Applied Economics

This paper studies the e¤ect of social relations on the convergence to the e¢ cient equilibrium in a 2x2 coordination game. We employ a 2x2 factorial design in which we explore two di¤erent games with asymmetric payo¤s and two matching protocols: "friends" versus "strangers". In the …rst game payo¤s of the worse o¤ player are the same in the two equilibria, whereas in the second game, this player must sacri…ce her own payo¤ for achieving the e¢ cient equilibrium. Results show that "strangers" coordinate more frequently in the e¢ cient equilibrium than "friends" in both I am very grateful to Pablo Brañas-Garza, Ramón Cobo-Reyes and Giovanni Ponti for their constant support and interest in the project. I would like to thank

Tous droits réservés © Département des relations industrielles de l'Université Laval, 2001 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l'

The water sector has economic and symbolic importance for citizens in developing countries. Water utility benchmarking is no panacea for improving water sector performance. Nevertheless, it can contribute to addressing four sources of conflict in the design and implementation of policies: cognitive conflicts (based on technical disagreements regarding how data might be analyzed and interpreted), interest conflicts (where suppliers and demanders obtain different benefits and costs under alternative policies), values conflicts (involving ideology or personal preferences regarding water sector outcomes), and authority conflicts (stemming from jurisdictional disagreements over who has the last word). These potential sources of conflict characterize most politically-charged situations, including water supply management. This paper examines the extent to which water utility benchmarking facilitates conflict resolution. Without information on historical trends, current baselines, and realistic targets, conflicts over reforms to improve sector performance can weaken systems that are already fragile, particularly those in developing countries. This paper attempts to improve our understanding of the links between sources of conflict, government approaches for dealing with conflict, and the role of water utility benchmarking as a complementary strategy for addressing policy issues. Benchmarking is one way regulators and managers can promote conflict resolution that allows participants to focus on performance. The principles apply to all sectors with significant state oversight.

People migrate to improve their well-being, whether through an expansion of economic and social opportunities or a reduction in persecution. Yet a large literature suggests that migration can be a very stressful process, with potentially negative impacts on mental health reducing the net benefits of migration. However, to truly understand the effect of migration on mental health one must compare the mental health of migrants to what their mental health would have been had they stayed in their home country. The existing literature is not able to do this and typically settles for comparing the mental health of migrants to that of natives in the destination country,which takes no account of any pre-existing differences between these groups. This paper overcomes the selection problems affecting previous studies of the effect of migration on mental health by examining a migrant lottery program. New Zealand allows a quota of Tongans to immigrate each year with a lottery used to choose amo...

This study explores the long-term impact of population ageing on labour supply and human capital investment in Canada, as well as the induced effects on productive capacity. The analysis is conducted with a dynamic computable overlapping generations model where ...

Information and communication technology can be used to improve the quality and safety of health care and to lower costs. But in both developed and developing countries, there is an inadequate supply of skilled individuals who have the technical skills to use this technology to improve health care. Some studies project workforce needs of tens of thousands in English-speaking developed countries, but it is not known what size workforce will be required in the developing world. It is important to identify and develop the skills, training, and competenciesconsistent with local cultures, languages, and health systems-that will be needed to realize the full benefits of these technologies. We present a framework for answering these questions and for developing estimates of the size and scope of the workforce that may be needed. O ne way to bring about improvements in health, health care, biomedical research, and public health across the world is to make use of knowledge and skills in the implementation and use of information and communication technology. The reach of these technologies in the developing world, via both Internet access and mobile phones, is increasing exponentially. 1 However, the size and skills of the workforce have not kept pace.When information and communication technology is used for health applications, it is called e-health. 2 Its application limited to mobile phone technology is called m-health. 3

, the number of elderly Hispanics and Asians living in US nursing homes grew by 54.9 percent and 54.1 percent, respectively, while the number of elderly black residents increased 10.8 percent. During the same period, the number of white nursing home residents declined 10.2 percent. These shifts have been driven in part by changing demographics, especially the fast growth of older minority populations. However, the numbers of minority residents in nursing homes increased more rapidly than the minority population overall, even in areas with high concentrations of minority populations. Thus, these results may indicate unequal minority access to home and communitybased alternatives, which are generally preferred for long-term care. When designing initiatives to balance institutional and noninstitutional long-term care, policy makers should take steps to reduce racial and ethnic disparities.

