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One of the factors influencing the emergence of disparities between rural and urban regions is the varying level of financial inclusion of the population. The system of microfinancing is becoming an important mechanism against poverty and social exclusion in Europe. However, there is available very limited legal, regulatory and historical information on the microfinance system in the Czech Republic. As a result, microfinance institutions are absent and small entrepreneurs tend to use expensive consumer credit products, thereby increasing the risk of over-indebtedness. The aim of this research is to examine the repayment performance of the European microfinance institutions with increased share of clients from rural areas. Based on an empirical statistical analysis of an unique European microfinance institutions´ database, we are presenting evidence that suggests that microfinance systems perform better in rural than in urban areas. This finding is strongly recommended for consideration in the development of policies to guide legal frameworks regarding microfinancing.

When alternative market institutions are available, traders have to decide both where and how much to trade. We conducted an experiment where traders could decide to trade either in an (efficient) double-auction institution or in a posted-offers one, which should favor sellers. When sellers face decreasing returns to scale (increasing production costs), fast coordination on the double-auction occurs, with the posted-offers institution becoming inactive. In contrast, under constant returns to scale, both institutions remain active and coordination is slower. The reason is that, in a finite-horizon setting, sellers trade off larger efficiency in a market with dwindling profits for biased-up profits in a market with vanishing customers. Hence, our results indicate that efficiency alone might not be sufficient to guarantee coordination on a single market institution if the distribution of the gains from trade is asymmetric. Trading behavior approaches equilibrium predictions (market clearing) within each institution, but switching behavior across institutions is explained by simple rules of thumb, with buyers chasing low prices and sellers considering both prices and trader ratios., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Does hosting a sports team boost the visibility of a city among tourists? I test this proposition by looking at the effect of playing soccer’s UEFA Champions' League on air travel. I compare routes across cities that had their teams randomly drawn into the same group in the first phase of the competition to routes across cities hosting teams randomly allocated to different groups. The average effect of being drawn into the same group is between 5% and 8% more arrivals for the 3 months following the group stage, a period which coincides with a break in the competition. The first appearance of a team in the competition has a larger impact on air travel, providing suggesting evidence of diminishing returns of exposure.

We investigate the implications of Salience Theory for the classical preference reversal phenomenon, where monetary valuations contradict risky choices. It has been stated that one factor behind reversals is that monetary valuations of lotteries are inflated when elicited in isolation, and that they should be reduced if an alternative lottery is present and draws attention. We conducted two preregistered experiments, an online choice study ($$N=256$$N=256) and an eye-tracking study ($$N=64$$N=64), in which we investigated salience and attention in preference reversals, manipulating salience through the presence or absence of an alternative lottery during evaluations. We find that the alternative lottery draws attention, and that fixations on that lottery influence the evaluation of the target lottery as predicted by Salience Theory. The effect, however, is of a modest magnitude and fails to translate into an effect on preference reversal rates in either experiment. We also use transitions (eye movements) across outcomes of different lotteries to study attention on the states of the world underlying Salience Theory, but we find no evidence that larger salience results in more transitions.

Social media platforms constitute an indispensable tool for social movements to mobilise public opinion to promote social change. To date, however, little is known about the extent to which activist and political claims formulated on social media echo what the general public thinks about gender equality. This is especially important given that social movements often use social media to develop their actions and to build long-standing support around particular claims. Our data collection is based on relevant actor groups and keywords surrounding the women’s strike that took place in Switzerland in June 2019. We investigate which actor groups were involved in gender equality discussions online, what were the prominent and polarising ideologies, and what were the main framings of the debate. Findings indicate that organizational committees and their followers were the most active, followed by political actors. We also observed a polarisation effect on social media between left and right-wing oriented actors, which is more pronounced than trends drawn from opinion surveys. We further find that social media discussions were organised along a continuum, which ranges between calling for attention and discussing concrete policy measures.

Several European countries have followed the USA in introducing prospective payment for hospitals with the expectation of achieving cost efficiency gains. This article examines whether theoretical expectations of cost efficiency gains can be empirically confirmed. In contrast to previous studies, the analysis of hospitals in Switzerland provides a comparison of a retrospective per diem payment system with a prospective global budget and a payment per patient case system. Using a sample of approximately 90 public financed Swiss hospitals during the years 2004–2009 and Bayesian inference of a standard and a random parameter frontier model, cost efficiency gains are found, particularly with payment per patient case. Prospective payment, designed to put hospitals at operating risk, is more effective in terms of cost reduction than the retrospective alternative. However, hospitals are heterogeneous with respect to their production technologies, making a random parameter frontier model the superior specification for Switzerland.

