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The independence of Independent directors is an important factor to be considered when it comes to the corporate governance and especially when we have a concentrated shareholding pattern. The rights of the minority shareholders, maintaining transparency in the management of the company and policy decisions which are very much central part of running of any company. But in order to fulfil all these duties it is important that the independent director is independent free from any constraints of the Board of Directors or promoters.

Since the COVID pandemic began, data has been at the heart of debates over how to respond. However, it is not yet well understood how the lack of high-quality data affects policy decisions. In this paper, we focus on one specific aspect of the errors in COVID-19 data: delays in data reporting. We present one of the first lines of evidence for significant reporting delays in state-level COVID-19 data, and for heterogeneity in reporting delays across states and over time. We then use policy analysis of state-level interventions to illustrate how failing to consider reporting delays in data analysis can severely distort policymakers' decisions. Our analysis traces out heterogeneity in state reporting due to reliance on outdated fax-based reporting methods, and infers the severity of delay from the use of these methods and substantial short-term fluctuations in reported numbers. Our results show that accounting for potential reporting delays in statistical analysis leads to sharp changes in the estimated effects of almost all policies we investigate. It is critical to take potential reporting delays into consideration when analyzing reported COVID-19 data, and there are large gains from systematically addressing the root causes of reporting delays in IT systems in general.

After a purchase, customers increasingly feel more comfortable sharing their experience in the form of online product reviews, which help resolve future buyers' valuation uncertainty for that product. On the other hand, retailers offer lenient return policies that also help with customers' ex-ante valuation uncertainty. We consider a monopolist retailer that sells a new experience good over two periods and makes pricing and refund decisions. Because returns for these types of products are generally associated with lack of or inadequate functionality, a customer review mentioning a return experience generally creates a negative sentiment. Consequently, in this environment, a higher refund not only increases the volume of returns which need to be resold at a discounted price, but also creates more reviews that will have a negative sentiment. Similarly, a lower refund (and the associated lower price) would decrease the return volume and increase the fraction of customers writing positive reviews. Using a framework in which the negative reviews are weighed more heavily compared to the positive ones, surprisingly, we show that the retailer offers even a more generous refund compared to the benchmark setting with no reviews. In a duopolistic competition, the overall common sentiment of the on-line reviews are influenced by the refund and pricing decisions of both retailers; in other words, a customer with the same valuation purchasing the same product at different price and refund values will have a different ex-post utility and experience. Interestingly, we show that the retailers make their returns even more lenient compared to not only the benchmark setting with no reviews, but also the monopolist retailer with the same salvage value when their decision collectively determine the review sentiment. In both settings, we show that the refund increases with salvage value, valuation heterogeneity, second-period demand and decreases with first-period demand. We show that our results remain robust when i) consumers incur hassle cost ii) consumers have ex-ante valuation heterogeneity iii) the second-period valuation uncertainty is partially resolved with reviews.

During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) were the main pillar of defense to protect human society against the virus. While a variety of modeling studies try to quantify the effects of NPIs, this paper investigates when and how national and subnational governments take actions. We observe longitudinal changes in the global pattern of policymaking to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on stay-at-home orders. Drawing on data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, we show several important trends. First, while national governments exhibited a strong convergence in policy settings initially in March and April 2020, their cross-country policy heterogeneity has grown since May 2020, although neighboring countries often continue to display similarities in their approaches. Second, most governments that have implemented multiple stay-at-home orders over the course of the pandemic have become less sensitive to case levels (insofar as they implement subsequent restrictions at progressively higher case levels), apart from a small number of contrast cases which have mostly eliminated domestic community transmission. Third, pandemic policy decisions are increasingly made at subnational levels, however there is significant heterogeneity with regards to decision-making approaches even within the same country.

The EU is considering implementing a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. To inform the policy decision, we assess eight energy-intensive trade-exposed sectors in depth to distill what their characteristics imply for the shape of an ideal mechanism. The results highlight the difficulty of finding a single tool to address the needs of very different sectors.

