This paper adopts trans-log production function based on the SFA model, empirically test how the change of the proportion of the value added tax impacts on each part of China’s productivity. The results show: that, in tax structure, if the proportion of the value added tax is higher, the more conducive to the improvement of production efficiency. But it is not good for the technical efficiency ...

We model the internal capital market of a conglomerate where headquarters must rely on information reported by division managers to allocate limited resources across competing projects. Managers may exaggerate project quality to attract more capital, which limits the extent of winner-picking in capital budgeting. Focus (correlated projects) helps headquarters to infer information regarding proj...

Taking the maximum joint payoff of a 2×2 matrix game as a measure of potential social welfare, one can compute a simple “value of government” based upon the difference between this maximum payoff and the joint payoff obtained in noncooperative equilibrium. We construct an efficiency loss index (ELI) as the expected value of this difference divided by the maximum joint payoff, and use the ELI to...

The system for litigating patents has long been recognized as having significant positive and negative effects on innovative activity in the United States. Consequently, understanding patent litigation dynamics is of paramount importance. We study how infringement awards and other case outcomes affect patent litigation, and we mine a comprehensive dataset we have assembled comprising over 1,300...

Healthcare remains a dominant issue for Canadians. Central to the debate is the dynamic tension among the value, accessibility and affordability of drugs. Simply put, innovative drugs improve health and economic outcomes for individuals and populations. As a result, providers and patients increasingly demand, and expect, these benefits; utilization and expenditures increase. The management chal...

Do nonprofit hospitals sell at a discount compared to for-profit hospitals? This question stems from public concerns about the underpricing of nonprofits, and raises important questions about the nature of nonprofit firms, their objectives, and their managerial efficiency. We address this question using a database of hospital sales prices and find that, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, nonpro...

The Medicare program may soon adopt value-based purchasing (VBP), in which hospitals could receive incentives that are conditional on meeting specified performance objectives. The authors advocate for a market-oriented framework and direct measures of system-level value that are focused on better outcomes and lower total cost of care. They present a multidimensional framework for measuring outc...

We analyze the optimal portfolio policies of expected utility maximizing agents under VaR Capital Requirement (VaR-CR) regulation in comparison to the optimal policy under exogenouslyimposed VaR Limit (VaR-L) and Limited-Expected-Loss (LEL) regulations. With VaR-CR regulation the agent strategy consists of simultaneous decisions on both the portfolio VaR and on the implied amount of required el...