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of tons of solar panel waste are going to be produced yearly just in the United States from the year 2035 on, most of which could be recycled. This paper estimates the amount of scrap material to be produced from solar photovoltaic panels decommissioning and determines the optimal date and location to establish centralized or regional recycling centers to better deal with this issue on its early stages, between the years 2024 and 2042. Solar panel recycling could become a multi-billion USD industry over that time, however the main challenge today is to keep its overall costs down while allowing for the majority of panels to be recycled. Real Options Analysis is deployed to assess the optimal solution to face this challenge. This approach allows determining the optimal time and location to invest in recycling centers and the best strategy to undertake among different alternatives. The goal of this paper is to set a cornerstone for dealing with solar panel decommissioning and recycling at the end of their useful life in the United States, and we also determine a model that accounts for optimal location of the recycling facilities, which is a novel approach. This paper also offers a new application of the ROA modeling for estimating the optimal investment date for solar panel recycling plants from the investor perspective of the U.S. government in Washington D.C. Further applications of the model proposed in this work could allow for a similar analysis at an international level.

We investigate how the selection process of a leader affects team performance with respect to social learning. We use a lab experiment in which an incentivized guessing task is repeated in a star network with the leader at the center. Leader selection is either based on competence, on self-confidence, or made at random. Teams with random leaders do not underperform compared to rather competent leaders, and they even outperform teams whose leader is selected based on self-confidence. The reason is that random leaders are better able to use the knowledge within the team, i.e., the wisdom of crowds. We can show that it is the declaration of the selection procedure which makes non-random leaders overly influential. The central position in the communication network already makes a leader highly influential. Knowing that the leader is not selected at random pushes team members to weigh the leader’s opinion even more. We set up a horse race between several rational and naive models of social learning to investigate the micro-level mechanisms. We find that overconfidence and conservatism contribute to the fact that too confident leaders mislead their team in finding good estimates.

Being at the forefront in the public discussion about sustainable finance (SF) has become a competitive advantage for financial corporations. This study investigates op-eds by representatives of major global investment banks and asset managers (Black Rock, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, UBS) published between 2018 and 2019 in the Financial Times regarding SF. Using an in-depth textual analysis approach, five overarching frames emerged: (1) climate crisis consensus and the urgency to act, (2) sustainable finance as powerful leverage, (3) sustainability in the name of profit and capital growth, (4) need for transparency, quantification, and datafication, and (5) shifting responsibilities. The results imply that SF is used as a public relations tool to promote new, lucrative financial activities that fit within the prevailing neoliberal market model. Rather than providing alternatives to the prevailing financial markets, the investment industry shifts responsibilities to the government, businesses and individuals to fight climate change.

Introduction Venetoclax in combination with rituximab (VEN + R) demonstrated prolonged overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) for patients with relapsed/refractory (R/R) chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in comparison to standard chemoimmunotherapy [bendamustine + rituximab (BR)]. We conducted a cost-effectiveness and budget impact analysis comparing VEN + R versus six comparators from the Swiss healthcare payer perspective. Methods A three-state partitioned survival model, developed in accordance with NICE and ISPOR decision modelling guidelines, was adapted to Switzerland. Model inputs were informed by the MURANO trial (survival data, patient characteristics), publicly available Swiss sources (drug prices, inpatient and outpatient costs), Swiss National Institute of Cancer Epidemiology and Registration data (incidence and prevalence values), and Swiss medical expert feedback. We used published (dis-)utility values and adverse event probabilities. Results Over a lifetime, VEN + R resulted in an expected gain of 2.60 quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) per patient and incremental costs of Swiss Francs (CHF) 147,851 compared to BR, leading to an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of CHF 56,881/QALY gained. Other treatment strategies (for example ibrutinib versus VEN + R) resulted in higher costs and lower QALYs. Results were not different for subgroups of patients with/without deletion of chromosome 17p/tumour protein 53 mutation. In scenario analysis, changes in post-progression treatment costs demonstrated a high impact on results. We estimated an expected value of perfect information of CHF 3,318/patient. A moderate VEN + R uptake was estimated to save CHF 12.3 million during 5 years. Conclusions Using a threshold of CHF 100,000 per QALY, VEN + R was projected to be cost-effective vs BR.

