the influence of money and the rate of interest on the rate of inflation in a financially repressed economy the case of turkey 1987 the influence of money and the rate of interest on the rate of inflation in a financially repressed economy the case of turkey applied economics vol 19 no 12 pp 1585 1601

health care evaluation utilitarianism and distortionary taxes cost utility analysis cua and cost benefit analysis cba are methods to evaluate allocations of health care resources problems are raised for both methods when income taxes do not meet the first best optimum this paper explores the implications of three ways that taxes may fall short of this ideal first taxes may be distortionary second they may be designed and administered without reference to information that is used by providers of health care finally the share of tax revenue that is devoted to health care may be suboptimal the two methods are amended to account for these factors

why is bank debt senior a theory of asymmetry and claim priority based on influence costs this theory can explain why bank debt is universally senior consistent with the presence of conflict lawyers and absolute priority violations in financial distress better organized banks would more strongly contest priority in financial distress if they were junior because deterrence can reduce creditors total expenses in a priority contest the ex post stronger lobbyist litigant should be senior ex ante for equivalent reasons the theory can advise when public debt should be senior to trade credit and or implicit contracts and can even suggest one rationale for the absolute priority rule apr this article further shows that chapter hi creditor reimbursement procedures can lower overall costs article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

influence costs and capital structure this paper analyzes the role of capital structure in the presence of intrafirm influence activities the hierarchical structure of large organizations inevitably generates attempts by members to influence the distributive consequences of organizational decisions in corporations for example top management can reallocate or eliminate quasi rents earned by their employees while at the same time they must rely on these employees to provide them with information vital to their decision making this creates the opportunity for lower level managers to influence top management s discretionary decisions as a result divisional managers may attempt to inflate the corporate perception of their relative contributions to the firm or to take actions that make the elimination of their rents more costly for the firm this incentive to influence is especially acute when managers fear losing their jobs for example in the event of a divestiture since the firm s capital structure can affect future divestiture decisions it can be chosen to reduce or increase the divisional managers incentives to influence top management s decisions the control of influence activities arises at the expense of restrictions on future divestiture decisions hence there emerges an optimal capital structure that trades off the costs of influence activities against the costs of making poor divestiture decisions the findings suggest that capital structure can also be chosen to control influence activities that arise under less extreme motivations we identify several key factors that determine the optimal capital structure the top management s prior assessment of the likelihood that it will be optimal to divest a specific division the costs of influence activities to the firm and to the divisional managers and the difference in the valuation of the division s assets in the current firm and under alternative uses

a new test of money income causality this paper investigates the prima facie causal relationship between money and income employing a methodology the multiple rank f test the results of which are invariant to monotonic transformations of all variables and robust over alternative distributions of the errors in contrast to prior functional form dependent parametric analyses evidence of prima facie causality between money and income is found for the 1970 88 time period this evidence is consistent with an elementary theoretical framework in which the direction and strength of causality is dependent upon the definition of money copyright 1992 by ohio state university press

a quantile estimation approach to identify income and age variation in the value of a statistical life abstract in theory heterogeneity in individual characteristics translates into variation in the marginal willingness to pay for a mortality risk reduction two dimensions of heterogeneity with respect to income and age have recently received attention due to their policy relevance we propose a quantile regression approach to simultaneously explore these two sources of heterogeneity and their interactions within the context of the hedonic wage model the most common revealed preference approach for obtaining value of statistical life estimates we illustrate the approach using data from the health and retirement study hrs we find that the impact of age on the wage risk tradeoff varies across the wage distribution this result indicates important interactions between age and income heterogeneity thus the conventional mean hedonic wage regression even when the mean effect is allowed to vary with age masks important heterogeneity

on the casual relationship between government expenditures and national income a research strategy is suggested that separates the issue of inference from the problems of prediction or of quantitative policy analysis of an empirical parametric model and illustrates a new methodology that enables this in a test for prima facie causality unlike the conventional parametric test the more powerful multiple rank f test is invariant to monotonic transformations of the variables and independent of the error distribution employing this test the wagnerian hypothesis supported by conventional parametric analysis is rejected and the conventional keynesian theory is accepted copyright 1990 by mit press

