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In some areas of social science, around half of studies can’t be replicated. A new test-fast, fail-fast initiative aims to show what research is hot — and what’s not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By joining a collecting society, researchers can ensure they are paid when copyrighted book content and papers are reproduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The double-carbon goal proposal has made it imperative for China's power industry to address the urgent issue of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants and promoting their clean and efficient use. A new approach to achieving peak-shaving and improving grid stability is the combination of carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities with coal-fired power plants, which offers a strategic solution for mitigating climate change. Nonetheless, the viability of CCS retrofitting for coal-fired power plants in China hinges on its economic feasibility. The technical characteristics, economic analysis, and policy implications of clean coal-fired power plant equipped with CCS (CCP-CCS) technologies are evaluated in the paper. A comparison of the characteristics of different clean coal power generation technologies, including capacity, efficiency, coal consumption, and environmental performance, is conducted. The paper analyzes the economic feasibility of four typical clean coal power generation technologies, namely Supercritical (SC), Ultra-supercritical (USC), Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC), and Circulating Fluidized Bed (CFB), both with and without CCS, using the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) model. Financial parameters, investment parameters, operation and maintenance parameters, tax parameters, and capacity parameters are all considered in the LCOE model. The results indicate: (1) If CCS is not installed, the LCOE of USC power plants is the lowest at 0.37 yuan/kWh, while the LCOE of IGCC power plants is the highest at 0.44 yuan/kWh. (2) If CCS is installed, the LCOE of CFB units is the highest at 0.74 yuan/kWh, while the LCOE of USC units is the lowest at 0.60 yuan/kWh. (3) In sensitivity analysis, coal prices have the most significant impact on LCOE, followed by expected annual operating hours, while the cost of carbon capture equipment is the least sensitive. (4) The cost of retrofitting CCS on clean coal-fired power plants (CCP) is currently high, with an LCOE increase of around 40 to 70%, which is comparable to that of renewable energy electricity. This paper presents policy recommendations, including preferential loans, tax incentives, and R&D funding, to promote the development of CCP in China based on the economic analysis results and challenges faced by CCP. Additionally, the paper proposes relevant policy implications such as preferential loan policies, a diversified financing system, R&D and innovation, and the establishment of a carbon trading market for CCS in China to provide practical guidance for the promotion of CCP-CCS technologies in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on a paper about the relevant lessons from the U.S. Federal Convention of 1787 in the context of the role of institutions in political economy and the performance of economies. Reasons for studying institutions; Path of historical change in terms of the way in which institutions evolved through time; Similarity of the sequential pattern of institutional evolution with the way in which the evolution of common law is perceived.

The prevalence of poverty has bothered Indian economists, policymakers, and politicians alike. The rapid economic growth was unable to trickle down to the poorest which has led to the persistence of poverty both in urban and rural India even after 75 years of independence. Keeping this in view this paper has tried to examine the regional variations in the spatial pattern of incidence of urban poverty in India across 17 major states using data from the 28th and 68th NSS rounds. It also attempts to isolate the key determinants responsible for these variations. The objective of this paper is twofold; one is to bring out changes in the pattern of regional variations in urban poverty across 17 major states of India from 1973 to 74 to 2011–12 and the second is to identify the determinants responsible for these variations. The selection of regional units is based on the availability of comparable data as well as on theoretical considerations. For this study, therefore, we have considered each state as a single regional unit as they are home to largely homogeneous populations with common history and language, topography, institutions, and laws and at the same time each state is different from the other on account of unique factors. Therefore, interstate variations in this paper imply regional variations across 17 major Indian states. The results obtained through an instrumental variable estimation suggest that this effect is causal and is largely attributable to the positive spillovers of urbanization on the rural economy rather than to the movement of the rural poor to urban areas. Concerning the growth process, both urban–rural and sectoral (output) growth poverty relationships are suggestive of stronger intersectoral linkages in the economy, whereby growth in one sector transmits its gains elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China’s growing economic importance has led to a significant increase in the volume of empirical research about business and management in this country during the last few years. This study reviews the 180 empirical papers focusing on the Chinese context that were published in 12 leading international academic journals between 2000 and 2005. A summary of the methodologies used and the topics analysed is offered, along with various rankings of journals, authors, institutions, and papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter is presented in response to the article "Application of Innovation Economics to Medical Imaging and Information System Technologies," by Dr. Bruce Reiner and Matthew McKinley in the June 2012 issue.

