The National Lottery:A Preliminary Assessment of net Additionality

This paper makes a preliminary assessment of how the current structure for the distribution of UK National Lottery funds affects the promise of net additionality for the designated 'good causes'. Indifference analysis demonstrates that the funding structure is optimal in these terms. However, the measurement of net additionality is highly problematic and involves both quantitative and qualitative techniques. Whilst a preliminary comparison with Ireland shows that the UK system is in a better position to achieve net additionality through its accountability and transparency, net additionality could still be only a relatively small proportion of the dedicated Lottery money, depending on the behaviour of politicians, local authorities, other interest groups, and the distribution boards themselves.     

INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERINGS: GOING BY THE BOOK

In the U.S., and increasingly in other countries as well, IPO securities are marketed to investors in a process known as "book-building"—one that amounts to polling institutional investors to establish a demand schedule for the issue and then allotting stock to individual investors according to the strength of their professed interest. Although book-building methods require use of discriminatory tactics that have attracted strong criticism from investors and regulators, this article defends such practices by demonstrating that book-building is more efficient than alternative methods. It effectively allows issuers to increase the net proceeds of their offerings by making better use of information about market demand conditions.
In the process of explaining the efficiency of the book-building method, this article also offers a plausible explanation for a phenomenon that has long puzzled economists: the systematic underpricing of IPOs. The key to the success of a book-building effort lies in the use of a strategic pricing and allocation policy designed to offset the investor's incentive to understate his or her interest in an IPO. By committing to favor investors who provide strong indications of interest with relatively large allocations of underpriced shares, the investment bank can limit the distortion of investor's incentives in bidding and so increase the level of proceeds the issuing firm can expect to generate from its IPO.     

The Role of Multinational Firms in the Wage-Gap Debate

The observation of an increase in the ratio of skilled to unskilled wages in the high-income countries and in some cases in low/middle-income countries has led to considerable discussion and controversy as to its cause. Virtually none of the analyses have considered a role for multinational investment in explaining the wage-gap phenomenon. This paper adapts the authors' earlier work to consider what role multinationals might play in factor markets. It identifies circumstances under which investment liberalization is likely to raise the wage gap in both the skilled-labor abundant and the unskilled-labor abundant country.     

Profutures. The birth of the strategic prospective and futures studies international network for applied methodology

On 30 September and 1 October 1993, the European Commission's Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (PROMPT) organized a meeting, in collaboration with LIPS-CNAM (the Laboratory for Investigation in Prospective and Strategy of the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris), on the theme: ‘Methods and tools in strategic prospective: retrospective and perspectives’. The main outcome of this meeting, which brought together 23 international experts from the strategic prospective-futures studies field at the Ispra campus of the EC's joint Research Centre, was the creation of a new network, devoted to applied methodology, to be known as Profutures.     

Evaluation of cooperative research

This report looks at evaluation studies of a number of cooperative academic-industrfy research programmes in Europe, and suggests that indirect economic benefits should be taken into account as well as motives and goals of participating firms.     

Linking of U.S. monetary policy and exchange rates to world soybean markets

The linkage between macroeconomic policies and agricultural commodity trade has become an important research issue of agricultural economists. This paper investigates the macroeconomic linkage of soybean trade competition between the exporting countries of the United States, Brazil, and Argentina in the EC-12 and Japan import markets. It is argued that U.S. monetary growth may have important impacts on the competitive position of U.S. soybean exports through exchange rates. Two relationships are investigated: (a) the effects of U.S. monetary growth on the agricultural trade weighted exchange rates, and (b) the responsiveness of agricultural commodity prices and U.S. exports to exchange rate movements. Results indicate that a weak dollar increases imports of soybeans and soymeal significantly which serves to increase the equilibrium world price and increase both U.S. and Brazil/Argentina exports in the long run. However, during periods of more expansionary U.S. monetary policy there is little evidence of significant increases in market share position for U.S. soybeans and soymeal in world markets.     

The economics of land transfer and title insurance

In the presence of uncertainty over the title of land (due to fraud or error), a legal system can protect either the current (innocent) owner, or a previous owner who claims title. The predominant system in the United States generally awards title to the latter in the event of legitimate claim. Thus, current owners frequently purchase title insurance to provide indemnification in the event of a loss. In contrast, the Torrens system awards title to the current owner, but provides for indemnification of any legitimate claimants. We evaluate these two systems and argue that if transaction costs are low, both promote efficient assignment of title (according to the Coase Theorem), but if transaction costs are high, the Torrens system is more likely to award title to the party that values it the most (namely, the current possessor).