This paper contributes to quantifying the biological implications of short-run climatic shocks and economic fluctuations in developing countries. Relying on a unique economic, climatic and anthropometric Japanese data covering the period from 1872 to 1917 (corresponding to the early phase of Japanese industrialization), we estimate the impact of yearly and monthly regional climate anomalies and yearly nationwide business cycle reversals on the average height of Japanese conscripts and its dispersion. Our estimations detect that climate anomalies during gestation and early infancy induced a decrease in average height observed at adulthood, as well as an increase in height dispersion, indicating greater welfare inequalities. These results indicate that pre-Anthropocene climate shocks had irremediable welfare implications for the poorest segments of the population in lower income countries.

Differences in cognitive sophistication and effort are at the root of behavioral heterogeneity in economics. To explain this heterogeneity, behavioral models assume that certain choices indicate higher cognitive effort. A fundamental problem with this approach is that observing a choice does not reveal how the choice is made, and hence choice data is insufficient to establish the link between cognitive effort and behavior. We show that deliberation times provide the missing link, in the form of an individually-measurable correlate of cognitive effort. We present a model of heterogeneous cognitive depth, incorporating stylized facts from the psychophysical literature, which makes predictions on the relation between choices, cognitive effort, incentives, and deliberation times. We confirm the predicted relations experimentally in different kinds of games. However, we also show that imputing cognitive depth from choices alone can lead to erroneous conclusions when the features leading to iterative thinking are not salient. Revised version, April 2019

This study examines how running performance (intensive runs, total distance covered) of football teams in previous games impacts betting markets as it relates to expected win probability. Theoretically, bookmakers could interpret team’s running performance as effort or fatigue, with sports science studies suggesting that distance covered reflects effort and intensive runs signal fatigue. Using data from the 2011/12-2018/19 seasons of the German Bundesliga, beta regression models reveal that bookmakers interpret team’s running performance in previous games contrary to physiological explanations in sports sciences. Tests of market efficiency incorporating these findings do not find a profitable betting strategy for bettors.

Assessing whether investments result in the desired non-financial performance is a key concern in the fast growing field of impact investments, including microfinance. The social performance of the...

Platforms are growing increasingly powerful, raising questions about whether their power might be exercised with bias. While bias is inherently difficult to measure, we identify a context within the music industry that is amenable to bias testing. Our approach requires ex ante platform assessments of commercial promise – such as the rank order in which products are presented – along with information on eventual product success. A platform is biased against a product type if the type attains greater success, conditional on ex ante assessment. Theoretical considerations and voiced industry concerns suggest the possibility of platform biases in favor of major record labels, and industry participants also point to bias against women. Using data on Spotify curators’ rank of songs on New Music Friday playlists in 2017, we find that Spotify’s New Music Friday rankings favor independent-label music, along with some evidence of bias in favor of music by women. Despite challenges that independent-label artists and women face in the music industry, Spotify’s New Music curation appears to favor them.

We attempt to identify and measure potential knowledge spillovers in the French urban transport sector, which is strongly regulated and where a few large corporations are in charge of operating several urban networks simultaneously. We build and estimate a structural cost model where the service is regulated by a local government and is provided by a single operator. Knowledge spillovers are directly linked to the know-how of a specific corporation, but they also depend on the incentive power of the regulatory contract which shapes the effort of the local managers. Exerting an effort in a specific network allows a cost reduction in this network, but it also benefit other networks that are members of the same corporation. Our model provides us with estimates of the operators' absorptive capacity, which is their in-house knowledge power in order to optimally benefit from spillovers. We find that diversity of knowledge across operators of a same corporation improves absorptive capacity and increases the flow of spillovers. Simulation exercises provide evidence of significant reductions in total operating cost following the enlargement of industrial groups.

