RAND Journal of Economics articles from September 2008

RAND Journal of Economics archives from September 2008

Academic freedom, private-sector focus, and the process of innovation.
September 22, 2008... We develop a model that clarifies the respective advantages and disadvantages of academic and private-sector research. Rather than relying on lack of appropriability or spillovers to generate a rationale for academic research, we emphasize...

What changes energy consumption? Prices and public pressures.
September 22, 2008... Policymakers often seek to limit energy prices following market shocks, and instead issue public appeals to reduce demand. This article presents new evidence on how price changes and conservation appeals affect energy consumption, using...

Delegation and incentives.
September 22, 2008... This article analyzes the relation between authority and incentives. It extends the standard principal-agent model by a project selection stage in which the principal can either delegate the choice of project to the agent or keep the authority....

Illinois Walls: how barring indirect purchaser suits facilitates collusion.(Hanover Shoe Inc. v. United Shoe Machinery Corp.)(Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois)(Law overview)
September 22, 2008... In its landmark ruling in Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois in 1977, the US. Supreme Court restricted standing to sue for recovery of antitrust damages to direct purchasers. However, antitrust damages are typically (in part) passed on to...

Quantifying the benefits of entry into local phone service.(Company overview)
September 22, 2008... Local telecommunications competition was an important goal of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. We evaluate the consumer welfare effects of entry into residential local telephone service in New York State using household-level data from...

An optimal auction with identity-dependent externalities.
September 22, 2008... We analyze the problem of a seller of multiple identical units of a good who faces a set of buyers with unit demands, private information, and identity-dependent externalities. We derive the seller's optimal mechanism and characterize its main...

Differentiated networks: equilibrium and efficiency.
September 22, 2008... We consider a model of price competition in a duopoly with product differentiation and network effects. In the efficient allocation, both networks are active and the firm with the highest expected quality has the largest market share. To...

Buy-out prices in auctions: seller competition and multi-unit demands.
September 22, 2008... Online auction sites often enable sellers to add a buy-out price. In one-shot auctions, this has been motivated by appeal to impatience or risk aversion. We offer additional justification in a dynamic model, by showing that an early seller has...

Do report cards tell consumers anything they don't already know? The case of Medicare HMOs.(Health Maintenance Organizations)
September 22, 2008... Estimated responses to report cards may reflect learning, about quality that would have occurred in their absence ("market-based learning,"). Using, panel data on Medicare HMOs, we examine the relationship between enrollment and quality before...

A retail benchmarking approach to efficient two-way access pricing: no termination-based price discrimination.
September 22, 2008... We study access pricing rules that determine the access prices between two networks as a linear function of marginal costs and (average) retail prices set by both networks. When firms compete in linear prices, there is a unique linear rule that...

Takeovers, market monitoring, and international corporate governance.
September 22, 2008... We theoretically and empirically examine the role of international takeover markets in curtailing dominant shareholder moral hazard for firms with higher value-added from acquisitions. In equilibrium, such firms strategically list shares in the...

Domestic airline alliances and consumer welfare.
September 22, 2008... This article investigates the consumer welfare consequences of the recent code-share agreement between Continental Airlines and Northwest Airlines. We develop a discrete choice model based on individual flight characteristics. This structural...

RAND journal of economics turnaround times.(Statistical table)
September 22, 2008... RAND Journal of Economics Turnaround Times First Decision (%) Month 0-3 4-6 7-9 Submitted Months Months Months July 2003 29 29 24 ...