In this paper we estimate relative age effects in academic performance using a unique database of students at Bocconi University. The identification exploits school entry cut-off ages that generate a difference of up to 11 months between the youngest and the oldest students within each cohort. Our data allow to control for potential selection as well as for differences in cognitive ability, as measured by an attitudinal entry test. Contrary to most of the existing evidence for primary school children, we document that in university the youngest students perform better compared to their oldest peers across almost all subjects. To rationalize this result we produce additional evidence on relative age effects in cognitive ability and in social behavior, using a combination of data from Bocconi admission tests and from a survey about the social behavior of Italian firstyear university students. We find that the youngest students in a cohort perform slightly better in cognitive tests and also appear to have less active social lives, particularly regarding romantic relationships. These results suggest that negative relative age effects at university are generated by the combination of two mechanisms: (i) early learning effects combined with a peak in the profile of cognitive development around age 20; (ii) psychological relative age effects that lead the youngest in a cohort to develop social skills (self-esteem, leadership) at a slower pace. Relatively younger students, thus, have less active social lives and devote more time to studying, as confirmed by additional evidence from the PISA study.

1] Hyporheic flow results from the interaction between streamflow and channel morphology and is an important component of stream ecosystems because it enhances water and solute exchange between the river and its bed. Hyporheic flow in pool-riffle channels is particularly complex because of three-dimensional topography that spans a range of partially to fully submerged conditions, inducing both static and dynamic head variations. Hence, these channels exhibit transitional conditions of streambed pressure and hyporheic flow compared to previous studies of fully submerged, two-dimensional bed forms. Here, we conduct a series of three-dimensional simulations to investigate the effects of bed topography, depth of alluvium, and stream discharge on hyporheic flow in pool-riffle reaches with variable bed form submergence, and we propose three empirical formulae to predict the mean depth of hyporheic exchange and characteristic values of the residence time distribution (mean and standard deviation). Hyporheic exchange is predicted with a three-dimensional pumping model, and hyporheic flow is modeled as a Darcy flow. We find that the hyporheic residence time is well approximated by a lognormal distribution for both partially and entirely submerged pool-riffle topography, with the parameters of the distribution defined by the mean and variance of the log-transformed residence time. Depth of alluvium has a substantial effect on hyporheic flow when alluvial depth is less than a third of the bed form wavelength for the conditions examined.

The Indian government imposed a ceiling on the price of Bt cotton seeds in 2006. This paper aims to analyze the effect of such price intervention on the diffusion of Bt cotton in India. Using three variations of dynamic logistic models, diffusion paths in nine major cotton growing states from 2002 to 2008 are studied. It was found that although seed prices were significant in impacting the diffusion rates, the effect was limited. It was also found that varietal approval is an important factor affecting diffusion rates.

Traditional resource economics has been criticised for assuming too high elasticities of substitution, not observing material balance principles and relying too much on planner solutions to obtain long-term growth. By analysing a multi-sector R&Dbased endogenous growth model with exhaustible natural resources, labour, and knowledge capital as inputs, the present paper addresses this critique. We study transitional dynamics and the long-term growth path and identify conditions under which firms keep spending on research and development so that growth is sustained. We demonstrate that long-run growth can be sustained under free market conditions even when elasticities of substitution between man-made inputs and resources are low.

