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In a recent manuscript, Rogowski and Lange (J Bus Ethics 177:63–77, 2022) evaluate whether the prisoner's dilemma can be used as a legitimate framework with which to examine health-related economic ethics decisions. In this commentary, I build upon Rogowski and Lange (J Bus Ethics 177:63–77, 2022) using the original institutional economics literature to argue a more subtle, but critical point. Except in extreme circumstances, the use of the prisoner's dilemma does not qualify as a legitimate, comprehensive framework in which to address most health-related economic ethics problems. Indeed, the intentional characterization of the prisoner's dilemma as a robust health economic ethics framework is often used to mask the absence of a formal ethical framework. However, this distinction may provide a more concrete, and appropriate, justification to use the prisoner's dilemma to assess a wider array of health-related economic ethics problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stochastic frontier models commonly assume positive skewness for the inefficiency term. However, when this assumption is violated, efficiency scores converge to unity. The potential endogeneity of model regressors introduces another empirical challenge, impeding the identification of causal relationships. This paper tackles these issues by employing an instrument-free estimation method that extends joint estimation through copulas to handle endogenous regressors and skewness issues. The method relies on the Gaussian copula function to capture dependence between endogenous regressors and composite errors with a simultaneous consideration of positively or negatively skewed inefficiency. Model parameters are estimated through maximum likelihood, and Monte Carlo simulations are employed to evaluate the performance of the proposed estimation procedures in finite samples. This research contributes to the stochastic frontier models and production economics literature by presenting a flexible and parsimonious method capable of addressing wrong skewness of inefficiency and endogenous regressors simultaneously. The applicability of the method is demonstrated through an empirical example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the European journal of law and economics symposium on the "law and economics of indigenous and ethnic minorities." Indigenous and ethnic minority groups tend to endure economic, political, and social disadvantages resulting from discrimination, inequality, marginalisation and other pathologies. The disadvantaged status of indigenous and ethnic minorities is often reflected in, if not entrenched as the result of, legal specifications and practices that increase the costs of inclusion and widespread participation in socio-economic and political life. Law and economics literature suggests that the costs of discrimination are significant, but that indigenous and ethnic minorities have the capacity to develop their own economic strategies and institutional practices to help ameliorate some of the consequences of discrimination by majoritarian populations. The papers in this symposium consider the law and economics of indigenous and ethnic minorities in a range of historical and contemporary perspectives, including the cases of immigration restrictions, conflicts over land management and property rights, and resources access. This introductory paper also presents a range of topical domains for potential future research by law and economics scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the work on the valuation of levered (and unlevered) warrants assumes that the volatility of the underlying state variable is constant. This paper extends the literature on warrant pricing to a more general assumption for the state variable process, the so-called constant elasticity of variance (CEV) process. The CEV model is well-known for its ability to capture some empirical observations found in the financial economics literature, namely the asymmetry between equity returns and volatility and the implied volatility skew. Using the CEV process, we are able to reduce pricing bias as the volatility becomes a function of the underlying state variable. We price European-style call warrants without restrictions on the debt maturity. When warrants have the same maturity as debt, it is possible to obtain closed-form solutions for warrants prices. When the maturity of warrants is different from the maturity of debt, prices can be computed numerically through very efficient and simple to implement valuation methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I study institutional and political determinants of migrants' immigration strategies using the United States' immigration system as a case study. Drawing from work that theoretically connects decisions to immigrate legally vs. illegally as well as theoretical insights from literature on the economics of crime, I show how relative probabilities of successful migration using different strategies and relative utility gained using different strategies weigh heavily in immigrants' calculus. To do so, I use qualitative evidence of migrant strategies in the face of migration policy constraints. These various policy constraints lead to a variety of different tactics revolving around decisions regarding whether to immigrate legally, to commit visa fraud, or to choose one type of visa over another. In the process, I also build on a rich body of Public Choice literature to demonstrate how complicated regulatory systems, in this case regulatory systems that quantitatively restrict migration, encourage rent-seeking by both migrants and nonmigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While cultural economics and urban economics literatures have well established that more able individuals tend to prefer mostly cities with a high level of cultural amenities and schooling is one of the main individual determinants of the cultural consumption, there is no empirical evidence on whether cities specialized in culture boost cultural consumption of their residents. This research takes a step back compared to most studies and directly tests whether—controlling for individual characteristics—the higher the city cultural supply, the higher the probability of consuming cultural goods. Using data for 2017 from Chile and an instrumental variable approach, the results suggest that cities' cultural employment shape workers' decisions to consume cultural goods. A positive impact of city cultural supply on cultural consumption is found for both aggregated and disaggregated cultural goods, a robust result even under weaker exclusion restrictions of the instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is one of the most popular crowdsourcing platforms for online research. Although the recent MTurk data quality crisis has raised serious concerns regarding its utility, this issue can be mitigated by including quality control methods. To date, only a few studies have compared the effectiveness of the methods in preserving an experimental effect. To provide empirical guidance on which quality control methods to use for MTurk research, this study compared different methods on their effectiveness in preserving the magnitude effect in delay discounting, a robust finding in the behavioral economics literature. Two groups of MTurkers, whose HIT approval rate (%) was between 95 and 98 and 99 and 100, were recruited in October 2021. They completed a delay discounting task evaluating the magnitude effect and questions from different quality control methods. The results showed that the group with higher HIT approval rates (i.e., 99%–100%) showed a greater magnitude effect and were more likely to pass the quality control methods than those with lower rates. In addition, the majority of the quality control methods were able to preserve the magnitude effect at the expense of sample sizes. The best combinations of quality control methods that optimally maintained the effect were explored with a discussion of their implications. Although improving data quality is imperative, caution should be exercised as the quality control methods may potentially bias the sample in an undesirable manner (e.g., excluding individuals who show steep delay discounting). