Data show that the food desert environment is correlated with high risk of diet-related illness in low-income urban communities. Using an empirical model of grocery purchasing decision processes, we explained how specific components of the economic and structural environment influenced purchasing decisions that conflicted with shoppers understanding of healthy eating. In this paper we describe ...

BACKGROUND Legal tobacco tax avoidance strategies such as cross-border cigarette purchasing may attenuate the impact of tax increases on tobacco consumption. Little is known about socioeconomic and country variations in cross-border purchasing. OBJECTIVE To describe socioeconomic and country variations in cross-border cigarette purchasing in six European countries. METHODS Cross-sectional d...

Background Many of public hospitals in Japan have had a deficit for a long time. Japanese local governments have been encouraging public hospitals to use group purchasing of drugs to benefit from the economies of scale, and increase their bargaining power for obtaining discounts in drug purchasing, thus improving their financial situation. In this study, we empirically investigate whether or no...

We find direct evidence that institutions increase round-trip stock trades, increase average commissions per share, and pay unusually high commissions on some trades in order to send abnormally high commissions to the lead underwriters of profitable initial public offerings (IPOs). These excess commission payments are a particularly effective way for transient investors to receive lucrative IPO...