willingness to pay and the distribution of risk and wealth willingness to pay wtp most economists believe is an appropriate benefits metric for government expenditure and regulatory policies that reduce risks to human life it depends however on the distribution of risk and wealth currently society s expenditures overemphasize concentrated risks say after the fact treatment as opposed to prevention a dead anyway effect complements excess attention to intense interests in explaining this our normative criterion for spending on risk reduction is what a rational albeit uninsured individual confronting lotteries on future risks to life and wealth would choose for himself this requires correcting wtp to eliminate the dead anyway effect but continues to reflect that wealth enhances the utility of living

lag length selection and tests of granger causality between money and income one of the most widely accepred relationships in macroeconomics is the positive relationship between the rate of growth of the money supply and the rate of growth of income a diversity of opinion arises however with the attempt to identify a causal relationship between these variables while friedman and schwartz 1963 initiated the empirical investigation of money income causality sims 1972 made the most significant contribution to this literature with a practical application of the criterion developed by granger 1969 for identifying a causal relationship since the appearance of sims s approach and an alternative one advanced by sargent 1976 many researchers have applied these techniques to the investigation of the causal relationship between money and income l with two exceptions hsiao 1981 and mcmillin and fackler 1984 these researchers have arbitrarily chosen the lengths of their distributed lags the purpose of this paper is to test for granger causality between money and income this paper differs from previous work in that considerably more attention is focused on the effect of the lag specification on the test results in particular we investigate the extent to which rules of thumb arbitrary lag specifications and

money inflation and causality in a financially repressed economy algeria 1970 88 the objective of the paper is to replicate tests identifying the line of causality between the money supply and the rate of inflation using algerian date for the period 1970 88 and provide new evidence for a developing economy the methodology adopted is that of granger and the results show that there is a very strong relationship between the money supply and the rate of inflation with the line of causation being unidirectional that is from the money supply to inflation with no feedback effects

willingness to pay for car safety evidence from sweden this study estimates a marginal willingness to pay wtp function for a road mortality risk reduction observed marginal wtp from the swedish car market is used and found to be positively correlated with the baseline risk of the cars no statistically significant relationships between examined owner attributes e g wealth and background risk and marginal wtp are found when comparing the estimated monetary value of a non marginal risk reduction derived from the integral of the marginal wtp function with an estimate based on marginal wtp we find in line with expectations that the difference between the estimates is negligible for smaller risk reductions and small 4 10 also for relatively large risk reductions

the irrelevance of inference a decision making approach to the stochastic evaluation of health care technologies the literature which considers the statistical properties of cost effectiveness analysis has focused on estimating the sampling distribution of either an incremental cost effectiveness ratio or incremental net benefit for classical inference however it is argued here that rules of inference are arbitrary and entirely irrelevant to the decisions which clinical and economic evaluations claim to inform decisions should be based only on the mean net benefits irrespective of whether differences are statistically significant or fall outside a bayesian range of equivalence failure to make decisions in this way by accepting the arbitrary rules of inference will impose costs which can be measured in terms of resources or health benefits forgone the distribution of net benefit is only relevant to deciding whether more information is required a framework for decision making and establishing the value of additional information is presented which is consistent with the decision rules in cea this framework can distinguish the simultaneous but conceptually separate steps of deciding which alternatives should be chosen given existing information from the question of whether more information should be acquired it also ensures that the type of information acquired is driven by the objectives of the health care system is consistent with the budget constraint on service provision and that research is designed efficiently

the causal factors of government expenditure growth in greece 1950 80 the notion of causal relationships is the basis on which the empirical testing of theoretical propositions rests this paper considers the risks from the wrong identification of causal relationships and then by using the pierce haugh test attempts to establish the correct causal patterns between various groups of government expenditures within the context of the greek economy from 1950 to 1980 and other variables which have appeared in the literature of the determinants of government expenditure growth

