Asymmetric information and price competition in small business lending

This paper examines the relationship between bank lending rates and their cost of funds in New Zealand. Our results show that on average mortgage rates respond more quickly to changes in the cost of funds than base business lending rates. We also find an asymmetry in the initial (short-run) response of banks to changes in funding costs; in particular, our results show banks adjust mortgage rates downwards faster than upwards. The speed to which lending rates revert back to their equilibrium relationship with funding costs varies across the lending markets. We find the adjustment speed is faster when mortgage rates are below equilibrium, whereas it is slower when business lending rates are above long-run levels in relation to funding costs. Our analysis suggests that banks prefer the plain-vanilla type of lending such as mortgages in comparison to small business lending consistent with asymmetric information associated with business loans.     

Dynamic factor demands under imperfect competition: the Greek manufucturing industry 1958–1981

The intertemporal maximization problem of the firm under adjustment costs for its factors of production and imperfect competition in the output market is considered. The first-order conditions, with respect to capital and labour, the production function and the demand equation have been jointly estimated using Greek manufacturing data and values for the structural parameters have been obtained. The estimates are plausible and most of them significant. Tests of the overidentifying restirctions are unable to reject the overall specification of the model at conventional levels of significance.     

The Abrams curve of government size and unemployment: evidence from panel data

This study investigates the long run relationship between government size and unemployment rate, the Abrams curve, using ten European countries over the period 1961–1999. To this end, panel cointegration analysis and estimation techniques appropriate for heterogeneous panels are made use of. The results support the idea that there is an Abrams curve, and the relation between government size and the unemployment rate is positive.     

Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Outcomes: Interrelations of External and Internal Orientations with Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment

Journal of Business Ethics - We bring together social identity and social exchange perspectives to develop and test a moderated mediation model that sheds light on employees’ perceptions...     

Importance and Need for Rural Development Instruments Under the CAP: A Survey of Farmers' Attitudes in Marginal Areas of Greece

The present work assesses the attitudes towards importance and need for providing agricultural development instruments other than traditional grant aid mechanisms in rural areas. Assistance in marketing farm produce, provision of extension services on new agricultural technology, agricultural training and provision of quality standards are four of the instruments examined. The importance and need for providing these instruments depends upon producers' human capital accumulation and farm characteristics. The analysis indicates that different instruments may apply to different parts of the rural population and thus a flexible, multi-instrument and selective rural development policy may be required.     

Personality traits discriminating between employees in public- and in private-sector organizations

Based on data collected from public and private organizations in Greece, this paper examines the differences in individual traits between public and private-sector employees, differences which eventually influence employees' attitudes and behaviours towards their organizations and their consequent performance, specifically in organizational commitment and neglect behaviour. The findings indicate that there are some differences between the two groups of employees. In only three out of ten personality characteristics examined here (security needs, pay needs and Protestant work ethic), are there no distinctions between the groups. These findings imply that, besides the environmental and structural characteristics of the two sectors which may be the source of attitudinal differences, it might also be that persons attracted to the public sector have different personality characteristics from those attracted to the private sector. Regardless of the source of differences, results point to the need for changing recruitment and selection practices in public organizations as well as for implementing a number of human resource management practices, the lack of which seems to drive junior qualified staff away from the public sector where they are mostly needed. The later seems to be the case in Greece where the lower pay and the non-competitive, non-challenging atmosphere prevailing in most public-sector organizations seem to play an important role in driving most dynamic employees away from the public sector.     

A Simulation Approach to Nonparametric Empirical Bayes Analysis

We deal with general mixture of hierarchical models of the form m(x) = f_øf(x |θ) g (θ)dθ , where g(θ) and m(x) are called mixing and mixed or compound densities respectively, and θ is called the mixing parameter. The usual statistical application of these models emerges when we have data x_i, i = 1,…,n with densities f(x_i|θ_i) for given θ_i, and the θ₁ are independent with common density g(θ) . For a certain well known class of densities f(x |θ) , we present a sample-based approach to reconstruct g(θ) . We first provide theoretical results and then we use, in an empirical Bayes spirit, the first four moments of the data to estimate the first four moments of g(θ) . By using sampling techniques we proceed in a fully Bayesian fashion to obtain any posterior summaries of interest. Simulations which investigate the operating characteristics of our proposed methodology are presented. We illustrate our approach using data from mixed Poisson and mixed exponential densities.     

Techno-economic evaluation of 3G and beyond mobile business alternatives

Three business case scenarios in the context of emerging mobile access network technologies and business players have been studied and the economical results are presented. The aim is to cover some of the most interesting business alternatives in providing the new 3G and beyond services including cases where the operator may have an existing second-generation cellular network or not, and a license for the 3G UMTS network or not. The scenarios have been analyzed in different Western European country groups that are not exactly representative of any defined country, but rather share typical demographic characteristics. Investments and operational expenditures are identified and the results show how diverse business models and technologies lead to different revenue, cost, and profitability profiles. The business case scenarios include incumbent’s 3G evolution with UMTS compared to an alternative 3G technology deployment with mobile WiMAX, new entrant’s UMTS deployment business case, and a greenfield CDMA450 deployment business case.     

FORECASTING INFLATION USING DYNAMIC MODEL AVERAGING*

We forecast quarterly US inflation based on the generalized Phillips curve using econometric methods that incorporate dynamic model averaging. These methods not only allow for coefficients to change over time, but also allow for the entire forecasting model to change over time. We find that dynamic model averaging leads to substantial forecasting improvements over simple benchmark regressions and more sophisticated approaches such as those using time varying coefficient models. We also provide evidence on which sets of predictors are relevant for forecasting in each period.     

Assessing the Transmission of Monetary Policy Using Time‐varying Parameter Dynamic Factor Models*

This article extends the current literature which questions the stability of the monetary transmission mechanism, by proposing a factor‐augmented vector autoregressive (VAR) model with time‐varying coefficients and stochastic volatility. The VAR coefficients and error covariances may change gradually in every period or be subject to abrupt breaks. The model is applied to 143 post‐World War II quarterly variables fully describing the US economy. I show that both endogenous and exogenous shocks to the US economy resulted in the high inflation volatility during the 1970s and early 1980s. The time‐varying factor augmented VAR produces impulse responses of inflation which significantly reduce the price puzzle. Impulse responses of other indicators of the economy show that the most notable changes in the transmission of unanticipated monetary policy shocks occurred for gross domestic product, investment, exchange rates and money.