This paper analyzes the impact of a randomized cash transfer program on cognitive development in early childhood in rural Nicaragua. We first show that a very large sample of children in our sample are delayed along various dimensions, including language, memory, and social skills, and that these delays are related to household per capita expenditure levels. We then show that the program had significant effects on cognitive outcomes, especially language. Program impacts are larger for older pre-school aged children, who were also more likely to be delayed. We analyze how the program affected several inputs into early childhood development that have been identified as key risk factors in the literature. Households randomly assigned to receive transfers increased the consumption of nutritious foods and provided more cognitive stimulation to children than those assigned to the control group. Moreover, we show that these impacts are not due to the cash component of the program only. The expenditure patterns of beneficiary households are significantly different from those of control households, indicating that households do not spend the cash received through the program in the same way as other income. Thomas, D. 1994. "Like Father, Like Son, Like Mother, Like Daughter: Parental Resources and Child

This paper outlines a classical-Marxian model of the antebellum US economy. The model assumes that the mobility of capital tended to equalize the rate of profit between North and South, whilst land rents were minimized by an expanding frontier. Under these conditions slave prices are the capitalized present value of the excess surplus value produced by slaves. This excess surplus value arose because slaves could be forced to work harder at a lower standard of subsistence than wage laborers, who were free to move between individual employers and also between sectors by farming frontier lands. If the growth of the slave population saturated the land available for slave production, land rents would rise to capture the excess surplus value produced by slaves, and slave prices would collapse. We find the model predicts historical movements of slave prices, and is compatible with contemporaneous views of the impact of territorial restriction on the viability of slavery.

Introduction: There are growing concerns among European health authorities regarding increasing prices for new cancer medicines, prices not necessarily linked to health gain and the implications for the sustainability of their healthcare systems. Areas covered: Narrative discussion principally among payers and their advisers regarding potential approaches to the pricing of new cancer medicines. Expert opinion: A number of potential pricing approaches are discussed including minimum effectiveness levels for new cancer medicines, managed entry agreements, multicriteria decision analyses (MCDAs), differential/tiered pricing, fair pricing models, amortization models as well as de-linkage models. We are likely to see a growth in alternative pricing deliberations in view of ongoing challenges. These include the considerable number of new oncology medicines in development including new gene therapies, new oncology medicines being launched with uncertainty regarding their value, and continued high prices coupled with the extent of confidential discounts for reimbursement. However, balanced against the need for new cancer medicines. This will lead to greater scrutiny over the prices of patent oncology medicines as more standard medicines lose their patent, calls for greater transparency as well as new models including amortization models. We will be monitoring these developments.

We measure the economic value of information derived from macroeconomic variables and from technical trading rules for emerging markets currency investments. Our analysis is based on a sample of 21 emerging markets with a floating exchange rate regime over the period [1997][1998][1999][2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006][2007] and explicitly accounts for trading restrictions on foreign capital movements by using nondeliverable forward data. We document that both types of information can be exploited to implement profitable trading strategies. In line with evidence from surveys of foreign exchange professionals concerning the use of fundamental and technical analysis, we find that combining the two types of information improves the risk-adjusted performance of the investment strategies.

The enlargement of the European Union has increased concerns about the role of generous welfare transfers in attracting migrants. This paper explores the issue of welfare migration across the countries of the pre-enlargement European Union and finds a significant but small effect of the generosity of welfare on migration decisions. This effect, however, is still large enough to distort the distribution of migration flows and, possibly, offset the potential benefits of migration as an inflow of mobile labour into countries with traditionally sedentary native workers.

In this paper, concept mapping is suggested as a methodological catalyst for organizational learning. Concept mapping, by virtue of its psychological and sociological foundations, offers a way to simultaneously understand complex systems in terms of both intra- and inter-personal relationships. We posit that key stakeholders, when taken together, represent the organization as a bounded unit and set the stage for

1] This paper assesses global water stress at a finer temporal scale compared to conventional assessments. To calculate time series of global water stress at a monthly time scale, global water availability, as obtained from simulations of monthly river discharge from the companion paper, is confronted with global monthly water demand. Water demand is defined here as the volume of water required by users to satisfy their needs. Water demand is calculated for the benchmark year of 2000 and contrasted against blue water availability, reflecting climatic variability over the period 1958-2001. Despite the use of the single benchmark year with monthly variations in water demand, simulated water stress agrees well with long-term records of observed water shortage in temperate, (sub)tropical, and (semi)arid countries, indicating that on shorter (i.e., decadal) time scales, climatic variability is often the main determinant of water stress. With the monthly resolution the number of people experiencing water scarcity increases by more than 40% compared to conventional annual assessments that do not account for seasonality and interannual variability. The results show that blue water stress is often intense and frequent in densely populated regions (e.g., India, United States, Spain, and northeastern China). By this method, regions vulnerable to infrequent but detrimental water stress could be equally identified (e.g., southeastern United Kingdom and northwestern Russia).