Turkish abstract: Kisisel Verileri Koruma Kurulu bir cok farkli alanda ilke kararlar yayimlamis olup son olarak 18 Subat 2019 tarihli Resmi Gazete’de “Saglik verilerini Kanununun 6’nci maddesinde yer alan isleme sartlarindan birine dayanmadan ucuncu bir kisiye aktaran veri sorumlusu hakkinda Kisisel Verileri Koruma Kurulunun 05/12/2018 tarihli, 2018/143 sayili” kararini, “Kisisel verilere hukuka aykiri erisilmesini onleme yukumlulugunu yerine getirmeyen veri sorumlusu hakkinda Kisisel Verileri Koruma Kurulu’nun 26/07/2018 tarihli, 2018/91 sayili” kararini ve “Sicil dosyalarindaki kisisel verilerin, islenmelerini gerektiren sebeplerin ortadan kalkmamasi halinde, imha edilmemesi gerektigi hakkinda Kisisel Verileri Koruma Kurulu’nun 28/06/2018 tarihli, 2018/69 sayili” kararini ilke karar olarak yayimlamistir. Bu kararlarin ozelligi, dikkatli okundugunda, aslinda hukuk sistemimizde olmayan ancak GDPR ile AB’nin gundemine gelen “tasarlanmis ve onceden tanimlanmis veri koruma” ile karsilastirmali hukukta var olan ulkemizde bugune kadar kabul edilmeyen “risk sorumlulugu” kavramlarini hukuk sistemimize girmesinde oncu nitelikte olmasidir. Bu makalemde Kurul tarafindan yayimlanan soz konusu kararlari basta 6698 sayili Kanun olmak uzere konuyla iliskili diger mevzuatlari da goz onunde bulundurarak yukarida belirtmis oldugum kavramlar baglaminda ele alacagim. English abstract:The Personal Data Protection Board has published policy decisions in many different areas, and lastly, in the Official Gazette dated February 18, 2019, it was stated that the Personal Data Protection Board, on 05 December 2018 dated and numbered 2018/143, the decision of the Personal Data Protection Board dated July 26, 2018, numbered 2018/91 about the data controller who does not fulfill the obligation to prevent unlawful access to personal data, and the "personal data in the registry files, the reasons that require processing has published the decision of the Personal Data Protection Board dated June 28, 2018 and numbered 2018/69, stating that it should not be destroyed, in case it is not removed. The feature of these decisions, when carefully read, is that they are pioneers in the introduction of the concepts of "designed and predefined data protection", which are not actually in our legal system, but brought to the agenda of the EU with the GDPR, and "risk liability" concepts, which have not been accepted until today in our country, in comparative law. In this article, I will discuss the aforementioned decisions published by the Board in the context of the concepts I have mentioned above, taking into account the Law No. 6698 and other relevant legislation.

Evidence-based policymaking is the process of routinely using the most rigorous research to guide policy decisions. This conference presented spectrum policy researchers and practitioners from industry, academia, and government the opportunity to ask: does the world of spectrum policy use evidence-based processes? Or is spectrum policy still adhering to the cycle of “policy-based evidence-making” as pressure to meet spectrum demand mounts and complex technological challenges proliferate? Panelists and speakers offered a variety of perspectives in answer to these difficult questions, and challenged each other to identify exactly what evidence-based spectrum policy might look like.

We study the impact of mortgage lender concentration on household credit access. An extensive literature has found little to no relationship between local lender concentration and mortgage interest rates; consequently, federal regulators regard mortgage markets as national and view their local concentration as irrelevant to financial regulation and monetary policy. We argue that this view is incomplete, showing that although local concentration has no influence on interest rates, it strongly affects lending standards and upfront fees. In more concentrated areas, mortgage application rejection rates are higher (this effect is particularly pronounced for low-income, female, and racial-minority applicants), and the pool of originated mortgages is less risky in terms of both ex-ante credit scores and ex-post default. On the intensive margin, lenders charge higher fees in more concentrated markets: non-interest fees are on average 35 basis points higher in the 10% most concentrated markets than in the 10% least concentrated markets. Again, these effects are strongest among minority applicants. Our findings suggest that contrary to current policy, regulators concerned with credit access should regard mortgage markets as local when making policy decisions such as bank merger approvals.

We study the impact of monetary policy on the term structure of equity prices. We find that short-term and long-term equity prices respond in opposite ways to changes in monetary policy. Following an unanticipated cut in the target federal funds rate, short-term equity prices fall while long-term equity prices rise on average. This pattern could arise if policy decisions signal information about economic conditions. We examine this mechanism and find that the price change of the short-term equity asset in the 30-minute window around an FOMC announcement significantly predicts both macroeconomic growth and professional forecast errors over subsequent quarters.

The COVID-19 debate in the United States has become more contentious in late April and early May 2020. On one side are voices arguing there is no end in sight for the risks associated with COVID-19 and that lockdown and stay at home policies need to persist. A divergence of opinion regarding these policies formed largely along party lines. Blue state governors emphasized the importance of continued lockdown policies and social distance policies. Red state governors, while still being concerned about health and safety, were recommending the reopening of the U.S. economy. Recent studies such as Tellis, Sood and Sood (2020) have identified political affiliation as a primary driver for policy decisions in the COVID-19 era. This study examines the role of political affiliation both in the advice governors provide for lockdown vs reopen the economy. Also considered is the relative impact of jobs lost over COVID-19 deaths. The study concludes that red states are paying a much higher relative price than blue states. For example, Hawaii has lost over 9,000 jobs for each of the 13 jobs lost. South Dakota has lost over 7,000 jobs for each of the 10 deaths attributed to COVID-19. In addition, this paper examines three troubling aspects of the data being used to justify lockdown measures and social distancing. Another reason for the undue burden being borne by red states is the fact that more than 88 percent of COVID-19 cases have been in blue states. Finally, a brief consideration of the massive amounts of U.S. debt being accumulated by the Federal Reserve and the risks for the U.S. financial condition is also briefly discussed.

We model public choice in a number of cases where a government, since it cannot design an optimal policy as a whole, resorts to a sequential, myopic approach; and which is not free of error. We use this framework to explore governmental budgeting and welfare economics. We develop various examples that clarify how the introduction of such subjective and imperfect characteristics affect predictions concerning public choice. We then provide a model which integrates bounds errors and systematic (astray) errors. We argue that bounds errors and astray errors are inextricably intertwined - some level of bounded rationality is required for astray errors to emerge. We further extend this model to explore information lobbying and other types of external pressure; and we show that choosing leaders with high ability to choose, or with Madison's wisdom to discern, is important, especially in the case of policy decisions concerning dangerous products (e.g. assault rifles) and environments (e.g. COVID-19).