We estimate weight and BMI values based on height, chest circumference, and mid upper arm circumference measures of Swiss conscripts in the city of Zurich for each year between 1904 and 1932. Height, chest circumference, and mid upper arm circumference were measured each year from 1904 to 1951. Body weight is available from 1933 to 1951. We used prediction equations from the literature, and also developed our own equations, which we tested and validated on the dataset from 1933 to 1951. We used a representative sample of usually 19-year-old Swiss males (N = 88,792, coverage > 88 %). There was an increase in average height and chest circumference between 1904 and 1951. During both world wars, chest circumference, mid upper arm circumference, weight, and BMI decreased, while height stagnated. Overall mean weight and BMI increased from 1904 to 1951, but decreased during the Great Depression. After World War II, weight quickly returned to the pre-war and pre-Great Depression level, while BMI had not reached the 1933 level by 1951. Average weights of the lower and middle socioeconomic groups were catching up with average weight of the upper socioeconomic group from 1904 to 1951. The convergence in height is less pronounced. Finally, we show that it is possible to accurately predict mean weight and BMI from other anthropometric measurements. We suggest that our estimation approach could be replicated for other historical populations to obtain more information on how nutritional status changed over time.

When investigating the well-being of a society, the living conditions of females are of special importance, not only due to the immediate impact for those directly involved, but also because of the potential intergenerational effects. Studying the dimorphism in the mean height helps to depict variation in the basic biological sex difference due to gender-related factors that potentially determine net nutrition. To expand knowledge of diachronic development in Swiss well-being conditions we investigate changes in the height of adult females born 1770-1930, and compare the series with data on contemporary males from the same sources: We employ a sample of N = 21'028 women and N = 21'329 men from passport-, convict-, maternity hospital-, and voluntary World War II army auxiliary records. The secular height trend is found both in males, from the 1870s/1880s, and in females starting with the 1840s/1850s birth cohorts. During the decades under study, mean height increased from 157 cm to 164 cm in female and 167 cm to 172 cm in male passport applicants, 154 cm to 159 cm in female and 167 cm to 169 cm in male convicts, 159 cm to 163 cm in female auxiliaries, and 155 cm to 159 cm in females giving birth in the maternity hospital of Basel. Because females seem to have started the secular trend in height earlier than their male contemporaries, the height dimorphism decreased during the second half of the 19th century. Differences between socio-economic status (SES) and data sources are found in both females and males: Women with low SES were significantly shorter than those of the other SES groups in all sources (on average 1.40 cm, p-values between 0.00 and 0.03). In men we found individuals of upper SES to be significantly taller (on average 1.96 cm, p-value = 0.00-0.10). Concerning differences between the sources, overall, passport applicants were the tallest for men as well as women; in females the individuals measured at the maternity hospital and in prison were the shortest. The variances across the datasets highlight the importance of considering different sources to depict average living conditions. Noteworthy is the finding that the diverse sources under study all show the same trajectory of increasing mean height over the course of the 19th century. In the long run, the improving net nutritional status of Swiss females may have been one of the contributors behind the general rise in well-being of the country's population from the later 19th century onwards.

This paper discusses why mathematical economists of the early Cold War period favored formal-axiomatic over behavioral choice theories. One reason was that formal-axiomatic theories allowed mathematical economists to improve the conceptual and theoretical foundations of economics and thereby to increase its scientific status. Furthermore, the separation between mathematical economics and other behavioral sciences was not as clear-cut as often argued. While economists did not modify their behavioral assumptions, some acknowledged the empirical shortcomings of their models. The paper reveals the multifaceted nature of rational choice theories reflected in the changing interpretations and roles of the theories in those early years.

In this paper we evaluate the heterogeneous effects of online copyright enforcement. We ask whether the unexpected shutdown of the popular file hosting platform Megaupload had a differential effect on box office revenues of wide-release vs. niche movies. Identification comes from a comparison of movies that were available on Megaupload to those that were not. We show that only movies that premiere in a relatively large number of theaters benefitted from the shutdown of Megaupload. The average effect, however, is negative. We provide suggestive evidence that this result is driven by information externalities. The idea is that online piracy acts as a mechanism to spread information about product characteristics across consumers with different valuations for the product. Our results question the effectiveness of blanket public anti-piracy policy, not only from a consumer perspective, but also from a producer perspective.

There is substantial evidence that women tend to support different policies and political candidates than men. Many studies also document gender differences in a variety of important preference dimensions, such as risk-taking, competition and pro-sociality. However, the degree to which differential voting by men and women is related to these gaps in more basic preferences requires an improved understanding. We conduct an experiment in which individuals in small laboratory "societies" repeatedly vote for redistribution policies and engage in production. We find that women vote for more egalitarian redistribution and that this difference persists with experience and in environments with varying degrees of risk. This gender voting gap is accounted for partly by both gender gaps in preferences and by expectations regarding economic circumstances. However, including both these controls in a regression analysis indicates that the latter is the primary driving force. We also observe policy differences between male- and female-controlled groups, though these are substantially smaller than the mean individual differences-a natural consequence of the aggregation of individual preferences into collective outcomes.The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10683-021-09741-8.

