on unemployment inflow and outflow in urban china wu z and yao s 2006 on unemployment inflow and outflow in urban china regional studies 40 811 822 as the largest transitional economy in the world china s labour market has a number of characteristics distinctively different from that of the developed economies such as the uk or the usa this paper aims to identify the determinants of unemployment inflow and outflow in urban china with empirical data for 29 provinces over 1989 99 it is found that rural urban migration ownership diversification industrial structural change international trade international competitiveness product wages and age structure are key determinants of unemployment flows the results suggest that due to market imperfections unemployment inflow and outflow are two asymmetric processes with respect to the concerned predetermined variables wu z et yao s 2006 sur l afflux et la fuite du chomage dans la chine urbaine regional studies 40 811 822 en tant que l economie en voie de transition la plus grande du monde

the role of feelings in investor decision making abstract this paper surveys the research on the influence of investor feelings on equity pricing and also develops a theoretical basis with which to understand the emerging findings of this area the theoretical basis is developed with reference to research in the fields of economic psychology and decision making recent advancements in understanding how feelings affect the general decision making of individuals especially under conditions of risk and uncertainty e g loewenstein et al 2001 psychological bulletin 127 267 286 are covered by the review the theoretical basis is applied to analyze the existing research on investor feelings e g kamstra et al 2000 american economic review forthcoming hirshleifer and shumway 2003 journal of finance 58 3 1009 1032 this research can be broadly described as investigating whether variations in feelings that are widely experienced by people influence investor decision making and consequently lead to predictable patterns in equity pricing the paper concludes by suggesting a number of directions for future empirical and theoretical research

pricing and patents of hiv aids drugs in developing countries this article provides empirical evidence on the impact of patents on drug prices across developing countries it uses sales data on human immunodeficiency virus hiv acquired immuno deficiency syndrome aids drugs in a sample of 34 low and middle income countries between 1995 and mid 2000 the main findings are that patents do shift drug prices up drug prices are correlated to per capita income levels and drug firms follow a skimming strategy when pricing new hiv aids drugs that is there is across country and intertemporal price discrimination in the global drug markets

primary and secondary reform i introduction the export led growth performance of the east asian newly industrialized countries has increased interest in liberalization among developing countries in general such reforms are felt to benefit the economy not only because they reduce the usual economic distortions but also because they tend to drive agents out of rent seeking and into productive activities however the presence of lobbyists working for vested interests such as import competing industries makes these distortions difficult to remove 1 developed countries of course face similar problems in analyzing the political and economic consequences of a reform it is essential to consider the full range of rent related activities in which individuals may engage our model focuses on two activities rent seeking and lobbying and examines the feedback effects resulting from reforms which target one or the other of these activities 2 in particular when people are driven out of rent seeking by a reform their most natural alternative may be some other rent related activity such as lobbying we refer to reforms which target lobbying as primary reforms while reforms which target rent seeking activities are called secondary reforms primary reforms target the decision making process an example is an institutional reform which lowers all else equal the marginal product of lobbying secondary reform focuses on the side effects resulting from the policy which has been put in place by lobbying an example is the replacement of quotas by their tariff equivalent tariffication in an attempt to reduce rent seeking associated with the trade regime in our model import competing firms may lobby for protection which takes the form of a combination of tariffs and quotas raising the domestic price of the imported good increases the returns to sector specific capital located in the protected industry to the extent that binding quotas are utilized rents will accrue to those who acquire the import licenses rent seeking consists of resources time spent attempting to acquire the import licenses 3 an important feature of the model is that for the individuals involved rent seeking and lobbying are highly substitutable activities the presumption is that the skills required for these activities are more closely related to one another than they are to productive activities this type of substitution between rent related activities is suggested by rodrik 1994 p 86 footnote 6 to the extent that rent seeking behavior dissipates some of the rents of trade protection the efficiency gains of reform may be larger than those measured here however the rent seeking literature generally exaggerates these gains if individuals can waste resources competing for the rents generated by say quotas they can also waste resources lobbying the government for the reimposition of quotas that have been taken away 4 our assumption about the nature of rent seeking and lobbying activities has important implications for understanding the response to reform in particular this response depends on the extent to which reform is directed at rent seeking secondary reform or lobbying primary reform feedback effects arise both because of labor market linkages and because rents are created as a side effect of lobbying for trade protection as we show below the feedback effects from primary reforms often tend to reinforce the original reform while the feedback effects associated with secondary reforms tend to retard the reform process near autarky however a primary reform can actually raise rents by increasing the volume of trade thus in this situation any primary reform should presumably be accompanied by secondary reform though the model presented here is extremely simple and is a rather specific example of reform of the trade regime the insights gained may apply to rent seeking and lobbying more generally

