Dusanee Kesavayuth

Retirement, Personality, and Well‐Being

This study investigates how two sources of individual heterogeneity — personality and gender — impact the well-being effects of retirement. Using data on older men and women from the British Household Panel Survey and its continuation, Understanding Society, we estimate the causal effect of retirement on satisfaction with overall life and domains of life in the presence of personality characteristics. As retirement is often considered to be a choice and thus may be endogenous to individual-level characteristics, we use the eligibility ages for basic state pension in the United Kingdom as instruments for retirement. We find that retirement increases leisure satisfaction of both males and females but not necessarily life satisfaction and income satisfaction. We further show that certain personality characteristics affect the well-being of female retirees. For males, however, personality does not seem to matter in how they cope with retirement.

Endogenous Contracts in Unionized Oligopoly

We study the endogenous determination of contracts in a unionized oligopoly and the welfare implications thereof. Alternative contracts specify the sequencing in the selection of R&D and wages. They can be classified as ‘fixed’ when the unions set wages before the firms make their R&D decisions or ‘floating’ when the sequencing of these choices is reversed. If the unions are highly employment-oriented, we find that either all firm–union pairs choose floating-wage contracts or both contract types may coexist depending on the degree of technological spillovers. However, when the unions have stronger preference over attaining a good wage deal, then it becomes very likely that fixed-wage contracts will endogenously emerge because they can serve as an insurance device against oppor tunistic wage increases. Our welfare analysis suggests that welfare-improving contracts may nevertheless not always arise in equilibrium.

HAPPY PEOPLE ARE LESS LIKELY TO BE UNEMPLOYED: PSYCHOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FROM PANEL DATA

There is a large literature showing that unemployment reduces peoples well-being. Yet little is known about the reverse possibility, namely that well-being itself may influence unemployment propensity. Understanding the potentials of human well-being in relation to unemployment is important as many developed countries are currently facing high unemployment rates. As well-being is likely to be endogenous, we use British panel data and implement Lewbels novel empirical approach for identification. We show that higher well-being implies a negative causal effect on the probability of being unemployed. The result holds for two very different well-being measures: life satisfaction and a 12-item scale of mental health. As such, it provides new empirical evidence on the causal link between well-being and unemployment propensity. (JEL D03, I31)

International and National R&D Networks in Unionized Oligopoly

We study the endogenous formation of RD however, if spillovers are sufficiently high, the foreign partial network that includes a domestic and a foreign firm will arise. Moreover, for intermediate spillovers, no equilibrium network emerges. These results have implications for aggregate outcomes: equilibrium networks are not necessarily optimal in terms of aggregate effective R&D and aggregate firm profits.

Merger and Innovation Incentives in a Differentiated Industry

Abstract This paper considers a duopoly with product differentiation and examines the interaction between merger and innovation incentives. The analysis reveals that a merger tends to discourage innovation, unless the investment cost is sufficiently low. This result holds irrespective of whether side payments between firms are allowed. When side payments between insiders within the merged firm are permitted, a standard result in the literature is reconfirmed, which suggests that a bilateral merger-to-monopoly is always profitable. When such side payments are not permitted, however, it is shown that a merger is not profitable when the efficiency of the new technology is relatively high and the investment cost is below a particular level.

Retirement and health behaviour

ABSTRACT This article investigates whether and to what extent retirement changes health behaviour. For identification we use an instrumental variable approach that exploits exogenous variations in the early and normal retirement ages within and across 10 European countries. Our results reveal that among those who abstained from alcohol and vigorous or moderate exercise at baseline, retirement increased those activities. Non-smokers did not increase smoking upon retirement. Retirement led to less smoking for those who smoked before retiring. It also brought about an increase in vigorous exercise for those who had the behaviour at baseline. These results further vary by a person’s job type, but less so with respect to gender or geographic region. Overall, our findings provide new empirical evidence on the causal link between retirement and health behaviours and how such link relates to four sources of individual heterogeneity: gender, European geographic region, job type and baseline health behaviour.

The benefits of the reciprocal grantback clause in patent licensing

ABSTRACT This paper shows that a reciprocal grantback clause could potentially be a better licensing provision than a one-way type. There are two benefits associated with the use of a reciprocal grantback clause. First, it improves efficiency by reducing the (minimum) contract compatible royalty rate to zero. As a result, the production becomes efficient because both the licensor and the licensee produce at the same marginal cost. Second, a reciprocal grantback clause is a more effective provision than a one-way grantback clause to guarantee the transfer of superior technology, hence it promotes better technology diffusion.