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys the use of nonparametric permutation tests for analyzing experimental data. The permutation approach, which involves randomizing or permuting features of the observed data, is a flexible way to draw statistical inferences in common experimental settings. It is particularly valuable when few independent observations are available, a frequent occurrence in controlled experiments in economics and other social sciences. The permutation method constitutes a comprehensive approach to statistical inference. In two-treatment testing, permutation concepts underlie popular rank-based tests, like the Wilcoxon and Mann–Whitney tests. But permutation reasoning is not limited to ordinal contexts. Analogous tests can be constructed from the permutation of measured observations—as opposed to rank-transformed observations—and we argue that these tests should often be preferred. Permutation tests can also be used with multiple treatments, with ordered hypothesized effects, and with complex data-structures, such as hypothesis testing in the presence of nuisance variables. Drawing examples from the experimental economics literature, we illustrate how permutation testing solves common challenges. Our aim is to help experimenters move beyond the handful of overused tests in play today and to instead see permutation testing as a flexible framework for statistical inference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustainability issues surrounding conventional agriculture motivate the need for exploring new sustainable methods of farming, critical for global sustainable development. Vertical farming is a potentially underexplored component of sustainable food production portfolio. This paper offers the first quantitative model in the environmental economics and policy literature that evaluates the economic prospect of vertical farming systems in a competitive market setting. Our framework identifies the principal factors to assess the economic and risk aversion potential of vertical farming and utilize a decision model quantify the trade-off between the two alternative farming practices. The model is utilized to evaluate the competitive economic prospect of vertical farming in seven locations with heterogeneous climate and economic conditions within the USA. The results quantify the value proposition of vertical farming in various conditions. Consequently, we leverage these results to evaluate the current and future prospect of the vertical farming industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business groups are sets of firms tied together by a centralized control mechanism, and they represent the most common form of business organization worldwide. Business groups have internal labor and capital markets that help them overcome institutional voids. Despite the abundant literature on the location of business groups across countries, little is known about the factors that explain the choice of a location of firms affiliated with (or controlled by) business groups within a country. Building on business group literature and agglomeration economics, we propose in this study that more firms are affiliated with business groups in regions with limited access to strategic resources, finance, and labor. Empirical results based on a large sample of privately held French firms support the idea that business group affiliation is more common in regions with limited access to the workforce. However, we could not find any evidence in support of the argument that the degree of regional financial development influences the likelihood of a business group affiliation. Overall, the study provides evidence that the way businesses are organized, for instance, as business groups, depends on the degree of resource scarcity of the locations in which firms are created. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Health science is evolving extremely rapidly at worldwide level. There is a large volume of articles about health economics that are published each year. The main purpose of this research is to explore health economics in the world's scholarly literature based on a scient metric analysis to outline the evolution of research in the field. Method: The Web of Science repository was used to get the data (1975–2022). The study explores 1620 documents from health economics. CiteSpace software was used to provide network visualisations. Four thousand ninety-six authors, 1723 institutions, 847 journals and 82 countries were involved in the sample. The current research contains a descriptive analysis, a co-authorship analysis, a co-citation analysis, and a co-occurrence analysis in health economics. Results: Drummond M.F (author), the USA (country), University of London (institution) and Value Health (journal) are among the most important contributors to the health economics literature. Co-authorship analysis highlights that cooperation between authors, institutions and countries is weak. However, Drummond M.F. is the most collaborative author, the USA is the most collaborative country, and University of York is the most collaborative institution. The study offers an image about the most co-cited references (Arrow K.J., 1963), authors (Margolis H.) and journals (British Medical Journal). The current research hotspots in health economics are "behavioural economics" and "economic evaluation". The main findings should be interpreted in accordance with the selection strategy used in this paper. Conclusion: All in all, the paper maps the literature on health economics and may be used for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the economics literature, measuring the performance of a dairy farm with a total productivity index is common practice. Previous research, on the other hand, has been chastised for failing to account for agricultural emissions in their models when calculating resource use productivity. This study estimated green total factor productivity (GTFP) accounting for dairy farms' CH4 emission to the model. The study is based on unbalanced panel data from 692 specialized dairy farms from 1991 to 2020. To estimate GTFP and its components using multiple input–output environmental production technologies, a stochastic input distance function and a Translog model were used. The average annual growth rate of green production over the research period was 0. 