conversation information and herd behavior experimental evidence shows that an important reason why people tend to imitate others to exhibit herd behavior is that they assume that the others have information that justifies their actions the information cascade models of banerjee 1992 and bikhchandani et al 1992 are significant developments in showing some general equilibrium and welfare effects of such rational imitative behavior but these models as specified may be of limited applicability since they assert that differences across groups in herd behavior can be attributed to the random decisions of first movers differences across groups in herd behavior might be explained more often in terms of different modes of interpersonal information transmission patterns of human conversation imply great selectivity to the kinds of information transmitted within groups this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

advertising sunk costs and barriers to entry this paper tests hypotheses about the entry deterring effects of advertising the model isolates three separate effects of advertising on entry the effect on the irrecoverable costs of entry the effect on the uncertainty underlying the entry environment and the effect on the measured rates of profit we find that advertising impedes entry since necessary advertising expenditures give rise to a sunk cost which raises the risk of entry however we also find a countervailing force due to advertising in that the entrant perceives a greater likelihood of success in markets where advertising is important our analysis shows that the overall impact of advertising on entry is positive

rural urban disparity and sectoral labour allocation in china this study examines china s rural urban segmentation and its causes in the context of economic reforms household survey and aggregate data indicate a v shaped process in which rural urban consumption and income differentials decreased between 1978 and 1985 but then have continually increased to historically high levels this sectoral division is consistent with production function estimates based on provincial data that reveal higher labour productivity in urban state owned industries than in rural industries and agriculture to explain the v shaped change we argue that the precedent of successful rural reforms raised farmers relative earnings but the remaining obstacles to an efficient sectoral allocation of labour have prevented china from eliminating dualism recent financial policies consisting of urban price subsidies and increased investment credits have also had influential distribution effects that are biased against the rural sector

information marketing and pricing in the u s antiulcer drug market introduced into the united states in 1977 tagamet was the pioneer product in the class of antiulcer drugs known as h2antagonists by promoting ulcer healing through inhibiting acid secretion tagamet was able to heal ulcers and treat pre ulcer conditions pharmacologically on an outpatient basis thereby substituting for more costly hospital admissions and surgeries in 1983 another h2 antagonist called zantac entered and by early 1987 u s zantac sales surpassed those of the pioneering tagamet today there are four h2 antagonists sold in the united states tagamet zantac pepcid and axid zantac is now the world s largest selling prescription drug having estimated worldwide sales in 1994 of about 4 billion each of the four h2 antagonists is among the top 100 in world drug sales although tagamet lost u s patent protection on may 17 1994 in this paper we examine empirically the role of information in facilitating and explaining growth of the overall antiulcer drug market as well as in shaping the changing market shares of the four patented products the dissemination of information is due largely to the use of marketing channels such as visits by manufacturers representatives to physicians called detailing advertising in medical journals and most recently by direct to consumer advertising we examine these and also explore pricing policies product differentiation and orderof entry effects

consumption externalities and diffusion in pharmaceutical markets antiulcer drugs we examine the role of consumption externalities in the demand for pharmaceuticals at both the brand level and over a therapeutic class of drugs externalities emerge when use of a drug by others affects its value and or conveys information about efficacy and safety to patients and physicians this can affect the rate of market diffusion for a new entrant and can lead to dominance of one drug despite the availability of close substitutes we use data for h2 antagonist antiulcer drugs to estimate a dynamic demand model and quantify these effects the model has three components an hedonic price equation that measures how the aggregate usage of a drug as well as conventional attributes affect brand valuation equations relating equilibrium market shares to quality adjusted prices and marketing levels and diffusion equations describing the dynamic adjustment process we find that consumption externalities influence both valuations and rates of diffusion and that they operate at the brand and not the therapeutic class level

