growth through linear regression

time series properties of earnings a comparison of extrapolative and component models for several years now accounting researchers have applied univariate time series analysis to investigate the behavior of reported numbers see foster 1977 griffin 1977 watts and leftwich 1977 and brown and rozeff 1979 univariate methods examine the interstructure of a series that is the behavior of the series explained by its own past variability when modeling the behavior of accounting data however the intrastructure between variables may also be relevant relationships exist between reported accounting numbers because economic events are interrelated and because the accounting measurement system imposes its own relationships consider the impact of investment in plant or equipment on earnings a direct impact occurs through depreciation an additional impact may occur through interest charges depending on both the extent of debt financing and the cost of debt finally since earnings is the aggregate of components such as revenue depreciation and interest charges its behavior is also the result of component aggregation multivariate methods are able to model such intrastructure while univariate

an investigation into adequate data for estimating annual earnings time series models abstract the purpose of this study is to examine the stability of corporate earnings per share eps time series models as the length of the time series are altered evidence is found to support the stationarity of corporate eps data furthermore outlier analysis is employed and supports the long run stability of corporate earnings series

estimating welfare in insurance markets using variation in prices we provide a graphical illustration of how standard consumer and producer theory can be used to quantify the welfare loss associated with inefficient pricing in insurance markets with selection we then show how this welfare loss can be estimated empirically using identifying variation in the price of insurance such variation together with quantity data allows us to estimate the demand for insurance the same variation together with cost data allows us to estimate how insurers costs vary as market participants endogenously respond to price the slope of this estimated cost curve provides a direct test for both the existence and the nature of selection and the combination of demand and cost curves can be used to estimate welfare we illustrate our approach by applying it to data on employerprovided health insurance from one specific company we detect adverse selection but estimate that the quantitative welfare implications associated with inefficient pricing in our particular application are small in both absolute and relative terms

does hospital competition save lives evidence from the english nhs patient choice reforms recent substantive reforms to the english national health service expanded patient choice and encouraged hospitals to compete within a market with fixed prices this study investigates whether these reforms led to improvements in hospital quality we use a difference in difference style estimator to test whether hospital quality measured using mortality from acute myocardial infarction improved more quickly in more competitive markets after these reforms came into force in 2006 we find that after the reforms were implemented mortality fell i e quality improved for patients living in more competitive markets our results suggest that hospital competition can lead to improvements in hospital quality

how high are option values in energy efficiency investments high implicit discount rates in consumers energy efficiency investments have long been a source of controversy in several recent papers hassett and metcalf argue that the uncertainty and irreversibility attendant to such investments and the resulting option value account for this anomalously high implicit discounting using their model and data we show that to the contrary their analysis falls well short of providing an explanation of this pattern

does contracting out increase the efficiency of government programs evidence from medicaid hmos state governments contract with health maintenance organizations hmos to coordinate medical care for nearly 20 million medicaid recipients identifying the causal effect of hmo enrollment on government spending and health care quality is difficult if as is often the case recipients have the option to enroll in a plan to estimate the average effect of hmo enrollment this paper exploits county level mandates introduced during the last several years in the state of california that required most medicaid recipients to enroll in a managed care plan the empirical results demonstrate that the resulting switch from fee for service to managed care was associated with a substantial increase in government spending but no corresponding improvement in infant health outcomes the findings cast doubt on the hypothesis that hmo contracting has reduced the strain on government budgets

a note on the effectiveness of security analysts forecasts abstract the purpose of this note is to examine the effectiveness of security analysts forecasts diversified sample of 159 firms with a 1980 1982 post sample estimation period the results of this study indicate the analysts forecasts produce statistically significant excess returns

banning the bulb institutional evolution and the phased ban of incandescent lighting in germany much academic attention has been directed at analysing energy efficiency investments through the lens of behavioural failure these studies have challenged the neoclassical framing of regulation which emphasises the efficiency benefits of price based policy underpinned by the notion of rational individual self mastery the increasing use of a regulatory ban on electric lamps in many countries is one of the most recent and high profile flash points in this dialectic of freedom versus the state in the public policy discourse this paper interrogates this debate through a study of electric lamp diffusion in germany it is argued that neoclassical theory and equilibrium analysis is inadequate as a tool for policy analysis as it takes the formation of market institutions such as existing regulations for granted further still it may be prone to encourage idealistic debates around such grand narratives which may in practice simply serve those who benefit most from the status quo instead we argue for an evolutionary approach which we suggest offers a more pragmatic framing tool which focuses on the formation of market institutions in light of shifting social norms and political goals in our case progress towards energy efficiency and environmental goals