Determines the topics covered in the 2002 Annual Meeting papers of the Royal Netherlands Economic Association. Correlation between housing prices and household savings; Accounts on the macroeconomic perspective of pension savings; Role of wealth in the economy.

Integrated simulation models are commonly used to provide insight on the complex functioning of social-ecological systems, often drawing on earlier tools with a narrower focus. Forest sector models (FSM) encompass a set of simulation models originally developed to forecast economic developments in timber markets but now commonly used to analyse climate and environmental policy. In this paper, we document and investigate this evolution through the prism of the inclusion of several non-timber objectives into FSM. We perform a systematic, quantitative survey of the literature followed by a more in-depth narrative review. Results show that a majority of papers in FSM research today focuses on non-timber objectives related to climate change mitigation, namely carbon sequestration and bioenergy production. Habitat conservation, deforestation and the mitigation of disturbances are secondary foci, while aspects such as forest recreation and many regulation services are absent. Non-timber objectives closest to the original targets of FSM, as well as those for which economic values are easier to estimate, have been more deeply integrated to the models, entering the objective function as decision variables. Others objectives are usually modelled as constraints and only considered through their negative economic impacts on the forest sector. Current limits to a deeper inclusion of non-timber objectives include the models' ability to represent local environmental conditions as well as the formulation of the optimisation problem as a maximisation of economic welfare. Recent research has turned towards the use of model couplings and the development of models at the local scale to overcome these limitations. Challenges for future research comprise extensions to other non-timber objectives, especially cultural services, as well as model calibration at lower spatial scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including big data, economic development of information technologies and social progress.

Reports that a group of researchers say they will stop buying, publishing, or reviewing for any scientific journal that refuses to place its research papers in a proposed online database, Public Library of Science, within six months of initial publication. Reaction of publishers, who claim that free access will leave journals without enough revenue to support peer review; Speculation that the research will end up on the publicly-funded PubMedCentral rather than on a private site.