the effect of direct to consumer television advertising on the timing of treatment i introduction in august 1997 the food and drug administration fda relaxed the rules governing television advertising of prescription pharmaceutical products before that time broadcast ads were permitted only to mention either the name of a drug or a disease against which a drug was effective but not both after august 1997 pharmaceuticals were allowed to mention both the disease and the drug brand name as long a a brief list of side effects was mentioned and 1 800 number or world wide web site was provided with more detailed information spending for direct to consumer advertising dtca for prescription drugs went from 985 million in 1996 to approximately 4 2 billion for 2005 donohue cevasco and rosenthal 2007 this has led to a great deal of debate in the medical profession and among health care insurer and managed care organizations and an ongoing review of advertising rules by the fda however very little is actually known about the effects of dtca for the efficient allocation o prescription drugs we will examine how dtca affects physician prescribing patterns and courses of care for patients suffering from a representative chronic condition osteoarthritis oa this condition is of special significance as one of the major products in this area merck s vioxx cyclooxygenase 2 cox 2 inhibitor was forced to withdraw from the market in october 2004 due to side effects on patients with heart conditions the side effects of vioxx have caused considerable criticism of merck s advertising strategy for vioxx see e g editorials from the new england journal of medicine mukherjee nissen and topol 2001 topol 2004 the primary goal of this paper was to determine what effect local and national television advertising on behalf of the two main cox 2 inhibitors had on the treatment decisions that patients made in collaboration with their physicians in particular we will examine the impact of dtca on the time patients wait after diagnosis with oa and before initiating treatment with a cox 2 inhibitor the paper will proceed by first reviewing the literature on dtca in section ii section iii will present a theoretical model of optimal delay to treatment section iv will present details of the data and empirical model we implement empirical results are presented in section v and section vi concludes with a discussion about future research ii background and literature a advertising for cox 2 inhibitors historically pharmaceutical advertising was done largely through detailing promotion directly from the manufacturer to the physician either through visits by representatives or contacts by pharmacists or through advertisements in professional journals since the mid 1980s however drug companies in the united states have increasingly turned their marketing strategies directly toward the consumer this advertising largely takes place through television media and in newspapers this change in advertising approach has its share of both critics and advocates the pharmaceutical industry in the united states is large accounting for more than 132 billion in retail sales in 2000 alone nihcm 2001 in 2000 celebrex celecoxib the leading cox 2 inhibitor had sales of approximately 2 6 billion pharmacia has setback for parecoxib 2001 while vioxx rofecoxib sold more than 1 2 billion in the first half of 2000 knight ridder news 2001 in support of vioxx merck spent almost 161 million in dtca in 2000 schumann 2001 which was the most spent on dtca for any prescription pharmaceutical making it the 39th most advertised brand of any kind in 2000 top brands in network primetime 2000 2001 over the same time periods pharmacia and pfizer jointly spent 78 million in dtca supporting celebrex we have chosen to examine the role of dtca in the context of the market for cox 2 inhibitors during the period spanned by our data 1999 2002 the two available cox 2 inhibitors were vioxx and celebrex

advertising and competition in the ethical pharmaceutical industry the case of antihypertensive drugs abstract this paper uses data on the majority of name brand antihypertensive drugs marketed in the united states during 1988 93 to test the hypothesis that advertising decreases the price elasticity of demand in the pharmaceutical industry this is the first study to directly estimate the effects of drug product promotion on the price elasticity of demand in this industry we find strong evidence of an advertising effect in particular detailing efforts the salient means for product promotion in this industry systematically lower price sensitivity given the inverse relationship between elasticity of demand and price it is likely that consumers pay higher prices as a result of the advertising that occurs in this industry our findings are thus consistent with hurwitz and caves who find evidence that advertising inhibits entry into this market but in contrast to earlier research that found no anticompetitive effect

energy price shocks household location patterns and housing crises theory and implications abstract the u s housing collapse in 2007 is widely blamed for inducing a financial crisis that spread to the real economy and caused a severe and prolonged downturn this paper develops a model to investigate the role of gasoline price shocks in triggering the housing market collapse and identifies a new channel through which energy price shocks affect the financial market and the macro economy results suggest that unanticipated gasoline price shocks increase the cost of work commutes lower the value of homes away from the city center and increase foreclosure rates as homeowners either cannot afford mortgage payments amid elevated gas expenditures or seek to abandon underwater homes the model predicts that gasoline price shocks disproportionately affect suburban households that face greater exposure due to longer commutes and lower incomes empirical evidence from the 2007 08 housing collapse is presented to corroborate this theory

