FLUCTUATING EXCHANGE RATES AND THE PRICING OF EXPORTS

The purpose of this paper is to examine the invoicing decision of an exporter under a system of pegged exchange rates and a system of freely fluctuating rates. With pegged exchange rates, the exporter may equivalently invoice in its home currency or in the currency of its foreign clients, since the two prices are related by the pegged rate. With fluctuating rates, however, the choice of an invoicing strategy is important and will affect the level of trade. The optimal prices with each strategy are compared, and the exporter's responses to governmental policy instruments are characterized.     

UNDERPRICING IN PUBLIC LOTTERIES: A CRITIQUE OF USER-PAY AND ALL-PAY TARIFFS

A body of literature spanning from medical ethics to public economics has amassed regarding the rationing of underpriced public resources. This study investigates the effects of price on entry, individual and aggregate expected consumer surplus, and tax revenues in user-pay and all-pay (AP) lotteries. Comparative statics indicate that expected surplus may increase (decrease) as price increases (decreases) if entry is sufficiently responsive though entry in AP lotteries is inelastic at all prices. Further, the lotteries are shown to be outcome equivalent under revenue equivalency. Selected results are evaluated numerically with simulations performed across a broad class of distributions describing individual private values. ( JEL D45, D61, H42)     

Sex Differences in Reciprocal Altruism: Reply to Mower

Mower questions some aspects of Geary's (2002 ) proposals regarding the nature of male-male and female-female relationships during human evolution and the implications for understanding the basis for same-sex friendships. The core of this proposal is reviewed and Mower's challenges to the core are addressed.     

Research Misconduct Policies of Scientific Journals

The purpose of this study was to gather information on the misconduct policies of scientific journals. We contacted editors from a random sample of 399 journals drawn from the ISI Web of Knowledge database. We received 197 responses (49.4% response rate): 54.8% had a policy, and 47.7% had a formal (written) policy; 28.9% had a policy that only outlined procedures for handling misconduct, 15.7% had a policy that only defined misconduct, 10.2% had a policy that included both a definition and procedures; 26.9% of journals had a policy that was generated by the publisher, 13.2% had a policy that was generated by the journal, and 14.7% had a policy that was generated by another source, such as a professional association. We analyzed the relationship between having a policy and impact factor, field of science, publishing house, and nationality. Impact factor was the only variable with a statistically significant association with having a policy. Impact factor was slightly positively associated with whether or not the publisher had a policy, with an odds ratio of 1.49 (P < .0004) per 10 units increase in the impact factor, with a 95% confidence interval (1.20, 1.88). Our research indicates that more than half of scientific journals have developed misconduct policies, but that most of these policies do not define research misconduct and most of these policies were not generated by the journal.     

THE EFFECT OF CADAVERIC KIDNEY DONATIONS ON LIVING KIDNEY DONATIONS: AN INSTRUMENTAL VARIABLES APPROACH

Transplantation is notable for the degree to which resources are allocated via administrative rather than market mechanisms. However, non‐monetary incentives still permeate the system. Using instrumental variable regression, we estimate the substitution patterns between cadaveric and living kidney donations in the United States from 1988 to 2008. On average, a decrease of two to five cadaveric donations causes living kidney donations to increase by one. Disaggregating living donors into blood‐related and non‐blood‐related donors, the strongest effect is found among non‐blood‐related donors known to the organ recipient. A 1% increase of cadaveric donations decreases living donations from this group by 1.54%. (JEL D62, D64, I1)