New ideas need new space

We develop a setting with weak intellectual property rights, where firms' boundaries, location and knowledge spillovers are endogenous. We have two main results. The first one is that, if communication costs increase with distance, entrepreneurs concerned about information leakage have a benefit from locating away from the industry center: distance is an obstacle to collusive trades between members andnon-members. The second result is that we identify a trade-off for the entrepreneur between owning a facility (controlling all its characteristics) and sharing a facility with a {\it non-member} (an agent not involved in production), therefore losing control over some of its characteristics. We focus on ``location" as the relevant characteristic of the facility, but location can be used as a spatial metaphor for other relevant characteristics of the facility. For theentrepreneur, sharing the facility with non-members implies that the latter, as co-owners, know the location (even if they do not have access to it). Knowledge of the location for the co-owners facilitates collusion with employees, what increases leakage. The model yields a benefit for new plants from spatial dispersion (locating at the periphery of the industry), particularly so for new plants of new firms.We relate this result with recent empirical findings on the dynamics of industry location.

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, "Free" and "Low-Cost" Computers: Beware of Unexpected Costs, January 2008

The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division receives hundreds of calls and consumer complaints every year. Follow these tips to avoid unexpected expense and disappointments. This record is about: "Free" and "Low-Cost" Computers: Beware of Unexpected Costs

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, "Free" and "Low-Cost" Computers: Beware of Unexpected Costs, June 2005

The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division receives hundreds of calls and consumer complaints every year. Follow these tips to avoid unexpected expense and disappointments. This record is about: "Free" and "Low-Cost" Computers: Beware of Unexpected Costs

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, "Rent-to-Own" -- Know the Costs!, January 2008

The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division receives hundreds of calls and consumer complaints every year. Follow these tips to avoid unexpected expense and disappointments. This record is about: "Rent-to-Own" -- Know the Costs!

Audit report on the Central Iowa Juvenile Detention Center in Eldora, Iowa for the year ended June 30, 2007

Audit report on the Central Iowa Juvenile Detention Center in Eldora, Iowa for the year ended June 30, 2007

Audit report on the Iowa State Center Business Office of Iowa State University of Science and Technology for the year ended June 30, 2007

Audit report on the Iowa State Center Business Office of Iowa State University of Science and Technology for the year ended June 30, 2007

Audit report on the City of Center Point, Iowa for the year ended June 30, 2007

Audit report on the City of Center Point, Iowa for the year ended June 30, 2007

Hiring and firing costs, adverse selection and long-term unemployment

In this paper, we present a matching model with adverse selection that explains why flows into and out of unemployment are much lower in Europe compared to North America, while employment-to-employment flows are similar in the two continents. In the model,firms use discretion in terms of whom to fire and, thus, low quality workers are more likely to be dismissed than high quality workers. Moreover, as hiring and firing costs increase, firms find it more costly to hire a bad worker and, thus, they prefer to hire out of the pool of employed job seekers rather than out of the pool of the unemployed, who are more likely to turn out to be 'lemons'. We use microdata for Spain and the U.S. and find that the ratio of the job finding probability of the unemployed to the job finding probability of employed job seekers was smaller in Spain than in the U.S. Furthermore, using U.S. data, we find that the discrimination of the unemployed increased over the 1980's in those states that raised firing costs by introducing exceptions to the employment-at-will doctrine.

Special investigation of the City of Center Point Library for the period January 1, 2006 through December 6, 2007

Special investigation of the City of Center Point Library for the period January 1, 2006 through December 6, 2007

Report on the Iowa Department of Human Services – Central Distribution Center for the year ended June 30, 2007

Report on the Iowa Department of Human Services – Central Distribution Center for the year ended June 30, 2007

Finance versus costs for teaching hospitals in Spain

In this paper we analyse the observed systematic differences incosts for teaching hospitals (THhenceforth) in Spain. Concernhas been voiced regarding the existence of a bias in thefinancing of TH s has been raised once prospective budgets arein the arena for hospital finance, and claims for adjusting totake into account the legitimate extra costs of teaching onhospital expenditure are well grounded. We focus on theestimation of the impact of teaching status on average cost. Weused a version of a multiproduct hospital cost function takinginto account some relevant factors from which to derive theobserved differences. We assume that the relationship betweenthe explanatory and the dependent variables follows a flexibleform for each of the explanatory variables. We also model theunderlying covariance structure of the data. We assumed twoqualitatively different sources of variation: random effects andserial correlation. Random variation refers to both general levelvariation (through the random intercept) and the variationspecifically related to teaching status. We postulate that theimpact of the random effects is predominant over the impact ofthe serial correlation effects. The model is estimated byrestricted maximum likelihood. Our results show that costs are 9%higher (15% in the case of median costs) in teaching than innon-teaching hospitals. That is, teaching status legitimatelyexplains no more than half of the observed difference in actualcosts. The impact on costs of the teaching factor depends on thenumber of residents, with an increase of 51.11% per resident forhospitals with fewer than 204 residents (third quartile of thenumber of residents) and 41.84% for hospitals with more than 204residents. In addition, the estimated dispersion is higher amongteaching hospitals. As a result, due to the considerable observedheterogeneity, results should be interpreted with caution. From apolicy making point of view, we conclude that since a higherrelative burden for medical training is under public hospitalcommand, an explicit adjustment to the extra costs that theteaching factor imposes on hospital finance is needed, beforehospital competition for inpatient services takes place.

A simple access pricing rule to achieve the Ramsey outcome for interconnected networks

This paper considers a general and informationally efficient approach to determine the optimal access pricing rule for interconnected networks. It shows that there exists a simple rule that achieves the Ramsey outcome as the unique equilibrium when networks compete in linear prices without network-based price discrimination. The approach is informationally efficient in the sense that the regulator is required to know only the marginal cost structure, i.e. the marginal cost of making and terminating a call. The approach is general in that access prices can depend not only on the marginal costs but also on the retail prices, which can be observed by consumers and therefore by the regulator as well. In particular, I consider the set of linear access pricing rules which includes any fixed access price, the Efficient Component Pricing Rule (ECPR) and the Modified ECPR as special cases. I show that in this set, there is a unique rule that implements the Ramsey outcome as the unique equilibrium independently of the underlying demand conditions.

On the receiver pays principle

This paper extends the theory of network competition betweentelecommunications operators by allowing receivers to derive a surplusfrom receiving calls (call externality) and to affect the volume ofcommunications by hanging up (receiver sovereignty). We investigate theextent to which receiver charges can lead to an internalization of thecalling externality. When the receiver charge and the termination(access) charge are both regulated, there exists an e±cient equilibrium.Effciency requires a termination discount. When reception charges aremarket determined, it is optimal for each operator to set the prices foremission and reception at their off-net costs. For an appropriately chosentermination charge, the symmetric equilibrium is again effcient. Lastly,we show that network-based price discrimination creates strong incentivesfor connectivity breakdowns, even between equal networks.

Audit report on the Dallas Center Water Department, Dallas Center, Iowa for the year ended June 30, 2008

Audit report on the Dallas Center Water Department, Dallas Center, Iowa for the year ended June 30, 2008

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, The National Do Not Call List, August 2008

The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division receives hundreds of calls and consumer complaints every year. Follow these tips to avoid unexpected expense and disappointments. This record is about: The National Do Not Call List