invited paper learning models an assessment of progress challenges and new developments learning models extend the traditional discrete choice framework by postulating that consumers have incomplete information about product attributes and that they learn about these attributes over time in this survey we describe the literature on learning models that has developed over the past 20 years using the model of erdem and keane as a unifying framework erdem t keane m 1996 decision making under uncertainty capturing dynamic brand choice processes in turbulent consumer goods markets marketing sci 15 1 1 20 we describe how subsequent work has extended their modeling framework and applied learning models to a wide range of different products and markets we argue that learning models have contributed greatly to our understanding of consumer behavior in particular in enhancing our understanding of brand loyalty and long run advertising effects we also discuss the limitations of existing learning models and potential extensions one key challenge is to disentangle learning as a source of

good day sunshine stock returns and the weather psychological evidence and casual intuition predict that sunny weather is associated with upbeat mood this paper examines the relationship between morning sunshine in the city of a country s leading stock exchange and daily market index returns across 26 countries from 1982 to 1997 sunshine is strongly significantly correlated with stock returns after controlling for sunshine rain and snow are unrelated to returns substantial use of weather based strategies was optimal for a trader with very low transactions costs however because these strategies involve frequent trades fairly modest costs eliminate the gains these findings are difficult to reconcile with fully rational price setting

information structures of product markets buyers demand continuing information flows to guide their choices among competing product brands they select portfolios of information types some supplied by sellers of the branded goods some not this paper investigates the determinants of businesses outlays on information media advertising sales force other sales promotion they include buyers overall demands for information buyers access to sources not controlled by the seller the relative efficiency of seller supplied information and competitive conditions in the product market the hypotheses about effects on sellers total information outlays are strongly supported some evidence appears on determinants of the mixture of information types they provide

endogenous export subsidies as a revenue seeking activity some implications for the evolution of protection explaining the antiexport bias of trade policy requires a model in which there is some asymmetry between protection of the import competing and export sectors one asymmetry is that export subsidies require government expenditure while import tariffs raise revenue for the government a model is developed where lobbying for export subsidies is treated as a revenue seeking activity in contrast with the import competing sector it is found that there is no presumption that vicious circles exist in the export sector where a vicious circle refers to the tendency for exogenous political shocks to be amplified by an endogenous lobbying response

pricing patent loss and the market for pharmaceuticals dustry the drug price competition and patent term restoration act of 1984 very clearly reflects the determination of policy makers to simultaneously address issues of price control and technical progress the 1984 act increased returns to innovation by extending the period of patent protection to take into account the time between receipt of a patent and food and drug administration fda approval of a drug for sale in the market the 1984 act also reduced the testing requirements for approval of new generic brands of existing chemical entities thus reducing entry barriers in markets where patents have expired the expected outcome from eased entry conditions for generic substitutes was substantially enhanced price competition and lower prices for brand name drugs in fact prices for brand name drugs have tended to increase following entry by generics wagner and duffy 28 examined price changes for top selling generics and name brands they show substantial price increases in brand name prices accompanying large reductions in generic prices as entry of generics occurs grabowski and vernon 9 examined data on 18 major orally administered rug products subject to generic competition between 1983 and 1987 and found that the name brand price increased by an average of 7 one year subsequent to generic entry and 11 two years following generic entry

chinese rural poverty marginalized or dispersed imagine two models of rural poverty distribution one which might be called the ecological model pictures the poor as confined to poverty regions of great natural adversity separate and apart from normal regions in the normal areas on the other hand there might be growing inequality but there is little or no absolute poverty the second model the socioeconomic model sees poor rich and middle class physically interspersed or living in proximity to one another which of these models more closely approximates reality is an important question it affects the visibility of extremes of wealth and poverty which is a politically sensitive matter also characteristics of antipoverty policy will be very different according to whether it is necessary to identify and treat individual households and neighborhoods widely scattered among the nonpoor population or whether it is possible to target entire poor regions in china the ecological model is official

rational contagion and the globalization of securities markets this paper argues that globalization may promote contagion by weakening incentives for gathering costly information and by strengthening incentives for imitating arbitrary market portfolios in the presence of short selling constraints the gain of gathering information at a fixed cost may diminish as markets grow moreover if a portfolio manager s marginal cost for yielding below market returns exceeds the marginal gain for above market returns there is a range of optimal portfolios in which all investors imitate arbitrary market portfolios and this range widens as the market grows numerical simulations suggest that these frictions can have significant implications for capital flows in emerging markets