Public enterprises have been an integral part of the involvement of the state in the economy for most of the 20th century. After 1980, privatization has been the dominant trend until the 2008-2010 economic crisis when new nationalizations happened.

In a globally connected world, it is increasingly common for individuals to belong to and be influenced by more than one culture. Based on a critique of conceptualizations from psychology, management, marketing, anthropology, and sociology, we bring clarity and consistency to conceptualizing and measuring multiculturalism at the individual level. We propose that individual-level multiculturalism is the degree to which someone has knowledge of, identification with, and internalization of more than one societal culture, and recommend methods to measure each dimension. Finally, we suggest how individual-level multiculturalism influences, and is influenced by, social networks and power dynamics in international organizations.

To predict the performance of an aquifer thermal energy storage system, an understanding of the system's hydrothermal behavior is needed. One possibility is to run a detailed numerical simulation of the system. However, for a single-well system in which fluid flow is limited to steady radial flow, a characterization scheme based on a set of four dimensionless parameter groups allows production temperatures and energy recovery factors to be read from graphs. The assumption of radial fluid flow is valid when buoyancy flow can be neglected and a well is fully screened in a horizontal aquifer which is confined above and below by impermeable layers. Criteria for little buoyancy flow include a low permeability or vertically stratified aquifer, a small temperature difference between injected and ambient water. and short cycle leneth The ha.•ie enerov tranannrt ., ,.., ........ •,.• ....... r layer system with steady radial fluid flow in the aquifer are nondimensionalized to derive the key parameter groups. Next a numerical model which calculates the heat transfer in the aquifer and confining layers for an injection-storage-production cycle is run for a range of values of these groups. The calculated production temperatures and energy recovery factors are then presented graphically as a function of the parameter groups. Comparisons between results of field experiments and recovery factors read from the graphs show good agreement. ATES cycl• [Tsang eta!., 1977; Fabris et al., 1977]. Recently, Sauty et al. [1980a] have studied the thermal behavior of a simplified single-well ATES system in terms of , a set of dimensionless groups. A few heat storage field experiments in either confined

A substantial literature has investigated the role of relationship lending in shielding borrowers from idiosyncratic shocks. Much less is known about how lending relationships and bank-specific characteristics affect the functioning of the credit market in an economywide crisis, when banks may find it difficult to perform the role of shock absorbers. We investigate how bank-specific characteristics (size, liquidity, capitalization, funding structure) and the bank-firm relationship have influenced interest rate setting since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Unlike the existing literature, which has focused chiefly on the amount of credit granted during the crisis, we look at its cost. The data on a large sample of loans from Italian banks to non-financial firms suggest that close lending relationships kept firms more insulated from the financial crisis. Further, spreads increased by less for the customers of well-capitalized, liquid banks and those engaged mainly in traditional lending business.

Part I: Historical Background 1: Justice and Economics 2: The Modern Moral Dialogue 3. Justice in Economic History 4. The Disappearance of Justice 5. Property, Culture, and Economics Part II: The Social Encyclicals 6. Rerum Novarum: A Scandalous Encyclical? 7. Laborem Exercens: Work as the Key to the Social Question 8. Centesimus Annus: The Uncertain Victory Part III: Toward an Evolved Capitalism 9. The Social Teachings and Economics: Ideas in Tension 10. Toward an "Evolved" Capitalism 11. Marginal Productivity and the Just Wage 12. The Neo-Conservative Response 13. Distributivism Part IV: The Practice of Justice in the Modern Business World 14. Taiwan and the "Land to the Tiller" Program 15. Development and Globalization 16. Micro-Banking 17. The Mondragon Cooperative Corporation 18. ESOP's and Profit Sharing 19. The Just Wage in the Corporation 20. The Vocation of Business.