Russian Abstract: В работе выявлены исторически сложившиеся политические факторы, повлиявшие на дифференциацию регионов, и новейшие политические факторы, связанные с новыми рисками и угрозами устойчивому развитию регионов. Проанализированы методологические подходы к оценке регионального неравенства. Аргументирован вывод о разрыве теоретических изысканий и практики принятия решений в отношении политики уменьшения неравенства. Проведен сравнительный анализ современных политических решений по уменьшению регионального неравенства в России и Италии. Выявлено, что ряд решений, направленных на смягчение последствий неравенства и его уменьшение, еще более усиливают неравенство некоторых групп населения и некоторых территорий. English Abstract: The paper identifies historically established political factors that have influenced the differentiation of regions and the latest political factors connected to new risks and threats for the sustainable development of regions. Methodological approaches to assessing regional disparities have been analyzed. The conclusion about the gap between theoretical research and decision-making practice with regard to policies to reduce inequality is explained. A comparative analysis of modern policy decisions to reduce regional inequality in Russia and Italy has been made. It was found that a number of decisions aimed at mitigating the effects of inequality and its reduction further increase the inequality of some groups of the population and some territories.

Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), the Indian drug regulatory agency, granted accelerated approval to Glenmark Pharmaceuticals to market Favipiravir in mild to moderate COVID-19 on 19/06/2020, for restricted use. The patients should sign informed consent before receiving Favipiravir. Subsequently, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals issued a press release on 20/06/2020 stating that it was a landmark development for COVID-19 patients in India and the approval was backed by strong clinical evidence supporting the use Favipiravir in COVID-19. The authors carefully reviewed the press release issued by Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, product information and informed consent form available with Fabiflu® (Glenmark’s Favipiravir brand) and public notice issued by the Drugs Controller General of India. They have gone through the legal aspects of emergency approvals in India and USA, WHO’s clinical trial synopsis for assessing efficacy of anti-COVID drugs and emergency use authorization granted to Remdesivir in USA. They critically analyzed the efficacy data presented in favor of Favipiravir in this due process. Based on the review and analysis, the authors consider that the two crucial publications quoted in the product information, Chang C et al (2020) and Cai Q et al (2020), do not provide convincing evidence for efficacy of Favipiravir. The entire clinical data presented in the press release and product information do not offer undisputed support for the efficacy of Favipiravir in mild to moderate COVID-19. Moreover, it is the right time to take policy decision and frame guidelines on how to handle emergency approvals for medicinal products in grave situations like COVID-19 pandemic, in India.

In this paper we explore how macroeconomic theory might be augmented, and the practice of monetary policy better understood, if approached through ideas from social and psychological science. A modern, inflation-targeting central bank faces ‘radical’ uncertainty both in understanding the economy and in knowing how best to communicate policy decisions to influence behaviour. We make use of narrative theory to explore these challenges, drawing on fieldwork with the Bank’s regional Agencies and conversations with staff and policy-makers. We find that the intelligence gathered from conversations with businesses is uniquely useful for both the analysis and communication of monetary policy. Such intelligence embodies knowledge about the plans which are making the future. It also provides insights into how economic agents understand the economy they are creating. These insights can help the Monetary Policy Committee to communicate its policy as a narrative the public understands and commits to. We propose further research to advance and test these ideas.

Italian Abstract Nel sistema bancario italiano a sostegno della diversita di genere coesistono misure, non prescrittive, poste dalle regole di vigilanza e misure, assistite da sanzioni in caso di inosservanza, poste dalla disciplina sulle societa quotate. Si analizzano gli effetti di queste misure, rispettivamente, su banche non quotate e banche quotate, tra il 2014 e il 2018. Integrando, per le banche quotate, le informazioni disponibili negli archivi della Banca d’Italia con quelle originali raccolte dall’analisi dei curriculum vitae dei membri dei board e dalle relazioni sul governo societario, l’analisi mostra che all’aumento del numero delle donne nei board si sono associati anche un maggior coinvolgimento nelle dinamiche consiliari delle consigliere e caratteristiche piu marcate di indipendenza e competenza, che le rendono potenzialmente in grado di essere piu incisive nei meccanismi decisionali. Inoltre, l’incremento del numero e il miglioramento del ruolo sostanziale delle consigliere incidono positivamente su alcuni profili che sono ritenuti determinanti per l’efficacia dell’azione dei board dalla letteratura scientifica e dalla Banca d’Italia nelle Disposizioni di Vigilanza sul governo societario. Cio apre futuri spunti per analisi quantitative che qualifichino la relazione tra presenza femminile nei board e performance aziendali tenendo conto delle caratteristiche dei componenti donna e del ruolo da loro svolto. Sotto il profilo delle scelte di policy, le evidenze raccolte sono a favore del rafforzamento delle misure in essere per le banche non quotate. English AbstractTwo kinds of measures aimed at fostering gender diversity are applied in Italian banks: non-prescriptive measures set by supervisory rules, and binding measures set by the law on listed companies. This study analyses the effects of these measures on the composition of banks’ boards, between 2014 and 2018, comparing listed banks and unlisted banks. The analysis provides a complete picture of the impact of quotas for listed banks, by integrating supervisory information on all members of banks’ boards, gathered by the Bank of Italy, with additional information on board members’ backgrounds collected from their CVs, and with information on the structure and functioning of boards collected from the reports on corporate governance. In particular, the analysis shows that, between 2014 and 2018, the increase in the number of women on banks’ boards was associated with the enhanced independence and competence of female directors and with their stronger involvement in the work of the boards. Furthermore, the analysis shows that these improvements have had a positive impact on those board characteristics that the scientific literature and the Bank of Italy consider to be key for the effectiveness of the board in fulfilling its mandate. In terms of policy decisions, the results of the analysis suggest that the existing measures need to be strengthened for unlisted banks.

