This thesis consists of a summary and four papers. The first two concerns health care and sickness absence, and the last two pharmaceutical costs and prices. Paper [I] presents an economic federation model which resembles the situation in, for example, Sweden. In the model the state governments provide health care, the fed-eral government provides a sickness benefit and both levels tax labor income. The re-sults show that the states can have either an incentive to under- or over-provide health care. The federal government can, by introducing an intergovernmental transfer, in-duce the state governments to provide the socially optimal amount of health care. In Paper [II] the effect of aggregated public health care expenditure on absence from work due to sickness or disability was estimated. The analysis was based on data from a panel of the Swedish municipalities for the period 1993-2004. Public health care expenditure was found to have no statistically significant effect on absence and the standard errors were small enough to rule out all but a minimal effect. The result held when separate estimations were conducted for women and men, and for absence due to sickness and disability. The purpose of Paper [III] was to study the effects of the introduction of fixed pharmaceutical budgets for two health centers in Västerbotten, Sweden. Estimation results using propensity score matching methods show that there are no systematic differences for either price or quantity per prescription between health centers using fixed and open-ended budgets. The analysis was based on individual prescription data from the two health centers and a control group both before and after the introduction of fixed budgets. In Paper [IV] the introduction of the Swedish substitution reform in October 2002 was used as a natural experiment to examine the effects of increased consumer infor-mation on pharmaceutical prices. Using monthly data on individual pharmaceutical prices, the average reduction of prices due to the reform was estimated to four percent for both brand name and generic pharmaceuticals during the first four years after the reform. The results also show that the price adjustment was not instant.

In this thesis, we analyze the impact of the decentralization of price and leadtime decisions made by the marketing and production departments, respectively, in a make-to-order firm. We first study a monopoly environment, and find that in the decentralized setting, the total demand generated is larger, leadtimes are longer, quoted prices are lower, and the firm profits are lower as compared to the centralized setting. We show that coordination can be achieved using a transfer price contract with bonus payments, where both departments receive a fraction of the total revenues generated as a bonus payment. In the second study, we extend this work to a duopoly environment, where two firms compete on the basis of their price and leadtime quotes in a common market. We find that under intense price competition, firms may suffer from a decentralized structure, particularly under high flexibility induced by high capacity, where revenue based sales incentives motivate sales/marketing for more aggressive price cuts resulting in eroding margins. We take the parameters of the demand models in the first two studies as constant, while estimating those parameters based on historical data is a very important problem in practice. In the last study of this thesis, we address the challenges encountered in estimating the price sensitivity of customers shifting focus to the passenger travel industry. We explore how to obtain better price elasticity estimates through an empirical study with an emphasis on the endogeneity problem, which arises as a result of the simultaneous determination of supply and demand. We show that if one does not account for endogeneity, price elasticities may induce an upward-sloping demand curve suggesting that high price produces high demand, or may be biased downward to the extent that elastic demand curves are incorrectly classified as inelastic. We show the improvement in price elasticities through an instrumental variable approach.

經濟投票研究逐漸重視內因問題，國外的研究對於資料上和方法上均展開革新。相較之下，台灣的經濟投票研究受限於資料和方法，一直無法對認知性與資料性的內因問題進行有效的處理。資料的侷限不是一時能獲得改善的。但方法的反思和修正，正是研究者與方法對話讓方法實用的開始（黃紀 2000b）。處理經濟投票的二個內因問題，本文引用Menard（2010, 145-168）所提出的PALR方法。它保留路徑分析的優點，並讓類別變數能夠在路徑分析方法中被估計；同時結合Heckman因果效應模型的概念，亦能處理資料性的內因問題。 2012年總統選舉「九二共識」和「台灣共識」的交鋒，最後是由主打透過「九二共識」提振台灣經濟的執政黨獲勝。面對前一個任期表現差強人意的執政黨，選民沒有對它進行處罰，反倒再給它執政的機會。這樣的選舉結果讓人聯想是否還有其他因素影響經濟評估。透過PALR希望能一窺2012年總統選舉的全貌。 研究發現，2012年總統選舉存在社會前瞻經濟投票，卻不存在社會回溯經濟投票。政黨認同對社會回溯型經濟評估有直接影響，對社會前瞻型經濟評估則是有間接影響；而且對投票選擇的影響不只存在直接影響力，透過候選人形象評估和社會前瞻型經濟評估，政黨認同對於投票選擇也有相當的間接影響力。這表示選民不僅是有立場地對執政黨2008年到2012年的表現進行評估；對台灣未來的展望同樣存在政黨認同的影響。選民不僅有立場地評估代表二個「共識」的候選人，也有立場地看待台灣未來可能的發展。

