On money as a medium of exchange when goods vary by supply and demand

Models of the exchange process based on search theory can be usedto analyze the features of objects that make them more or less likely toemerge as ``money'' in equilibrium. These models illustrate the trade--offbetween endogenous acceptability (an equilibrium property) and intrinsiccharacteristics of goods, such as storability, recognizability, etc. Inthis paper, we look at how the relative supply and demand for various goodsaffect their likelihood of becoming money. Intuitively, goods in highdemand and/or low supply are more likely to appear as commodity money,subject to the qualification that which object ends up circulating as amedium of exchange depends at least partly on convention. Welfare propertiesare discussed.

Adoption of financial technologies: Implications for money demand and monetary policy

In this paper we argue that inventory models are probably not usefulmodels of household money demand because the majority of households does nothold any interest bearing assets. The relevant decision for most people is notthe fraction of assets to be held in interest bearing form, but whether to holdany of such assets at all. The implications of this realization are interesting and important. We find that(a) the elasticity of money demand is very small when the interest rate is small,(b) the probability that a household holds any amount of interest bearing assetsis positively related to the level of financial assets, and (c) the cost ofadopting financial technologies is positively related to age and negatively relatedto the level of education. Unlike the traditional methods of money demand estimation, our methodology allowsfor the estimation of the interest--elasticity at low values of the nominalinterest rate. The finding that the elasticity is very small for interest ratesbelow 5 percent suggests that the welfare costs of inflation are small. At interest rates of 6 percent, the elasticity is close to 0.5. We find thatroughly one half of this elasticity can be attributed to the Baumol--Tobin orintensive margin and half of it can be attributed to the new adopters or extensivemargin. The intensive margin is less important at lower interest rates and moreimportant at higher interest rates.

Health care provider choice in the case of patient-initiated contacts. An extended version of discrete choice of model demand

This paper analyzes the nature of health care provider choice inthe case of patient-initiated contacts, with special reference toa National Health Service setting, where monetary prices are zeroand general practitioners act as gatekeepers to publicly financedspecialized care. We focus our attention on the factors that mayexplain the continuously increasing use of hospital emergencyvisits as opposed to other provider alternatives. An extendedversion of a discrete choice model of demand for patient-initiatedcontacts is presented, allowing for individual and town residencesize differences in perceived quality (preferences) betweenalternative providers and including travel and waiting time asnon-monetary costs. Results of a nested multinomial logit model ofprovider choice are presented. Individual choice betweenalternatives considers, in a repeated nested structure, self-care,primary care, hospital and clinic emergency services. Welfareimplications and income effects are analyzed by computingcompensating variations, and by simulating the effects of userfees by levels of income. Results indicate that compensatingvariation per visit is higher than the direct marginal cost ofemergency visits, and consequently, emergency visits do not appearas an inefficient alternative even for non-urgent conditions.

Do market conditions affect preferences? Evidence from experimental markets with excess supply and excess demand

We study whether people's preferences in an unbalanced market are affected by whether they are on the excess supply side or the excess demand side of the market. Our analysis is based on the comparison of behavior between two types of experimental gift exchange markets, which vary only with respect to whether first or second movers are on the long side of the market. The direction of market imbalance could influence subjects' motivation, as second movers, workers, might react differently to favorable actions by first movers, firms, in the two cases. Our data show strong deviations from the standard game-theoretic prediction. However, we only find secondary treatment effects. First movers are not more generous when they are in excess supply and second movers do not respond less favorably when they are in excess demand. Competition has only minor psychological effects in our data.

Demand for private health insurance: Is there a quality gap?

Quality of care is qualified as a main determinant of the demand forvoluntary private health insurance (PHI) in National Health Systems(NHS). This paper provides new evidence on the influence of the qualitygap between public and private health insurance and other demanddeterminants in the demand for PHI in Catalonia. The demand for PHI ismodelled as a demand for health care quality. Unlike previous studies, the database employed allows for the development of a link between thetheoretical and the empirical model dealing with unobserved heterogeneityand endogeneity issues. Results suggest that a rise in PHI qualityenhances an equivalent influence in the demand for PHI as an equalreduction of NHS quality. Income and price elasticity estimates areconsistent with the observed feature that PHI appears to be a luxurygood and individuals tend to be relatively insensible to tax relief'sand monetary co-payments in insurance contracts.

A quantitative analysis of antagonism and inverse agonism at wild-type and constitutively active hamster alpha1B-adrenoceptors.