Gordon Tullock's work in economics spans nearly 50 years and is known for the breadth, originality, and quantity of his contributions in public choice, constitutional political economy, law and economics, bioeconomics, and monetary history. Despite his lack of formal training in economics, Tullock published in major economic journals early in his career. A number of his papers, which proved to be seminal to the theory of rent seeking, were rejected by top economic journals. This paper explores possible reasons for the editor's reception to Tullock's work and uses citation counts to value Tullock's rejected papers. My paper shows that Tullock's work continues to be cited, often far more frequently than the papers which journals chose to publish when they rejected Tullock's submissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relevance of the research topic stated is due to the importance of conducting economic research in the field of agriculture, aimed at studying the main peculiarities of constructing an economic model of forestry development. The purpose of scientific study is to conduct research into the basic aspects of constructing a model of forestry's impact on the economic system of a particular state, as well as to study the basic aspects of the forestry system's functioning in the general economic system of the state, taking into account the current realities. The methodological approach of this study is based on a systematic analysis of the main aspects of conducting economic research on the role of forestry in the life of a particular country, combined with an analytical study of the specific features of the role and importance of forestry in the economy, as well as the overall influence of forestry on the country's economy. The research model of the role of forestry in the national economy is based on the example of the development of forestry in Kazakhstan. The main results obtained in the course of this study should be considered the role of the forestry sector in the economy of a single state and the assessment of the main trends and prospects for the development of the sector within the country as a whole. The results and conclusions of this scientific paper are of great significance for the workers of the forestry system, whose responsibility is to ensure the viability of the sector and its functioning in the overall economic system of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the publishing industry evolves towards the predominant open access (OA) model, publishers are establishing OA journal power-houses, the OA mega-journals (OAMJs), which are wide in scope, with larger-than-usual editor boards, and that pump out large numbers of papers. OAMJs are thus able to accommodate a surge in submissions, or transfers from other journals within the same publisher's fleet. OAMJs represent a simple but effective publishing model that can also be an effective business model. We question whether the peer review system is robust enough to accommodate for effective post-publication peer review in OAMJs. As examples, we examine Scientific Reports, PLOS One, Heliyon, F1000Research, PeerJ, and BMJ Open, as well as a possible developing OAMJ, eLife, for clues to the dynamics of OAMJs and the possible links to quality control via peer review or post-publication peer review. We also take a closer look at the economics of OA publishing that might be driving the expansion of the OAMJ market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue brings together eight separate contributions reflecting recent advances in the methodology of supermodular optimization/games and monotone methods. Two of the papers extend some aspects of the methodology itself: Barthel and Sabarwal (Econ Theory, 2018. 10.1007/s00199-017-1079-3) deal with comparative statics without the strong set order on constraints and Beggs (Econ Theory, 2018. 10.1007/s00199-016-0987-y) deals with the case of boundary optimal solutions. The next five papers deal with various economic applications, which may be classified into two broad groups. The first of these deals with dynamic general equilibrium within macroeconomic dynamics (Datta et al. in Econ Theory, 2018. 10.1007/s00199-017-1046-z; Barbie and Hillebrand in Econ Theory, 2018. 10.1007/s00199-017-1082-8). The second group of papers consists of studies applying the techniques at hand to industrial organization (Reynolds and Rietzke in Econ Theory 2018. 10.1007/s00199-016-0963-6; Cosandier et al. in Econ Theory, 2018. 10.1007/s00199-017-1050-3) and applied microeconomic theory (Dekel and Pauzner in Econ Theory, 2018. 10.1007/s00199-017-1083-7). Finally, the paper by Bich et al. (Econ Theory, 2018. 10.1007/s00199-017-1045-0) considers an alternative general formulation of a theoretical framework for dynamic programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the proposed method to evaluate the motives behind government behavior concerning public goods in the U.S. The method is to derive results from a set of simple and largely unobjectionable propositions about public goods. The author points out that it is difficult to argue that efficiency requires uniform public provisions.

Looking merely from the neoclassical perspective, cloud computing is price effective. However, according to institutional and transaction cost economics, cloud customers should estimate other costs beyond the price. Such costs may not be known to cloud customers, leading to unmet expectations and implementation challenges. The aim of this paper is to study transaction costs of cloud computing from the customer perspective to make the cloud journey less cloudy, i.e. more informed and well planned. This paper applies transaction cost theory to cloud computing through a 360-degree industry analysis. Expert interviews with vendor, customer and consultancy sides were conducted to understand costs associated with cloud computing. Findings were validated through a case study. Findings of this research indicate that cloud has high 'asset specificity' due to change management costs, meta services costs and business process reengineering costs. Cloud also has a considerable level of 'uncertainty' asking for managing contracts, investing in cloud-specific monitoring solutions and consciously reviewing of the legal compliance. Finally, cloud has high 'transaction frequency', which compensates for the needed investments triggered by 'uncertainty' and 'asset specificity'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to reflect and articulate the key scholarly contributions made by Cristiano Antonelli in his pathbreaking book, The Knowledge Growth Regime: A Schumpeterian Approach and why it is so important, not only to scholars of innovation and Schumpeterian economics, but also to the entirety of economic thinking. This paper highlights how this important new book breaks new and important ground paving the way for a new paradigm in economics, where knowledge takes the center stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an introduction to papers on computational economics that appear in this periodical.

The new economic geography theory serves as a foothold for gaining a better insight into agglomeration effects through a model-based approach. While it is true that the basic elements of the modem theory are anything but new, the economists have only recently been able to fruitfully bring together in a single model aspects such as economies of scale, imperfect competition and the associated choice of location, and the possibilities of multiple equilibria. In terms of this theory, economic integration can be seen as a systematic lowering of transportation costs, or more generally, of the transaction costs of trade.