032%. The main reason for the increase in GTFP was positive scale change contributions. Technological change (− 0.031% per year) and efficiency change (− 0.002% per year), on the other hand, had a detrimental effect on GTFP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent economics literature emphasises the inextricable link between economic prosperity and efficient energy supply and consumption, arguing vehemently that much of today's prosperity is predicated on secure and reliable energy use and that modern industry would grind to a halt without the necessary energy infrastructure. France is an example of an advanced country with enormous energy infrastructure. The country's economic growth has been rather sluggish in recent years, despite its robust and efficient energy production and consumption. The current study analyses empirically whether France's current sustainable electricity use defies the theoretical and empirical literature. To achieve this objective, the standard tools of growth empirics were used over the period 1961–2015. The Zivot–Andrews trended and de-trended structural break tests, as well as Autoregressive Distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing were employed to analyse the data. The findings of this study demonstrated that France's economic growth is stimulated by electricity usage, financial development, capital, import, and export. The study sheds light on the feedback impact between economic growth and power usage as well as capital and economic growth. With these findings, we argue that it is not electricity that has ceased to serve a functional purpose in France, rather there is a need for entrepreneurial innovative capacity to create factors that require an infinite horizon for the continued use of electricity, which seems to be impeding the country's economic growth potential, among other things. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The illusion of control occurs when individuals believe that exerting objectively meaningless control over pure chance events increases their probability of success. In economics, the illusion of control has only ever been studied in choice under risk, where probability distributions are known, and has been found to have no effect. This contrasts with studies in psychology, which have found a persistent positive effect. The cause of these conflicting findings may be that the illusion of control only affects risk taking in choice under ambiguity, where probability distributions are fully or partially unknown. To address this gap in the literature, we conducted an incentive compatible laboratory experiment which induced the illusion of control in some participants. We find that the illusion of control does not affect choice under risk but increases ambiguity tolerance. These results bridge the gap between the psychology and economics literature, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing risk from ambiguity. Our results suggest that some studies may unintentionally induce an illusion of control and over-estimate ambiguity tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of environmental sustainability formed the basis of the Paris Agreement and the United Nations conference in Rio de Janeiro. Empirically, without environmental sustainability, everything else could fall apart or be aimless. This study investigates factors affecting global environmental sustainability spanning 1966Q1 to 2019Q4. However, there are many micro-/macroeconomic factors engendering the environment, and the absence of robust clarity on whether factors such as economic growth, urbanization, trade openness, and energy consumption matter for global environmental sustainability remains a global academic dilemma in the economics literature. This paper utilized the unrestricted nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) bounds test techniques to model their relationship. Furthermore, the study adopted fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS), and canonical cointegrating regression (CCR) methods to test the research hypothesis, catering to the problem of endogeneity and serial correlation. Up-to-date of this study, no empirical study has examined the nexus of these variables within the global framework. The outcomes suggested that (i) NARDL bounds test of cointegration confirmed evidence of long-run and short-run relationships among the variables; (ii) long-run asymmetric relationship was affirmed among the variables; and (iii) DOLS, FMOLS, and CCR models demonstrate that economic growth, energy consumption, and trade openness are positively significantly correlated with environmental sustainability except for economic growth which shows negative and insignificant correlation. These findings validate the protracted argument in literature that these estimated variables are significant for global environmental sustainability. This study recommends that environmental policymakers integrate global economic incentives with favorable regulatory changes for achieving the goals of a global sustainable environment in the long-run equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In economic applications, the behavior of objects (e.g., individuals, firms, or households) is often modeled as a function of microeconomic and/or macroeconomic conditions. While macroeconomic conditions are common to all objects and change only over time, microeconomic conditions are object-specific and thus vary both among objects and through time. The simultaneous modeling of microeconomic and macroeconomic conditions has proven to be extremely difficult for these applications due to the mismatch of dimensions, potential interactions, and the high number of parameters to estimate. By marrying recurrent neural networks with conditional factor models, we propose a new white-box machine learning method, the recurrent double-conditional factor model (RDCFM), which allows for the modeling of the simultaneous and combined influence of micro- and macroeconomic conditions while being parsimoniously parameterized. Due to the low degree of parameterization, the RDCFM generalizes well and estimation remains feasible even if the time-series and the cross-section are large. We demonstrate the suitability of our method using an application from the financial economics literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the effects of scientific changes on broader cultural discourse, two phenomena that the economics literature identifies as key drivers of long-term growth, focusing on a unique episode in the history of science: the elaboration of the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin. We measure cultural discourse through the digitized text analysis of a corpus of hundreds of thousands of books as well as of Congressional and Parliamentary records for the US and the UK. We find that some concepts in Darwin's theory, such as Evolution, Survival, Natural Selection and Competition, significantly increased their presence in the public discourse immediately after the publication of On the Origin of Species. Moreover, several words that embedded the key concepts of the theory of evolution experienced semantic and sentiment changes—further channels through which Darwin's theory influenced the broader discourse. Our findings represent the first large-sample, systematic quantitative evidence of the relation between two key determinants of long-term economic growth, and suggest that natural language processing offers promising tools to explore this relation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate two related questions about the trade-off between the short-term pressures on managers to meet earnings targets and the long-term environmental benefits of reduced pollution. Do firms release more toxins by cutting back on pollution abatement costs to boost earnings in years they meet earnings benchmarks? If so, is that relation weaker for firms with higher environmental ratings? Using Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data on toxic emissions, we find that U.S. firms pollute more when they meet or just beat consensus earnings per share (EPS) forecasts, suggesting that meeting expectations is a more important goal than reducing pollution. We find this relation is stronger, not weaker, for firms with higher environmental ratings: they increase pollution even more when meeting earnings benchmarks than firms with lower ratings. This suggests that highly rated firms build regulatory and reputational slack over time and use it when needed to soften the negative impact of increased pollution. We contribute