Paper 1: Give More Tomorrow Many charities ask donors to commit to monthly contribution schemes. Monthly contributors give a fixed sum every month, which is automatically deducted from their bank account. These donors are the most profitable ones for a charity. On average, they give more than donors who contribute sporadically. They also facilitate the long-run financial planning of the charity, and they reduce the administrative and fundraising costs. What will influence a donor's decision to commit to a monthly contribution scheme? If the costs and benefits associated with contributing to a charity occur at different points in time, the answer will depend on the donor's inter-temporal preferences. More specifically, it will be of importance whether donors are time consistent or whether they exhibit present-biased preferences.  This paper designs and tests a fundraising strategy that allows for present-biased preferences among donors. The strategy, Give More Tomorrow, was implemented as a randomized field experiment in collaboration with a large charity. 1134 donors that make monthly contributions were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups. In the first group, monthly donors were asked to increase their donation starting immediately. In the second group, monthly donors were asked to increase their donations starting two months later. Mean donations were 32 percent higher in the latter group, a highly significant difference. Donations conditional on giving were also significantly higher in the latter group. The effect of the GMT strategy is economically large and highly profitable to the charity. Paper 2: Crowding Out or Crowding In? The crowding-out hypothesis says that private givers, who are also taxpayers, will use their tax-financed donations as a substitute for their voluntary donations, thus reducing the net effectiveness of grants (Warr, 1982, 1983; Roberts, 1984; Bernheim, 1986; and Andreoni, 1988). While theory predicts a one-to-one relationship between government grants and private donations, econometric and experimental studies have found evidence of partial or no crowding out (see, e.g., Khanna et al., 1995; Payne, 1998; Khanna and Sandler, 2000; and Okten and Weisbrod, 2000). A recent contribution to this literature argues that government grants reduce the organizations' fundraising efforts, which may indirectly cause a decrease in private contributions (Andreoni and Payne, 2003). This paper employs a previously unexplored panel dataset to test whether government grants crowd out private donations to charitable organizations, controlling for changes in the organizations' fundraising behavior. The data covers all registered charitable organizations in Sweden between 1989 and 2003. We have a total of 361 organizations where the largest group is health related. The panel data allows us to control for unobserved organizational heterogeneity and time fixed effects. Furthermore, we use a 2SLS specification to control for possible endogeneity in government grants and fundraising expenditures. Complete crowding out can be strongly rejected. In the 2SLS regression, the estimated crowd-out is small and highly significant in the full sample, on average 5.0%. In the disaggregated sample, we cannot reject zero crowding out for any type of organization in the 2SLS regressions. Furthermore, we find strong evidence that organizations are net revenue maximizing, indicating that fundraising activities are efficient. Paper 3: Is Foreign Aid Paternalistic? (with Ola Granstrom and Felix Masiye) In this paper, we experimentally investigate whether donors are paternalistically altruistic when contributing to foreign aid. A paternalist may be defined as someone who advances other people's interests, such as life, health, or safety, at the expense of their liberty or autonomy. In economic theory, a donor is said to be paternalistically altruistic if he cares about a recipient's wellbeing, but does not fully respect the recipient's preferences (Pollak, 1988; Jones-Lee, 1991, 1992; Jacobsson et al., 2005). In a double-blind experiment, a subject chooses whether to make a monetary or a tied transfer (mosquito nets) to an anonymous household in Zambia. Recipients have revealed preferences for money, as their willingness to pay for mosquito nets is positive but below the market price. A monetary transfer will therefore preserve the household's preferences while a tied transfer is paternalistic. The mean donation of mosquito nets differs significantly from zero, thereby implying paternalistic preferences among donors. Paternalistic donors constitute 65 percent of the total sample, whereas purely altruistic donors constitute 15 percent. We conclude that health-focused paternalistic rather than purely altruistic preferences dominate the foreign-aid giving of individuals. Paper 4: Altruism without Borders? (with Ola Granstrom) Why do individuals contribute to foreign aid? Does the willingness to give increase the more we know about the recipients? Although there is some literature on the strategic interests of countries in providing foreign aid, (see, e.g., Alesina and Dollar, 2000) very little is yet known about which preferences guide the foreign-aid giving of individual donors. This paper experimentally tests altruism over borders. We design a cross-country dictator game where the degree of identification of the recipient is varied in four treatments: (1) anonymity, (2) photo, (3) information and (4) photo and information. In addition, questionnaire data on donor characteristics is gathered. The mean donation is 55%, which is considerably higher than in standard dictator games. In contrast to previous within-country experiments, we find no significant effect of identification on donations. Furthermore, we find that women donate significantly more than men (64 compared to 50 percent) and that those who state that aid is too large donate significantly less than those who state that aid is too small (24 compared to 67 percent). / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2006 S. 5-7: Summary of Papers, S. 13-125: 4 papers