This paper discusses aspects of economic analysis of law developed because of the status quo existing on the Internet and of the evolution of legal theory on copyright. It also explores the massive increase of interest in the law and economics of intellectual property during the first decade of twenty-first century. The paper argues that law and economics discourse on copyright foregrounds policymaking with a focus on copyright's economic ramifications. This paper also examines Coase's theorem and its influence on considerations about copyright regulatory frameworks and potential reform to keep abreast of ongoing technological advancements and their impact on copyright protection in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the ongoing failure of hybrid transgenic Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton unique to India. The underlying cause for this failure is the high cost of hybrid seed that imposes a suboptimal long-season low plant density system that limits yield potential and has associated elevated levels of late-season pests. Indian hybrid Bt cotton production is further complicated by the development of resistance to Bt toxins in the key pest, the native pink bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella Saunders, PBW), resulting in increased insecticide use that induces ecological disruption and outbreaks of highly destructive secondary pests. Rainfed cotton production uncertainty is further exacerbated by the variable monsoon rains. While hybrid cotton produces fertile seed, the resulting plant phenotypes are highly variable preventing farmers from replanting saved seed, forcing them to buy seed yearly (i.e., market capture), and effectively protecting industry Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). The lessons gained from the ongoing market failure of hybrid Bt cotton in India are of utmost importance to its proposed introduction to Africa where, similar to India, cotton is grown mainly in poor rainfed smallholder family farms, and hence similar private–corporate conflicts of interest will occur. Holistic field agroecological studies and weather-driven mechanistic analyses are suggested to help foresee ecological and economic challenges in cotton production in Africa. High-density short-season (HD-SS) non-hybrid non-genetically modified irrigated and rainfed cottons are viable alternatives for India that can potentially produce double the yields of the current low-density hybrid system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the drivers of research performance of 1431 economists from six European countries. Data from the Scopus database are collected. We compare the relative performance of economists from three northern European countries: Belgium, Denmark and Germany with three from the south: Greece, Italy and Portugal. Relative performance is measured as the deviation from the country average in both citations and papers. The dependent variables take the value of 1 if the productivity of the researcher is above the country average and 0 if it is below. Probit/logit analysis is employed and marginal effects are estimated to examine the significance of factors like the country of their PhD studies, gender and inbreeding at the national level. A US PhD or a German PhD affects negatively the relative productivity of German economists. Inbreeding at the national level (locally trained economists) reduces productivity among Greek, Italian and Portuguese economists. Gender is significant in the case of Denmark, Germany and Italy, but it does not affect productivity in Belgium, Greece and Portugal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the rest of this issue, which mainly focuses on economist Edward C. Prescott and his work. The author praises Prescott, not only for his contributions to economics but also his dedication to students and young economists. He has done important research in almost every aspect of economics, including business cycles and industrial organization. This issue deals mainly with his work in applied fields and some employ models of Prescott's design, including calibration methodology.

This paper takes a purely statistical look at two of the most important empirical growth papers authored by Mankiw et al. [1992 ] and Islam [1995 ]. MRW claim that the Solow model is justified only when human capital is added to the regression,while Islam claims that cross-country heterogeneity is the actual culprit. In a statistical sense, the author of this study finds that Islam was correct in the fact that mean heterogeneity does exist in MRW's data. However, after statistical adequacy is achieved, human capital continues to maintain its role as a significant determinant of growth even though the estimates are not robust for one of the two cross-country samples investigated. On the other hand, though Islam's models were not without statistical problems, they continue to maintain their traditional form and his estimates are robust to respecification. This paper also exemplifies the need for objective statistical testing methods in applied work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces several articles on small business economics.