to the real earnings management and environmental economics literatures by documenting a negative externality of financial reporting incentives on the environment and society. We also contribute to the corporate sustainability literature by showing that an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) focus does not curb managerial short-termism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on socio-psychology and economics literature contributions, this paper provides an original conceptual framework examining whether and how natural disasters exert any influence on nuptiality. Scholars suggest that disasters remind people about the transience of life and mortality. This feature triggers shifting towards intrinsic meaningful goals — such as commitment to relationships; at the same time, it fosters people's proximity and support-seeking from their security providing attachment figures and leads to accelerate life transition choices. In this view, disasters are expected to positively impact on people's intentions to marry. Such an effect is evident in case of natural hazards determining slight damage to physical capital (buildings, productive locations, etc.) which have limited economic consequences that do not hamper marriage intentions. Meanwhile, in the case of highly disruptive disasters, these positive psychological pushes are counterbalanced or even exceeded by the negative economic consequences of the disaster, which inhibit marriage intentions. These predictions are supported by an empirical analysis that relies on a difference-in-differences investigation of municipality-level nuptiality data collected in the Abruzzo region of Italy before and after the major 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic theories predict that with modernity and with the increase in standards of living, individuals will aspire for more leisure. However, the results of empirical studies which examined period trends in leisure time across developed countries do not confirm this presumption. The current study asks: If changes in leisure stem from ideational changes among different generations, will trends in leisure look different if examined across cohorts, or if measured differently? By integrating theoretical definitions of leisure based on literatures in economics, sociology, and psychology, this research derives three main macro-level empirical measures of leisure from various sources. These measures are used to analyze the contribution of population turnover to changes in the quantity of leisure, in developed countries, using linear regression decomposition method. Our results show an almost unequivocal increase in leisure across cohorts, across 159 country-periods, suggesting that new policies supporting domestic consumption are warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing literature in economics and epidemiology has exploited changes in wind patterns as a source of exogenous variation to better measure the acute health effects of air pollution. Since the distribution of wind components is not randomly distributed over time and related to other weather parameters, multivariate regression models are used to adjust for these confounding factors. However, this type of analysis relies on its ability to correctly adjust for all confounding factors and extrapolate to units without empirical counterfactuals. As an alternative to current practices and to gauge the extent of these issues, we propose to implement a causal inference pipeline to embed this type of observational study within an hypothetical randomized experiment. We illustrate this approach using daily data from Paris, France, over the 2008–2018 period. Using the Neyman–Rubin potential outcomes framework, we first define the treatment of interest as the effect of North-East winds on particulate matter concentrations compared to the effects of other wind directions. We then implement a matching algorithm to approximate a pairwise randomized experiment. It adjusts nonparametrically for observed confounders while avoiding model extrapolation by discarding treated days without similar control days. We find that the effective sample size for which treated and control units are comparable is surprisingly small. It is however reassuring that results on the matched sample are consistent with a standard regression analysis of the initial data. We finally carry out a quantitative bias analysis to check whether our results could be altered by an unmeasured confounder: estimated effects seem robust to a relatively large hidden bias. Our causal inference pipeline is a principled approach to improve the design of air pollution studies based on wind patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work analyses the existence of asymmetric effects on the subjective well-being of the population of different countries in response to changes in the levels of aggregate income. Microdata from the Eurobarometer and the World Values Survey are used for the period 2000–2019. This period includes several economic changes, among which are the strong expansion at the beginning of the century, the Great Recession, and the subsequent recovery. Our study includes several groups of countries. In the broadest case, the study comprises a group of 83 countries and analyses the issue both from a global perspective as well as focusing particular attention on European countries. These asymmetric effects of economic activity are in line with behavioural economics and previous literature and allow us to determine a macroeconomic aversion to losses. The results obtained support the existence of asymmetric effects of changes in aggregate income on subjective well-being, and show that losses generated in recessions require a far more vigorous recovery if they are to be compensated for, and that they might even have permanent effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relative importance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large firms is a recurrent topic in the small business economics literature. This paper presents a real and financial social accounting matrix (FSAM) capable of distinguishing the direct and indirect effects that are transferred from micro-, small, medium, and large firms to the rest of the economy. We use the hypothetical extraction method (HEM) to explore the sequence of reactions associated with shocks that arise from the COVID-19 lockdown. Using a structural model for the Spanish economy, we identify the role of different firm size categories in the aggregate gross domestic product (GDP). Our results allow us to reconcile the mixed narrative that accompanies the evaluation of the role played by these categories in economic activity by revealing that both SMEs and large firms are important for supporting economic activity. In particular, SMEs help explain 43% of the income and two-thirds of the unemployment decline caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings also show the importance of conditioning SME industrial policy to sectoral analysis. Plain English summary: The effects of the macroeconomic lockdown and its transmission to the rest of the economy differ by firm size and across sectors. Using the Spanish context for micro-, small, medium, and large firms, we distinguish the direct and indirect effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The main implications are the following: (1) Research: results emphasize that SMEs and large firms are both important to support economic activity but, in order to account for the relative effects on SMEs, it is crucial to consider the specific sector that receives the disruption. 