Objectives: Expert opinion is considered as a legitimate source of information for decision-analytic modeling where required data are unavailable. Our objective was to develop a practical computer-based tool for eliciting expert opinion about the shape of the uncertainty distribution around individual model parameters. Methods: We first developed a prepilot survey with departmental colleagues to test a number of alternative approaches to eliciting opinions on the shape of the uncertainty distribution around individual parameters. This information was used to develop a survey instrument for an applied clinical example. This involved eliciting opinions from experts to inform a number of parameters involving Bernoulli processes in an economic model evaluating DNA testing for families with a genetic disease, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The experts were cardiologists, clinical geneticists, and laboratory scientists working with cardiomyopathy patient populations and DNA testing.

Un modèle d'analyse a été construit pour rendre compte de l'influence du contexte de l'établissement sur l'issue d'interventions de prévention en santé et en sécurité du travail. Il a été constitué à partir d'une étude de cas en profondeur de sept interventions réalisées par ...

In the 21st-century USA, increasingly militarized systems of killer cops are the perpetrators of a new episode of state violence, as their increasing murders of unarmed black people demonstrate. Immediately after Ferguson, MO, cop Darren Wilson murdered unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown on 9 August 2014, and the city's police mounted a show of militarized power, which represented the rising tide of police-state terrorism in growing numbers of urban communities throughout the United States of America. Treating the community as a war zone, the cops occupied the streets, suggesting that they were protecting the city from the violence of black protestors. Rather, the militarized cop presence in the city of Ferguson only served to exacerbate community anger, outrage, and resentment. Young Brown's parents, Leslie McSpadden and Michael Brown, Sr., were left to grieve for their son, who was left dead in the street for four hours. Since the murder of Michael Brown, killer cop Darren Wilson has been exonerated by bankrupt and corrupt local and national systems of (in)justice. Moreover, he has gone into hiding, scarcely seen in public. Obviously full of anguish, despair, and frustration, Brown's parents have announced not only their desire for justice, but also their lack of confidence in the Ferguson, MO, (il)legal system. Significantly, their fears are reasonable, because in past cases of killer cop (or want-to-be cop) murderers of unarmed black and brown people the perpetrators have gone free. Although these slaughters have taken place under different circumstances-for example,

This paper examines the price discovery mechanism at the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) in Tanzania. The objective is to explain the efficiency of price discovery in relation to its dynamics and deterministic market features, using the All Sector Index (ASI). Our results provide evidence of inefficient price discovery at the Exchange, associated with some moments of structural shifts. Moreover, the inefficient price discovery is corroborated by the fact that the Index does not follow a random walk. These finding are consistent with our investigation of the main features of the market: inactive trading, illiquidity, high dependence on foreign investors to boost market activities, investors' dependence on dividend as the main source of income rather than stock trading, uncompetitive trading among brokers, and motives for more returns from alternative portfolio investments in government securities. Generally, the findings have strong implications for market participants and policy makers at the DSE and similar markets.

Given the preferential tax treatment afforded nonprofit firms, policymakers and researchers have been interested in whether the nonprofit sector provides higher nursing home quality relative to its for-profit counterpart. However, differential selection into for-profits and nonprofits can lead to biased estimates of the effect of ownership form. By using "differential distance" to the nearest nonprofit nursing home relative to the nearest for-profit nursing home, we mimic randomization of residents into more or less "exposure" to nonprofit homes when estimating the effects of ownership on quality of care. Using national Minimum Data Set assessments linked with Medicare claims, we use a national cohort of post-acute patients who were newly admitted to nursing homes within an 18-month period spanning January 1, 2004 and June 30, 2005. After instrumenting for profit status, we found that post-acute patients in nonprofit facilities had fewer 30-day hospitalizations and greater improvement in pain and ADL functioning.