No description available.

Submitted by FLAVIO MORAES (flafmoraes@yahoo.com.br) on 2010-08-19T14:21:41Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Flavio_Moraes.pdf: 462004 bytes, checksum: 123425d1cbdd74b47091293eaf1f296d (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Andrea Virginio Machado(andrea.machado@fgv.br) on 2010-08-19T16:53:50Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Flavio_Moraes.pdf: 462004 bytes, checksum: 123425d1cbdd74b47091293eaf1f296d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2010-08-20T14:46:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Flavio_Moraes.pdf: 462004 bytes, checksum: 123425d1cbdd74b47091293eaf1f296d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-07-18 / The purpose of this paper is to discuss in details the development of estimation methods of demand and supply parameters in di§erentiated products markets. The techniques presented consider explicitly the endogeneity of prices and can be applied to di§erent types of industries. The market demands system is derived from discrete choice models describing the behaviour of the consumer. This system is then combined with hypothesis about the cost functions and the behaviour of price determination by the Örms to generate equilibrium prices and quantities. The parameters to be estimated are those that determine the marginal costs of the Örms and the distribution of the consumersí tastes. This distribution determine elasticities and these, combined with the marginal cost and a hypothesis of Nash equilibrium, determine equilibrium prices. These elasticities and cost parameters play a central role in analysis of descriptive / Este trabalho tem por objetivo discutir detalhadamente o desenvolvimento de métodos de estimação de parâmetros de demanda e oferta em mercados de produtos diferenciados. As técnicas apresentadas consideram explicitamente a endogeneidade dos preços e podem ser aplicadas a diferentes tipos de indústrias. O sistema de demandas de mercado é derivado a partir de modelos de escolha discreta descrevendo o comportamento do consumidor. Esse sistema é então combinado com hipóteses sobre as funções custo e sobre o comportamento de determinação dos preços por parte das firmas para gerar preços e quantidades de equilíbrio. Os parâmetros a ser estimados são os que determinam os custos marginais das firmas e a distribuição dos gostos dos consumidores. Essa distribuição determina elasticidades e estas, combinadas com o custo marginal e com uma hipótese de equilíbrio de Nash na determinação de preços, determinam preços de equilíbrio. Essas elasticidades e parâmetros de custo desempenham um papel central em análises de questões descritivas e de mudanças no ambiente do mercado sob análise.

The theory of optimum currency areas states that the more two countries trade with each other, the better candidates they are for a currency union. In terms of the endogeneity argument, convergence follows from joining a currency union and the integration process itself turns the countries into optimal currency areas. The potential increase in trade is regarded as one of the most important benefits of a currency union. Indirect evidence from studies on the effect of exchange rate volatility on trade does not support this claim. Rose argues that the common currency effect on trade is separate from the effect of the elimination of exchange rate variability and finds a large positive effect of a currency union on trade. Although his methodology has met with criticism, most studies find a positive estimate. A meta-analysis of the studies confirms that a common currency has a statistically and economically significant trade-creating effect. / Economics / M.Com. (Economics)

