Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Together...We Compete... (In Greek), Triantafillia Giotopoulou, Andreas Drichoutis, Vassilis Karalis, Lykouropoulou Eirini

Andreas Drichoutis

No abstract provided.

Firm-Sponsored General Training, Felipe Balmaceda Assoc Prof.

Felipe Balmaceda

This article analyzes firm and worker’s incentives to invest in general and specific training when these are separable in the production technology and wages are determined by the outside-option principle. It is shown that firms pay for general training, while workers receive the full return on it, and firms and workers share both the costs and benefits of specific training. The case of delayed general training is also studied. When general training is delayed, it is shown that the strategic complementarity between specific and general training increases the worker’s incentives to invest in specific training.

Competitive Auction Markets In British Columbia, Peter Cramton, Susan Athey

Peter Cramton

US-Canada Softwood Lumber Trade Dispute, On behalf of British Columbia Ministry of Forests.

Money And Real Fluctuations In The Chilean Economy, Andres Acuña, Carlos Oyarzun

Andrés A. Acuña

Hub-And-Spoke Or Else? Free Trade Agreements In The 'Enlarged' European Union, Luca De Benedictis, Roberta De Santis, Claudio Vicarelli

Luca De Benedictis

The object of this paper is to estimate if and how the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) and the Baltic Free Trade Agreement (BFTA) exerted a significant impact on intra-European trade, effectively reducing the influence of the European Association Agreements (EAs) in shaping the European trade structure has a hub-and-spoke system – with the EU15 being the hub and the CEECs the spoke. This paper analyses bilateral trade flows between eight CEECs and EU-23. We estimate a gravity equation using a system GMM dynamic panel data approach. Results support the assumptions that gravity forces and “persistence effects” matter. With …

Evaluating Brazilian Mutual Funds With Stochastic Frontiers, Andre Santos, Joao Tusi, Newton Da Costa Jr, Sergio Da Silva

Sergio Da Silva

We evaluate the performance of 307 Brazilian stock mutual funds employing stochastic frontiers. We list the top ten actively managed funds and the bottom ten for the period April 2001−July 2003, and show that a fund’s efficiency increases with management skill to beat the market. We also find that portfolios with low volatility tend to be more efficient. Yet we find no relationship between fund size and performance, though this might be blurred by a survivorship bias.

Travel Hysteresis In The Us Current Account After The Mid-1980s, Roberto Meurer, Guilherme Moura, Sergio Da Silva

Sergio Da Silva

Following the real appreciation of the US dollar in the first half of the 1980s, travel expenditures in the current account soared. Employing standard regression techniques as well as Markov−switching regime analysis we show that such expenditures did not return to their pre−appreciation levels thereafter. The permanent increase suggests the presence of travel hysteresis in the US current account after the mid−1980s.

Travel Hysteresis In The Brazilian Current Account, Roberto Meurer, Guilherme Moura, Sergio Da Silva

Sergio Da Silva

The strong Brazilian currency between 1994 and 1998 led Brazilians to an unprecedented increase in their travels abroad. Even after the 1999 currency crisis, travel patterns did not recover to their pre−exchange rate devaluation levels. The occasional exchange rate valuation has left long−lasting effects by changing habits, and thereby generating a travel hysteresis in the Brazilian current account.

When The Saints Go Marching Out, Scott J. Wallsten

Scott J. Wallsten

No abstract provided.

The Problem Of Moral Dirigisme: A New Argument Against Moralistic Legislation, Mario Rizzo

Mario Rizzo

This Article applies a theory of rational choice to moral decisionmaking. In this theory, agents act primarily on local and personal knowledge to instantiate moral principles, virtues and moral goods. The State may seek to prevent them from acting as they independently determine by prescribing or proscribing certain conduct by formal legal means. If its purpose is to ensure that people act morally or become better persons, we call this “moral dirigisme.” Our thesis is that the need to use decentralized knowledge to determine the moral status of an act makes the task of the moral dirigiste well-neigh impossible. The …

Financial Crisis In Turkey, Political Economy Papers: 53, Madrid, Gary S. Sander

Gary S Sander

In the last decade the Turkish economy was hit by two crises. This paper we will discus answers these questions. What are the causes of the 1994 and 2001 crisis? Could the financial crisis have been avoided? What are the lessons that can be drawn from these crises?