advertising and quality in the u s market for automobiles using data consisting of domestic and foreign automobiles over the period 1985 1990 the hypothesis that advertising serves as a signal of higher quality is empirically tested this is accomplished by examining how advertising levels vary with a quality measure that is not observable at the time of purchase but becomes available subsequent to a model s release above average quality results in expenditures that are 15 higher than average quality outlays lending further support to the signalling hypothesis the positive advertising quality relationship holds strongest when a model significantly improves in quality relative to the previous year s model

information aggregation in debate who should speak first abstract privately informed individuals speak openly in front of other members of a committee about the desirability of a public decision each individual wishes to appear well informed for any given order of speech committee members may herd by suppressing their true information with individuals of heterogeneous expertise optimizing over the order of speech can improve the extraction of information but not perfectly so it is not always optimal to use the common anti seniority rule whereby experts speak in order of increasing expertise a committee with more able experts may be afflicted by greater herding problems yielding a worse outcome

capital market liberalization economic growth and instability summary this paper reviews briefly the arguments for capital market liberalization and identifies their theoretical and empirical weaknesses this provides the foundations for the argument for intervention in short term capital flows the paper concludes with a brief discussion of the various ways in which such interventions may be implemented 2000 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

one quarter of gdp is persuasion economists view talk as cheap and culture as insignificant yet humans are talking animals talking in their markets the talk probably matters why else would the human animals bother doing it the usual economic view of the talk is that it issues orders and conveys information workers at gm are ordered to report for work tomorrow credit ratings are conveyed economic analysis takes these parts of the talk into account without fuss production theory can be viewed as the theory of one mind issuing orders much of game theory is concerned in one way or another with information though game theory as joseph farrell 1995 and others have found requires more than bits of information but issuing the orders and conveying the information does not account for all of the talk the third part of the economic talk is persuasion

nature or nurture what determines investor behavior abstract using data on identical and fraternal twins complete financial portfolios we decompose the cross sectional variation in investor behavior we find that a genetic factor explains about one third of the variance in stock market participation and asset allocation family environment has an effect on the behavior of young individuals but this effect is not long lasting and disappears as an individual gains experience frequent contact among twins results in similar investment behavior beyond a genetic factor twins who grew up in different environments still display similar investment behavior our interpretation of a genetic component of the decision to invest in the stock market is that there are innate differences in factors affecting effective stock market participation costs we attribute the genetic component of asset allocation the relative amount invested in equities and the portfolio volatility to genetic variation in risk preferences

personal selling elasticities a meta analysis abstract this article presents a meta analysis of prior econometric estimates of personal selling elasticity that is the ratio of the percentage change in an objective ratio scaled measure of sales output e g dollar or unit purchases to the corresponding percentage change in an objective ratio scaled measure of personal selling input e g dollar expenditures the authors conduct a meta analysis of 506 personal selling elasticity estimates drawn from analyses of 88 empirical data sets across 75 previous articles they find a mean estimate of current period personal selling elasticity of 34 they also find that elasticity estimates are higher for early life cycle stage offerings higher from studies set in europe than from those set in the united states and smaller in more recent years in addition elasticity estimates are affected significantly by analysts use of relative rather than absolute sales output measures by cross sectional rather than panel data by omission of promotions by lagge

regulation and competition in the taiwanese pharmaceutical market under national health insurance this article investigates the determinants of the prices of pharmaceuticals and their impact on the demand for prescription drugs in the context of taiwan s pharmaceutical market where medical providers earn profit directly from prescribing and dispensing drugs based on product level data we find evidence that the profit seeking behavior of the medical providers in the prescription drug market transfers the force of competition from the unregulated wholesale market to the regulated retail market and hence market competition still plays an important role in the determination of the regulated price we also find that the profit seeking behavior plays a similar role to advertising in that it increases the brand loyalty and hence lowers price elasticity an important implication of our study is that the institutional features in the pharmaceutical market matter in shaping the nature of pharmaceutical competition and the responsiveness of pharmaceutical consumption with respect to changes in price

rent seeking and growth the case of growth through human capital accumulation this paper follows the work of h uzawa 1965 and r e lucas 1988 by presenting an endogenous growth model with human capital accumulation as the engine of growth agents make time allocation decisions in an economy where quantitative restrictions are employed in the trade regime agents may allocate time to obtain valuable import licences the effect of this activity on the growth rate is found to be dependent upon whether agents specialize in the rent seeking activity when agents do not specialize the rent seeking activity reduces growth by reducing the incentive to accumulate productive human capital