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]

This paper conducts a scientometric analysis and systematic literature review to identify the trends in microfinance outcomes from the perspective of their recipients, specifically more vulnerable people, while also focusing on the demand side. Applying the keywords "co-occurrence networks" and "citation networks," we examined 524 studies indexed on the ISI Web of Science database between 2012 and March 2021. The subsequent content analysis of bibliometric-coupled articles concerns the main research topics in this field: the socioeconomic outcomes of microfinance, the dichotomy between social performance and the mission drift of microfinance institutions, and how entrepreneurship and financial innovation, specifically through crowdfunding, mitigate poverty and empower the more vulnerable. The findings reinforce the idea that microfinance constitutes a distinct field of development thinking, and indicate that a more holistic approach should be adopted to boost microfinance outcomes through a better understanding of their beneficiaries. The trends in this field will help policymakers, regulators, and academics to examine the nuts and bolts of microfinance and identify the most relevant areas of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on logical approaches to economics and game theory. Description of logic; Distinction between symbolic expressions and their associated meanings; Unique theory of rationality or bounded rationality.

While the origins of genetic programming (GP) stretch back over 50 years, the field of GP was invigorated by John Koza's popularisation of the methodology in the 1990s. A particular feature of the GP literature since then has been a strong interest in the application of GP to real-world problem domains. One application domain which has attracted significant attention is that of finance and economics, with several hundred papers from this subfield being listed in the GP bibliography. In this article we outline why finance and economics has been a popular application area for GP and briefly indicate the wide span of this work. However, despite this research effort there is relatively scant evidence of the usage of GP by the mainstream finance community in academia or industry. We speculate why this may be the case, describe what is needed to make this research more relevant from a finance perspective, and suggest some future directions for the application of GP in finance and economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is possible that a budget breaking incentive scheme may not solve the problem of moral hazard in team production, due to an incentive for a principal to cheat on such an agreement. This is a problem common to incentive schemes which result in an unbalanced budget, which include among them processes designed to reveal demand for public goods. This paper shows the conditions under which cheating is possible, and designs a payment scheme for the principal which is free of any cheating incentive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue brings together eight separate contributions reflecting recent advances in the methodology of supermodular optimization and games. Three of the papers fall in the main area of supermodular games. Balbus et al. (Econ Theory 67, 2019, 10.1007/s00199-017-1075-7) study supermodular games with a continuum of players. Jimenez-Martinez (Econ Theory 67, 2019, 10.1007/s00199-018-1107-y) develops a model of versioning in social networks. Barthel and Hoffman (Econ Theory 67, 2019, 10.1007/s00199-017-1092-6) deal with a class of games with mixed-monotonic best responses (in both directions). The second group of papers falls in the related areas of mechanism design, principal agent, and matching. Johnson (Econ Theory 67, 2019, 10.1007/s00199-018-1127-7) considers synchronized Becker-style matching with incomplete information. Kushnir and Liu (Econ Theory 67, 2019, 10.1007/s00199-018-1124-x) generalizes the equivalence between Bayesian and dominant strategy implementation to the case of nonlinear utilities. Zambrano (Econ Theory 2019, 10.1007/s00199-017-1087-3) studies a principal-agent model with choice between a risky and a safe projects. Christensen (Econ Theory 67, 2019, 10.1007/s00199-018-1116-x) investigates the stability, existence, and uniqueness of equilibria, as solutions to systems of equations. Finally, Drugeon et al. (Econ Theory 67, 2019, 10.1007/s00199-018-1166-0) consider a class of dynamic programming problems with endogenous discount factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the special issue of papers selected from those presented at the International Conference on Business Ethics in Transitional Economies, held March 20-22, 2002 in Celakovice and Prague, Czech Republic. A brief background on the conference is given, and a summary of the papers offered in this special issue is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-throughput next-generation sequencing technologies have seen an increase in use in most developed countries. The translation of genomic testing into clinical practice challenges the traditional model of medical care in France and raises numerous medical, legal, ethical, organizational, and financial issues. In order to allow the population to use this revolution to its advantage, France has conceived the French Plan for Genomic Medicine 2025. Its aim is to improve health and quality of life, to organize new pathways of care and counseling, and to make decisions about insurance coverage. It has also been designed to drive innovation and promote economic growth in France by incorporating genomic medicine into the French health care system. These issues can be addressed through evaluations developed to aid the decision-making process in the context of resource scarcity. Health economists can help to resolve these resource allocation challenges by measuring the impact of this technological revolution on patients, caregivers, providers, and the health care system. In this paper, we will review challenges associated with implementing genomic testing in France. One of the pilot studies of the French Plan for Genomic Medicine 2025 will be presented as an illustration of the role of health economists in overcoming some of the challenges of this technological revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theoretically studies how unfunded pay-as-you-go social security affects economic growth, the fertility rate, and welfare in a neoclassical growth model. In addition, this paper considers a more general form of child-rearing cost, which is a mixture of time and money. The first observation is that whether the fertility rate increases or not by the expansion of the pay-as-you-go social security depends on (1) the size of the monetary child-rearing cost relative to the time spent on child-rearing and (2) the current fertility and interest rate in laissez faire. The second observation is that income per worker can increase by an expansion in pay-as-you-go social security when the output elasticity of capital is sufficiently small and the payroll tax rate is high. The last finding is that welfare can be improved even though capital is underaccumulated in an economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the immigration literature by generating two unique non-economic quality of life (QOL) indices and testing their role on recent migration patterns. Applying the generated QOL indices in conjunction with four independent welfare measures to an augmented gravity model of immigration, this paper finds an insignificant relationship between the six non-economic QOL measures and immigration flows for