This paper develops a model to analyse the Australian health insurance system when individuals differ in their health risk and this risk is private information. The Australian system involves mixed public and private health insurance with private insurance both duplicating and supplementing...

Credit card reform has been canvassed in Europe, the US and in Australia. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is in the process of implementing wide-ranging reforms to credit cards aimed at increasing entry, allowing merchants to surcharge for card payments and regulating the interchange fee -...

This paper provides a simple model of 'four party' payment systems designed to consider recent moves to regulate interchange fees and other rules of credit card associations. In contrast to recent formal analyses emphasising the role of network effects in the decisions of customer and merchants...

There has been considerable public debate over the effect of interchange fees on credit card transactions. Regulators in Australia and Europe have argued that these fees can be set by banks to have an anticompetitive effect. In the US, it has been argued that these fees, together with a rule...

If buyers can choose to initiate bargaining with a seller, how does this alter the price that the seller `posts' in the market? And does the option of bargaining raise or lower expected welfare? This paper develops a simple model to answer these questions. With a single seller, the potential for...

This study explores the relationship between home ownership and subjective wellbeing in urban China. We first present a theoretical model examining the relationship between housing property rights and subjective wellbeing in China. We then test the predictions of the theoretical model using a...

This chapter surveys the economics literature on wireless communications. Wireless communications and the economic goods and services that utilise it have some special characteristics that have motivated specialised studies. First, wireless communications relies on a scarce resource rights for...