Federal agencies’ cost-benefit analyses do not systematically account for nonhuman animals’ interests. This omission matters. Many nonhuman animals have interests that most moral and legal systems recognize as mattering, and cost-benefit analysis drives many regulatory decisions that have enormous impacts on many billions of these animals. That omission creates a regulatory blind spot that is untenable as a matter of morality and of policy. This article advances two claims related to valuing nonhuman animals in cost-benefit analyses for policies that substantially impact them. The Weak Claim argues that such analyses may value nonhuman animals; the Strong Claim argues that they must. In regulatory-law terms, the Weak Claim asserts that including this kind of valuation in a cost-benefit analysis is not arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable; the Strong Claim asserts that omitting this valuation is such. After describing these two claims, the article then discusses a range of options agencies have to value nonhuman animals, including, most preferably, variations on the value of a statistical life, interspecies comparisons, and, as a bare minimum, breakeven analysis. It briefly assesses these and other possible methodologies against identified criteria for a viable methodology. It also discusses various considerations related to implementing this kind of valuation. It finishes by showing, as a sort of “proof of concept,” that even a simple breakeven analysis from affected animals’ perspective could plausibly paint even a thoroughly investigated policy decision—specifically the policy decision at issue in Entergy Corp. v. Riverkeeper, Inc.—in an informative new light.

As the world falls into crisis mode, it becomes the time to make policy decisions that steer the course of a nation and push it across to the other side. During the Ukraine Conflict, many countries swooped in as the saving grace to Ukraine against the militaristic actions taken by the Russian Federation. This event study demonstrates the changes in the Global Economic Policy Uncertainty do occur during this window of time. However, these returns are not far enough from their mean to conclusively deem them as abnormal changes caused by this geopolitical crisis.

We evaluate a program in Pakistan that equips government health inspectors with a smartphone app which channels data on rural clinics to senior policy makers. The system led to rural clinics being inspected 104% more often after 6 months, but only 43.8% more often after a year, with the latter estimate not attaining significance at conventional levels. There is also no clear evidence that the increase in inspections led to increases in general staff attendance. In addition, we test whether senior officials act on the information provided by the system. Focusing only on districts where the app is deployed, we find that highlighting poorly performing facilities on a dashboard viewed by supervisors raises doctor attendance by 75%. Our results indicate that technology may be able to mobilize data to useful effect, even in low capacity settings.

When would the COVID-19 outbreak peak? What is the transmission-rate? How long will the outbreak last? As the COVID-19 pandemic grows around the world, governments and businesses are interested in the answers to these questions. While sophisticated epidemiological studies have appeared in the press, majority of the world cannot run these models, interpret the numbers, and translate them to policy decisions. Consequently, governments and businesses must rely on scientific advisory bodies to enact policies. The wait between translation of scientific insights to actionable policies are leading to loss of precious time. Our work shows that using a classical new-product forecasting model from the marketing domain, policy makers can generate directional outlooks in the early period of the outbreak, especially when lack of data prevents sophisticated epidemiological models to be deployed. With as little as 2-4 weeks of new case data, this model can be implemented on a spreadsheet and answer all the three questions for an outbreak at a country, region, or county level. We test the model on the outbreak data from Hubei province, Korea, Italy, France, India and United States and find meaningful directional outlooks that can be translated to effective policies.

I evaluate the impact of BNDES disbursements on Brazilian commercial banks’ disbursement using balance-sheet data for the period of 2002-2016. Using dynamic panel data techniques, I find BNDES disbursement for both investment in innovation and fixed capital investments crowded-in commercial banks’ disbursement. Further, the results obtained considering the distribution before and after 2008, suggest the beginning of the crowding-in impact together with the countercyclical role adopted by the bank at the beginning of the financial crisis.

Most commentators claim that age is a determinant of deaths from Co-Vid 19. This paper suggests flaws in this analysis. While co-morbidities associated with age may be contributory, there is no data showing that oldsters are more vulnerable to death from CoVid 19 than they are for dying generally. In fact, it appears that the aged population is less likely to die from CoVid than from Influenza and that the healthy oldster may be able to survive CoVid better than the healthy youngster. I further claim that CoVid policies targeting the elderly have unnecessarily contributed to their deaths. Thus rationing policies depriving the elderly of respirators and imposing restrictive lockdowns themselves contributed to the very assumptions on which these policy decisions were based.