2) Policy: SMEs are an important focus of business support policies within the EU. According to our estimations, disruptions in SMEs produce larger reductions in demand. These results could support credit policies for SMEs with a strong impact on the aggregate economy due to their greater productive and financial linkages with the domestic economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of economics literature shows that multinational corporations (MNCs) shift their profits to tax havens. We contribute to this evidence by comparing a range of available data sets focusing on US MNCs, including country-by-country reporting data, a full sample of which has been released in December 2019 for the first time. With each of the data sets, we analyse the effective tax rates that US MNCs face in each country and the amount of profits they report. Using country-by-country reporting data, we have been able to establish that lower effective corporate tax rates are associated with higher levels of reported profits when compared with different indicators of real economic activity. This corresponds to the notion that MNCs often shift profits to countries with low effective tax rates—without also shifting substantive economic activity. Consequently, we identify the most important tax havens for US MNCs as countries with both low effective tax rates and high profits misaligned with economic activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To satisfy the utility maximization hypothesis in binary choice modeling, logit and probit models must make a priori assumptions regarding the underlying functional form of a representative utility function. Such theoretical restrictions may leave the postulated estimable model statistically misspecified. This may lead to significant bias in substantive inferences, such as willingness-to-pay (or accept) measures, in environmental, natural resource and applied economic studies. Feed-forward back-propagation artificial neural networks (FFBANN) provide a potentially powerful semi-nonparametric method to avoid potential misspecifications and provide more valid inference. This paper shows that a single-hidden layer FFBANN can be interpreted as a logistic regression with a flexible index function and can be subsequently used for statistical inference purposes, such as estimation of marginal effects and willingness-to-pay measures. To the authors' knowledge, the derivation and estimation of marginal effects and other substantive measures using neural networks are not available in the economics literature and is thus a novel contribution. An empirical application is conducted using FFBANNs to demonstrate estimation of marginal effects and willingness-to-pay in a contingent valuation and stated choice experimental framework. We find that FFBANNs can replicate results from binary choice models commonly used in the applied economics literature and can improve on substantive inferences derived from these models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical divorce occurs when couples split up so that one spouse's medical bills do not deplete the assets of the healthy spouse. It has not been studied in the economics literature, but it has been discussed by attorneys and widely reported in the media. We develop a model of medical divorce that demonstrates that divorce is optimal when a couple's joint assets exceed the exempted asset level. We use the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion which removed asset tests to qualify for Medicaid as exogenous variation in the incidence of divorce (as it was only implemented by some states). We find that the ACA expansion decreased the prevalence of divorce by 11.6% among those ages 50–64 with a college degree. These results are robust to numerous placebo checks including older subsamples (who qualify for Medicare regardless of assets) and earlier years (before the expansion was implemented). Our results suggest that Medicaid expansion reduced medical divorce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, the cooperative enterprise (CE) produces market goods and/or provides services in the interest to its members, such as communities, customers, and suppliers. The upsurge of interest in social enterprises, and their balancing of social and economic interests, has also led to a renewed interest in CEs, often seen as a specific type of social enterprise. However, from an organizational perspective, this renewed interest has been both limited and scattered over a variety of fields. In this paper, we systematically review papers on CE in the mainstream organizational literature, defined as literature in the fields of economics, business, management and sociology. Our review integrates and synthesizes the current topics in the mainstream organizational literature and provides a number of avenues for future research. In addition, we compare our findings in the organizational literature to the social issues literature as these appeared to be quite complimentary. We found multilevel studies, determination of social impact—in particular measurable impact, managerial practices for sustainable (organisational) development, and the entrepreneurial opportunity generation process as the four key avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the environmental literature by (i) demonstrating that the estimated coefficients and the statistical significance of the non-leading terms in quadratic, cubic, and quartic logarithmic environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) specifications are arbitrary and should therefore not be used to choose the preferred specification and (ii) detailing a proposed general-to-specific type methodology for choosing the appropriate specifications when attempting to estimate higher-order polynomials such as cubic and quartic logarithmic EKC relationships. Testing for the existence and shape of the well-known EKC phenomenon is a hot topic in the environmental economics literature. The conventional approach widely employs quadratic and cubic specifications and more recently also the quartic specification, where the variables are in logarithmic form. However, it is important that researchers understand whether the estimated EKC coefficients, turning points, and elasticities are statistically acceptable, economically interpretable, and comparable. In addition, it is vital that researchers have a clear structured non-arbitrary methodology for determining the preferred specification and hence shape of the estimated EKC. We therefore show mathematically and empirically the arbitrary nature of estimated non-leading coefficients in quadratic, cubic, and quartic logarithmic EKC specifications, being dependent upon the units of measurement chosen for the independent variables (e.g. dependent upon a rescaling of the variables such as moving from $m to $bn). Consequently, the practice followed in many previously papers, whereby the estimates of the non-leading terms are used in the decision to choose the preferred specification of an estimated EKC relationship, is incorrect and should not be followed since it potentially could lead to misleading conclusions. Instead, it should be based upon the sign and statistical significance of the estimated coefficients of the leading terms, the location of turning point(s), and the sign and statistical significance of the estimated elasticities. Furthermore, we suggest that researchers should follow a proposed general-to-specific type methodology for choosing the appropriate order of polynomials when attempting to estimate higher-order polynomial logarithmic EKCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use topic modeling to study research articles in environmental and resource economics journals in the period 2000–2019. Topic modeling based on machine learning allows us to identify and track latent topics in the literature over time and across journals, and further to study the role of different journals in different topics and the changing emphasis on topics in different journals. The most prevalent topics in environmental and resource economics research in this period are growth and sustainable development and theory and methodology. Topics on climate change and energy economics have emerged with the strongest upward trends. When we look at our results across journals, we see that journals have different topical profiles and that many topics mainly appear in one or a few selected journals. Further investigation reveal latent semantic structures across research themes that only the insider would be aware. