"This paper presents a formal theory of reciprocity. Reciprocity means that people reward kind actions and punish unkind ones. The theory takes into account that people evaluate the kindness of an action not only by it’s consequences but also by the intention underlying this action. The theory explains the relevant stylized facts of a wide range of experimental games. Among them are the ultimatum game, the gift-exchange game, a reduced best-shot game, the dictator game, the prisoner's dilemma, public goods games, and the investment game. Further, the theory explains why subjects behave differently in treatments where they experience the actions of real persons compared to treatments where they face 'actions' caused by a random device. Finally, the theory explains why in bilateral interactions outcomes tend to be ''fair'' whereas in competitive markets even extremely unfair distributions may arise."
Unlike in other disciplines, research output in economics is commonly measured based on the journal titles in which an author has published. Here, I examine how much output measures based on journal titles tell us about the academic interest and relevance of economic papers as measured by citation frequency. Using data from the 2008 Handelsblatt ranking of economists in German speaking countries and interdisciplinary citation data from the Web of Science, I find that researcher scores based on journal titles explain only about one fourth of the variation (variance) in article citations. When the top 10 (20) percent of the researchers according to journal title scores are excluded, the percentage of explained variation in citation frequency drops to 5 (3) percent. These findings empirically confirm the hypothesis that the measures of research output in economics promote narrow and complacent work that is of interest to few, even among an academic audience. They suggest that responsible hiring committees and funding institutions should re-examine existing standards in evaluation and abandon the heavy reliance on journal titles as a measure of individual research output.
This paper sheds light on some unexpected consequences of health insurance regulation that may pose a big challenge to insurers’ risk management. Because mandated uniform contributions to health insurance trigger risk selection efforts risk adjustment (RA) schemes become necessary. A good deal of research into the optimal RA formula has been performed (Ellis and Van de Ven [2000]). A recent proposal has been to add ”Hospitalization exceeding three days during the previous year” as an indicator of high risk (Beck et al. [2006]). Applying the new formula to an individual Swiss health insurer, its payments into the RA scheme are postdicted to explode, reaching up to 13 percent of premium income. Its mistake had been to successfully implement Managed Care, resulting in low rates of hospitalization. The predicted risk management response is to extend hospital stays beyond three days, contrary to stated policy objectives also of the United States.
The bivariate probit model is frequently used for estimating the effect of an endogenous binary regressor on a binary outcome variable. This paper discusses simple modifications that maintain the probit assumption for the marginal distributions while introducing non-normal dependence among the two variables using copulas. Simulation results and evidence from two applications, one on the effect of insurance status on ambulatory expenditure and one on the effect of completing high school on subsequent unemployment, show that these modified bivariate probit models work well in practice, and that they provide a viable and simple alternative to the standard bivariate probit approach.
Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) designed to estimate willingness-to-pay (WTP) values are very popular in health economics. With increased computation power and advanced simulation techniques, random-coefficient models have gained an increasing importance in applied work as they allow for taste heterogeneity. This paper discusses the parametrical derivation of WTP values from estimated random-coefficient models and shows how these values can be simulated in cases where they do not have a known distribution.
In mixed health care systems a crucial condition for the success of Managed Care (MC) plans is to win over a su±cient number of general practitioners (GPs) acting as gatekeepers. This contribution reports on GPs' willingness-to-accept (WTA) or compensation asked, respectively, for changing from conventional fee-for-service to MC practice. Some 175 Swiss GPs participated in discrete choice experiments which permit to put a money value on their status quo bias. Regardless of whether effects coding or dummy coding is used to measure status quo bias, Swiss GPs require at least 16 percent of their current average income to give up fee-for-service in favor of MC practice.
In October 2003, a new flight regime was introduced at Zurich airport that significantly changed the levels of noise pollution in surrounding communities. We investigate the impact of the new flight policy on apartment prices using a hedonic price model and a non-linear difference-in-differences identification strategy. Our results suggest that rental prices increased by about 3 to 8 percent less in regions affected by the policy change, controlling for several apartment and location characteristics. The noise discount is still significant, although smaller, even after the inclusion of object-speciffc fixed effects. However, we do not find evidence of price changes in the sales market.
This paper studies the effects of patents and subsidies on R&D investment decisions. The theoretical framework is a two-stage game consisting of an investment and a market stage. In equilibrium, both patents and subsidies induce the same amount of R&D investment, which is higher than the investment without governmental incentives. In the first stage, the firms can invest in a stochastic R&D project which might lead to a reduction of the marginal production costs and in the second stage, the firms face price competition. Both stages of the game are implemented in a laboratory experiment and the obtained results support the theoretical predictions. Patents and subsidies increase investment in R&D and the observed amounts of investment in the patent and subsidy treatment do not differ significantly across both instruments. However, we observe overinvestment in all three treatments. Observed prices in the market stage converge to equilibrium price levels.
This paper provides a theoretical rationale for non-binding retail price recommendations (RPRs) in vertical supply relations. Analyzing a bilateral manufacturer-retailer relationship with repeated trade, we show that linear relational contracts can implement the surplus-maximizing outcome. If the manufacturer has private information about production costs or consumer demand, RPRs may serve as a communication device from manufacturer to retailer. We characterize the properties of efficient bilateral relational contracts with RPRs and discuss extensions to settings where consumer demand is affected by RPRs, and where there are multiple retailers or competing supply chains.
Class specific mortality in 17th and 18th Century Vienna shows a cyclical pattern which is related to grain price cycles in the 5-10 years range. This relationship is not stable over time. Applying spectral analysis based on time-varying VARs, it can be shown that at the beginning of the observation period, comovement of grain prices and mortality is considerably high in areas populated by lower classes of society. This comovement cannot be found in richer areas of the city and vanishes over time for the entire population of the city.
