This paper proposes a test statistic for discriminating between two partly non linear regression models whose parametric components are non-nested. The statistic has the form of a J-test based on a parameter which artificially nests the null and alternative hypotheses. We study in detail the...

This work presents a theoretical framework to study if the motive for money-transfers within families is altruism or exchange. We propose models which explicitly incorporate transfers on education as an additional family transfer. Our models allows us to discriminate between the two possible...

This paper compares alternative time-varying volatility models for daily stock-returns using data from Spanish equity index IBEX-35. Specifically, we have estimated a parametric family of models of generalized autoregressive heteroskedasticity (which nests the most popular symmetric and...

We construct a model to analyze the willingness of Health Authorities to reach agreements with private hospitals to have some of their public sector patients treated there. When physicians are dual suppliers, we show that a problem of cream-skimming arises and reduces the incentives of the...

We propose an alternative method of obtaining stylized facts on comovement, based on the cross-correlation function of the prewhitened time series, which only depends on the purely stochastic components of the series and the cross efects between them. This approach has the property of being...

The paper studies how does the size of a cartel affect the possibility that its members can sustain a collusive agreement. I obtain that collusion is easier to sustain the larger the cartel is. Then, I explore the implications of this result on the incentives of firms to participate in a cartel....

This paper formally describes the Human Capital Theory as a Research Programme that fits into the classical economic Research Programmes. The fundamental ¿hard core¿ assumption which converts the Human Capital Theory into a Research Programme itself in Lakatosian terms is based upon the...

This paper provides a cardinal welfare measure for the allocation of a bundle of goods among a group of people. Social welfare is measured as the sum of n partial indices, one for each good, each of which consists of a function of the amount of the good availabe and its dispersion, measured by...

There is a substantial amount of microeconomic evidence documenting diferential responses oflabor supply across productivity groups. In partic-ular, more productive individuals: (i) enjoy ahigher employment rate, (ii) have a lower volatility of employment and (iii) spend less time workingat...

The optimal competition policy when licensing is an alternative to a merger to transfer a superior technology is derived in a differentiated goods duopoly, for the cases of Cournot and Bertrand competition. We show that whenever both royalties and fixed fees are feasible, mergers should not be...