on aggregating qalys a comment on dolan dolan dolan p 1998 the measurement of individual utility and social welfare journal of health economics vol 17 pp 39 52 in a recent paper suggested an empirical method for estimating the shape of the social welfare function using a simple theoretical model it is shown that dolan s proposed empirical method has no theoretical foundation the main problem with the approach is that it measures only the altruistic values that individuals attach to other peoples health status and ignores the utility that individuals attach to their own health status

money income and sterilization tests for causality in the oil economy of kuwait the purpose of this investigation is to provide some evidence on two widely held hypotheses dominating monetary analysis in the small oil economy of kuwait and other gulf states the first posits that causality should run from money to income while the second emphasizes the neutral impact of external transactions on the domestic money supply

causality between export growth and industrial development empirical evidence from the nics a comment abstract in a recent article chow 1987 argued that his empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that export growth causes industrial development in this comment i point out several serious shortcomings of chow s analysis

complementarity and the measurement of individual risk tradeoffs accounting for quantity and quality of life effects this paper considers the factors responsible for differences with age in estimates of the wage compensation an individual requires to accept increased occupational fatality risk we derive a relationship between the value of a statistical life vsl and the degree of complementarity between consumption and labor supplied when health status serves as a potential source of variation in this relationship our empirical analysis finds that variations in an individual s health status or quality of life and anticipated longevity threats lead to significant differences in the estimated wage risk tradeoffs we describe how extensions to the specification of hedonic wage models including measures for quality of life and anticipated longevity threats help to explain the diversity in past studies examining how the estimated wage risk tradeoff changes with age

vsl reconsidered what do labor supply estimates reveal about risk preferences abstract we propose and illustrate a theoretically consistent framework for linking estimates of the value of a statistical life vsl to individual preferences our example suggests a method for using estimates of the labor supply elasticity to impute a vsl estimate

risky sports and the value of safety information abstract we develop a theoretical account of how athletes engaged in risky sports value safety information based on our model we postulate that the demand value of such information rises with wealth and exposure and declines with the athlete s appetite for risk we use survey data from a sample of backcountry skiers to empirically test these predictions the high degree of self control over exposure makes these athletes a well suited population to study the demand value of safety information caution is warranted in the empirical analysis as unobserved factors may jointly affect the athlete s perceived risk and his willingness to pay for obtaining safety information we use a recursive two stage estimation approach to account for endogeneity concerns the empirical results are supportive of our theoretical predictions and suggest that variations in athletes demand for safety information can be explained by personal beliefs about risk exposure and deliberate risk taking

willingness to pay the risk premium and risk aversion abstract in this paper we compare the properties of two concepts that are often used to value risk transformations the willingness to pay w t p and the risk premium we show that in contrast to a widespread belief some properties of the risk premium are not shared by w t p

the value of a statistical life under ambiguity aversion abstract the paper shows that ambiguity aversion increases the value of a statistical life if the marginal utility of an increase in wealth is larger if one is alive rather than dead intuitively ambiguity aversion has a similar effect as an increase in the perceived baseline mortality risk and thus operates as the dead anyway effect a numerical example suggests however that ambiguity aversion cannot justify the substantial ambiguity premium apparently embodied in environmental policy making the paper also shows that ambiguity aversion decreases the marginal cost of individual self protection effort but may well decrease its marginal benefit so that the total effect of ambiguity aversion on self protection is unclear

energy and economic growth in the usa a multivariate approach abstract this paper examines the causal relationship between gdp and energy use for the period 1947 90 in the usa the relationship between energy use and economic growth has been examined by both biophysical and neoclassical economists in particular several studies have tested for the presence of a causal relationship in the granger sense between energy use and economic growth however these tests do not allow a direct test of the relative explanatory powers of the neoclassical and biophysical models a multivariate adaptation of the test vector autoregression var does allow such a test a var of gdp energy use capital stock and employment is estimated and granger tests for causal relationships between the variables are carried out although there is no evidence that gross energy use granger causes gdp a measure of final energy use adjusted for changing fuel composition does granger cause gdp