In order to characterize inverse agonism at alpha1B-adrenoceptors, we have compared the concentration-response relationships of several quinazoline and non-quinazoline alpha1-adrenoceptor antagonists at cloned hamster wild-type (WT) alpha1B-adrenoceptors and a constitutively active mutant (CAM) thereof upon stable expression in Rat-1 fibroblasts. Receptor activation or inhibition thereof was assessed as [3H]inositol phosphate (IP) accumulation. Quinazoline (alfuzosin, doxazosin, prazosin, terazosin) and non-quinazoline alpha1-adrenoceptor antagonists (BE 2254, SB 216,469, tamsulosin) concentration-dependently inhibited phenylephrine-stimulated IP formation at both WT and CAM with Ki values similar to those previously found in radioligand binding studies. At CAM in the absence of phenylephrine, the quinazolines produced concentration-dependent inhibition of basal IP formation; the maximum inhibition was approximately 55%, and the corresponding EC50 values were slightly smaller than the Ki values. In contrast, BE 2254 produced much less inhibition of basal IP formation, SB 216,469 was close to being a neutral antagonist, and tamsulosin even weakly stimulated IP formation. The inhibitory effects of the quinazolines and BE 2254 as well as the stimulatory effect of tamsulosin were equally blocked by SB 216,469 at CAM. At WT in the absence of phenylephrine, tamsulosin did not cause significant stimulation and none of the other compounds caused significant inhibition of basal IP formation. We conclude that alpha1-adrenoceptor antagonsits with a quinazoline structure exhibit greater efficacy as inverse agonists than those without.

Why England? Demand, growth and inequality during the Industrial Revolution

Why was England first? And why Europe? We present a probabilistic model that builds on big-push models by Murphy, Shleifer and Vishny (1989), combined with hierarchical preferences. The interaction of exogenous demographic factors (in particular the English low-pressure variant of the European marriage pattern)and redistributive institutions such as the old Poor Law combined to make an Industrial Revolution more likely. Essentially, industrialization is the result of having a critical mass of consumers that is rich enough to afford (potentially) mass-produced goods. Our model is then calibrated to match the main characteristics of the English economy in 1750 and the observed transition until 1850.This allows us to address explicitly one of the key features of the British IndustrialRevolution unearthed by economic historians over the last three decades the slowness of productivity and output change. In our calibration, we find that the probability of Britain industrializing is 5 times larger than France s. Contrary to the recent argument by Pomeranz, China in the 18th century had essentially no chance to industrialize at all. This difference is decomposed into a demographic and a policy component, with the former being far more important than the latter.

Unobserved heterogeneity and censoring in the demand for health care

This paper analyses the demand for private health care by Spanishhouseholds using a micro budget survey. The methodology used takescare of the three part decision process involved in this type ofbehaviour, namely the decision to use private health care, howoften to do so and how much to spend each time and also the effectsof unobserved heterogeneity. Since the theoretical frameworkcorresponds to the Grossman model of health investment, the resultsalso provide a test of the theory when these issues are considered.Finally, the obtained evidence also suggest that the current systemof tax deductions for private health care expenditures is regressive.

Inventory-routing model, for a multi-period problem with stochastic and deterministic demand

The need for integration in the supply chain management leads us to considerthe coordination of two logistic planning functions: transportation andinventory. The coordination of these activities can be an extremely importantsource of competitive advantage in the supply chain management. The battle forcost reduction can pass through the equilibrium of transportation versusinventory managing costs. In this work, we study the specific case of aninventory-routing problem for a week planning period with different types ofdemand. A heuristic methodology, based on the Iterated Local Search, isproposed to solve the Multi-Period Inventory Routing Problem with stochasticand deterministic demand.

On heuristic and linear models of judgment: Mapping the demand for knowledge

Research on judgment and decision making presents a confusing picture of human abilities. For example, much research has emphasized the dysfunctional aspects of judgmental heuristics, and yet, other findings suggest that these can be highly effective. A further line of research has modeled judgment as resulting from as if linear models. This paper illuminates the distinctions in these approaches by providing a common analytical framework based on the central theoretical premise that understanding human performance requires specifying how characteristics of the decision rules people use interact with the demands of the tasks they face. Our work synthesizes the analytical tools of lens model research with novel methodology developed to specify the effectiveness of heuristics in different environments and allows direct comparisons between the different approaches. We illustrate with both theoretical analyses and simulations. We further link our results to the empirical literature by a meta-analysis of lens model studies and estimate both human andheuristic performance in the same tasks. Our results highlight the trade-off betweenlinear models and heuristics. Whereas the former are cognitively demanding, the latterare simple to use. However, they require knowledge and thus maps of when andwhich heuristic to employ.