exogenous tariff changes with an endogenous lobbying response as pointed out by krueger 1993a 1993b changes in policy which are exogenous to the lobbying process may lead to a vicious circle of protectionism a sector which receives protection will tend to grow thereby increasing the constituency for greater protection and reducing the constituency which opposes protection the possibility of such a vicious circle is examined in the context of a trade model where capital which is immobile in the short run may lobby for a sector specific import tariff if costs associated with overcoming the free rider problem do not rise too quickly exogenous policy changes will be reinforced by the endogenous lobbying response as capital flows into the protected sector in the long run the implications of lobbying by third parties versus lobbying by the specific factors themselves are also examined

an epidemic model of investor behavior i test whether social influence affects individual investors trading and stock returns in each of the 20 most active stocks in finland over 9 years the number of owners in a municipality multiplied by the number of investors who do not own a stock a measure of the rate of transmission of diseases and rumors through social contact predicts individual investor trading i control for known determinants of trade including daily news and show that competing explanations for the relation are unlikely socially motivated trades predict stock returns and the effects are not reversed suggesting that individuals share useful information individuals susceptibility to social influence has declined during the period but the opportunities for social influence have increased

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

herding among security analysts the paper shows that the buy or sell recommendations of security analysts have a signi cant positive in uence on the recommendations of the next two analysts this in uence can be traced to short lived information in the most recent revisions in contrast the in uence of the prevailing consensus is not stronger if the consensus accurately forecasts subsequent stock price movements this indicates consensus herding consistent with models in which analysts herd based on little information the consensus also has a stronger in uence when market conditions are favorable the resulting poorer information aggregation could cause bull markets to be intrinsically more fragilea e g bikhchandani et al j political economy 100 5 1992 992 1026 2000 elsevier science s a all rights reserved jel classixcation g11 g14 g24

information and diffusion of new prescription drugs this article examines the role of different product information flows on the diffusion of new pharmaceuticals given the innovative nature of pharmaceutical drugs and their impact on health care expenditure there is a surprisingly small literature devoted to this topic some information flow mechanisms have been examined individually in the literature but very few have captured the simultaneous impact of these mechanisms on up take and diffusion this article uses the up take of statins as an example diffusion of this therapeutical group is expressed as a function of four specific informational channels self experience consumption externalities scientific evidence and marketing in addition to this the influence of economic factors is tested to examine whether they have any role in drug diffusion prescription data from over 130 general practitioners gp practices in the uk during 1991 2004 are used to test the econometric specification applying dynamic panel data methods results suggest individual self experience and clinical evidence are major factors promoting diffusion while there is an inverse relationship with gp practice size and diffusion having controlled for these factors financial incentives and marketing appear to play little role

persistence and reversal in herd behavior theory and application to the decision to go public we model rational herd behavior when the underlying value changes over time with payoffs that are either dependent or independent of the underlying value we show that herding does not last forever and is not monotone in signal quality high correlation among agents actions does not necessarily imply herding this suggests alternative empirical methods are needed to detect herding the model has many applications including the ipo decision in which payoffs are state dependent the model implies that the decision to go public is more likely associated with herding than the decision to delay an ipo copyright 2002 oxford university press

the spatial contribution to income inequality in rural china an income function analysis is conducted of the 2 400 rural counties of china using cross section data income inequality among counties is considerable and accounts for the major part of inequality among rural households in china county income per capita is well explained by province terrain agricultural type location and the relative importance of non agriculture non agricultural activity in turn is strongly assisted by agricultural success an analysis of time series data suggests that a process of cumulative causation operated in the decade after the rural reforms of 1978 increasing spatial inequality in rural investment industrialization and income fiscal redistribution from richer to poorer areas weakened the process but failed to stem it copyright 1993 by oxford university press

advertising and entry the case of physician services this paper examines the entry implications of physician advertising evidence suggests that advertising inhibits entry into this market nevertheless experienced physicians incumbents to whom advertising would offer the greatest financial benefit in fact advertise less a paradox that may be explained by nonfinancial concerns such as unwillingness to break well internalized professional norms against advertising physician advertising has risen sharply in recent years and it appears that this trend will continue if incumbents increasingly resort to advertising there could be a substantial redistribution of income from less well established physicians to better established ones

