NHH Brage (Norges Handelshøyskole)
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The economics of risk sharing in discrete time with translation invariant recursive utility
Full text linkWe consider optimal risk sharing in a dynamic setting, where agents have preferences represented by translation invariant recursive utility. This model has some appealing features, both compared to the scale invariant one and to the standard model with expected utility. First, the model allows for a treatment of heterogeneous preferences. This leads to extensions in more realistic directions of the standard, one-period risk sharing model. Second, the new endogenous variable entering the state price deflator is a traded security, an annuity, while in the scale invariant model the corresponding variable is the agent’s wealth. The model invites for a closer look at the mutuality principle in syndicates and optimal risk sharing in society. We also embed a stock market in our setting and derive a consumption based capital asset pricing model
Nash-in-Nash Bargaining with Price-Setting Firms: Contracts, Profits, and the Role of Slotting Fees
Full text linkThis paper uses a Nash-in-Nash bargaining framework to consider why suppliers and retailers sometimes prefer to negotiate over linear contracts rather than over more sophisticated contracts such as two-part tariffs, and why, when they do negotiate over more sophisticated contracts, we often see negative fixed fees (slotting fees). We compare profits under the two forms of contracts and find under weak conditions that when negative fixed fees would arise in the case of two-part tari↵s, at least one side and often both sides will prefer this outcome to the outcome that would arise with linear contracts. In contrast, the opposite holds when positive fixed fees would arise in the case of two-part tariffs. Using linear demands, we demonstrate that retailers always favor negotiating over two-part tariffs when the fixed fees are negative, and prefer linear contracts when the fixed fees are positive. Suppliers generally share these preferences, unless they possess particularly strong bargaining power relative to retailers. Our findings have implications for retailer buyer power and are broadly consistent with stylized facts from the U.S. grocery industry
Transfer Pricing and Investment – How OECD Transfer Pricing Rules Affect Investment Decisions
Full text linkWe study how the OECD transfer pricing guidelines aimed at curbing tax-motivated transfer pricing practices affect investment incentives. Our theoretical model integrates the different OECD’s transfer pricing methods into the tax planning cost function of an MNC to evaluate how the choice of transfer price and quantity produced determine the amount of profit shifted. When the transfer pricing method used emphasizes the choice of transfer price over the choice of the quantity of the intermediate good, tax-motivated transfer pricing has positive investment effects. However, when the transfer pricing method treats profit shifting by price and quantity symmetrically, tax-motivated transfer pricing does not impact investment on the intensive margin. Our study has potential policy implications and also produces suggestions for empirical research on transfer pricing and investment
Public coverage of dental care: universal or targeted?
Full text linkThis paper analyses the impact of public dental care coverage-universal versus targeted-on access, pricing, and public spending in a model with two competing dental practices and heterogeneous patient income groups. We evaluate two types of reimbursement schemes: fixed subsidies and cost sharing. Our findings show that public coverage improves access for low-income patients but increases producer prices due to reduced price elasticity of de-mand. Targeted coverage provides greater access at lower public cost compared to universal coverage, especially under cost-sharing schemes. With fixed subsidies, both schemes achieve similar access, but targeted coverage remains more cost-efficient. The policy that maximises utilitarian welfare is targeted coverage with a fixed subsidy, balancing improved access for low-income patients against higher prices for high-income patients. This trade-off highlights challenges in implementing targeted policies but provides insights for designing efficient and equitable public dental care systems
Returns to Education with Earnings Uncertainty and Employment Risk over the Life Cycle
Full text linkWe measure the returns to education in the presence of earnings uncertainty and employment risk over the life cycle. The context of our study is Norway, offering a credible instrument for schooling and population panel data with nearly career long earnings histories. We first characterize the causal relationship between schooling, earnings, and employment over the life cycle. This relationship allows us draw conclusions about how additional schooling affects the probability of having a job as well as the level and dispersion of earnings over the life cycle. To disentangle uncertainty from heterogeneity, we next model the underlying earnings process, targeting the estimated causal relationship between schooling, earnings, and employment over the life cycle. We then fit a life-cycle model with precautionary saving motive to the estimated earnings process and observed consumption profiles. The estimated model allows us to quantify how earnings uncertainty and employment risk affect the incentives to invest in education, and to examine the extent to which the progressive tax-transfer system distorts these incentives