stationarity and outliers in annual accounting earnings abstract the purpose of this study is to apply a unit root test to examine the stationarity of corporate earnings per share eps series we find evidence to support the stationarity of corporate eps data furthermore outlier analysis is employed and supports the long run stability of corporate earnings series

paying for health insurance the trade off between competition and adverse selection we use data on health plan choices by employees of harvard university to compare the benefits of insurance competition with the costs of adverse selection moving to a voucher type system induced significant adverse selection with a welfare loss of 2 to 4 percent of baseline spending but increased competition reduced harvard s premiums by 5 to 8 percent the premium reductions came from insurer profits so while harvard was better off the net effect for society was only the adverse selection loss adverse selection can be minimized by adjusting voucher amounts for individual risk we discuss how such a system would work governments are increasingly turning to market forces as a way to limit the cost of social insurance traditionally social insurance programs were operated as nonmarket goods governments mandated participation in a central program collected revenues to finance the program and ran the insurance system there was no role for competition among suppliers in providing the basic benefit as the costs of social insurance have increased however the centralized model of social insurance is coming under increasing strain in the united states for example recent proposals have called for replacing the medicare program with a health care voucher for the elderly aaron and reischauer 1995 cutler 1996 the voucher would guarantee people a basic insurance plan but the plans would be privately run competition among plans would generate plan premiums and enrollments similarly longstanding proposals for social security reform have called for replacing the current system with a system of individual accounts where people would make saving investment and annuitization decisions on their own advisory council on social security 1996 feldstein 1996 the trend is not just domestic in the united kingdom the national health service has moved to encourage more competition in recent years with the establishment of hospital trusts that bid for patients and partially fixed payments to physicians

oil and energy price volatility it is commonly believed that since the 1973 oil crisis oil and energy prices have been more volatile than other commodity prices this study examines monthly producer prices for thousands of products over the period january 1945 through august 2005 the results show that crude oil refined petroleum and natural gas prices are more volatile than prices for about 95 of products sold by domestic producers relative to crude commodities however crude oil prices are currently more volatile than about 65 of other products and oil price volatility first exceeded the median for crude commodities following the 1986 drop in oil prices

estimating bounds on the economy wide effects of the cef policy scenarios abstract the scenarios for a clean energy future study relied primarily on bottom up technology based methods to estimate costs associated with its scenarios these methods however do not allow for calculation of economy wide or general equilibrium effects of the policies considered we propose and apply a means of combining the bottom up estimates with estimates of the costs associated with a carbon charge obtained from computable general equilibrium models our approach is based on the concept of production inefficiency the economy lies within its production frontier with respect to the provision of energy services the cef technology policies are interpreted as moving the economy toward its frontier as well as moving the frontier outward while the carbon charge induces a substitution effect along the frontier this perspective allows a synthesis of the two sets of calculations

efficiency gains within firms under voluntary environmental initiatives this paper focuses on efficiency gains that voluntary environmental initiatives may achieve within the firm current debate concerning the extent and significance of inefficiencies within firms is critically important to the progress of energy and environmental policies several recent lines of inquiry in microeconomics help explain the persistence of inefficiencies within firms in addition two of the most prominent new approaches in the field of business strategy resource based strategy and the capabilities perspective focus on the heterogeneity among firms and the resulting pockets of inefficiency within firms they suggest at least three generic strategies for voluntary environmental initiatives challenging outdated organizational routines creating opportunities for differentiation or complementing firms resource investment trajectories these generic approaches suggest that there is considerable scope for further experimentation with voluntary environmental initiatives

basic versus supplementary health insurance moral hazard and adverse selection this paper introduces a tractable model of health insurance with both moral hazard and adverse selection we show that government sponsored universal basic insurance should cover treatments with the biggest adverse selection problems treatments not covered by basic insurance can be covered on the private supplementary insurance market surprisingly the cost effectiveness of a treatment does not affect its priority to be covered by basic insurance

how does risk selection respond to risk adjustment new evidence from the medicare advantage program to combat adverse selection governments increasingly base payments to health plans and providers on enrollees scores from risk adjustment formulae in 2004 medicare began to risk adjust capitation payments to private medicare advantage ma plans to reduce selection driven overpayments but because the variance of medical costs increases with the predicted mean incentivizing enrollment of individuals with higher scores can increase the scope for enrolling overpriced individuals with costs significantly below the formula s prediction indeed after risk adjustment ma plans enrolled individuals with higher scores but lower costs conditional on their score we find no evidence that overpayments were on net reduced