We examine whether the moment just before the half-time break is a particularly good time to score a goal. Using detailed data from the top five European football leagues between the 2013-2014 and 2017-2018 seasons, we exploit the quasi-random occurrence of goals scored just before and just after the half-time break. In the former situation, the game is exogenously interrupted by a break immediately after the goal, whereas in the latter situation, the game continues without interruption. We show that in the case of a goal being scored just before halftime, the scoring team benefits more from the half-time break than the conceding team.

In European club football, decision makers often rely on recent match outcomes when evaluating team performance, even though short-term results are heavily influenced by randomness. This can lead to systematic misjudgments. In this article, we propose a complementary approach for performance evaluation. We build upon the concept of expected goals based on quantified scoring chances and develop a chart that visualizes situations in which a team’s true performance likely deviates from the performance indicated by match outcomes. This should prevent clubs from making flawed decisions when match outcomes are misleading due to the influence of random forces.

We study how the scope of negative externalities from market activity affects the willingness of market actors to exhibit social responsibility. Using the laboratory experimental paradigm introduced by Bartling et al. (Q J Econ 130(1):219–266, 2015), we compare the voluntary internalization of negative social impacts by market actors in cases where the negative externality is diffused among many subjects or is concentrated on a single subject. We (1) replicate earlier results demonstrating substantial degrees of market social responsibility and (2) find that the willingness of market actors to act pro-socially is only slightly affected by whether the impacts are concentrated or diffused.

Rounding is a common phenomenon when subjects provide an answer to an open-ended question, both in experimental tasks and in survey responses. From a statistical perspective, rounding implies that the measured variable is a coarsened version of the underlying continuous target variable. Since the coarsening process is non-random, inference from rounded data is generally biased. Despite the potentially severe consequences of rounding, little is known about its causes. In this paper, we focus on subjects' uncertainty about the target variable as one potential cause for rounding behavior. We present a novel experimental method that induces uncertainty in a controlled way, thus providing causal evidence for the effect of subjects' uncertainty on the extent of rounding. Then, we specify and estimate a mixture model that relates uncertainty and rounding. The results suggest that an increase in the exogenous level of uncertainty translates into higher variance of the subjects' beliefs, which in turn results in more rounding.

This article examines Cornelia Woll’s book on the “power of collective inaction” in which she argues that banks could extract favorable bailouts in the recent global financial crisis by remaining collectively inactive. Collective inaction forces governments to bear the brunt of the crisis resolutions. While this book provides an illuminating account of banking bailouts in several countries, its argument neglects the power of governments and of individual banks. Governments did not have to wait for banks’ (in)action but could impose punitive conditions on banks. And the resistance by banks did not originate from an incapacity to act collectively but from deliberate actions by individual banks to obstruct government intrusion. Rather than inaction on the part of banks, these interactions between governments and banks involved deliberate action and their outcome depended on more conventional notions of state-business power relations.

We look at gender differences among adolescents in Sweden in preferencesfor competition, altruism and risk. For competitiveness, we explore two different tasks that differ in associated stereotypes. We find no gender difference in competitiveness when comparing performance under competition to that without competition. We further find that boys and girls are equally likely to self-select into competition in a verbal task, but that boys are significantly more likely to choose to compete in a mathematical task. This gender gap diminishes and becomes nonsignificant when we control for actual performance, beliefs about relative performance, and risk preferences, or for beliefs only. Girls are also more altruistic and less risk taking than boys.

The house money effect predicts that individuals show increased risk-seeking behavior in the presence of prior windfall gains. Although the effect’s existence is widely accepted, experimental studies that compare individuals’ risk-taking behavior using house money to individuals’ risk-taking behavior using their own money produce contradictory results. This experimental field study analyzes the gambling behavior of 917 casino customers who face real losses. We find that customers who received free play at the entrance showed not higher but significantly lower levels of risk-taking behavior during their casino visit, expressed through lower average wagers. This study thus provides field evidence against the house money effect. Moreover, as a result of lower levels of risk seeking, endowed customers yield better economic results in the form of smaller own-money losses when leaving the casino.