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the recent surge of interest in understanding the influence of entrepreneurship on individual health and well-being, we ask whether county-level creative destruction is associated with county-level health outcomes. Consistent with regional economics and epidemiology literature our unit of analysis is at the regional (i.e., county) level. Based on a sample of 3072 U.S. counties between 2009 and 2015, we find that creative destruction is negatively associated with the share of fair/poor health, the share of frequent physical distress, the share of frequent mental distress, and age-adjusted mortality. The results further show that creative destruction tamps the negative effects of unemployment, income inequality, and rural areas on health and mortality. The estimates are consistent for commuting zones as an additional unit of geographic analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to investigate the spatial effect of the quality of human capital and to identify if there is educational spillover from higher education in the proficiencies of elementary students. Although the role of geographical aspects has been studied in several academic areas, in the literature on the economics of education such studies are incipient and the few existing contributions use the stock of education as the object of analysis. The present study differs by using proficiency as a proxy for quality and also by examining the spillover effect of the presence and quality of university courses in the area of education. The results indicate a strong spatial dependence, suggesting the spatial dimension influences school performance. On the other hand, higher education institutions influence school performance in the municipality of origin, but not that of neighboring municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is conventional in the sports economics literature to assume that professional sports teams are local monopolists and that stadium attendance below capacity has approximately zero marginal cost, implying that prices should optimally be set at the point of unit elasticity, regardless of whether teams are win maximisers or profit maximisers. The empirical literature has puzzled over the finding that prices appear to be set on the inelastic part of the demand curve. This paper approaches the problem in a different way. If the assumptions are true, then tax theory implies that an ad valorem tax such as VAT should be absorbed in full by the sellers. The paper uses company records that identify attendance and gate revenue for over 6000 English Football League games between 1971 and 1974, to examine the impact of the adoption of 10% VAT in the UK on April 1, 1973. The data suggests that pass through rates varied considerably, averaged around 25%, and were seldom zero. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing literature on happiness economics suggests that, together with absolute income, individual well-being is affected by relative income both horizontally (i.e. because of differences between an individual's income and that of others to whom she compares) and vertically (i.e. compared to changes in individuals' own income). Moreover, the way in which individuals value their relative situation and the distribution of income will determine how inequality affects individual well-being. This paper aims to examine the relationship between these variables in the case of China, focusing mainly on how income inequality affects subjective well-being. Using data from the CGSS, the results suggest that both absolute and relative income affect subject well-being, and that an inverted-U shaped relationship between income inequality and individual well-being appears at least for urban residents, whereas this relationship tend to be negative in the case of people living in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offshoring, either as FDI or offshore outsourcing, is a phenomenon of increasing importance that has been widely studied in the economics literature. Studies analysing the impact of offshoring on the labour market report divergent results. In this paper we develop a meta-analysis of the empirical literature that estimates the effect of offshoring on wages. We find that, after correcting for the presence of publication bias, the average effect is not significantly different from zero in either the origin or the destination countries. We also find that the wage impact of offshoring depends on methodological characteristics of the primary studies, such as the way offshoring is measured, the nature of goods/services that are offshored, the workers' skill level, the unit of analysis, the structure of the data, and the estimation technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the 1968 Merger Guidelines were drafted, both the economics and antitrust literatures addressed how competition could be softened when oligopolists anticipated the natural and predictable responses of their rivals to their competitive moves, such as price cuts or output expansion. But when economists developed new models of oligopoly behavior, and of coordinated effects in particular, the older ideas were dropped—until the 2010 Guidelines, when the older ideas were reincorporated along with the newer ones. Our article points out limitations of the workhorse repeated game model of oligopoly conduct for analyzing coordinated effects of mergers, and suggests ways to make that model more realistic. We also identify important research questions that are raised when attempting to account for oligopolists' natural and predictable responses in evaluating the consequences of mergers, and suggest studying Stackelberg reactions as a way to make progress in doing so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there have been many studies, focusing on basic determinants of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), the effect of higher education, which has the potential to be an important determinant of CO2, has been neglected. The paper aims to display the potential mechanisms between higher education and CO2 and expand the environmental economics literature. In the paper, the trade-off between higher education and CO2 is tested by autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) during the period 1983–2017 in Turkey. Results denote that cointegration exists and an increase in higher education negatively affects CO2. We also find that economic growth and energy consumption positively affect CO2 both in the long run and short run. Vector error correction model (VECM) reveals that higher education, economic growth, energy consumption, trade openness, and exchange rates are the causes of CO2 in the long run. Also, energy consumption and economic growth are the causes of CO2 in the short run. Therefore, higher education can be used to overcome environmental problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The value of mobility is an unresolved question in transportation economics literature. The advent of ride-hailing services and the emergence