the performance of industrial sector voluntary climate programs climate wise and 1605 b abstract corporate voluntary climate programs have had limited evaluation the self selection of participants an essential element of such initiatives poses challenges to researchers because the decision to participate may not be random and may be correlated with outcomes this study aims to gage the environmental effectiveness of the industrial sector elements of two early voluntary climate change programs with established track records the u s environmental protection agency s climate wise and the u s department of energy s voluntary reporting of greenhouse gases program 1605 b particular attention is paid to the participation decision and how various assumptions affect estimates of program outcomes using propensity score matching methods applied to plant level census data overall the effects are modest reductions in fuel and electricity expenditures are no more than 10 percent and probably less than 5 percent virtually no evidence suggests either program has a statistically significant effect on fuel costs some evidence indicates that participation in climate wise led to a 3 5 percent increase in electricity costs that vanished after two years stronger evidence suggests that participation in 1605 b led to a 4 8 percent decrease in electricity costs that persisted for at least three years these results suggest that while voluntary programs can play some role in addressing climate change they are unlikely to bring about the kinds of steep reductions called for in the current debate

private insurance subsidies and public health care markets evidence from canada in this study i examine the effects of government subsidies to employer provided health insurance on the decision to purchase insurance and on utilization of publicly funded health services using unique variation in tax subsidies across canadian provinces as an instrument i estimate the effects of these subsidies on the demand for supplemental health insurance and their extended effects on the decision to use publicly funded health services my results show that government subsidies through tax exemptions have significant effects on the decision to purchase insurance furthermore additional insurance policies lead to moral hazard in the use of publicly funded health services jel classification h2 h4 11

the effect of medicare part d on pharmaceutical prices and utilization prescription drug expenditures represent the most rapidly growing component of health care spending increasing from 5 percent of health care spending in 1980 to more than 10 percent by 2005 centers for medicare and medicaid services cms 2007a further almost 60 percent of all prescriptions in the united states are filled for beneficiaries of medicare medicaid and other government programs rapid innovation in new pharmaceuticals has contributed substantially to quality of life and longevity in the us frank lichtenberg 1996 these facts combined indicate that government procurement schemes are critical both in determining government expenditure on pharmaceuticals and in stimulating innovation of new treatments in this paper we show that the institutions and mechanisms used by the government to pur chase prescription drugs can strongly affect market outcomes by institutions we have in mind large buyer groups structured incentives for patients to consume certain products and the devel opment and use of formularies a formulary is a mechanism that allows a buyer to identify a therapeutically similar treatment as a viable substitute for a patented treatment and to create price competition due to the ability to substitute away from the more expensive product when bargaining with the seller of a patented product the ability to shift demand to a substitute drug is a powerful negotiating tool our paper provides evidence for what we consider a surprising outcome in the case of the new prescription drug program for medicare enrollees moving consumers from cash paying status to membership in an insured group lowers optimal prices for branded prescription drugs below what they otherwise would be this is surprising because the standard effect of insurance is to create inelastic demand and therefore elicit higher prices from a seller with market power duggan and scott morton 2006 however the insurers that we study bundle insurance with a formulary and other mechanisms to create elastic demand an individual consumer typically does not know which drugs are acceptable therapeutic substitutes the consumer s physician typi cally has poor knowledge of prices especially negotiated prices and any one consumer is too small a share of demand to negotiate with a pharmaceutical company a prescription drug plan can potentially surmount all three hurdles our evidence leads us to conclude that the formulary and other mechanisms perform the spe cial role of allowing buyers to move market share among drugs with patent protection thereby raising cross price elasticities and lowering purchase prices or reducing price increases for branded drugs this result contrasts with the common intuition that an uninsured consumer

innovation enabling policy and regime transformation towards increased energy efficiency the case of the circulator pump industry in europe abstract when new energy efficient products are struggling with their commercialisation and diffusion into widespread applications you would typically expect policy makers and green lead users to guide the way this paper examines the case of the hot water circulator pump industry in europe where parts of the industry envisioned and worked for a voluntary energy label bringing technological innovation new business and energy savings of approx 85 for each new circulator pump the case study explores the complexities of innovation processes where technology market actors and policy co evolve over time to transform an existing socio technical regime the paper highlights the importance of policies to reduce barriers towards innovation and energy efficiency and shows that it is not always policy makers that establish the crucial policies that change the innovation dynamics for the benefit of the environment and the industry