effects of mortality risk on risk taking behavior abstract this paper studies how an exogenous mortality risk affects an individual s risk taking behavior elsewhere we find that individuals will respond to the new mortality risk by increasing their exposure to financial and other mortality risks

money supply and prices and indonesia 1969 1980 an econometric investigation the purpose of the study is to integrate the influence on prices which flow not only from monetary changes but also from other exogenous shocks harvest failures devaluations or changes in world market prices on key export commodities with the influences of money supply caused not only by government policy changes but also from previous or expected price changes the findings suggest that although monetary authorities have some control over the money supply changes can be exogenously determined by contrast it is also found that the rate of inflation proxy for interest rate in a developing economy which is generally considered to be an important element in the money demand function does not turn out to be a significant factor in recent indonesian experience the formulated model in this paper is dynamically simulated and seems to possess desirable properties namely positive prices and stable solutions

endogenous private safety investment and the willingness to pay for mortality risk reductions when individuals cannot undertake safety improving expenditures the effect of an increase in the initial risk on the willingness to pay wtp for mortality risk reduction is positive because of the dead anyway effect when they can undertake safety improving expenditures the effect of an increase in the initial risk is governed by two effects the dead anyway effect which is positive and the high payment effect which is negative we treat the two types of risk reducing expenditures endogenous and exogenous as inputs in a safety improving technology function and find conditions that guarantee that the high payment effect dominates

endogenous private health investment and the willingness to pay for public health projects the effects of income abstract a distinction is made between the wtp for health improvement and the wtp for health improving projects through endogenizing private health investment while the former always increases in income income s effect on the latter depends on whether private and public health inputs are substitutes or complements

monetarism and the aggregate economy some longer run evidence a simple macro model is used to investigate various monetarist propositions over the period 1923 82 initial tests indicate a structural break over this period and the subperiods 1923 60 and 1961 82 are analyzed separately results obtained for the latter period support the monetarist propositions put forward by stein and others however upon closer investigation it appears that the crucial long run neutrality that characterizes these findings is essentially generated by government policy and is not necessarily an intrinsic property of the economy over that period by contrast results obtained for the period 1923 60 are much less supportive of these same propositions

on the economic foundations of cea ladies and gentlemen take your positions abstract there are still many ongoing debates about several aspects of the methodology of economic evaluations of health care interventions some of the disparities in recommendations on methodological issues may be traced back to different viewpoints on cost effectiveness analysis cea in general two important views are the welfarist approach which aims at embedding cea into traditional welfare economics and the decision maker s approach which takes a broader and more pragmatic view on cea the focus in welfarism may be on utility while that of the decision maker s approach may be considered to be on health in this paper it is examined how these two views differ and how these differences may subsequently lead to debates in methodological areas it is indicated that embedding the practical operationalisation of cea in welfare economics seems impossible in a strict welfarist approach it is necessary to view qalys as being utilities although one may question whether such an approach to qalys is appropriate also equity considerations may play an important role in cost effectiveness analysis and these should preferably be taken into account in a way that reflects societal attitudes towards an equitable distribution of health care these equity considerations may not always be directly related to utility or efficiency furthermore both camps may prefer different methods for cost measurement in areas such as productivity costs and informal care a better recognition of the contents and origins of controversies and disputes may enhance the clarity of discussions

parental altruism and the value of avoiding acute illness are kids worth more than parents abstract a model describing parents preferences to relieve their own and their children s acute illnesses is estimated using stated preference data estimated marginal rates of substitution mrs between child and parent illness are about two indicating that parents value children s illness attributes twice as highly as their own the mrs is larger for younger children falls toward unity as the child approaches adulthood and appears to reflect parental altruism rather than parent child differences in initial health or illness costs intra family allocations may compensate for chronic health impairments parents willingness to pay to avoid own or child illness increases with income declines with fertility increases at a decreasing rate with duration and number of symptoms and depends on perceived discomfort and activity restrictions current methods of assessing morbidity benefits of environmental regulations may understate substantially the value of children s health particularly in african american families