Three Decades Of Italian Comparative Advantages, Luca De Benedictis

Luca De Benedictis

The paper explores the structure of Italian Revealed Comparative Advantages (RCA), focusing on the export structure itself, on its changes over time and on its degree of persistence. The analysis is developed with the use of visual statistical tools and nonparametric statistical techniques that allow to estimate the empirical distribution of the Balassa (1965) Index, and to track its dynamics during three decades, from the 1970s to present. The main results of the analysis are that the structure of Italian RCA is highly persistent, but is changing; the structure is very different when it is examined at a macro-regional level; …

Hegemons Of A Lesser God: The Bank Of France And Monetary Leadership Under The Classical Gold Standard, Giulio M. Gallarotti

Giulio M Gallarotti

Conventional theories of international hegemony all agree on the fact that the stabilizing functions of hegemons (i.e., nations which use their power to maintain orderly relations in a given issue-area) are positively correlated with their power. The public goods logic upon which this vision is founded posits that as any potential leader becomes more powerful in a given issue area, it will increasingly see its own welfare as synonymous with order in the entire constellation of relations within the issue area itself, and consequently have an incentive to provide the necessary public goods (i.e., the components of stability) to bring …

The View From The West Bank, Warren Coats

Warren Coats

Today's failure to resolve the Israeli Palestinian conflict/relationship is put in historical context.

Unraveling Of Dynamic Sorting, Ettore Domiano, Hao Li, Wing Suen

hao li

We consider a two-sided, finite-horizon model of search and matching with heterogeneous types and complementarity between types. The quality of the pool of potential matches deteriorates as agents who have found mutually agreeable matches exit the market. With automatic participation of all agents in each round, the market performs a sorting function in that attractive types of agents have multiple chances to meet and match with their peers. However, the sorting function of the market is lost if agents incur an arbitrarily small cost in order to participate in each round. The market unravels as almost all agents rush to …

Estimated Age Effects In Baseball, Ray Fair

Ray C Fair

Age effects in baseball are estimated in this paper using a nonlinear fixed-effects regression. The sample consists of all players who have played 10 or more ``full-time'' years in the major leagues between 1921 and 2004. Quadratic improvement is assumed up to a peak-performance age, which is estimated, and then quadratic decline after that, where the two quadratics need not be the same. Each player has his own constant term. The results show that aging effects are larger for pitchers than for batters and larger for baseball than for track and field, running, and swimming events and for chess. There …

On The Influence Of Extreme Parties In Electoral Competition With Policy-Motivated Candidates, Georges Casamatta, Philippe De Donder

Georges Casamatta

We study and compare equilibrium platforms in models of unidimensional electoral competition with two and four policy motivated parties. We first analyze the plurality game, where the party getting the most votes is elected and implements its proposed platform. Restrictions on the set of credible announcements are needed to get existence of equilibria. Comparing equilibria with two and four parties, we obtain that moderate parties react to the introduction of extreme parties by proposing the same or more extreme equilibrium platforms. We then study the proportional system, where the policy implemented is a weighted sum of the proposals, with the …

Evaluación Y Descentralización, Fernando González-Laxe

Fernando González-Laxe

No abstract provided.

Liberalisation Of The European Services Market And Its Impact On Switzerland: Assessing The Potential Impacts Of Following The Eu's 2004 Services Directive, Henk Lm Kox, Arjan Lejour

Henk LM Kox

Investing In Louisiana: Venture Capital Activity 1995-2004, Dave N. Norris, Aijun Besio

Dave Norris

No abstract provided.