By N. J. MAYHEW he history of prices in England begins in the thirteenth, or even the T late twelfth century, from which time the data continue more or less unbroken to the present day. This material has been the subject of serious study for over a century, and although recent scholarship has refined and improved our knowledge, the broad outlines of the picture have long been clear. At its simplest, the price history of the four or five centuries before 1700 may be described as two periods of marked and prolonged inflation either side of a fifteenth century characterized by stagnant, or even falling prices.' Explanation of these price trends is, however, much less clear than are the data. For much of this century economic historians have debated the relative importance of demographic as opposed to monetary factors affecting prices in England from c. 1300 to 1700. The monetary approach argues that when money becomes plentiful, its value falls, which means that other prices expressed in money must rise. The demographic argument is that a rising population will generate an increased demand for goods, and a rise in demand over supply will lead to a rise in prices. Most work has been rather exclusively either medieval or modern, and either monetary or demographic in its approach. This article will attempt to cover four centuries, and will draw on both demographic and monetary data. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been well served with good summaries of the debate,2 while for the middle ages the best summary is a brief essay by Harvey.3 Happily, recent medieval scholarship tends less towards single factor explanations. Demographers combine a growing mastery of their own discipline with an interest in, and tolerance of, other approaches, while historians of money are more likely to make claims for the importance of their subject than for its pre-emir~ence.~ Rogers, H i s t o r y of agriculture and prices; Beveridge, Prices and wages in England; Phelps Brown and Hopkins, 'Seven centuries of the price of consumables'; Farmer, 'Some price fluctuations'; idem, 'Some grain price movements'; idem, 'Some livestock price movements'; idem, 'Prices and wages'; idem, 'Prices and wages, 1350-1500'; Bowden, 'Agricultural prices'. Outhwaite, Infition in Tudor and early Stuart England; Ramsey, ed., Price revolution in sixteenthcentury England. More recently Challis, Currency and the economy, provides a detailed summary of the evidence of, and questions raised by, the coinage. Harvey, 'Introduction'. Though focusing on the half century or so before the Black Death, the issues raised are relevant for the whole of the later middle ages. Collected volumes of the essays of some of the chief protagonists are available: Postan, Medieval agriculture; idem, Medieval trade and finance; Day, M e d k a l market economy; Munro, Bullion flows and mmuuzry policies. Smith, 'Demographic developments'; Spufford, Money.

1] The interest about the exchange of water between streams and aquifers has been increasing among the hydrologic community because of the implications of the exchange of heat, solutes, and colloids for the water quality of aquatic environments. Unfortunately, our understanding of the relevance of the exchange processes is limited by the great number of coupled hydrological and geomorphological factors that interact to generate the complex spatial patterns of exchange. In this context, the present work presents a mathematical model for the surface-subsurface exchange through the streambed of a meandering stream. The model is based on the linearization of the equations that govern the hydrodynamics and the morphodynamics of the system, and it provides a first-order analytical solution of the coupled flow field of both the surface and the subsurface flows. The results show that stream curvature determines a characteristic spatial pattern of hyporheic exchange, with water upwelling and downwelling concentrated near the stream banks. The exchange can drive surface water deep into the sediments, thus keeping deep alluvium regions connected with the stream. The relationships between hyporheic exchange flux and the geometrical and hydrodynamical properties of the stream-aquifer system are also investigated.

Objectives: Leadership practices of health care managers can positively or negatively influence outcomes for organizations, providers and, ultimately, patients. Understanding the factors that contribute to nursing leadership is fundamental to ensuring a future supply of nursing leaders who can positively influence outcomes for health care providers and patients. The purpose of this study was to systematically review the multidisciplinary literature to examine the factors that contribute to nursing leadership and the effectiveness of educational interventions in developing leadership behaviours among nurses.

Excerpt] When the Ravenswood Aluminum Company locked out seventeen hundred workers on October 31, 1990, it hardly looked like a big opportunity for labor. In what had become standard operating procedure for employers during the 1980s, management broke off bargaining with the United Steelworkers of America, and then brought hundreds of replacement workers into a heavily fortified plant surrounded by barbed wire and security cameras. Injunctions prevented union members from doing little more than symbolic picketing, and the wheels of justice, as they had done for more than a decade, creaked ever so slowly. All the pieces were in place for another long, drawn-out defeat for labor.