a panel of 16 OECD countries from 1991 to 2000. However, the results suggest that other factors such as the stock of immigrants from the source country already living in the OECD destination country, population size, relative incomes, and geographic factors all significantly drive the flow of immigration for the sample tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the real world, agents or entities are in a continuous state of interactions. These interactions lead to various types of complexity dynamics. One key difficulty in the study of complex agent interactions is the difficulty of modeling agent communication on the basis of rewards. Game theory offers a perspective of analysis and modeling these interactions. Previously, while a large amount of literature is available on game theory, most of it is from specific domains and does not cater for the concepts from an agent-based perspective. Here in this paper, we present a comprehensive multidisciplinary state-of-the-art review and taxonomy of game theory models of complex interactions between agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The telecommunications industry has evolved from voice-centric to provisioning of broadband data services. As witnessed in countries around the world, the industry has an oligopoly market structure with a few operators providing services. The services offered by the operators differ in both price and quality of service. On the other hand, consumers differ in their preferences over price and quality with some displaying sensitivity towards price and others towards quality. In this paper, we provide the standard microeconomic framework of supply and demand for telecom services and derive equilibria under varying supply and demand conditions. In particular, we analyse the strategies of new entrants vis-à-vis incumbents in offering service plans over varying price and quality dimensions. We also analyse the equilibria for varying elasticities of demand of consumers. We then validate the analytical results by simulation using an agent-based model with operator and consumer agents. Our results show that new entrants ought to target relatively elastic consumers as their market entry strategy, by offering a combination of low price, high-quality service plans to gain market share. On the other hand, incumbent operators ought to continue to target relatively inelastic consumers who have loyalty towards them due to larger network effects and associated higher switching costs. Our simulation results also confirm the analytical results. Telecom regulators can use the study results in assessing and regulating (i) market power dynamics of incumbents and new entrants, (ii) tariff plans offered by operators for possible predatory pricing and (iii) quality of service to meet threshold minimum quality of standard levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the export growth of China's information communication technology (ICT) products in two major markets Japan and the US from 1995 to 2008 and its competition with six East Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Korea. The analysis shows that China has emerged as the largest single supplier of ICT products to both markets. By 2008, China's exports accounted for 44 and 38% of total Japanese and the US ICT imports respectively. On the other hand, market shares of the six East Asian countries either remained stagnant or decreased substantially. The analysis by destination markets and by product categories indicates that, there exist significant negative correlations between market shares of China and that of the six East Asian countries, implying that the rapid expansion of China's ICT exports crowded out exports of its East Asian competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory essay summarizes the contents of the papers presented at a conference in honor of Gebhard Kirchgässner entitled “(Macro-)Economic Policy and Public Choice” which are published in this special issue. In addition to this brief overview on the contributions, this essay relates them to the scientific works of Gebhard Kirchgässner after locating the latter within the realm of Public Choice analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During and beyond the twentieth century, urbanization has represented a major demographic shift particularly in the developed world. The rapid urbanization experienced in the developing world brings increased mortality from lifestyle diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. We set out to understand how urbanization has been measured in studies which examined chronic disease as an outcome. Following a pilot search of PUBMED, a full search strategy was developed to identify papers reporting the effect of urbanization in relation to chronic disease in the developing world. Full searches were conducted in MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, and GLOBAL HEALTH. Of the 868 titles identified in the initial search, nine studies met the final inclusion criteria. Five of these studies used demographic measures (such as population density) at an area level to measure urbanization. Four studies used more complicated summary measures of individual and area level data (such as distance from a city, occupation, home and land ownership) to define urbanization. The papers reviewed were limited by using simple area level summary measures (e.g., urban rural dichotomy) or having to rely on preexisting data at the individual level. Further work is needed to develop a measure of urbanization that treats urbanization as a process and which is sensitive enough to track changes in “urbanicity” and subsequent emergence of chronic disease risk factors and mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper (my keynote talk from the 2006 ESPE conference), I discuss the recent upsurge in research on the economics of education that has occurred, especially in Europe. I discuss the reasons for the increased interest and present some examples from my recent research in the area. The paper concludes that the increased research interest seems likely to be sustained for some time to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A previous publication in this journal showed that the pricing matrix model (PMM) allows an assessment of the pricing potential of a new innovative product. When the PMM is going to be used for the determination of a drug price for a new drug in the strategic product planning process, it is important that this methodology is reliable. In the initial paper the PMM only yielded an expected price for the new antidepressant without generating an estimate of the probability that the new drug would indeed be listed at this expected price. In this manuscript we present various methodologies to deal with uncertainty in the PMM. We introduce the concept of price acceptability curves. The conclusion of this paper is that the incorporation of uncertainty into the PMM will lead to a more accurate assessment of the pricing potential of a new drug. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses research into international businesses centered in Central and Eastern Europe. Much of this has focused on theories such as transaction cost economics, agency theory, and institutional perspectives. Articles in this issue analyze the dynamic processes in transitional economies. Each papers analyze different aspects of transition that businesses must go through to fully internationalize themselves. Several researchers found that positive emotions were the key to increasing a Dutch firm's chances of internationalization. Another showed the rough entry of several Swedish firms into the Russian marketplace.