The Cost of Weather: Modeling Weather Delay in Bulk Shipping
Full text linkWeather is an ever-present factor influencing shipping operations at every stage, including port operations. This paper examines the determi nants of weather-induced delays in port operations, the probability and duration of such delays, the predictive capability of various statistical models, and the potential for improving upon standard industry methods for estimating port margins. A wide range of models are investigated, including Generalized Linear (GLM) models, Cox Propotional Hazard models, and Autoregressive Conditional Duration (ACD) models. The findings reveal that a GLM with gamma distributed dependent variables provides the best fit for data on delay duration, while a linear multiple regression offers the highest predictive accuracy for delay duration. Similarly, probit and logit models are found to perform comparably well for both predicting delay probabilities and data fit. Moreover, the analysis demonstrates that there are significant potential cost savings when using a linear regression model with a probit model to predict delays compared to a common industry rule-of-thumb of half a day delay. These results underscore the potential for improving operational efficiency and accuracy in port margin estimation through statistical modeling techniques
Competition matters: uniform vs. indication-based pricing of pharmaceuticals
Full text linkPharmaceutical expenditures are rising rapidly, driven in part by the innovation of highly effective but very expensive drug therapies that treat multiple diseases. While these drugs offer substantial health benefits, payers face a critical trade-off between cost containment and access to new medicines. A key policy question is whether producers should be restricted to uniform pricing or allowed to use indication-based pricing, where prices vary across patient groups. We analyse how this choice affects drug producers' incentives to invest in new indications, their pricing strategies, and the resulting surplus for health plans. In a monopoly setting, indication-based pricing yields higher profits and thus strengthens incentives to invest in new indications, while the payer prefers uniform pricing unless the fixed investment costs cannot be recouped. The novelty of our study lies in showing that monopoly-based insights may not hold under competition. Specifically, we identify a softening-of-competition effect, where a uniform pricing restriction serves as a credible commitment to raise prices in the competitive market. In this case, the health plan generally favours indication-based pricing to reduce costs. However, an exception arises, where both parties prefer uniform pricing, if the uniform price generates significant health gains through demand expansion in the original monopoly market. Our findings suggest that neither pricing scheme is universally optimal, underscoring the need for case-by-case assessments across drug classes
Fair Institutions
Full text linkThe experimental literature on preferences for redistribution has established that individual perceptions of what earning distributions are fair depend greatly on context. In this paper, we study an important and novel dimension of context: whether the choice to redistribute occurs before workers work and accrue earnings, or after. Contrary to the predictions of our theoretical framework, we fi nd no evidence that spectators are less likely to equalize earnings ex ante than to equalize earnings ex post. Interestingly, our study also suggests that, relative to American subjects, Scandinavian subjects are more likely to equalize ex post earnings, but we find no evidence that Scandinavian and American subjects make different choices ex ante. A follow-up analysis suggests that the latter result is largely due to Scandinavian and American subjects having similar preferences over ex ante redistribution when equalizing earnings comes at a cost to efficiency. Overall, our results suggest that context-dependent preferences for redistribution are sensitive to the relative timing of the redistribution choice
Competition and incentives in the mutual fund industry: Evidence from product development strategies
Full text linkDespite extensive evidence of how competition in the mutual fund industry affects fees and performance outcomes, less is known about its effect on the incentives of market participants. This paper examines how competition drives product development in mutual fund families. The results show that greater industry competition encourages fund families to focus more on enhancing product quality than altering the fund base. Quality development increases performance across family-affiliated funds, ultimately benefiting investors. Based on these results, I argue that competition helps mitigate conflicts of interest associated with the family-based structure of the industry