optimal risk adjustment in markets with adverse selection an application to managed care it is well known that adverse selection causes distortions in contracts in markets with asymmetric information taxing inefficient contracts and subsidizing the efficient ones can improve market outcomes bruce c greenwald and joseph e stiglitz 1986 although regulators rarely seem to implement tax and subsidy schemes with adverse selection motives in mind contracts are often complex and incomplete and it is the inefficient elements of the contract that are difficult to verify and hence tax or subsidize this is precisely the reason that in health insurance markets rather than subsidizing contracts regulators and payers contend with adverse selection by taxing and subsidizing the price paid to insuring health plans on the basis of observable characteristics of the persons joining the plan a practice known as risk adjustment risk adjusted premiums are paid to managed care plans plans that ration care by management rather than by conventional approaches like coinsurance and deductibles and offer a bundle of characteristics quality access for many services that is fundamentally outside the scope of direct regulation selection related incentives threaten the efficiency and fairness of this organization of health insurance markets by inducing plans to distort the quality of the services they offer to discourage high cost persons from joining the plan as managed care becomes the predominant source of health care for residents of the united states and many other countries payers attempt to address this incentive by setting a risk adjusted price that pays more for more expensive enrollees as it is conventionally practiced risk adjustment sets prices for people proportional to their expected cost based on observable characteristics the federal medicare program for example has used age sex welfare status and county of residence adjusters to set prices to managed care plans to convey how what we term conventional risk adjustment works suppose age is the risk adjuster for a medicare population over 65 if it is determined that the 75to 84 year old population costs 20 percent more than the overall average in medicare the assumption in conventional risk adjustment is that the premium paid to plans for someone in this group should be 20 percent above the average we fundamentally disagree that this is the right way to think about and do risk adjustment

on economic disequilibrium and free lunch there is a sharp disagreement between mainstream economists and advocates of energy efficiency as regards the potential for free lunches or no regrets policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions from an economics perspective the critical question is whether the economic system is or is not close to a pareto optimum equilibrium state if so it follows that most technological systems now in place are optimum or nearly so from an economic perspective if not there may be many sub optimal technologies in place with corresponding opportunities for very high returns on appropriate investments this paper presents some of the evidence supporting the latter thesis

the effect of allocation above emissions and price uncertainty on abatement investments under the eu ets abstract the european union emission trading scheme eu ets by far the largest in its kind has inspired several other carbon markets in the world based on interviews with plant managers from almost all belgian ceramics lime and cement producers this study describes how manager s perceptions on emission trading affected investment decisions in line with behavioural economics reference dependence is found to explain why free allocation below emissions creates a greater incentive to abatement investment compared to allocation above emissions in the ceramics sector allocation above emissions refrained managers from including carbon gains in payback times this contradicts the famous coase theorem which predicts that free allocation has no effect on abatement incentives the results indicate that auctioning part of the emission rights will reduce barriers to abatement investment carbon price uncertainty is seen as a disincentive for abatement investment by some managers and as an incentive by others intermediate levels of uncertainty add option value to abatement investments because the associated gradual learning adds flexibility in an uncertain carbon constrained future however high levels of uncertainty creating a risk of offshoring even when companies innovate creates an option value to postpone abatement investments narrow framing misperceiving the risk hedging counter cyclicality of carbon costs reinforces the option value to wait therefore policy should aim to reduce price uncertainty for very low and very high carbon prices not for an intermediary price range

europe and central asia s great post communist social health insurance experiment aggregate impacts on health sector outcomes abstract the post communist transition to social health insurance in many of the central and eastern european and central asian countries provides a unique opportunity to try to answer some of the unresolved issues in the debate over the relative merits of social health insurance and tax financed health systems this paper employs regression based generalizations of the difference in differences method on panel data from 28 countries for the period 1990 2004 we find that controlling for any concurrent provider payment reforms adoption of social health insurance increased national health spending and hospital activity rates but did not lead to better health outcomes

integrating economic analysis and the science of climate instability abstract scientific understanding of climate change and climate instability has undergone a revolution in the past decade with the discovery of numerous past climate transitions so rapid and so unlike the expectation of smooth climate changes that they would have previously been unbelievable to the scientific community models commonly used by economists to assess the wisdom of adapting to human induced climate change rather than averting it lack the ability to incorporate this new scientific knowledge here we identify and explain the nature of recent scientific advances and describe the key ways in which failure to reflect new knowledge in economic analysis skews the results of that analysis this includes the understanding that economic optimization models reliant on convexity are inherently unable to determine an optimal policy solution it is incumbent on economists to understand and to incorporate the new science in their models and on climatologists and other scientists to understand the basis of economic models so that they can assist in this essential effort