dutch disease economics and oil syndrome an empirical study abstract this paper integrates the existing dutch disease models of an oil boom into a reduced form three sector model and estimates it for five developing oil exporting countries having significant agricultural and manufacturing sectors time series annual data for the period 1966 1986 are used for algeria ecuador indonesia nigeria and venezuela their output composition is altered by an increase in their oil revenues the spending effect and in the world price of manufactured goods relative to agricultural products the world price effect both effects expand the manufacturing sectors of these countries and contract their agricultural sectors the spending effect expands their nontraded sectors whereas the world price effect may expand or contract them the opposite results are implied for the oil collapse of the 1980s

cognitive ability and scale bias in the contingent valuation method this study investigates whether or not the scale bias found in contingent valuation cvm studies on mortality risk reductions is a result of cognitive constraints among respondents scale bias refers to insensitivity and non near proportionality of the respondents willingness to pay wtp to the size of the risk reduction two hundred swedish students participated in an experiment in which their cognitive ability was tested before they took part in a cvm study asking them about their wtp to reduce bus mortality risk the results imply that wtp answers from respondents with a higher cognitive ability are less flawed by scale bias

on the possibility of a bridge between cba and cea comments on a paper by dolan and edlin in a recent work by dolan and edlin it is concluded that no link can be established between cost benefit analysis cba and cost effectiveness analysis cea however the conclusion seems to depend rather heavily on what is understood by a link between cba and cea as well as on the exact meaning of the latter two terms we argue that there is at least one approach to cba and cea in which the two are very intimately linked on the other hand the limitations in the access to preference information has consequences for the kind of questions that can be meaningfully addressed in both cba and cea

booming sector and de industrialisation in a small open economy this paper presents a theoretical analysis of the dutch disease the phenomenon whereby a boom in one traded goods sector squeezes porfitability in other traded goods sectors both by directly bi

on interest rate innovations and anticipated monetary policy abstract in this note i investigate whether anticipated money matters by following mccallum s 1983 suggestion that nominal interest rates be included in a var system estimated on data spanned by a policy of interest rate targeting the evidence is in favour of gordon s 1982 natural rate hypothesis gradual price adjustent model of policy ineffectiveness ambler and phaneuf 1988 have shown the results can be interpreted as evidence in favour of contract based models of the business cycle

discouraging rivals managerial rent seeking and economic inefficiencies we argue here for a broader view of the biases in managers decisions in general managerial rent seeking affects not only the level of investment but also the form our basic hypothesis is simple given the now well established scope for managerial discretion managers have an incentive to exercise that discretion to enhance their income any managerial contract is subject to renegotiation and a manager s pay is the outcome of an often bewildering bargaining process between management the board of directors and rival management teams or takeover artists this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

money inflation and casuality another look at the empirical evidence for the usa 1953 84 this paper addresses the issue of the existence of a causal relationship between inflation i e change in the price level and change in the money supply three different causality tests are discussed and implemented for two separate time periods the results are mixed and somewhat difficult to interpret on intuitive grounds while a causal relationship is found to exist between changes in the consumer price index and changes in the narrowly defined money supply there is no relationship indentifiable between the other price and money supply data series used given this result one can see why different results are frequently obtained the different researchers focusing on the question of a relationship between the supply of money and prices finally the results of a previous paper by feige and pearce are called into question as the result of a serious misspecification

ceo replacement under private information this article examines the optimal ceo compensation and replacement policy when the ceo is privately informed about the firm s continuation value under his leadership ex ante moral hazard implies that the ceo must receive ex post quasi rents which endogenously biases him toward continuation our model shows that to induce bad ceos to quit it may be best to make continuation costly through steep incentive pay rather than simply rewarding quitting through severance pay incentive pay makes continuation attractive for good ceos who can expect high future on the job pay but unattractive for bad ceos who may instead prefer to take their outside option payoff our model generates novel empirical implications that jointly relate ceo compensation and turnover to corporate governance firm size cash flow risk and the informativeness of performance measurement jel g34

