Partial Privatization, Foreign Competition, and Tariffs Ranking

This paper compares the optimal tariff and revenue maximizing tariffs in the presence of partial privatization. We show that in an international mixed oligopoly with asymmetric costs and partial privatization, when the marginal cost of the privatized firm exceeds a critical value, maximum -revenue tariff is higher than optimum-welfare tariff. Otherwise, optimum-welfare tariff is higher than maximum-revenue tariff. In addition, associating with the market-opening policy, the domestic government should accelerate privatization path and impose a lower welfare-optimum tariff rate.mixed oligopoly, partial privatization, tariff ranking

Does compensative subsidy alleviate pollutant emission and improve welfare under crossindustry pollution?

This paper establishes a cross-industry pollution externality model under centralized labor union. In delineating the motivations of a benevolent government, it might be possible to tax part of the welfare gains and use the revenue to compensate the affected polluting industry for the damage costs, thereby improving welfare. We show that the magnitude of marginal pollution plays a critical role. When the marginal pollution is large, the government should tax the pollution firm to reduce the pollution. However, when the marginal pollution is small, the government should subsidize the polluted firm to increase output and enhance consumer surplus

Is deck B a disadvantageous deck in the Iowa Gambling Task?

BACKGROUND: The Iowa gambling task is a popular test for examining monetary decision behavior under uncertainty. According to Dunn et al. review article, the difficult-to-explain phenomenon of "prominent deck B" was revealed, namely that normal decision makers prefer bad final-outcome deck B to good final-outcome decks C or D. This phenomenon was demonstrated especially clearly by Wilder et al. and Toplak et al. The "prominent deck B" phenomenon is inconsistent with the basic assumption in the IGT; however, most IGT-related studies utilized the "summation" of bad decks A and B when presenting their data, thereby avoiding the problems associated with deck B. METHODS: To verify the "prominent deck B" phenomenon, this study launched a two-stage simple version IGT, namely, an AACC and BBDD version, which possesses a balanced gain-loss structure between advantageous and disadvantageous decks and facilitates monitoring of participant preferences after the first 100 trials. RESULTS: The experimental results suggested that the "prominent deck B" phenomenon exists in the IGT. Moreover, participants cannot suppress their preference for deck B under the uncertain condition, even during the second stage of the game. Although this result is incongruent with the basic assumption in IGT, an increasing number of studies are finding similar results. The results of the AACC and BBDD versions can be congruent with the decision literatures in terms of gain-loss frequency. CONCLUSION: Based on the experimental findings, participants can apply the "gain-stay, loss-shift" strategy to overcome situations involving uncertainty. This investigation found that the largest loss in the IGT did not inspire decision makers to avoid choosing bad deck B

Relative-performance delegation destabilizes upstream collusion

This paper analyzes upstream firms’ collusive sustainability when downstream firms adopt the relative-performance delegation in an infinitely repeated Cournot or Bertrand game. We find that relative-performance delegation makes managers act more aggressive and upstream collusion more difficult to sustain compared to sales-revenue delegation. The driving force is that downstream relative-performance delegation makes more profits for the deviated firm. This result holds regardless of the competition modes

Supporting Acute Appendicitis Diagnosis: A Pre-Clustering-Based Classification Technique

Service quality and cost containment represent two critical challenges in healthcare management. Toward that end, acute appendicitis, a common surgical condition, is important and requires timely, accurate diagnosis. The diverse and atypical symptoms make such diagnoses difficult, thus resulting in increased morbidity and negative appendectomy. While prior research has recognized the use of classification analysis to support acute appendicitis diagnosis, the skewed distribution of the cases pertaining to positive or negative acute appendicitis has significantly constrained the effectiveness of the existing classification techniques. In this study, we develop a pre-clustering-based classification (PCC) technique to address the skewed distribution problem common to acute appendicitis diagnosis. We empirically evaluate the proposed PCC technique with 574 clinical cases of positive and negative acute appendicitis obtained from a tertiary medical center in Taiwan. Our evaluation includes tradition support vector machine, a prevalent resampling classification technique, Alvarado scoring system, and a multi-classifier committee for performance benchmark purposes. Our results show the PCC technique more effective and less biased than the benchmark techniques, without favoring the positive or negative class