Stock Selection Based On Cluster Analysis, Newton Da Costa Jr, Jefferson Cunha, Sergio Da Silva

Sergio Da Silva

We put forward a technique based on cluster analysis to group stocks in spot markets according to a risk−return criterion. We show how an informed investor will make money using the cluster analysis to select stocks of major companies from North and South America.

The Economic Costs Of The War In Iraq, Scott J. Wallsten, Katrina Kosec

Scott J. Wallsten

No abstract provided.

Insurance, Self-Protection, And The Economics Of Terrorism, Darius Lakdawalla, George Zanjani

Darius N. Lakdawalla

This paper investigates the rationale for public intervention in the terrorism insurance market. It argues that government subsidies for terror insurance are aimed, in part, at discouraging self-protection and limiting the negative externalities associated with self-protection. Cautious self-protective behavior by a target can hurt public goods like national prestige if it is seen as “giving in” to the terrorists, and may increase the loss probabilities faced by others by encouraging terrorists to substitute toward more vulnerable targets. We argue that these externalities are essential for normative analysis of government intervention and may also explain why availability problems in this market …

A Theory Of Health Disparities And Medical Technology, Darius Noshir Lakdawalla, Dana Goldman

Darius N. Lakdawalla

Better-educated people are healthier, although the sources of this relationship remain unclear. Starting with basic principles of consumer theory, we develop a model of how health disparities are determined that does not depend on the precise causal mechanism. Improvements in the productivity of health care disproportionately benefit the heaviest health care users. Since richer patients tend to use the most health care, this suggests that new technologies—by making more diseases treatable, reducing the price of health care, or improving health care productivity—could widen socioeconomic disparities in health. An exception to this rule, however, is a simplifying technology, which can contract …

Regional Analysis And Sustainable Development: Application Of A Synthetic Sustainability Index To Galicia And The European Union, Fernando González-Laxe

Fernando González-Laxe

No abstract provided.

The Two-Part Instrument In A Second-Best World, Don Fullerton, Ann Wolverton

Don Fullerton

Standard Pigovian tax theory has been extended in two directions. First, many polluting activities are difficult to tax because they are not market transactions, and so recent papers have shown that the same effects can be achieved by use of a two-part instrument (2PI): a tax on output or income and a subsidy for clean alternatives to pollution. It is a generalization of a deposit-refund system. Second, a different literature concerns the second-best pollution tax in the presence of other tax distortions. Here, we combine the two extensions by looking at the second-best 2PI. When government needs revenue, is the …

Estimates Of The Effectiveness Of Monetary Policy, Ray C. Fair

Ray C Fair

This paper examines various interest rate rules, as well as policies derived by solving optimal control problems, for their ability to dampen economic fluctuations caused by random shocks. A tax rate rule is also considered. A multicountry econometric model is used for the experiments. The results differ sharply from those obtained using recent models in which the coefficient on inflation in the nominal interest rate rule must be greater than one in order for the economy to be stable.

Transport And Sustainable Development: Impact Of The Systems Of Population Mobility And Goods On The Ecological Footprint In Galicia (Spain), Fernando González-Laxe, Federico Martín Palmero, Fernanda Miguélez Pose

Fernando González-Laxe

No abstract provided.

A Capacity Market That Makes Sense, Peter Cramton, Steven Stoft

Peter Cramton

We argue that a capacity market is needed in most restructured electricity markets, and present a design that avoids problems found in the early capacity markets. The proposed market only rewards capacity that contributes to reliability as demonstrated by its performance during hours in which there is a shortage of operating reserves. The capacity price responds to market conditions, increasing when and where capacity is scarce and decreasing to zero when and where it is sufficiently plentiful. Market power in the capacity market is addressed by basing the capacity price on actual capacity, rather than bid capacity, so generators cannot …

Fiscal Risks Indicators For The Emu Countries, Riccardo Fiorito

riccardo fiorito

Sustainable government debt reflects also the importance of non-financial assets ant the size of private wealth in a country. This matters for evaluating EMU countries and is partially reflected in the yield differentials.