is free trade passe abstract if there were an economist s creed it would surely contain the affirmations i understand the principle of comparative advantage and i advocate free trade yet the case for free trade is currently more in doubt than at any time since the 1817 publication of ricardo s principles of political economy and this is due to changes that have recently taken place in the theory of international trade while new developments in international trade theory may not yet be familiar to the profession at large they have been substantial and radical in the last ten years the traditional constant returns perfect competition models of international trade have been supplemented and to some extent supplanted by a new breed of models that emphasizes increasing returns and imperfect competition these new models call into doubt the extent to which actual trade can be explained by comparative advantage they also open the possibility that government intervention in trade via import restrictions export subsidies

modelling the effects of promotion expenditures on sales of pharmaceuticals the successful innovation of pharmaceuticals requires a substantial amount of marketing support despite concerns about the effects of these marketing efforts this study considers prior findings that indicate that higher marketing expenditures for a brand reduce its price elasticity of demand which may lead to higher prices in the context of the dutch pharmaceutical market the authors find that parameters are heterogeneous across brands and that marketing effects differ across product life cycle stages they propose a separate analysis of established and new brands for established brands marketing efforts neither have a positive effect on sales nor do they affect the price elasticity for new brands several proposed models might capture their diffusion pattern the diffusion of innovation models provide the best results marketing accelerates the rate of diffusion and leads to a higher baseline level of sales

persuasion or information the economics of prescription drug advertising the economic and welfare effects of advertising have been extensively studied over the last half century however these efforts have not led to a consensus either as to the effects or the value of advertising economists continue to reach polar conclusions that appear to be derived mainly from preconceptions of the social desirability of advertising on the one hand is research that emphasizes promotion s ability to create artificial product differentiation and thereby produce informational confusion 1 this line of research stresses the empirical association of extensive advertising with high concentration and high accounting profits evidence judged to support increased market power and entry barrier effects 2 a contrary body of research emphasizes the value of advertising in providing information and hence in promoting competition 3 the empirical findings most consistent with this view are that prices paid by consumers in selected markets are lower with advertising than without it 4

on the new economic policies promoted by the 17th ccp congress in china the 17th chinese communist party congress in october 2007 attracted attention within and outside china for the bold development agenda that was placed before delegates after 30 years of economic reform that has produced a remarkable improvement in living standards and china s reintegration into the world economy the party unveiled a programme that would push china to become a world superpower over the next 30 years china s ambition is to become a technologically innovative state to make china a moderately prosperous and harmonious society with a scientific outlook on development and to achieve full industrialisation and sustainable prosperity whether china is able to attain its objectives will critically depend on the party s ability to implement the new economic policies and address the social and political challenges that economic growth has created the aim of the paper is to examine the policies motivations and constraints that china faces in achieving the objectives laid out at the party congress

a contractual remedy to premature innovation the vertical integration of brand name specific research is there any private contractual mechanism which can reduce premature innovation vertical integration of inventors and manufacturers is shown to be an answer so is exclusive dealing between inventors and manufacturers the prospect of getting ahead of other manufacturers and the fear of being left behind would induce a manufacturer to contract for an inventor s output inventors assured of markets for their results can focus more on the quality than on the completion dates of their work the paper examines contractual remedies for premature innovation consistent with the idea of competition the analysis develops from the conventional rushing model first it is shown that self interest of consumers manufacturers and inventors contradicts the intrinsic consequences of the rushing model correction requires exclusive commitments by manufacturers to the innovating results of winning inventors second it is hypothesized that vertical integration of inventors with production facilities of manufacturers is a form of prior commitment discouraging premature innovation viewed this way an entry barrier raised by brand name advertising may not be entirely undesirable

a breed apart security analysts and herding behavior herding behavior occurs when security analysts ignore their private opinions and issue public forecasts that mimic the earnings forecasts of others joining the consensus provides cover for analysts reputations we question the ethics of this practice when the motive to protect one s reputation takes precedence over the forecast accuracy motive while seemingly predictable behavior from a self interested perspective herding behavior has subtle but long term ramifications for the efficient pricing of securities and the preservation of the public trust in the financial services profession we call upon each individual analyst as well as the profession to exercise the moral courage necessary to cultivate a climate of personal and public integrity personal resistance and pro active policies are prescribed as actions to assist analysts to become more cognizant of their motivations as well as to promote a more ethical professional context