In this article, we aim to stress that the fight of COVID-19 needs clear and timely data collection plans. Without data to support decisions, we can only hope for a fortunate guess. We need synergies between different research communities, policy-makers, Official Statistics, health institutions, and private companies which may provide non-conventional source of data. After having discussed policies and data collection initiatives in several European countries, we argue that on the one hand policy decisions are often not driven by the data. On the other hand, data collection either does not occur in a timely manner or it does not enable researchers to generalise the sample results to the entire population.

Natural disasters are a source of economic risks in many countries, especially in smaller and lower-income states, and ex-ante preparedness is needed to manage the risks. The paper discusses sovereign experience with disaster insurance as a key instrument to mitigate the risks; proposes ways to judge the adequacy of insurance; and considers ways to enhance its use by vulnerable countries. The paper especially aims to inform policy decisions on disaster insurance. Through simulations of natural disasters and various insurance options, we find that sovereign decisions on optimal risk transfer involve balancing trade-offs between growth and debt, based on government risk preferences and country risk exposure. The choice of optimal insurance for smaller countries turns out to be more constrained by cost considerations due to their higher exposure, likely resulting in underinsurance; donor grants could help them achieve a more optimal protection. We also find that optimal insurance packages are those that are least costly relative to expected payouts (i.e. have the lowest insurance multiple), which are also the packages that insure less severe (more frequent) disasters.

Policymaking during a pandemic can be extremely challenging. As COVID-19 is a new disease and its global impacts are unprecedented, decisions need to be made in a highly uncertain, complex and rapidly changing environment. In such a context, in which human lives and the economy are at stake, we argue that using ideas and constructs from modern decision theory, even informally, will make policymaking more a responsible and transparent process.

Economists have long known the sports industry is unique. However, the rest of the Sport Management community may not fully appreciate the breadth of topics economists have identified as being “peculiar” to sports, nor “origin story” of the economic debate over how the uniqueness of sports should be assessed for policy decisions. Nonetheless, it is recognized that sports economics plays a critical role in sport management. This paper aims to provide an overview of the economics considered unique to sports and the history of the debate as to what to do about that uniqueness, as well as to reassess, where necessary, whether the economics really are all that unique after all.

India has embarked on a brisk pace of highway development following the policy change in the mid-1990s that gave a high priority to highway development in India. The National Highway Development Programme (NHDP) was launched in 1997 to develop a large highway network in a relatively short period of time. The Public Private Partnerships (PPP) model was adopted for highway development in India, given the intrinsic advantages associated with it over conventional models. Pursuant to the policy decision, a large number highway development contracts were awarded under the Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) variant of PPP model and other variants with further development of policy’s Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer (DBFOT) models were awarded and finally now National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has adopted Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM) for highway development at rapid pace. This paper first discuss the various features of HAM in road sector of India, later it compares the Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM) with the conventional DBFOT model of road development so as to find out the advantages and risk associated with HAM both for client & contractor prospective, which will help the stake holders to analyze the latest trends of HAM projects awarded by NHAI.

Nowadays, in Europe, women do not have lower education as compared to men, but they are often less advantaged in their careers. The study aimed to reveal the association between gender attitudes, achievement motivation and realisation of this achievement motivation among the working women in Europe. According to multilevel regression modelling on European Social Survey (2010) data on employed individuals, women and men with more egalitarian gender attitudes in general have higher achievement motivation and are more likely to be able to influence policy decisions in their organisations. The impact of achievement motivation on the possibility to influence decisions was very strong in all the countries. The models with cross-level interaction showed that in most cases the association between the three aspects are more pronounced in countries with higher female participation in the labor market.

The 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act significantly revised long-standing rules regarding the tax treatment of many employer provided in-kind benefits. Instead of including the value of these benefits in the recipients’ taxable income, for the most part the new rules disallow employers a deduction for the cost of providing the affected benefits. This article argues that the two components of this legislative scheme – relying on cost of provision as the measure of taxable income and on imposing the nominal tax obligation on providers rather than recipients – are distinct policy decisions. It argues that the better approach would be to require employers to allocate their costs of providing benefits among recipients of those benefits.

This paper surveys the landscape of empirical studies on cross-border trade in knowledge that use IPRs data. Based on a thorough search of the literature, we identify and categorize the types and uses of IPRs data. Our discussion critically evaluates whether these data support the empirical findings in the studies by identifying where IPRs data are particularly useful and where these data have limitations. The final section of the paper discusses the potential value of making greater use of IPRs assignment data. The goal is to provide a reference to help policymakers evaluate the trade in knowledge literature, particularly the interpretation of IPRs-based evidence for policy decisions.

