Publications

Abstract The speculative nature of the stock market in Mainland China has attracted the attention of many observers. However while the degree of integration of the Hong Kong market with its Mainland counterpart has monopolized the interest of researchers, they have neglected the diffusion of bubbles from the latter to the former. We thus propose the first study of such bubble migration. Focusing on the period 2005–2017, we use the Phillips et al. (Int Econ Rev 56:1043–1078, 2015a; Int Econ Rev 52:201–226, 2015b) recursive explosive root test to detect and date speculative episodes in both markets. We then implement the Greenaway-McGrevy and Phillips (NZ Econ Pap 50:88–113, 2016) methodology to detect the presence of migration between the two markets. We detect significant, but dwindling, bubble migration from Shanghai to Hong Kong.
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Abstract The pharmaceutical market is not tailored to cater the needs of patients who are located in the economically disadvantaged Southern countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. International organizations are working in numerous ways to overcome this challenge and to increase the access to medicines at affordable prices in the global South. They recommend and proscribe drugs, shape national policies, assure drug quality, provide funding and technical assistance, manage the supply chain, negotiate prices with manufacturers, decide who can compete and influence the behavior of competitors. Recently, some international organizations like Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) have successfully ventured into new drug development for tropical diseases. This has resulted in the evolution of complex relational dynamics and interdependencies between states, firms and international organizations. The structural power to bargain in such relationships often does not lie with states but rather with international organizations who create conditions under which firms would agree to invest in a particular venture. Thus, international organizations have acquired the role of “market makers” who not only convert the need for medicines into real demand but also shape the institutional environment for market functioning by setting up the rules of exchange for market transactions. However, this phenomenon is not well studied. In this regard, this study sheds light on the role of international organizations in the creation and functioning of the market for artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) for malaria. It explains the role of WHO treatment guidelines in the global acceptance and legitimization of ACTs and WHO prequalification program in assuring quality. It further elaborates on the importance of donor funding, negotiation with manufacturers, the introduction of new ACT formulations to increase competition and stabilization of the supply of raw artemisinin on the reduction of treatment prices. It also explains how business strategies of firms are shaped by the action of international organizations.
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Abstract This paper is intended to bridge the theoretical literature describing efficient intra-household behaviour and the development literature that collects empirical regularities pointing toward the existence of strategic decision-making among spouses. It examines the key elements of the collective model and discusses its relevance to analysing intra-household behaviour in poor countries. It explores the role that risk and uncertainty, information asymmetries, power imbalances, arranged marriages, strategic investment, gender norms, and extended households play in the attainment of efficiency.
Keywords Household, Efficiency, Development, Strategic behaviour
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Abstract Depuis au moins deux décennies, les économies des pays industrialisés connaissent une décélération tendancielle de l’inflation ainsi qu’un écrasement des cycles de l’inflation. Ces phénomènes sont le résultat de plusieurs facteurs d’ordre structurel.Le premier est l’atténuation des déterminants nationaux de l’inflation. Elle se traduit par une moindre réactivité de l’inflation aux tensions du marché...
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Abstract This paper revisits the optimal population size problem in a continuous time Ramsey setting with costly child rearing and both intergenerational and intertemporal altruism. The social welfare functions considered range from the Millian to the Benthamite. When population growth is endogenized, the associated optimal control problem involves an endogenous effective discount rate depending on past and current population growth rates, which makes preferences intertemporally dependent. We tackle this problem by using an appropriate maximum principle. Then we study the stationary solutions (balanced growth paths) and show the existence of two admissible solutions except in the Millian case. We prove that only one is optimal. Comparative statics and transitional dynamics are numerically derived in the general case.
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Abstract Asymptotic and bootstrap inference methods for inequality indices are for the most part unreliable due to the complex empirical features of the underlying distributions. In this paper, we introduce a Fieller-type method for the Theil Index and assess its finite-sample properties by a Monte Carlo simulation study. The fact that almost all inequality indices can be written as a ratio of functions of moments and that a Fieller-type method does not suffer from weak identification as the denominator approaches zero, makes it an appealing alternative to the available inference methods. Our simulation results exhibit several cases where a Fieller-type method improves coverage. This occurs in particular when the Data Generating Process (DGP) follows a finite mixture of distributions, which reflects irregularities arising from low observations (close to zero) as opposed to large (right-tail) observations. Designs that forgo the interconnected effects of both boundaries provide possibly misleading finite-sample evidence. This suggests a useful prescription for simulation studies in this literature.
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Abstract In this paper we present a principled view that grounds the need for whistleblowing protection, often missing in the literature. They argue that whistleblowers have a right to protection because of their role in ensuring accountability against wrongdoings that go unnoticed due to unrestrained practices of secrecy. This right derives from the crucial role of whistleblowing in exposing right limitations, in absence of procedures of redress, and information of public interest. Given this role, absence of procedures of protection and fair hearing of disclosure claims puts unfair burdens on whistleblowers so much as to, in some instances, preclude the very possibility of disclosure. In this regard, a cognizance of their role in ensuring protection of rights and structure of accountability demands a system of protection extended to human rights defendants. We argue that the European Union should stand up for the legal protection of whistle-blowers and encourage their contribution towards more transparent institutions and economic transactions.
Keywords Whistleblowing, Accountability, Public Interest, Europe
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Abstract Economists ceased at some point to discuss the “self” of the “economic agent.” Moralists criticized them for this. Yet attention had been paid to the “self” from the start of modern economics with Adam Smith “self-love.” Granted, the contemporary mathematized mainstream in economics ignores the “self,” its representations, and its realization through economic life. Economic philosophers, however, bring it to the fore and debate identity issues, the flesh and “reality” of agents beyond an axiomatic skeleton. Inspired by Ancient thought and heterodox individualistic currents (like the Austrian school), the inquiry as to what “self-realization” may, or may not mean in the economists’ realm and in economic life is essential to ethical and methodological issues so as to make sense of how to realize the self from an economic viewpoint (and far from popular folk psychology).
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