of mobility as a service (MaaS) place increased pressure on the research community to develop methods to consider this question. We provide one of the first efforts to quantify the value of mobility using a consistent econometric approach. A series of discrete choice models are estimated for car ownership and residential density choices. The decision to purchase an additional vehicle is a concrete manifestation of the marginal value of travel vis-a-vis the desire to make additional trips. The proposed framework has the benefit of employing a single utility function, thus removing the need to set a reference alternative. Models are estimated with a large household travel survey for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, which provides a close approximation to the true population. We estimate separate values of mobility by household composition, providing evidence for a high degree of heterogeneity. Results are examined in the context of MaaS and it is found that the value of mobility is much higher in suburban areas than suggested in previous research. Model results provide strong evidence for potential social exclusion with the widespread adoption of MaaS. The methods explored in this paper show great promise for quantifying the value of mobility and we present recommendations for additional research in this direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability has become an important and widely applied concept in the environmental economics literature. Despite the numerous studies employing an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), this model has been critiqued for its incompleteness. This article builds a modified EKC model to examine the contribution of financial development for achieving sustainable development in the case of 14 selected Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries. Using the Augmented Mean Group (AMG) and Common Correlated Effects Mean Group (CCEMG) estimators, our empirical results show that the EKC hypothesis is valid for per capita CO2 emissions and ecological footprint. The results provide evidence also of the presence of linear and non-linear relationships between financial development and non-sustainability and indicate that financial development is likely to have a small long-term impact on sustainable development. This suggests that current efforts aimed at protecting the environment and achieving sustainability will be ineffective given the extent of the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does fractionalization affect political collaboration on reform? We develop a theory to explain observable variation in legislative output over time and policy areas. We show how the properties of a reform project determine the extent to which fractionalization affects political collaboration on reform. We apply our framework to the case of Lebanon and present mixed-methods evidence based on a novel comprehensive dataset of legislative activity and 32 interviews with parliamentarians, ex-ministers, and other high ranking officials. Our findings contribute to explaining ambiguous evidence in the literature on the political economy of reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most common pecuniary sanction, i.e. fixed-fines, places an emphasis on the severity of the crime. This fine has the problem of being either too high for poorer offenders to pay or too low for the richer offenders to be deterred. Day-fines, on the other hand, systematically account for the financial situation of the offender as well as for the severity of his offense. Consequently, it imposes equivalent burden of punishment on offenders who committed similar crimes, regardless of their wealth. However, a problem of asymmetric information is raised. Accurate financial information is essential for the efficiency of day-fines, yet its collection is costly. Day-fines receive increasing attention from policy-makers around the world. Nonetheless, it is under-researched in the law and economics literature. Therefore, this article is the first to formally analyze the problem of asymmetric information in the context of day-fines and to develop an optimal secondary enforcement system that would incentivize criminals to provide accurate information regarding their wealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a new perspective in the environmental and resource economics literature by examining innovation (measured by R&D expenditures), FDI (measured by country–country technology transfer), and energy–environment–growth nexus. Using simultaneous equation modelling (SEMs), three econometric functions were formulated for production, energy consumption, and environmental pollution with GDP per capita, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions (CO2e) as dependent variables for twenty-four OECD economies for the period 1993 to 2014, respectively. The results failed to support the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in the OECD economies. At the same time, a two-way causality was observed between GDP per capita and energy consumption per capita, indicating that the pollution has not yet reached the maximum threshold. Moreover, the results unveiled that fossil-fuel consumption, innovation, and FDI were the primary sources of CO2e. The paper offers important implications for academics, policymakers, and identifies avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, the regional economics literature has paid special attention to the locational patterns of firms. However, the scientific debate on the location and relocation decisions of firms is still open. The paper aims at evaluating whether relocation factors established in the literature on metropolitan areas in the USA and Western European countries play a critical role in post-socialist countries as well. We empirically investigate the destination choice of relocating firms at local level, by looking at the case of Polish metropolitan areas. A nested logit model is applied, with sampling of alternatives. Results underline the role of distance in choosing the destination: even in Poland, a country with a wide surface, relocation of firms occurred within small distances. Moreover, our results demonstrate the relevance of urbanisation economies in the locational preferences of firms, confirming the relevant role of metropolitan areas as catalyst for people and investments. Finally, we observe that firms do not necessarily adopt a pure costs minimisation strategy in the relocation decision, but they choose municipalities where they can take advantage of availability of high-skilled workers and amenities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Franchising is usually approached in economics literature as a search for the reasoning behind an organization's decision to opt for this model. In light of this situation, this study aims to find whether the current economics literature is capable of taking the next step from the origins of the franchising network and explaining three patterns of franchise operations: growth of network, quality of network and franchisee satisfaction with the franchisor. The method utilized in this study is descriptive explanatory, with the use of multiple linear regressions for the data analysis, which allows for the analysis of the relationship between independent and dependent variables. Secondary data were used from the Brazilian Franchising Association, from which the independent variables were taken, and from the Franchise Guide Journal of the Small Companies & Big Business Journal, from which the dependent variables were taken. These two sources are reliable authorities on the subject in the Brazilian market, and their complementary, mutual use for this research enhances the reliability of the