Economic policy uncertainty (EPU) relates to ambiguity surrounding possible changes in government policy and their associate impact on firm performance. This uncertainty places additional stress on economic agents and has implications for the global economy via delays in firm investment and hiring, and postponement of household consumption. We utilise the EPU measure of Baker et al. (2016) to investigate whether financial market uncertainty is influenced by policy uncertainty across the G7. Our empirical results show that financial market uncertainty (implied volatility) increases as economic policy uncertainty increases (and the economy weakens). This relationship holds even after controlling for macroeconomic state variables and country/time fixed effects, and is consistent for monthly and daily data frequency. The correlation of political uncertainty among countries varies over time, increasing in tranquil times of low EPU, and sharply decreasing during times of crisis. We also show that US policy uncertainty has an economic and statistically significant impact on global financial market uncertainty, a spill-over effect that is consistent with the important role that US policy decisions play in the global economy.

This paper investigates the effects on traffic safety and the associated economic savings of the introduction of RITEVE, the Periodical Technical Inspections (PTI) in Costa Rica. Since there were no national estimates for the costs of crashes in Costa Rica available, this study derives and evaluates in a first step different ways to estimate these costs. Subsequently these are used for a cost-benefit analysis to bench-mark the policy decision to introduce periodical technical inspections. The findings show that there are considerable economic gains from having such a system in place with high cost-benefit ratios. The study shall give insights and encourage other countries to introduce or consider such measures as they can be an important step toward more road safety and reduce the cost of crashes for society and the economy.

We analyze the impact of a tax on sweetened beverages using a unique dataset of prices, quantities sold, and nutritional information across several thousand taxed and untaxed beverages for a large set of stores in Philadelphia and its surrounding area. We find the tax is passed through at an average rate of 97%, leading to a 34% price increase. Demand in the taxed area decreases by 46% in response to the tax. A large amount of cross-shopping to stores outside of Philadelphia offsets more than half of the reduction in sales in the city and decreases the net reduction in sales of taxed beverages to only 22%. We find no significant substitution to bottled water and modest substitution to untaxed natural juices. We show that tax avoidance through cross-shopping severely constrains revenue generation and nutritional improvement, thus making geographic coverage an important policy decision.

Passwords are the primary and widely used single and multiple point authentication scheme adapted across the globe. However, implemented password practices and policies varies across different platforms which creates potential security vulnerabilities. For our research, we studied the password policies of twenty-two universities and analyzed 1.3 billion email addresses and passwords obtained from Exploit.in and Anti-Public combination lists. We analyzed the potential reusability of the students, staffs, faculty, and other associated users' credentials for each of the universities' domains and checked whether they meet the specific requirements of each password policy. Through our analysis, we found several policy decisions adopted by educational institutes that may decrease security related to account credentials and make actionable recommendations for patching such security loopholes. We aim at limiting the reuse of passwords by implementing adaptive policies which will enable protection of data theft across any educational institute wide network. Our recommendations can be generalized to improve the policies adapted by several organizations in general, especially with accounts that are deemed to be highly valued, ex. email, banking, medical portal, etc.

What leads a donor to change the trajectory of its aid policy? Surprisingly little is known about the political dynamics that drive the aid policy decision making process. Notwithstanding recent advances, the role public opinion plays in shaping aid policy remains poorly understood, as does the role political actors play in initiating such change. The role of advocacy efforts in driving change are also unsettled. This paper engages in these ongoing debates by drawing on the agenda-setting literature to highlight the crucial role political attention plays in shaping the political dynamics of the aid policy subsystem. The central claim the paper makes is that instances of high-level aid policy change are driven by top-down, political actor-led processes, rather than bottom-up processes triggered by changes in public attitudes towards aid, as is commonly assumed. This argument is substantiated theoretically by outlining how the politics of attention play out in the aid policy subsystem, and empirically by examining the dramatic aid spending expansions that occurred roughly in parallel in Australia and the United Kingdom during the mid-2000s and into the 2010s. Finally, suggestions are made as to how aid advocates can contribute to cultivating top-down aid policy change.

I analyze settings where a policy maker needs information that financial market traders have in order to implement her optimal policy, and market prices may reveal this information. Policy decisions, in turn, affect asset values, possibly punishing the informed for trading on information. Applications include central bank policy reactions to asset prices or regulator reactions to bond prices. In the first part without noise, I derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the possibility of fully revealing equilibria, which identifies all situations where learning from prices for policy purposes works, and where it does not. Full revelation may be impossible because the pricing problem is a self-defeating prophecy, impairing incentives to trade on information. I demonstrate how the condition can be used for asset design that supports information revelation by markets. In the second part, I develop a noisy model of trader-policy maker interaction. Noise can solve the problem of self-defeating prophecies in specific situations, but in general it may still occur. Using a novel solution approach, I derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of revealing equilibria in a general class of noisy equilibria that allows for nonlinear price and policy functions.

We extend the protection for sale model of Grossman and Helpman (1994) by introducing a general model of monopolistic competition with variable markups and incomplete pass-through. We show that the structure of protection emerging in the political equilibrium not only depends on the weight attached by the government to consumer welfare when making its policy decision, but also on the degree of market power of firms and on the terms-of-trade variations due to the degree of pass-through. Our results highlight the importance of demand characteristics in shaping the structure of protection and are consistent with the occurring of protectionism also in unorganized industries.