is it really possible to build a bridge between cost benefit analysis and cost effectiveness analysis cost benefit analysis cba is a recognised as the economic evaluation technique that accords most with the underlying principles of standard welfare economic theory however due to problems associated with the technique economists evaluating resources allocation decisions in health care have most often used cost effective analysis cea in which health benefits are expressed in non monetary units as a result attempts have been made to build a welfare economic bridge between cost benefit analysis cba and cost effectiveness analysis cea in this paper we develops these attempts and finds that while assumptions can be made to facilitate a constant willingness to pay per unit of health outcome these restrictions are highly unrealistic we develop an impossibility theorem that shows it is not possible to link cba and cea if i the axioms of expected utility theory hold ii the quality adjusted life year qaly model is valid in a welfare economic sense and iii illness affects the ability to enjoy consumption we conclude that within a welfare economic framework it would be unwise to rely on a link between cba and cea in economic evaluations

life cycle preferences over consumption and health when is cost effectiveness analysis equivalent to cost benefit analysis this paper studies life cycle preferences over consumption and health status we show that cost effectiveness analysis is consistent with cost benefit analysis if the lifetime utility function is additive over time multiplicative in the utility of consumption and the utility of health status and if the utility of consumption is constant over time we derive the conditions under which the lifetime utility function takes this form both under expected utility theory and under rank dependent utility theory which is currently the most important nonexpected utility theory if cost effectiveness analysis is consistent with cost benefit analysis it is possible to derive tractable expressions for the willingness to pay for quality adjusted life years qalys the willingness to pay for qalys depends on wealth remaining life expectancy health status and the possibilities for intertemporal substitution of consumption

inflation and growth in a disequilibrium macroeconomic model abstract the purpose of this paper is to study the dynamics of temporary equilibria in a disequilibrium growth model dynamics rests upon adjustment mechanisms of prices capital stock money balances and labour supply wage dynamics is supposed to be influenced by indexation processes and this question is related to the investment behaviour of firms we give sufficient conditions for existence unicity and asymptotic stability of steady states of this model we also show that steady states correspond to a long run phillips curve which is vertical when inflationary expectations are fully reflected in wage and price changes

the social value of mortality risk reduction vsl vs the social welfare function approach we examine how different welfarist frameworks evaluate the social value of mortality risk reduction these frameworks include classical distributively unweighted cost benefit analysis i e the value per statistical life vsl approach and various social welfare functions swfs the swfs are either utilitarian or prioritarian applied to policy choice under risk in either an ex post or ex ante manner we examine the conditions on individual utility and on the swf under which these frameworks display sensitivity to wealth and to baseline risk moreover we discuss whether these frameworks satisfy related properties that have received some attention in the literature namely equal value of risk reduction preference for risk equity and catastrophe aversion we show that the particular manner in which vsl ranks risk reduction measures is not necessarily shared by other welfarist frameworks jel d81 d61 d63 q51

institutional analysis and the resource curse in developing countries abstract the present article examines the recent advances reported in the literature regarding the mechanisms underlying the resource curse in developing countries by analyzing the rule of law index we investigated how the institutions responsible for allocating hydrocarbon royalties can help minimize the effects of the resource curse we used a qualitative methodology based on case studies the results show that evidence of legal violations on the part of these institutions and the lack of tools in resource rich developing countries to uphold basic social and economic rights are associated with the resource curse our findings suggest that strengthening the institutions closer monitoring of oil revenue allocations and public participation can help to alleviate the resource curse

keynes versus wagner public expenditure and national income for three african countries the public expenditure income hypothesis has long been debated in economics following keynes public expenditure is seen as an exogenous factor to be used as a policy instrument to influence growth on the other hand wagner argues that expenditure is an endogenous factor or an outcome not a cause of growth in national income the purpose of this paper is to apply both the granger and holmes hutton statistical procedures to test the income expenditure hypothesis for three african countries ghana kenya and south africa we find that the hypothesis of public expenditure causing national income is not supported by the data for these african countries

