Average profits of a price taker are increasing in the variability of the output price (Oi, 1961). We show that, for the same reason, average profits of the price taker are increasing in the variability of the price of inputs. We proceed to establish that the same holds for a firm with a...

One of the main features of health insurance is moral hazard, as defined by Pauly (1968); people face incentives for excess utilization of medical care since they do not pay the full marginal cost for provision. To mitigate the moral hazard problem, a coinsurance can be included in the insurance...

The recent 'scientification' of commercial technology has brought the interface between universities and industry into sharp focus. In particular, academic entrepreneurship, i.e., the variety of ways in which academics take direct part in the commercialization of research, is widely discussed....

This paper deals with a dynamic adjustment process in which adjustment of a key variable input (labor) towards its desired level is modeled in a panel data context. The partial adjustment type model is extended to incorporate firm- and time-specific adjustment parameter. A flexible (translog)...

Walter Korpi argues in a previous issue of Challenge (March/April 2000) that Swedish economists' claim that Sweden's growth performance has been inferior to that of other industrialized countries is at odds with the facts. Since Sweden has not grown slowly relative to other countries, there is...

What is the long-run relationship between monetary and fiscal policies? This paper provides an answer by examining a large set of data covering major economies during the past 115 years. The evidence suggests the existence of a close interaction between the monetary regime, that is the behaviour...

In this paper we show the consequences of applying a panel unit root test when testing for a purchasing power parity relationship. The distribution of the tests investigated, including the IPS test of Im et al (1997), are influenced by a common stochastic trend which is usually not accounted...

We analyse the change in family gross income inequality between 1951 and 1973. We use two new samples of the Swedish population from 1951 and 1956 containing tax register data, and compare the results with those obtained from the Swedish Level of Living survey from 1967 and 1973. Gini...