Suchergebnisse

Abstract
In this paper, we analyze the problem faced by impatient researchers attempting to balance the considerations of journal quality, submission lags, and acceptance probabilities in choosing appropriate outlets for their work. We first study the case in which probabilities of submission outcomes are exogenous parameters and show that authors can find the optimal submission path through the use of journal 'scores' based only on the journals' characteristics and the author's degree of impatience. Then, we analyze a more realistic framework in which acceptance probability is determined by the quality of the manuscript, in which the reviewing process may be imperfect, and in which authors may not be certain of the manuscript's quality. Throughout, we illustrate our analysis with data on actual economics journals. We also consider the problem of journals facing a large number of submissions, limited space, and limited resources to review papers and, in particular, we examine the relative effectiveness of using submission fees and reviewing lags to ration article submissions.

Abstract
We analyze the demand for medical care and precautionary saving in a framework with uncertainty surrounding the incidence of illness and the effectiveness of medical treatments and a representation of preferences that disentangles ordinal preferences, risk preferences, and intertemporal smoothing preferences. We consider a "pure consumption" model with exogenous health capital and a model where young consumers invest in preventive care to increase their future health stock. In both cases, we establish conditions for the different sources for uncertainty to induce precautionary saving and we evaluate how uncertainty affects the demand of curative and preventive care. We also show that given the self-insurance function of preventive care, consumers' welfare may increase with the degree of uncertainty surrounding health care effectiveness.

Abstract
How should changes in environmental quality occurring in the future be discounted? To answer this question we consider a model of "ecological discounting", where the representative consumer has a utility function defined over two attributes, consumption and environmental quality, which evolve stochastically over time. We characterize the determinants of the social discount rate and its behavior over time using a preference structure that disentangles attitudes towards intertemporal inequality, attitudes towards risk, and tastes over consumption and environmental quality. We show that the degree of substitutability between consumption and environmental quality, the degree of risk aversion, the degree of inequality aversion, and the rate at which these attitudes change as natural and man-made resources evolve over time are all important aspects of the ecological discount rate and its term structure. Our analysis suggests that over medium and long term horizons the ecological discount rate should be below the rate of time preference, supporting recent proposals for immediate action towards climate change mitigation.