Building on critical literature on corporate sustainability, we add a perspective thus far only scarcely addressed: the toxicity of financial practices and products generating systemic risk. We start with illustrative examples setting the stage for defining toxic assets and practices as revealed after the onset of the financial crisis precipitated by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. To illustrate corporate toxicity we use the ‘Global 100 Index’ from ‘Corporate Knights’ to show which (mostly financial) scandals or bailout cases were detected at corporations awarded a position in this prestigious sustainability rating. Next, we present examples of toxic products (Naked Credit Default Swaps and structured products) and practices (securitization and ratings). Based on the examples we derive the concept of ‘financial toxicity’ adopted from pharmacology as a meta-criterion, which, as we argue, should be added to the ESG (environment, society, governance) universe as well as to corporate social responsib...

Data from the National Nutrition Survey for adults (menuCH) allow for the assessment of recent trends in measured height by year of birth for adult men and women from a population-based sample. The aim of the present study was to test if – similarly to conscripts and schoolchildren – the Swiss adult population stopped growing taller in recent birth cohorts, and if so, when the change occurred. We found that – when self-reported – height was overestimated on average by about 1 cm in both men and women, with an increasing tendency with older age and with shorter height. Average measured height increased by 4.5–5.0 cm for adult men and women between the birth years 1937–1949 and 1990–1995. However, this increase was not linear, and starting with the 1970s birth years, average height plateaued on a level of about 178 cm for men and 166 cm for women. Being born outside of Switzerland or adjustment for potential shrinkage with increasing age did not change this temporal pattern. We also found shorter average height among participants from the Italian part of Switzerland and those with lower educational level. It remains unclear if the phenomenon of stabilisation affects all subgroups of the Swiss population. Future studies should combine a larger number of population-based surveys to enhance the sample size, for example, for people with a migration background or with different educational levels. Continuing growth monitoring needs to be performed to assess if environmental and demographic changes with an impact on body growth (adverse trends in nutrition, increasing social inequality in health, ethnic composition of the population) positively or negatively influence future trends in average height., Economics and Human Biology, 33, ISSN:1570-677X, ISSN:1873-6130

We use the theory of coherent measures to look at the problem of surplus sharing in an insurance business. The surplus share of an insured is calculated by the surplus premium in the contract. The theory of coherent risk measures and the resulting capital allocation gives a way to divide the surplus between the insured and the capital providers, i.e., the shareholders., Risks, 7 (1)

We analyze the best price clauses (BPCs) of online travel agents (OTAs) using meta-search price data of nearly 30,000 hotels in different countries. We find that BPCs influence the pricing and availability of hotel rooms across online sales channels. In particular, hotels publish their offers more often at Booking.com when the OTA does not use the narrow BPC, and also tend to promote the direct online channel more actively. Moreover, the abolition of Booking.com’s narrow BPC is associated with the direct channel of chain hotels having the strictly lowest price more often.

In this article, a complete history of Charlemagne's mortal remains is outlined, including the first publication reporting on the most recent tomb opening in 1988. Besides exclusive bioarchaeological details - namely that his body was indeed mummified - a full clinical interpretation of the Emperor's final illnesses and death is given: a likely combination of osteoarthritis, gout and a recurrent fever caused by an infectious disease.

This year's International Labour Conference from 2nd to 18th June adopted a declaration of principles concerning fundamental workers' rights. What can the World Trade Organisation do to help establish these rights, and what economic effects can be expected?

This paper explores the joint extreme-value behavior of discontinuous random variables. It is shown that as in the continuous case, the latter is characterized by the weak limit of the normalized componentwise maxima and the convergence of any compatible copula. Illustrations are provided and an extension to the case of triangular arrays is considered which sheds new light on recent work of Coles and Pauli (Stat Probab Lett 54:373–379, 2001) and Mitov and Nadarajah (Extremes 8:357–370, 2005). This leads to considerations on the meaning of the bivariate upper tail dependence coefficient of Joe (Comput Stat Data Anal 16:279–297, 1993) in the discontinuous case., Extremes, 13 (1), ISSN:1386-1999, ISSN:1572-915X