database. The findings suggest that franchising in economics literature is not robust enough to explain growth and quality of networks, as well as franchisee–franchisor satisfaction, and it is suggested that the current theory needs to be further developed in order to take further steps in the concept of franchising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relevant economics literature on the impact of R&D on patenting activity falls within two methodological areas of inquiry. The first area might be classified as a test of the Schumpeterian hypothesis. The second and lesser research area might be classified as an estimation of the knowledge production function relationship between R&D and patenting. This paper focuses on estimates of the R&D-to-patenting relationship for a random sample of small, entrepreneurial firms whose research projects were supported through the US Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Our paper contributes to the R&D-to-patenting literature in two ways. It examines empirically a unique set of small, entrepreneurial firms funded by the public sector, and it explores the effect of the gender and ethnicity of firm owners on the propensity of their firms to patent from funded research projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop econometric models to estimate jointly revealed preference (RP) and stated preference (SP) models of recreational fishing behavior and preferences using survey data from the 2007 Alaska Saltwater Sportfishing Economic Survey. The RP data are from site choice survey questions, and the SP data are from a discrete choice experiment. Random utility models using only the RP data may be more likely to estimate the effect of cost on site selection well, but catch per day estimates may not reflect the benefits of the trip as perceived by anglers. The SP models may be more likely to estimate the effects of trip characteristics well, but less attention may be paid to the cost variable due to the hypothetical nature of the SP questions. The combination and joint estimation of RP and SP data seeks to exploit the contrasting strengths of both. We find that there are significant gains in econometric efficiency and differences between RP and SP willingness-to-pay estimates are mitigated by joint estimation. We compare a number of models that have appeared in the environmental economics literature with the generalized multinomial logit model. Naïve (1) scaled, (2) mixed logit, and (3) generalized multinomial logit models produced similar results to a generalized multinomial logit model that accounts for scale differences in RP and SP data. Willingness-to-pay estimates do not differ across these models but are greater than those in the mixed logit error components model that accounts for scale differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mobility of highly skilled employees is seen as a critical way for organizations to transfer knowledge and to improve organizational performance. Yet, the relationship between mobility and individual performance is still largely a theoretical and empirical puzzle. Integrating human capital mobility research and the economics of science literature, we argue that mobility of academics should have a positive effect on individual productivity. Additionally, we argue that this positive effect is strengthened when academics move towards better-endowed institutions. We find support for our predictions using a unique dataset of 348 academics working in biology department in the United Kingdom supplemented with qualitative evidence from a survey of the focal academic researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elert and Henrekson (2019) draw important connections between Austrian economics and the Schumpeterian literatures on "development blocs" and "the experimentally organized economy." We appreciate their emphasis on experimentation and think that Austrian ideas on the time structure of production and the multiple specificities of capital offer complementary insights into why production is likely to be clustered, localized, and path-dependent. While we agree that Austrian economics can benefit from a "meso" level of analysis between individuals and market outcomes, we do not think their proposed Experimentally Organized Economy framework adds much to existing Austrian theory and policy analysis. We also suggest that, by focusing on Kirzner's entrepreneurial discovery approach, Elert and Henrekson miss other Austrian approaches to entrepreneurship that can better inform their analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces an innovative framework for decision making by individuals with inconsistent preferences. Practices, associations of individuals with a preference set shared by its members, provide context and unify preferences across an economy so that decision-makers are situated in social and economic structures. Our framework models the time evolution of certain attributes, emerging from the practice framework, that govern individuals' decisions and their intertemporal variation. A novel feature is that preferences are able to rank other preference sets without the need to aggregate them. Instead, the selection of a preference set is treated as a decision in its own right. Our framework explains decision making paradoxes such as the disposition effect and agency cost considerations that are frequently encountered in the behavioural finance and economics literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the insights from the literature in environmental economics and politics, this study examines the configurational conditions of national carbon intensity by constructing a new analytical framework integrating six factors, i.e. population, affluence, industrial structure, energy intensity, urbanization rate and democracy. A fuzzy set analysis of 136 countries shows that national carbon intensity is not determined by any single factor but rather by the combined effects of multiple factors. There are two configurational pathways to low-carbon development while four pathways to high-carbon development, each with its own configuration. Low-carbon development occurs most often in those affluent, highly urbanized and democratic countries with low intensity of energy use, while high-carbon development is most likely in those small, poor countries with high intensity of energy use. This study also shows that the role of particular factor should be understood in the context as its combinations with different sets of other factors may produce opposite effects on national carbon intensity. That is, the policy efforts concentrated on single factor may be ineffective to reduce carbon intensity. These findings permit a more contextualized and systematic understanding of the determinants of national carbon intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to present a comprehensive survey of the literature on the economics of informality. First, we focus on studies that aim to provide measures of informality using different methodologies. Next, we review empirical and theoretical studies focusing on the determinants as well as effects of informality. Finally, we conclude by summarizing the main findings of the literature, evaluate several policy recommendations based on our review as well as suggest some future research directions. Even though the literature on informality is growing at an increasing rate, future research efforts are very much needed, both on the theoretical and empirical side. Efforts have to be made to improve measurement of informal sector size as well as developing theoretical mechanisms for determinants and effects of informality that can be supported by empirical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]