Asymmetric Demand Response When Prices Increase and Decrease: The Case of Child Healthcare

This study tests whether demand responds symmetrically to price increases and decreases—a seemingly obvious proposition under conventional demand theory that has not been rigorously tested. Exploiting the rapid expansion in Japanese municipal subsidies for child healthcare in a difference-in-differences framework, we find evidence against conventional demand theory: when coinsurance, our price measure, increases from 0% to 30%, the demand response is more than twice that to a price decrease from 30% to 0%. This result indicates that while economists and policymakers pay little attention, price change direction matters and should be incorporated into welfare analysis.

Leverage constraints or preference for lottery: What explains the low-risk effect in India?

The study empirically investigates two theories that claim to explain the low-risk effect in Indian equity markets using a universe of stocks listed on the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) from January 2000 to September 2018. Leverage constraints and preference for lottery are two major competing theories that explain the presence and persistence of the low-risk effect. While the leverage constraints theory argues that systematic risk drives low-risk anomaly and therefore risk should be measured using beta, lottery demand theory claims that irrational investor’s preference towards stocks with lottery-like payoffs is responsible for the persistence of the low-risk effect, and risk should be measured by idiosyncratic volatility. However, given that most of the risk measures are highly correlated, it is not easy to precisely measure a specific theory’s contribution to explaining the low-risk effect. The study constructs the Betting against correlation (BAC) factor to measure the contribution of leverage constraints to the low-risk effect. It further constructs the SMAX factor to untangle the contribution of lottery preference theory. The results show that leverage constraints theory predominantly explains the low-risk effect in Indian markets. This study contributes significantly to the body of literature, as this is the first such study on the Indian market, one of the major emerging markets, especially when the debate on theories explaining the low-risk effect is yet to settle.

Reang Women: Development, Autonomy and Fertility

ABSTRACT Using primary data collected through multistage random sampling design from 400 women respondents, this paper investigates the determinants of fertility among the Reang tribe of Tripura. Building on the demand theory of fertility which emphasizes the crucial role of socioeconomic development for fertility decline, and incorporating the effect of women’s autonomy on fertility behavior; Poisson regression analysis has been employed to discern the determinants of children ever born, as a measure of fertility. Results indicate that Reang women with more years of formal education and higher autonomy levels bear fewer children, even after adjusting for other factors such as age at marriage, socioeconomic status and women’s work status. Hence, policies aimed at promoting higher education of Reang women have to be implemented efficiently. Also, this study emphasizes the need to support processes and factors that increase women’s autonomy as a route to reducing fertility among the Reangs.

The Wealth Effect and the Law of Demand: A Comment on Karl-Friedrich Israel

Karl-Friedrich Israel (2018) sees “obvious tension” in a book chapter (Salerno 2018) in which I argue that the Hicksian income effect plays no role in the causal-realist approach to the demand curve. Israel’s reconstructed “wealth effect” is an effort to solve this perceived problem. This comment addresses the expositional gap in my analysis, and resolves the perceived tension. I then outline the problems with Israel’s proposed solution, which involves a wholesale reconstruction of demand theory that, in the end, implies a denial of the law of demand.

Design of Senior Family Bathroom System Based on Demand Theory

Aiming at the characteristics of the elderly population, based on the demand theory, this paper proposes a design scheme of a suitable family bathroom system. Based on the theory of Maslow’s demand theory, understand the real psychological status of the elderly through theoretical transformation, analyze the physical and psychological characteristics of the elderly, and simulate the specific behavior of the elderly in the bathroom space system through user interviews. In response to the elderly’s needs for the space, facilities and supporting facilities of the bathroom system, a type of bathroom space was finally selected to carry out the design practice, which provided certain theoretical support and practical reference value for the subsequent research of bathroom products for the elderly.