This study examines the causes of federal deficits from three vantage points. Over three-fourths of the projected long-term federal fiscal imbalance derives from policies enacted between 1965 and 1972. The long-term imbalance is driven primarily by growth in Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the new health-insurance exchanges established as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Most Medicare and Medicaid costs derive from the programs' initial enactment in 1965 during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. They, along with Social Security, were the objects of significant benefit expansions in 1972 during the Nixon administration. Responsibility for the federal deficit in 2013 (the second vantage point) is more diffuse. The current deficit exists largely because of growth in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending, in combination with recent expansions of income security programs and lower-than-typical revenue collections. A third vantage point assigns responsibility for federal deficits according to their absolute levels during elected officials' terms of office. These deficits have been substantially higher during the current presidential administration than in any other period studied. Each of these perspectives represents a legitimate way of understanding the federal budget.

This paper provides a new and unique look at the dynamics and persistence of historical house prices in the US and the UK using fractional integration techniques not previously applied to housing markets. We use annual data from 1830 to 2016 for the US and 1845 to 2016 for the UK, which provides a much longer perspective on the behavior of house prices than is common in the literature, where most empirical work uses data starting from the 1980s or later. Unlike previous research, we consider two components of persistence of house prices: the component associated with the long-run trend (i.e. at frequency zero) and the component associated with the cycle (i.e. at frequency away from zero). We find convincing evidence that in the UK, housing markets incorporate two distinct poles in house price dynamics, at the zero (long-run trend) and non-zero (cyclical) frequencies. In contrast, we fail to find evidence of cyclical persistence for the US. For the sub-samples, which account for a structural break in each series, an important difference is the asynchronous pattern of the breaks, an indication of heterogeneity in the house price dynamics of the two countries and a sign that national rather than global events have played an important role. Although the house price movements of the last decade are dramatic, the greatest structural changes in the overall nominal and real price dynamics of the UK and the US appear to have taken place much earlier, in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the UK, and in the mid-1950s and early 1970s in the US. An important result, common to the whole and sub-samples, is that long-run persistence plays a greater role than cyclical persistence in explaining the dynamics of house prices in both countries. These findings have substantial implications for policy decisions. Shocks affecting the long-run component will persist for a long time, while those affecting the cyclical component will not. Thus, policymakers should adopt stronger policies with respect to long-run house price movements to create an environment whereby housing markets can readily revert to their original trends.

Social Security’s Trust Fund is projected to run out in 2034. As policymakers consider restoring financial balance to the program, one topic that may be discussed is how to structure any tax increases. Understanding why Social Security requires a higher payroll tax than a funded retirement program for a given level of benefits is a crucial first step in informing this discussion. The current “pay-as-you-go” approach is the result of the policy decision made decades ago to pay benefits far in excess of contributions for early cohorts of workers. By paying benefits in excess of contributions to early cohorts, the nation essentially gave away the Trust Fund that would have accumulated and, importantly, gave away the interest on those contributions. Thus, the payroll tax must cover not only the required contribution but also the missing interest. This paper addresses alternative ways to pay for this Missing Trust Fund, including a comparison of the size of the required changes and their distributional implications.

Massive student protests started in 2006 as a result of several issues that the previous administrations had not tackled Students marched to protest against high tuition and enrollments costs, low education quality and limited employment opportunities. High school students protests in 2006 and university student protests in 2011 impacted policy debates that leaned toward free education in order to reduce social segmentation (World Politics Review, 2017). In this scenario, it becomes important to identify the most important issues around educational policy in Chile and evaluate how the system has evolved in the last decades. In this paper I survey the literature to better understand how has access to higher education evolved in Chile and how the different policy decisions around it have shaped tertiary education to what it is now.

This paper proposes a novel method for identifying unconventional monetary policy shocks. The method incorporates the movement of two unconventional monetary policy indicators, namely, the size and composition of the central bank’s balance sheet, after the bank makes policy decisions. Under some restrictions imposed in the vector autoregressive model, we identify two unconventional policy shocks, quantitative and qualitative shocks, as news shocks that best portend the current and future paths of the unconventional policy indicators in response to the policy shocks. The qualitative easing shocks have expansionary effects on the real economy, while the quantitative easing shocks have contractionary effects.

We study the pricing and return policy decisions of an omnichannel retailer serving customers who differ in how they realize their uncertain valuation for a product—by inspecting in store before purchase or by purchasing online and possibly returning misfit products. Customers may return misfit products either to stores for a full refund or online as per the firm’s return policy. We model prices to be identical across channels, allow crosschannel returns, and endogenize customers’ purchase and return decisions, capturing typical features of an omnichannel setting. Our analysis helps explain why some omnichannel firms choose full refunds, whereas others charge a fee for online returns. We find that omnichannel firms with good salvage partners for online returns (e.g., Nordstrom) as well as those with more store-based customers (e.g., Macy’s) should offer full refunds. Similarly, firms are incentivized to offer full refunds for products that customers are more likely to inspect in store (e.g., Express for footwear). In contrast, firms with a significant store network and better in-store salvage opportunities (e.g., J.C. Penney) might be better off charging a fee for online returns in order to nudge customers to return in store. Finally, an omnichannel firm should be cautious both in making the return process more convenient and in improving accessibility to its stores, because these seemingly beneficial policies, if combined with a partial-refund policy, could undermine the firm’s overall profit. This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management.

