Volume 5 Issue 2

The theory of the optimal-consumption leisure choice under price dispersion describes the phenomenon of moral hazard as the customer's reaction on unfair insurance policy. The unfair insurance offer does not equalize marginal costs of propensity to seek healthcare with marginal benefits on purchase. Under unfair insurance policy consumers increase ex post healthcare seeking activities and they optimize their consumption of medical services. The analysis of moral hazard results in the assumption that the increase in the time horizon of the unfair insurance offer makes it fair and moral hazard becomes inefficient. The time horizon competition between insurance companies can eliminate moral hazard effect that clears the way to the competitive equilibrium.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate demand elasticities of cigarette, alcohol, and cocaine for a sample of young American population. To deal with the inherent censoring issue in cigarette, alcohol, and drug consumption data, the paper applies ZINB, Tobit, and a two-step AIDS model. Findings indicate habit formation in young American consumption. Also, the results show that alcohol has an inelastic income elasticity. The ZINB model price elasticity, Marshallian own price elasticity, and Hicksian own price elasticity all agree that drug has a negative inelastic own price elasticity. This implies that price increased by drug traders increases their total revenue and slightly affects the quantity demanded of drug.

This paper focuses on and compares two specific definitions of performance: economic and financial, with the aim to provide evidence that supports the distinctions between both definitions. Relying on a Belgian sample consisting of 14,135 firms, our results show that one specific variable deserves to be questioned: the worker's level of education. On one hand, it seems that the workers' level of education has a positive impact on economic performance; namely, the more the firms hire highly educated workers, the more productive it is. On the other hand, it seems that the effect is entirely the opposite when the financial performance is taken into account. In this case, the more the firms rely on highly educated workers, the less it is performing in a competitive manner.

The Australian dollar is known as a commodity currency because it is sensitive to fluctuations of commodity prices. Although the structure of Australian production has historically moved from the primary commodities to manufacturing and services, market expectations of the currency are still strongly influenced by the variation of the commodities' prices. Recent evidence show that the Australian dollar has fluctuated in response to the growth of the Chinese economy. The empirical results from this study show that commodity prices as represented by oil price changes and the growth of China's economy are the most important variable influencing the Australian currency.

This paper presents a study on the importance of copper production in the State of Sonora, Mexico. Important data will be presented with total relevance to the current economic framework in which it will be possible to determine through a thorough investigation the reason why Sonora as a state is a great potential producer, as copper exporter in comparison to the other producing states of Mexico. The main producing states of the country will be presented using statistics that show the production of each of them in the time-frame of 2011-2016.