This contribution seeks to measure preferences for health insurance of individuals with and without chronic conditions in two countries, Germany and the Netherlands. The objective is to test the presumption that preferences between these two subpopulations differ and to see whether having a chronic condition has a different influence on preferences depending on the country. The evidence comes from two Discrete Choice Experiments performed in 2005 (Germany) and 2006 (the Netherlands, right after a major health reform). Results point to an even more marked resistance against restrictions of physician choice among individuals with chronic conditions in both countries. Thus, the alleged beneficiaries of Disease Management Programs would have to be highly compensated for accepting the restrictions that go with them. This contribution seeks to measure preferences for health insurance of individuals with and without chronic conditions in two countries, Germany and the Netherlands. The objective is to test the presumption that preferences between these two subpopulations differ and to see whether having a chronic condition has a different influence on preferences depending on the country. The evidence comes from two Discrete Choice Experiments performed in 2005 (Germany) and 2006 (the Netherlands, right after a major health reform). Results point to an even more marked resistance against restrictions of physician choice among individuals with chronic conditions in both countries. Thus, the alleged beneficiaries of Disease Management Programs would have to be highly compensated for accepting the restrictions that go with them.

Managed care (MC) imposes restrictions on physician behavior, but also holds promises, especially in terms of cost savings and improvements in treatment quality. This contribution reports on private-practice physicians' willingness to accept (WTA, compensation asked, respectively) for several MC features. In 2011, 1,088 Swiss ambulatory care physicians participated in a discrete choice experiment, which permits putting WTA values on MC attributes. With the exception of shared decision making and up to six quality circle meetings per year, all attributes are associated with non-zero WTA values. Thus, health insurers must be able to achieve substantial savings in order to create sufficient incentives for Swiss physicians to participate voluntarily in MC plans.

z-Tree (Zurich Toolbox for Ready-made Economic Experiments) is a software for developing and conducting economic experiments. The software is stable and allows programming almost any kind of experiments in a short time. In this article, I present the guiding principles behind the software design, its features, and its limitations.

Prices are macro-observables of a financial market that result from the trading actions of a huge number of individual investors. Major stylized facts of empirical asset returns concern (i) non-Gaussian distribution of empirical asset returns and (ii) volatility clustering, i.e., the slow decay of auto- correlations of absolute returns. We propose a model for the aggregate dynamics of the market which is generated by the coupling of a `slow' and a `fast' dynamical component, where the `fast' component can be seen as a perturbation of the `slow' one. Statistical properties of price changes in this model are estimated by simulation; sample size is 4 × 106. It is shown that increasing the decoupling of these two dynamical levels generates a crossover in the distribution of log returns from a concave Gaussian-like distribution to a convex, truncated Levy-like one. For a sufficiently large degree of dynamic decoupling, the return trails exhibit pronounced volatility clustering.

In this paper we discuss the implementation of general one-factor short rate models with a trinomial tree. Taking the Hull-White model as a starting point, our contribution is threefold. First, we show how trees can be spanned using a set of general branching processes. Secondly, we improve Hull-White's procedure to calibrate the tree to bond prices by a much more efficient approach. This approach is applicable to a wide range of term structure models. Finally, we show how the tree can be adjusted to the volatility structure. The proposed approach leads to an efficient and exible construction method for trinomial trees, which can be easily implemented and calibrated to both prices and volatilities.

We show that the optimal asset allocation for an investor depends crucially on the decision theory with which the investor is modeled. For the same market data and the same client data different theories lead to different portfolios. The market data we consider is standard asset allocation data. The client data is determined by a standard risk profiling question and the theories we apply are mean–variance analysis, expected utility analysis and cumulative prospect theory. For testing the robustness of our results, we carry out the comparisons for alternative data sets and also for variants of the risk profiling question.

It has been argued persistently that economic models frequently suffer from poor empirical performance because they rely upon empirically inadequate behavioral foundations, i.e. theories of rationa...

In this paper the solutions to several variants of the so-called dividend-distribution problem in a multi-dimensional, diffusion setting are studied. In a nutshell, the manager of a firm must balance the retention of earnings (so as to ward off bankruptcy and earn interest) and the distribution of dividends (so as to please the shareholders). A dynamic-programming approach is used, where the state variables are the current levels of cash reserves and of the stochastic short-rate, as well as time. This results in a family of Hamilton---Jacobi---Bellman variational inequalities whose solutions must be approximated numerically. To do so, a finite element approximation and a time-marching scheme are employed.