This thesis investigates the sensitivity of derived monetary valuations of the well-being effects of non-market goods, by considering, in turn, the four components that contribute to these calculations. Comparisons are made to the current subjective well-being (SWB) literature by altering one component at a time in a willingness to pay (WTP) function, in addition to varying the estimator used when calculating WTP. The first component varied is the measure of income used; a more robust, up-to-date measure is proposed that takes into account household size, economies of scale and composition, plus other improvements over current income scaling approaches including equivalence scales. Secondly, anticipation and adaptation effects are examined, in order to allow for the dynamics of SWB in WTP valuations. Thirdly, due to the ordered nature of the dependent variable, the effects of both cardinal and ordinal models on WTP derivations are investigated. Such models include the ordered logit fixed effects (FE) model (see for example Das and Van Soest (1999), Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters (2004) and Baetschmann et al. (2011)). The final input to be varied is whether income endogeneity is accounted for. A control function approach is used in this case. A key finding is that all four inputs in the WTP calculation contribute significantly to the estimated WTP values. However, the degree to which each input influences the variation in WTP values differs substantially. The three main contributing factors to WTP variations are the income variable chosen, anticipation and adaptation effects, and controlling for endogeneity. Additionally, this thesis proposes a new way to define WTP that is also valid for ordered estimators. Whilst the standard WTP approach relies simply on coefficient ratios at a point in time, the method proposed here uses the finding that statistically significant anticipation and adaptation effects, along with adaptation to all non-market events (except for unemployment) suggest that there are concerns with taking WTP values as yearly valuations that assume constant effects on SWB. By instead defining WTP as the summation of the value of all WTP effects over all lag and lead effect periods, the total value of an event can be calculated. This definition presents further weaknesses of the original method by showing that because of significant lag and lead effects for events such as divorce and widowhood, these events have substantially larger WTP values than first thought. This leads to the major finding in this study that rank orders are not preserved when controlling for income endogeneity, even when comparing two model specifications that are identical in all other respects. Therefore, despite absolute WTP valuations appearing more similar for linear and ordered estimators when a more appropriate model specification is in place, the rank orders are affected. This finding argues against papers such as Powdthavee and van den Berg (2011) that find that rank orders are preserved for WTP valuations when modelling SWB. In conclusion, given rank orders are generally not preserved when a small change is made in the model specification, the validity of the WTP method is significantly reduced. Finally, the above methodology is applied to education, with the main contribution to the education literature being that the positive effects on SWB from education only exist in terms of lead effects.

Submitted by Victor Alexandre de Paula Lopes (victorplopes@uol.com.br) on 2013-09-11T20:43:53Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_VictorLopes_Final.pdf: 911842 bytes, checksum: 3710b25e11bb7233285c373138991e1e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Vera Lúcia Mourão (vera.mourao@fgv.br) on 2013-09-11T20:55:20Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_VictorLopes_Final.pdf: 911842 bytes, checksum: 3710b25e11bb7233285c373138991e1e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-09-11T20:55:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_VictorLopes_Final.pdf: 911842 bytes, checksum: 3710b25e11bb7233285c373138991e1e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-08-22 / This work had the aim of investigating the effect of policing over crime rates, analyzing both the municipalities of São Paulo as well the Brazilian states. The analysis of counties developed for four types of criminal practices classified as theft, burglary, robbery and vehicle theft and murders, while the second analysis of the Brazilian states was restricted to murders. The São Paulo counties crime data were extracted from the Bureau of Public Security of the State of São Paulo and the Brazilian state data has the Datasus/SIM as the main source. The model used is based on the economic theory of crime proposed by Becker (1968). The attempt of measuring the police effect over crime was carry on for 2 variables: the police force and the public security expenditure. Besides those variables, control variables were added to the regressions such as demographic and socio-economics, compiled from various sources. Models were estimated with fixed effects panel methodology, controlling for the simultaneity bias of the relationship between policing and crime in a two stages regression. The results, especially in the regressions for the Brazilian states, illustrate the positive bias of simultaneity between police and crime, once the firsts regressions, that did not control for this endogeneity, resulted in positive parameters, while all regressions in two stages resulted in negative coefficients for the police variable, which are significant when expenditure is used as public security measure. The São Paulo counties regressions, we found evidence that the existence of a municipality guard may have a reduction effect over thefts rate. / Neste trabalho teve-se como objetivo investigar o efeito do policiamento sobre os índices de criminalidade, analisando tanto os municípios do Estado de São Paulo quanto os estados brasileiros. A análise dos municípios paulistas aborda quatro tipos de práticas criminosas classificadas como roubo, furto, furto e roubo de veículos e homicídios dolosos, enquanto que a segunda análise, dos estados brasileiros, restringe-se aos homicídios dolosos. Os dados da criminalidade paulista foram extraídos da base de dados da Secretaria de Segurança Publica do Estado de São Paulo (SSPSP) e os homicídios estaduais tem como fonte o Datasus/SIM. O modelo utilizado se baseia na teoria econômica de explicação do crime como proposto por Becker (1968). Para se tentar medir o efeito do policiamento foram utilizadas tanto variáveis de efetivo policial quanto de gastos em segurança pública. Além das variáveis de policiamento, outras variáveis, de âmbito demográfico e socioeconômico, foram adicionadas as regressões como controle e foram extraídas de diversas fontes. Foram estimados modelos de painel de efeitos fixos, controlando-se, a partir de regressões em dois estágios, o viés de simultaneidade da relação entre policiamento e criminalidade. Os resultados, principalmente nas regressões para os estados brasileiros, conseguem ilustrar claramente o viés positivo da simultaneidade entre o policiamento e os indicadores de criminalidade, uma vez que as regressões que não controlam esta endogeneidade resultaram em parâmetros positivos, ao passo que todas as regressões em dois estágios resultaram em coeficientes negativos para a variável de Policiamento, sendo estes significativos quando o gasto em segurança é usado como medida de policiamento. Para os municípios paulistas foram encontradas foram encontradas evidências de que, quando um município passa a ter guarda municipal, ocorre redução significativa da taxa de furtos.