a new look at forecasting annual corporate earnings in the u s a abstract in this study composite earnings per share models are estimated for 35 chemical food and utility firms during the 1981 1982 period although it is generally held that financial analysts produce superior earnings forecasts when compared to time series model forecasts the results of this study indicate that analysts fared very poorly in 1982 and the average mean square forecasting error of analyst forecasts may be reduced by 74 2 percent by combining analyst and univariate time series model forecasts this reduction is very interesting when one finds that the univariate time series model forecasts do not substantially deviate from those produced by random walk drift models the arima 0 1 1 process moreover despite the high degree of correlation existing among analyst and time series forecasts the ordinary least squares estimation of the composite earnings model is a better forecasting model than the composite earnings models estimated with ridge regression and latent root regression techniques

choice price competition and complexity in markets for health insurance abstract the united states and other nations rely on consumer choice and price competition between competing health plans to allocate resources in the health sector while a great deal of research has examined the efficiency consequences of adverse selection in health insurance markets less attention has been devoted to other aspects of consumer choice the nation of switzerland offers a unique opportunity to study price competition in health insurance markets switzerland regulates health insurance markets with the aim of minimizing adverse selection and encouraging strong price competition we examine consumer responses to price differences in local markets and the degree of price variation in local markets using both survey data and observations on local markets we obtain evidence suggesting that as the number of choices offered to individuals grows their willingness to switch plans given a set of price dispersion differences declines which allows large price differences for relatively homogeneous products to persist we consider explanations for this phenomenon from economics and psychology

information processing and organizational structure abstract standard economic theories of the firm and other organizations stress profit maximization as the foundation for derivation of predictable behavior yet statistical and case study evidence continues to accumulate that real firms do not act as required by the neoclassical framework instead of being represented by ever more elaborate maximization models the firm can be modeled simply as a network of information processing agents the actions of the firm are then a function only of the network structure and the information processing capabilities of the agents this approach can be used to explain a number of features of organizational behavior including the process of technological diffusion it also suggests that derivation of the optimal organizational structure may be computationally complex with a number of implications for economic theory and policy development

tax credits insurance and the use of medical care the personal income tax systems in canada the united states and elsewhere permit deductions or tax credits for out of pocket health care expenditures and private medical insurance premiums little is known about the effects of such tax measures on individual behaviour in contrast to the extensive research on the tax exemption for employer provided health insurance in this paper we exploit variation in the after tax cost of health expenditures under the tax law to estimate the tax price elasticity of demand for prescription drugs health insurance and other eligible expenditures we find evidence of moderate to large tax price elasticities compared with traditional point of service price elasticity estimates despite the apparent differences in the way tax subsidies are experienced by consumers in contrast we find no evidence the tax subsidy affects demand for health insurance on the intensive margin which we show is consistent with the theory of optimal self insurance we discuss the implications of our results for recent proposals to reform public and private health insurance systems jel classification i1 h2 credits d impot assurance et l utilisation des soins medicaux les systemes d impot sur le revenu des particuliers au canada aux etats unis et ailleurs permettent des deductions ou credits d impot pour les depenses directes en soins de sante assumees par les particuliers ou pour les primes d assurance privee on connait mal les effets de ces mesures fiscales sur le comportement des personnes par comparaison avec les resultats extensifs de la recherche sur les effets des exemptions fiscales pour l assurance sante fournie par les employeurs dans ce texte on utilise la variation dans le fardeau des depenses pour la sante apres impot selon les diverses juridictions pour evaluer l elasticite de la demande de medicaments d ordonnance de l assurance sante et d autres depenses eligibles en reponse a des differences de prix fiscaux on decouvre que l ordre de grandeur des elasticite se situe entre moderee et grande quand on les compare aux evaluations des elasticites traditionnelles de la demande aux points de service par rapport aux prix et ce malgre les differences apparentes dans les experiences de ces subventions fiscales pour les consommateurs d autre part on ne trouve pas de support pour l hypothese que les subventions fiscales affectent la demande d assurance santea la marge intensive ce qui concorde bien avec ce que nous enseigne la theorie de l auto assurance optimale on discute les implications de ces resultats pour certaines reformes recentes proposees aux systemes d assurance sante prives et publics