how to measure the economic impact of vector borne diseases at country level vector borne diseases vbds are widespread in less developed countries and reemerging in developed ones available economic studies agree that vbds have significant effects on countries economic outcomes and affirm that a systematic evaluation of such effects is crucial for the efficient allocation of resources to health related priorities this paper provides a comparative assessment of available methodologies for measuring the economic impact of vbds at national level we review both macroeconometric and micro based approaches and examine advantages and disadvantages of current methods we conclude by suggesting possible areas for future research

money prices and causality monetarist versus structuralist explanations using pooled country evidence the direction of causality between changes in money supply and aggregate prices has long been a matter of controversy between structuralists and monetarists this paper addresses deficiencies in this literature in three ways first a large sample of countries with alternate measures of money and price variables is used to evaluate the evidence on money inflation and causality second combined data are tested for causality with the combinations based on variables suggested by the literature level of per capita income magnitude of inflation degree of financial market development and independence of the central bank finally because the choice of lag length is often arbitrary results are generated with varying lags and consistency across different lag periods looked for two presentation methods are developed categorical and graphical evidence of structural inflation was found only in chile and sri lanka evidence of money supply exogeneity on the other hand was found to be strongest in kuwait

willingness to pay and sensitivity to time framing a theoretical analysis and an application on car safety stated preference sp surveys attempt to obtain monetary values for non market goods that reflect individuals true preferences numerous empirical studies suggest that monetary values from sp studies are sensitive to survey design and so may not reflect respondents true preferences this study examines the effect of time framing on respondents willingness to pay wtp for car safety we explore how wtp per unit risk reduction depends on the time period over which respondents pay and face reduced risk in a theoretical model and by using data from a swedish contingent valuation survey our theoretical model predicts the effect to be nontrivial in many scenarios used in empirical applications in our empirical analysis we examine the sensitivity of wtp to an annual and a monthly scenario our theoretical model predicts the effect from the time framing to be negligible but the empirical estimates from the annual scenario are about 70 higher than estimates from the monthly scenario

assessing risky social situations this paper reexamines the welfare economics of risk it singles out a class of criteria the expected equally distributed equivalent as the unique class that avoids serious drawbacks of existing approaches such criteria behave like ex post criteria when the final statistical distribution of well being is known ex ante and like ex ante criteria when risk generates no inequality the paper also provides a new result on the tension between inequality aversion and respect of individual ex ante preferences in the vein of harsanyi s aggregation theorem

modelling money price and output in india a vector autoregressive and moving average varma approach the present study has two purposes first the study examines the most substantive and debatable question is there any long run relationship among money price and output it has been found by applying different tests of cointegration that there is no long run relationship among these three variables in cointegration sense second having ascertained that the variables under study are not cointegrated an attempt is made to explore the short run relationship among money price and output exploiting the characteristics of the vector autoregressive and moving average varma model sub set concept has been used to identify the best fitted varma model the paper concludes the following i both money and price affect each other and there exists bi directional causality ii output affects price and there is also feedback between price and output and iii money unidirectionally affects output various consequences of cointegration on parameter estimates of pure var varma in difference have been discussed

a casual varma model analysis with an application to canadian money and income data 1988 a casual varma model analysis with an application to canadian money and income data applied economics vol 20 no 9 pp 1167 1183

the effect of risk context on the value of a statistical life a bayesian meta model this paper presents the first value of statistical life vsl meta analysis that empirically estimates correction factors for out of context benefits transfer bt purposes in the field of mortality risk reductions elicited willingness to pay values in one risk context say road safety are frequently applied in other risk contexts like air pollution however differences in risk perception and the population at risk across contexts are likely to result in diverging vsl estimates in a meta analysis of 26 international stated preference studies a bayesian model is estimated regressing contingent values for mortality risk reductions originating from three different risk contexts on the characteristics of the risk reduction itself and additional variables characterizing the underlying studies a willingness to pay wtp premium for mortality risk reductions in the air pollution and general mortality risk context relative to improving road safety is observed evaluated at the mean road safety vsl estimates should be multiplied by a factor 1 8 before being applicable in the air pollution context moreover in an illustrative bt exercise we find limited overlap in the set of context specific predictive vsl distributions consequently out of context bt results in a substantial over or underestimation of the vsl