Cette thèse propose une approche quantitative intégrée pour l'analyse du rôle de la dimension spatiale de l'économie sur la demande énergétique des secteurs résidentiel et transports, ainsi que sur les émissions de carbone associées. L'approche comprend cinq étapes méthodologiques distinctes et consécutives. Après une méta-analyse des travaux économiques soulignant l'impact significatif de la structure spatiale sur la demande énergétique pour les transports (Chapitre 1), on développe et estime un modèle économétrique en coupe transversale sur la France afin d'explorer la nature causale de cet impact et d'en révéler les déterminants pour les deux secteurs, transports (Chapitre 2) et résidentiel (Chapitre 3). Ensuite, le cadre d'analyse économétrique est étendu pour intégrer la dimension longitudinale de la relation entre espace et énergie via l'effet de long terme des prix de l'immobilier sur la demande nationale de transports (Chapitre 4). L'identification d'un tel effet permet de dépasser les enjeux d'acceptabilité d'un espace entièrement planifié ainsi que ceux d'arbitrage entre bien-être individuel et maitrise des externalités négatives dues aux émissions de carbone. Enfin, l'ensemble des déterminants identifiés dans les étapes économétriques précédentes sont intégrés dans un cadre d'équilibre général calculable pour l'évaluation du potentiel de l'organisation spatiale en tant que levier additionnel de lutte contre le changement climatique (Chapitre 5). Les résultats concluent en faveur de la coordination de stratégies d'action diversifiées (axées sur les instruments de marché et/ou sur les interventions planifiées) pour l'atteinte d'objectifs énergie-climat à coûts maitrisés / This thesis develops an integrated framework to investigate the impact of the spatial dimension of the economy on the energy use from the transportation and buildings sectors, and on associated carbon emissions. The developed framework consists of five methodological steps based on econometric and quantitative approach. First, a meta-analysis is carried out to pool information across existing studies and yield new and preliminary economic insights. It is shown that spatial organization of economic activities and agents is significantly positively associated with the demand on energy for transport (Chapter 1). Next the causal impact of space on energy consumption is estimated using cross section data for the French households and further decomposed into specific determinants of the energy demand for both transport- (Chapter 2) and buildings- (Chapter 3) related activities. The econometric framework is then extended to account for the longitudinal (dynamic) dimension of the relation between space and sectoral energy use via the long-term impact of housing price on domestic transport demand (Chapter 4). Including information on housing price formation and dynamics allows encompassing broader welfare effects of spatial planning and policy than pure environmental ones. Finally, the set of determinants identified in the previous steps of the analysis are then embedded in a computable general equilibrium framework to assess the role of space and spatial planning as additional leverage to carbon pricing scheme for climate change control (Chapter 5). In the face of the energy and climate challenges ahead, this thesis quantitatively concludes in favor of taking broad and coordinated action. This comes down to identifying the available (market-based and/or regulatory) policy instruments and using them to achieve ambitious targets whilst driving down the cost of action