Showing papers on "Managerial economics published in 1987"

The economics of health and medical care

Abstract: The new edition of this text (dates of previous editions are not stated) continues its mission as an introduction that assumes no economics background. With the aim of teaching students how to think about economic problems in a systematic way, Jacobs (public health services, U. of Alberta, Canada) a

Cost-benefit analysis of environmental change

Abstract: This book is an advanced text in applied welfare economics and its application to environmental economics. The author goes far beyond the existing literature on the valuation of environmental benefits, deriving sets of cost-benefit rules which can be used to assess private and public sector projects which affect the environment. He explains how valuation studies can be augmented so as to yield the information necessary for decision-making, showing how externalities, taxes, unemployment, risk, irreversibilities, flow and stock pollutants, discounting, and intergenerational distribution should be treated in social cost-benefit analysis. Drawing on a number of empirical illustrations, this book will be of interest not only to those taking advanced courses in environmental economics, welfare economics, and public economics, but also as a reference for those undertaking project evaluations in government and business.

Health economics and econometrics.

Abstract: It seems worthwhile to pause occasionally and take stock of the balance of trade between economics and health economics. Martin Feldstein (1974) did this fourteen years ago at the ASSA meetings, and sufficient time has lapsed to bring up the issue again. Here, however, I undertake only a fragment of the task, confining the discussion to some remarks about econometrics and health economics. If one were writing about economic theory and health economics, one might focus on the importance for health economics of both uncertainty and the physician's dual role as supplier and patient agent. In discussing econometrics and health economics, however, other features of health economics are relevant:

Chapter 1 Advances in regional economics

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the advances made in regional economics. Regional economics analyzes the spatial dispersion and coherence of economic activities. Although it is a fairly recent discipline, the history of economics shows various early attempts to explicitly address spatial issues—for e.g., in comparative costtheories and international trade theories. Initially, much of the field of regional economics was based on an analogy to general economics, the main difference being the explicit treatment of geographical space as a source of various location–allocation phenomena. Illustrative examples in this context are linear programming models for transportation analysis, spatial substitution problems in neoclassical production theories, inter-regional input-output analysis, and so forth. In a later stage, however, more emphasis was placed on the indigenous features of geographical space and its implications for the spatio-temporal evolution of complex spatial economic systems. Currently, regional economics appears to be a rich discipline with a great many linkages to urban economic problems, transportation problems, and natural resource problems.

The New Institutional Economics

Abstract: In this very important book Oliver E. Williamson once again makes a major contribution to the sociology and economics of organizational ife. His two earliest books (1964, 1970) carried forward the Simonian project of understanding problems of bounded rationality and control loss in large-scale firms. With Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications (1975) and the essays published in The Economic Institutions of Capitalism, Williamson has moved beyond the firm to larger issues of the organization of economic life-to issues of the boundaries of the firm, the nature of contracting, decisions to internalize or externalize transactions, and the comparative efficiency of alternative forms of work organization. Extending and elaborating what may be considered a version of \"property-rights\" heory, he has applied transaction-cost economics to an extraordinary range of economic phenomena-for instance, to the organization of work, antitrust law, labor relations, the structure of corporations, and options in the franchise bidding and regulation of monopoly. Along with Jerry Mashaw, Williamson edits the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, which helps to promote his program in the new institutional economics. While his early work was very useful, his most recent work is of central importance. Unless you believe that efficiency considerations are irrelevant to the way economic life is organized, you cannot afford to ignore transaction-cost analysis. Every scholar working in the area of organizations and economic phenomena will need to understand Williamson's arguments, if only to modify or reject them. That his work is of great significance has been recognized by economists and sociologists alike. Sociologists have reacted to his work in several ways. First, at least one

Institutional Economics and The Theory of Production

Abstract: What is wanted is training in the ways and means of productive industry, not in the ways and means of salesmanship and profitable investment. By force of habit, men trained to a businesslike view of what is right and real will be irretrievably biased against any plan of production and distribution that is not drawn in terms of commercial profit and loss and does not provide a margin of free income to go to absentee owners.'

In Defense of Realistic International Economics: Free Trade

Abstract: The effective teaching of economics requires a framework in which the concepts and the analysis are presented. Since Adam Smith, economists have developed theories and tests of their application in the real world. These theories provide the intellectual pegs upon which analysis of contemporary problems can hang. Although they are theories, they are not synonymous with universal truths. Therefore, theory is in a constant state of evolution. The relationships that most theories establish are subject to constant tests by reality, and from these tests the embryos of policy emerge. The policies are not exclusively economic phenomena but, in a contemporary society, reflect political realities and social and cultural factors, as well as the natural endowments of the country and its human and capital resources. Therefore, there seems to be a need, if not a requirement, that some analytical framework be adopted so that policy issues can be developed, analyzed, and adapted to achieve the objectives established by the policy makers. John Culbertson's "A Realistic International Economics" has focused primarily on the problems of "traditional" international economics without providing a new framework to replace it. His criticisms of free trade and laissezfaire economics reflect an American economist's perspectives on the realities of the 1980s. However, those realities alone are not an adequate data set for establishing a theory of international economics for the next century, the period for which we are now educating our youth.