The design of insurance coverage for medical products under imperfect competition

This paper studies the design of health insurance with ex post moral hazard, when there is imperfect competition in the market for the medical product. Various scenarios, such as monopoly pricing, price negotiation or horizontal differentiation are considered. The insurance contract specifies two types of copayments: an ad valorem coinsurance rate and a specific (per unit) copayment. By combining both copayment rates in an adequate way the insurer can effectively control the producer price, which is then set so that the producer’s revenue just covers fixed costs. Consequently, a suitable regulation of the copayment instruments leads to the same reimbursement rule of individual expenditures as under perfect competition for medical products. Additional rationing of coverage because of imperfect competition as advocated by Feldstein (1973) is thus not necessary. Interestingly the optimal policy closely resembles a reference price mechanism in which copayment rates are low (possibly negative) and coinsurance rates are high

The complex relationship between households’ climate change concerns and their water and energy mitigation behaviour

Climate change will require commitment by all levels of the community, but there is still uncertainty surrounding the best way to influence individual mitigation behaviour. This study analyses household survey data on water and energy climate change mitigation behaviour from eleven OECD countries in 2011, and provides new evidence of a form of maladaptation, namely a complex rebound relationship between climate change attitudes and mitigation behaviour. First, results confirm other studies that climate change concerns and economic incentives (in terms of electricity and water charges) positively influence mitigation behaviour. Second, we find that the more costly, in terms of time and/or money, are the mitigation actions of a household, the more likely undertaking such actions directly lessens respondents’ climate change concerns. This negative rebound effect is more likely to occur in ‘environmentally-motivated’ households, who are more likely to have stated they believe human actions can help mitigate climate change. Conversely, economic incentives in driving energy and water pro-environmental behaviour work better in non-environmentallymotivated households. This highlights that a portfolio of policies is needed to drive mitigation behaviour

Dynamics of cash holdings, learning about profitability, and access to the market

We develop a dynamic model of a firm whose shareholders learn about its long-term profitability, face costs of external financing and costs of holding cash. Cash management policy generates a corporate life-cycle with two stages: a "probation stage" where the firm has no access to the capital markets, pays little in dividends, increases its cash target levels and a "mature stage" where the firm does have access to external financing, pays dividends, decreases its cash target levels. The model provides new insights on the corporate propensity to save and the firm's value dynamics when its profitability is difficult to ascertain

Matching, cooperation and HIV in the couple

We examine how cooperation within the couple protects the partners from HIV infection using survey data from southern Africa. The respective impacts of education and cooperation on HIV risk for both wives and husbands are estimated in a joint estimation model. We fully discuss and test the conflictual approach of the couple against a cooperative framework derived from a simple matching model. Our findings suggest that the larger the number of decisions husbands and wives jointly make, the less likely it is that they are infected with HIV. This is robust to assuming that cooperation is endogenous in the wife equation. Freedom and trust are also significantly related to the likelihood of infection for both partners while the women's views about whether marital violence is acceptable are not. These effects may come from a reduced likelihood of extramarital affairs among men and women living in more cooperative partnerships

On Representation Formulas for Long Run Averaging Optimal Control Problem

We investigate an optimal control problem with an averaging cost. The asymptotic behaviour of the values is a classical problem in ergodic control. To study the long run averaging we consider both Cesàro and Abel means. A main result of the paper says that there is at most one possible accumulation point – in the uniform convergence topology – of the values, when the time horizon of the Cesàro means converges to infinity or the discount factor of the Abel means converges to zero. This unique accumulation point is explicitly described by representation formulas involving probability measures on the state and control spaces. As a byproduct we obtain the existence of a limit value whenever the Cesàro or Abel values are equicontinuous. Our approach allows to generalise several results in ergodic control, and in particular it allows to cope with cases where the limit value is not constant with respect to the initial condition

National identity and judicial interculturality in Ireland: The Dáil Courts experience (1919--1924)

Due to its past colonial status, Ireland has strived to oppose its national identity to the heritage of British rule as it gradually severed ties with its former rulers. Nationalism being a political notion, it is normally reflected in the country's institutions, the latter getting their legitimacy by constitutional means, and this is how the national/foreign, and identity/interculturality dichotomies were shaped. This paper will examine a particular case of these oppositions in the context of the first Republic (1919–1923) whose judicial institutions competed with the existing British court system during the War of Independence, under the tutelage of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's political and philosophical critique of the State (A Thousand Plateaus, 1980). It will deal with the setting up of a system of courts, called the Dáil Courts, and how they came to represent some sort of Irish identity in the making, something that Deleuze and Guattari called a " becoming " , while aggregating both British and foreign legal features. The fate of this singular system will first be examined as the setting up of a Deleuzian war machine challenging the rigid structure of the colonial State apparatus (1919–1920); the second part will analyse how the new court system efficiently replaces the old institutions by adopting an unusual " rhizomatic " structure (1920–1921); finally, the third part will show how the Dáil Courts were absorbed by the Irish Free State's Apparatus of Capture that reinstated a more familiar, traditional Common Law system (1921– 1924). En raison de son statut d'ancienne colonie, l'Irlande n'a cessé d'opposer son identité nationale à l'héritage britannique au moment où le pays coupait les liens institutionnels avec l'ancien occupant. Le nationalisme, notion politique, se reflète dans la mise en place d'institutions autonomes légitimées par l'adoption d'une constitution, construisant ainsi des dichotomies du type national/étranger, identité/ interculturalité. Le présent article examinera le cas particulier de la mise en place d'un système judiciaire autonome lors de la formation de la première république irlandaise pendant la guerre d'indépendance (1919–1923), celui des Dáil Courts. Ces dernières participèrent de la création d'une identité politique irlandaise, d'un « devenir » agrégeant des éléments du droit irlandais et anglais, pour reprendre le concept élaboré par Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari dans leur critique politique et philosophique de l'Appareil d'État (Mille Plateaux, 1980). Le destin de ce système singulier sera tout d'abord analysé comme la mise en place d'une « machine de guerre » deleuzienne défiant la structure rigide de l'appareil d'État colonial (1919– 1920). La deuxième partie examinera comment ce nouveau système judiciaire a remplacé efficacement les institutions existantes en adoptant une forme plus inhabituelle, plus «rhizomatique» (1920–1921). Enfin, la troisième partie montrera la manière dont l'Irish Free State, issu du Traité Anglo–Irlandais de 1921, a capturé et absorbé les Dáil Courts et a adopté un système judiciaire plus traditionnel calqué sur celui de la Common Law (1921–1924)