Copyright, Parallel Imports and National Welfare: The Australian Market for Sound Recordings

For more than a decade now there has been considerable, often heated, debate over the issue of the parallel importation of sound recordings into Australia. Citing anti-competitive monopolistic distribution, an increasingly integrated global market and the challenges of new technologies, the Australian government recently passed the Copyright Amendment Act (No.2) 1998 , which permits the parallel importation of 'non-infringing' copies of a sound recording. This paper investigates the economic rationale underpinning this regulatory change and, using a partial equilibrium model, attempts to measure the likely welfare effects on consumers, copyright owners and the nation. In addition the paper examines the likely welfare impact of piracy within the new regulatory framework. This paper demonstrates that in a global music market characterised by exclusive territorial licences and price discrimination, the removal of parallel import restrictions by a small net-importer of intellectual property may be welfare enhancing for the nation. This welfare gain is at the expense of largely foreign copyright owners.     

How to improve scenario analysis as a strategic management tool?

Scenarios are claimed to support strategic decision makers. They are especially effective in dealing with uncertainties. This paper addresses some drawbacks of the conventional scenario method, which is especially directed at handling these uncertainties, and indicates possible avenues for methodological adaptations. We take the approach, which rests in the Shell tradition, as exemplary for our discussion on the mainstream scenario methodology. This approach has some limitations when it comes to dealing with simultaneous trends and countertrends, and trends or clusters of trends that are not thought of beforehand, especially the methodological requirements of causality and consistency, which might be limiting factors in this respect. This paper indicates alternative ways for scenario construction. It discusses the use of either recombinant scenarios, context scenarios, or inconsistent scenarios and/or combinations of these scenarios. These options explicitly incorporate the notion of ‘paradoxical trend’ as the codriver of future developments into the methodology.     

Common stock repurchases and market signalling: An empirical study

This paper examines the pricing behavior of securities of firms which repurchase their own shares. The results are consistent with a market in which investors price securities such that expected arbitrage profits are precluded. The results are also consistent with the hypothesis that firms offer premia for their own shares mainly in order to signal positive information, and that the market uses the premium, the target fraction and the fraction of insider holdings as signals in order to price securities around the announcement date. The observation that repurchases via tender offer are followed by abnormal increases in earnings per share and that mainly small firms engage in repurchase tender offers, provides further support for the signalling hypothesis.     

Effects of an Employee Volunteering Program on the Work Force: The ABN-AMRO Case

One of the new ways used by companies to demonstrate their social responsibility is to encourage employee volunteering, whereby employees engage in socially beneficial activities on company time, while being paid by the company. The reasoning is that it is good for employee motivation (internal effects) and good for the company reputation (external effects). This article reports an empirical investigation of the internal effects of employee volunteering conducted amongst employees of the Dutch ABN-AMRO bank. The study showed that (a) socio-demographic characteristics from employee volunteers markedly differ from those of non-volunteers and community volunteers and (b) employee volunteering seems to have positive effects on attitudes and behavior towards the organization.     

Development of advanced tourism studies in Holland

Bodewes, Theo, Development of Advanced Tourism Studies in Holland. Annals of Tourism Research 1981, VIII(1):35–51. The entry of tourism studies into the field of advanced education is often a difficult process. Theory and practice sometimes serve conflicting interests. In the Netherlands an option has been taken for a theoretical, multi-disciplinary approach with links to the field of practice. Within this framework, tourism is indissolubly connected with leisure and recreation, leisure being the core of studies. This implies that the universities should educate leisure economists, leisure sociologists, etc., and that advanced professional educational institutions should educate leisure experts. This paper discusses whether the problems and solutions in the Netherlands are recognizable and/or useful abroad, and whether one institution can learn from the experiences of others.     

Distribution,taxation and employment in an open economy

Summary If taxes on labour income are passed on in wages the balanced budget multiplier may be negative. The present paper analyses this problem from a theoretical point of view applying a linearized version of a model for the small open economy. The model is dynamic, because account is taken of capital accumulation. Short-run and long-run solutions are expressed in terms of fiscal policy variables, a wage push variable, the price level abroad and world demand. Numerical examples are supplemented to illustrate the analytical results. Acknowledgement is due for his helpful comment to S.K. Kuipers     

Gold price dynamics and the role of uncertainty

This study focuses on the dynamics of the gold price against bonds, stocks and exchange rates based on a disaggregation of the underlying relationships across different frequencies applying a wavelet decomposition. To analyze joint extreme movements (i.e. tail dependence), we adopt a copula approach, which helps us to assess the dependence between the returns of gold and other assets in calm and turmoil market times and therefore the hedge and safe haven functions of gold. We also examine whether gold prices are directly affected by changes in macroeconomic uncertainty, economic policy uncertainty and/or CPI forecasters disagreement. Analyzing data for nine economies for a sample period starting in 1985, we find that the role of gold changes significantly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Gold is unable to serve as a hedge or safe haven in the classical sense while the findings for the period prior to 2008 mostly suggest that gold is able to shield investors. Uncertainty measures display a surprising and time-varying relationship with the path of the gold price. While economic policy uncertainty is positively correlated with gold price changes, macroeconomic uncertainty and inflation uncertainty among forecasters are both negatively related to gold price changes.