The paper maps out an alternative to a behavioural (economic) approach to business ethics. Special attention is paid to the fundamental philosophical principle that any moral `ought' implies a practical `can', which the paper interprets with regard to the economic viability of moral agency of the firm under the conditions of the market economy, in particular competition. The paper details an economic understanding of business ethics with regard to classical and neo-classical views, on the one hand, and institutional, libertarian thought, on the other hand. Implications are derived regarding unintentional and passive intentional moral agency of the firm. The paper moves on to suggest that moral agency can be economically viable in competitive `market' interactions, which is conventionally disputed by classical/neo-classical and institutional, libertarian economics. The paper here conceptualises active moral agency of the firm as the utilisation of ethical capital in firm-stakeholder interactions. This yields a reinterpretation of instrumental stakeholder theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A global effort to uncover the nature of the Universe has had resounding effects on scientists and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last two centuries, taxation has not only increased dramatically in level and volume; its structure has also changed: from a heavy reliance on customs revenue in the early nineteenth century to a stronger emphasis on income taxation in the twentieth. A common explanation for this development is the spread of democracy, which supposedly increases redistribution and the size of government. This paper argues that the effect of democratization on taxation depends on the distribution of tax preferences in society. These preferences are not uniform: rural farmers prefer different policies than urban workers. Thus, the impact of democratization varies depending on the urbanization rate. The paper uses a novel dataset providing data on government tax revenue in thirty-one countries in Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan—from as far back as 1800 up to the present day—in order to evaluate the conditional impact of democratization on tax structure. The results show that democracy decreases property taxes in rural countries but instead increases income taxes and decreases excise and consumption taxes in more urbanized states. These results are robust to different estimation methods, a number of control variables, such as interstate warfare, and to alternative measurements of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]