Foreword

The collection of articles in this Special Issue is based on an international conference on Advances in the Behavioral Analysis of Law: Markets, Institutions, and Contracts that took place on December 8, 2009 at the University of Haifa Faculty of Law in Israel. The conference addressed cuttingedge legal issues at the intersection of law, economics, and psychology from a diverse set of viewpoints, bringing together scholars engaged in both theoretical and experimental behavioral analyses of law

Managerial Pay and Executive Turnover in the Czech and Slovak Republics

Despite the crucial role played by managers in changing the functioning of labour markets in transition economies, research on the determinants of executive pay and CEO turnover in these countries is almost non-existent. The current paper aims at adding to this minuscule literature. For this purpose I make use of a unique data set containing relevant firm-manager information from the Czech and Slovak Republics in the late nineties. This allows me to examine the influence of individual and in particular firm characteristics, such as, size, ownership type, industry and region, as well as corporate performance on chief executive compensation levels and changes therein and on the probability of the executive being turned over.Managerial Compensation; CEO Turnover; Corporate Performance

A study of income-motivated behavior among general practitioners in the Norwegian list patient system

In the Norwegian capitation system each general practitioner (GP) has a personal list of patients. The payment system is a mix of a capitation fee and fee-for-service. From a model of a GP’s decisions we derive the optimal practice profile contingent on whether a GP experiences a shortage of patients or not. We also find the conditions for whether a GP, who experiences a shortage of patients, is likely to increase the number of services he provides to his patients. Data give us the opportunity to reveal patient shortage, i.e. a positive difference between a GP’s preferred and actual list size, at the individual practice level. From the analysis of 2587 Norwegian GPs (out of a total 3650) the main result is that patient shortage has a positive effect on a GP’s intensity of service provision and hence, on the income per listed person. We also find that a GP’s income per listed person is influenced by the composition of the list according to indicators of need for services, and of accessibility according to the GP density in the municipality. These results are also valid when possible selection bias is accounted for, although the magnitude of the effects is then smaller.economic motives; capitation; general practice; patient shortage; service provision

Incoherent scatter radar observations of the ionosphere

Incoherent scatter radar (ISR) has become the most powerful means of studying the ionosphere from the ground. Many of the ideas and methods underlying the troposphere and stratosphere (ST) radars have been taken over from ISR. Whereas the theory of refractive index fluctuations in the lower atmosphere, depending as it does on turbulence, is poorly understood, the theory of the refractivity fluctuations in the ionosphere, which depend on thermal fluctuations, is known in great detail. The underlying theory is one of the most successful theories in plasma physics, and allows for many detailed investigations of a number of parameters such as electron density, electron temperature, ion temperature, electron mean velocity, and ion mean velocity as well as parameters pertaining to composition, neutral density and others. Here, the author reviews the fundamental processes involved in the scattering from a plasma undergoing thermal or near thermal fluctuations in density. The fundamental scattering properties of the plasma to the physical parameters characterizing them from first principles. He does not discuss the observation process itself, as the observational principles are quite similar whether they are applied to a neutral gas or a fluctuating plasma

Linear dependence of bivariate Minimal Support and Locally Refined B-splines over LR-meshes

The focus on locally refined spline spaces has grown rapidly in recent years due to the need in Isogeoemtric analysis (IgA) of spline spaces with local adaptivity: a property not offered by the strict regular structure of tensor product B-spline spaces. However, this flexibility sometimes results in collections of B-splines spanning the space that are not linearly independent. In this paper we address the minimal number of B-splines that can form a linear dependence relation for Minimal Support B-splines (MS B-splines) and for Locally Refinable B-splines (LR B-splines) on LR-meshes. We show that the minimal number is six for MS B-splines, and eight for LR B-splines. The risk of linear dependency is consequently significantly higher for MS B-splines than for LR B-splines. Further results are established to help detecting collections of B-splines that are linearly independent

How Many Danish Jobs Can (Potentially) Be Done Elsewhere?

This paper employs a new survey technique to arrive at estimates of the proportion of jobs with the characteristic that they can be performed elsewhere than currently, in particular in other countries. The results from the survey which was carried out in November 2008 indicate that the proportion of current jobs with offshorability characteristics in Denmark is in the 20 to 30 percent range. Danish jobs that could potentially be carried out elsewhere are primarily found in the services sector (financial and business services) and they are typically performed by employees from the middle of the wage distributionJobs; offshorability; outsourcing