We analyze the factors that influence the support for environmental policy proposals. Swiss referendum data show that proposals obtain more yes-votes if they do not restrict consumption possibilities directly, if they are endorsed by business associations, if environmental preferences are strong and economic conditions are favorable at the time of the referendum. Also, there are more pro-environmental votes in cantons with higher population density. On the other hand, yes-votes do not seem to depend on whether a proposal involves a tax or not.
This paper examines the competitive effects of reorganizing a network industry's vertical structure. In this industry, an upstream monopolist operates a network used as an input to produce horizontally differentiated final products that are imperfect substitutes. Three potential pitfalls of restructuring integrated network industries are analyzed: (i) double marginalization, (ii) underinvestment and (iii) vertical foreclosure. The paper studies the net effect of restructuring on retail prices and cost-reducing investment and discusses policy implications.
This article evaluates three measures introduced by the Australian Federal Government in 1999 and 2000 that were designed to encourage private health insurance and relieve financial pressure on the public healthcare sector. These policy changes were (i) a 30% premium rebate, (ii) health insurers offering lifetime enrolment on existing terms and the future relaxation of premium regulation by permitting premiums to increase with age, and (iii) a mandate for insurers to offer complementary coverage for bridging the gap between actual hospital billings and benefits paid.
These measures were first evaluated in terms of expected benefits and costs at the individual level. In terms of the first criteria, the policy changes as a whole may have been efficiency-increasing. The Australian Government mandate to launch gap policies may well have created a spillover moral hazard effect to the extent that full insurance coverage encouraged policy holders to also use more public hospital services, thus undermining the government's stated objective to relieve public hospitals from demand pressure. Without this spillover moral hazard effect, there might have been a reduction in waiting times in the public sector. Secondly, the measures were evaluated in terms of additional benchmarks of the cost to the public purse, access and equity, and dynamic efficiency. Although public policy changes were found to be largely justifiable on the first set of criteria, they do not appear to be justifiable based on the second set. Uncertainties and doubts remain about the effect of the policy changes in terms of overall cost, access and equity, and dynamic efficiency. This is a common experience in countries that have considered shifts of their healthcare systems between the private and public sectors.
Health care may be similar to Sisyphus work: When the task is about to be completed, work has to start all over again. To see the analogy, consider an initial decision to allocate more resources to health. The likely consequence is an increased number of survivors, who will exert additional demand for health care. With more resources allocated to health, the cycle starts over again. The objective of this paper is to improve on earlier research that failed to find evidence of a Sisyphus syndrome in industrialized countries. This time, there are signs of such a cycle, which however seems to have faded away recently.
Das Bundesamt für Berufsbildung und Technologie (BBT) erhebt in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Fraunhofer-Institut für Systemtechnik und Innovationsforschung (FhG-ISI) periodisch die Patentanmeldungen des Standorts Schweiz sowie der Schweizer Unternehmen weltweit. Daraus lässt sich ein Technologieportfolio ermitteln. Es bildet die Gesamtheit der technischen Fähigkeiten und Errungenschaften ab, die einem Land bzw. seinen Unternehmen zur Verfügung steht. Die jüngste Erhebung zeigt ein insgesamt hohes Niveau der schweizerischen Innovationstätigkeit, wobei die KMU stark an dieser Entwicklung beteiligt sind.
Die Wirksamkeit und Sicherheit der beiden in der Schweiz zur Behandlung der Hepatitis C zugelassenen Kombinationstherapien (Pegasys®/Copegus®, PAC; PegIntron®/Rebetol®, PIR) ist sehr ähnlich. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist, die Kosten der beiden Therapien zu vergleichen und ihren kostengünstigsten Einsatz zu definieren. Die Durchschnittskosten für Genotyp-1-Patienten liegen zwischen CHF 21700.- (PAC) und CHF 19700.- (PIR), bzw. CHF 15600.- (PAC) und CHF 15000.- (PIR) für Genotyp-2/3-Patienten. Ein konsequenter Einsatz von PIR ist 9 bis 12% kostengünstiger als PAC. Weitere Kosteneinsparungen von 3% könnten bei einem Einsatz von PIR bei allen Patienten unter 85 kg (Genotyp 1) bzw. unter 75 kg (Genotyp 2/3) und von PAC bei solchen über 85 kg (Genotyp 1) bzw. über 75 kg (Genotyp 2/3) erreicht werden.
This paper argues that an unequal distribution of political power, biased to landed elites and owners of natural resources, in combination with openness to trade is a major obstacle to development of natural resource- or land-abundant economies. We develop a two-sector general equilibrium model and show that in an oligarchic society public investments conducive to industrialization - schooling for example - are typically lower in an open than in a closed economy. Moreover, we find that, under openness to trade, development is faster in a democratic system. We also endogenize the trade regime and demonstrate that in a land-abundant economy the landed elite has an interest to support openness to trade. We present historical evidence for Southern economies in the Americas that is consistent with our theoretical results: resistance of landed elites to mass education, comparative advantages in primary goods production in the 19th century globalization wave, and low primary school enrollment and literacy rates.
The previous literature on the determinants of individual well-being has failed to fully account for the interdependencies in well-being at the family level. This paper develops an ordered probit model with multiple random effects that allows to identify the intra-family correlation in wellbeing. The parameters of the model can be estimated with panel data using Maximum Marginal Likelihood. The approach is illustrated in an application using data for the period 1984-1997 from the German Socio-Economic Panel in which both inter-generational and intra-marriage correlations in well-being are estimated.
I consider the problem of estimating the effect of a health care reform on the frequency of individual
doctor visits when the reform effect is potentially different in different parts of the outcome distribution.
Quantile regression is a powerful method for studying such heterogeneous treatment effects. Only
recently has this method been extended to situations where the dependent variable is a (non-negative
integer) count. An analysis of a 1997 health care reform in Germany shows that lower quantiles, such
as the first quartile, fell by substantially larger amounts than what would have been predicted based
on Poisson or negative binomial models.
We examine vertical backward integration in a reduced-form model of successive oligopolies. Our key findings are: (i) There may be asymmetric equilibria where some firms integrate and others remain separated, even if firms are symmetric initially; (ii) Efficient firms are more likely to integrate vertically. As a result, integrated firms also tend to have a large market share. The driving force behind these findings are demand/mark-up complementarities in the product market. We also identify countervailing forces resulting from strong vertical foreclosure, upstream sales and endogenous acquisition costs.