the dilemma of accountability for professionals a challenge for mainstream management theories professional institutions are increasingly confronted by fiscal constraints and political pressures to improve and increase their accountability in a competitive consumer driven market accordingly the need to ensure efficiency and accountability is of strategic importance this article reports on a qualitative study of medical professionals that assessed the utility of financial incentives and external control methods derived from agency theory to ensure accountability of professionals the authors argue that approaches derived from stewardship and institutional theories can extend the principal agent perspective to sustain greater social and ethical accountability

attitudes toward catastrophe in light of climate change and other global threats policy commentators sometimes urge that society should be more concerned about catastrophes this paper reflects on what society s attitude toward low probability high impact events is or should be we first argue that catastrophe risk can be conceived of as a spread in the distribution of losses based on this conception we review studies from decision sciences psychology and behavioral economics that explore people s attitudes toward various social risks contray to popular belief we find more evidence against than in favor of catastrophe aversion the preference for a mean preserving contraction of the loss distribution and discuss a number of possible behavioral explanations next we turn to social choice theory and examine how various social welfare functions handle catastrophe risk we explain why catastrophe aversion may be in conflict with equity concerns and other regarding preferences finally we discuss current approaches to evaluate and regulate catastrophe risk

why hang on to losers divestitures and takeovers we study the divestiture decisions of managers who care about their reputations managers divestiture and investment decisions are publicly observable but managers privately observe signals with respect to the future payoff distribution of investments they have initiated we establish that in equilibrium there is too little divestiture these inefficiencies create the opportunity for wealth enhancing divestiture motivated takeovers a key result is that only managers of targets with middle of the road asset specificity should consider the takeover threat credible these findings suggest that uniqueness of assets is an important determinant of both agency costs and takeover activity our analysis leads to several empirical predictions overwhelming empirical evidence has documented large gains in shareholder wealth that arise from takeovers jarrell brickley and netter 1988 and jensen and ruback 1983 the source of these gains has remained elusive however although takeovers are followed by some infusion of new managerial talent we have not witnessed the kind of profound post takeover restructuring of the productive activities of target firms that would readily justify the documented wealth gains a commonly observed post takeover initiative is divestiture of some of the target s lines of business bhide 1989 and bhagat shleifer and vishny 1990 what is puzzling is that if the gains from takeovers stem from the anticipation of such divestitures then why were these divestitures not undertaken by the target firm s management in the first place the purpose of this paper is to provide a possible answer to this question our focus is on the divergence in incentives between managers and shareholders with respect to divestitures of ongoing projects we show that managers might rationally decide to hang on to projects that should be divested in

default and renegotiation a dynamic model of debt we analyze the role of debt in persuading an entrepreneur to pay out cash e ows rather than to divertthem in the e rstpartof the paper we study the optimal debt contract specie cally the trade off between the size of the loan and the repayment under the assumption that some debt contract is optimal in the second part we consider a more general class of nondebt contracts and derive sufficient conditions for debt to be optimal among these

are causal relationships sensitive to causality tests 1987 are causal relationships sensitive to causality tests applied economics vol 19 no 4 pp 459 465

oil windfalls in a controlled economy a fix price equilibrium analysis of algeria abstract the algerian macroeconomic response to oil windfalls which differs from that expected of a neoclassical economy is examined through application of fix price equilibrium analysis a model of the aggregate macroeconomy is specified and its response decomposed into behavioral and involuntary spillover elements the implications of classical unemployment are derived econometric estimation of the model for the period 1966 1984 supports the importance of involuntary spillovers as an explanation of algeria s unusual pattern of demand and money balance accumulation rationing is shown to have been considerable relative to observed consumption in recent years two major conclusions are drawn 1 fix price modeling captures an important feature of the algerian economy during this period analyses ignoring spillovers will provide biased results 2 conventional neoclassical estimation will in general confound behavioral parameters and spillover effects for countries where the price mechanism is not permitted to operate freely this will lead to biased behavioral estimates and inaccurate policy advice