A fundamental policy decision every government must make is whether, and to what extent, to manage the exchange rate. This note discusses some of the basic costs and benefits of fixed and floating exchange rates. Excerpt UVA-F-1746 Jan. 5, 2015 Fix or Float A fundamental policy decision every government must make is whether, and to what extent, to manage the exchange rate. This note discusses some of the basic costs and benefits of fixed and floating exchange rates. Fixed Exchange Rates: The Pros The benefits of a fixed exchange rate include the following: . . .

Do electoral incentives affect immigration policies? I study this question in the setting of Italian municipalities making decisions about the reception of refugees. The localized control of the reception policy, combined with the exogenous timing of policy decisions and staggered elections, enables me to study the effect of electoral incentives on the reception of refugees. Although municipalities receive fiscal grants for hosting refugees, I find that the probability of opening a reception centre is 24 per cent lower for municipalities in the final year of the electoral term (i.e. just before new elections), compared to municipalities in other years of the term. The results suggest that electoral incentives may induce politicians to make decisions that are potentially detrimental from an economic perspective.

Does the effect of monetary policy depend on the macroeconomic information released by the central bank? Because differences between central bank’s and private agents’ information sets affect private agents’ interpretation of policy decisions, this paper aims to investigate whether the publication of macroeconomic information by the central bank modifies private responses to monetary policy. We assess the non-linear effects of monetary shocks conditional on the Bank of England’s macroeconomic projections on UK private inflation expectations. We find that inflation projections modify the impact of monetary shocks. When contractionary monetary shocks are interacted with positive (negative) projections, the negative effect of policy on inflation expectations is amplified (reduced). This suggests that providing guidance about central bank future expected inflation helps private agents’ information processing, and therefore changes their response to policy decisions.

This project presents the analytical framework for macroprudential policy (AFMaP) developed at the Financial Stability Directorate of the Banque de France that could be used to calibrate macroprudential instruments and to provide analytical support to macroprudential policy decision making. In this paper, we present and compare several possible methodologies to calibrate macroprudential capital buffers that rely both on structural models and macroprudential stresstesting tools.

The aim of the Shadow Economy Index for the Baltic countries is to measure the size of the shadow economies in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as to explore the main factors that influence participation in the shadow economy. We use the term “shadow economy” to refer to all legal production of goods and services produced by registered firms that is deliberately concealed from public authorities. The calculation of the Index draws on methodology developed by Putniņs and Sauka (2015) and is published annually since 2010 to provide policy makers with information for making justified policy decisions, as well as to foster a deeper understanding of entrepreneurship processes in the Baltic countries. This report analyses the dynamics of the shadow economy in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania during the period 2009-2016. It also provides evidence on the main factors that influence entrepreneurs’ involvement in the shadow economy and provides some policy recommendations. We also measure the amount of unregistered businesses in the Baltic countries.

Machine Learning (ML) can be a powerful tool to inform policy decisions. Those who are treated under a programme might have different propensities to put into practice the behaviour that the policymaker wants to incentivize. ML algorithms can be used to predict the policy-compliers; that is, those who are most likely to behave in the way desired by the policymaker. When the design of the programme is tailored to target the policy-compliers, the overall effectiveness of the policy is increased. This paper proposes an application of ML targeting that uses the massive tax rebate scheme introduced in Italy in 2014.

The use of benefit-cost analyses by criminal justice researchers has slowly been increasing over the past 30 years. While still in its infancy, benefit-cost analyses of criminal justice policies have recently moved from the academic arena to actual use by policy makers. The growing use of benefit-cost analysis in crime policy tends to be lauded by economists; however, criminologists and legal scholars are less than unanimous in their views. A recent issue of Criminology and Public Policy on the “Role of the Cost-of-Crime Literature,” highlights this controversy. Two main themes can be distilled from critiques of the literature: first, the considerable uncertainty that exists in cost and benefit estimates; and second, the fact that important social costs are not being taken into account in current models. A related critique is that current methodologies to estimate the cost of crime are affected by income; bringing with it a concern that criminal justice policies based on a benefit-cost analysis will favor the rich. This research note addresses these broad questions about the role of benefit-cost analysis in the criminal justice policy arena and attempts to clear up some misunderstandings on the methodologies used to estimate the cost of crime. I also highlight some of the most important gaps in the literature for those interested in helping to improve the state-of-the-art in estimating the “cost of crime.” Perhaps equally important, I hope to demystify benefit-cost analysis and unmask it for what it really is – an important tool that can help policy makers systematically and transparently assess and compare options with the goal of making better policy decisions.

The economy of most developing countries, especially those in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been subjected to periodic fluctuations in the world market since the implementation of structural adjustment program (SAP) due to the impact of trade liberalization. This has no doubt affected the structure of imports in this sub region since then. This paper provides an empirical study of the structure of imports in Sub-Saharan Africa from 1995 to 2012. In its methodology, trend analysis is used to profile the structure of imports in SSA. Evidence from the analysis showed that the description of the trend of imports and its determinants in the Sub-Saharan Africa has particularly enabled policy makers to be conversant with the structure of imports for better policy decision that will drive domestic production and trade efficiency. The study among others thus recommends a stabilization policy that will reduce the dependence on imports and reduce import demand in SSA.