The paper addresses the decomposition of firms’ profit inefficiency (i.e. the difference between the observed profit and the maximal profit that could have been earned) in a context of output price uncertainty. More precisely, we separate this inefficiency into price expectation error,...

In a paper published by Ma (1994) it was argued that the prospective payment system in the hospital industry was superior to the cost based reimbursement system to achieve both cost reduction and quality improvement ob jectives. In the analysis, it was assumed that quality and costs decisions...

The degree of downside risk aversion (or equivalently prudence) is so far usually measured by -U'''/U''. We propose here another measure, U'''/U', which has interesting properties, different from those related to -U'''/U''. It also appears that the two measures are not mutually exclusive....

We focus on a simple framework on wheat producer behaviour in a context of price output uncertainty. More precisely, we establish a relationship between ex post output price level and allocative inefficiency that allows to characterize farmers’ risk preferences. Given this analysis, the...

Nous analysons les conséquences du passage d’un financement par dotation globale à un financement prospectif lié à l’activité et tentons de déterminer en quoi la réforme pourrait être préjudiciable ou bénéfique à la santé financière des hôpitaux publics. Nous développons un...