A 'Basic Needs' Strategy for Development of Technology in Low Income Countries.

Abstract . The ‘basic needs’ strategy in development planning calls for giving priority to meeting minimum human needs and providing certain essential public services. This investigations studies its relevancy for developing technology and change in low income countries. It advances the case for an operationally-oriented basic needs concept for technology in such countries. It outlines a simplified planning model incorporating such a strategy. Eight equations are developed to yield an illustrative preliminary function showing the basic needs technology interacting with a structure of production, consumption and accumulation.     

Are There Differential Effects of Price and Policy on College Students’Drinking Intensity?

This article investigates the impact of campus bans on alcohol use and the price of alcohol on college students'drinking intensity. The impact of a campus ban on drinking appears to depend on the ability of students to substitute off-campus access to alcohol for on-campus access. Where few off-campus alternatives exist, campus bans reduce the odds that a student becomes a heavy drinker but have no impact on the odds of transitioning from abstainer to drinker. Where off-campus alternatives are more plentiful, campus bans are less effective. Increasing the price of alcohol appears to be equally effective at reducing the likelihood of drinking and heavy drinking. (JEL)     

Commodity price cycles and heterogeneous speculators: a STAR–GARCH model

We propose an empirical commodity market model with heterogeneous speculators. While the power of trend-extrapolating chartists is constant over time, the symmetric impact of stabilizing fundamentalists adjusts endogenously according to market circumstances: Using monthly data for various commodities such as cotton, sugar or zinc, our STAR–GARCH model indicates that their influence positively depends on the distance between the commodity price and its long-run equilibrium value. Fundamentalists seem to become more and more convinced that mean reversion will set in as the mispricing enlarges. Commodity price cycles may thus emerge due to the nonlinear interplay between different trader types. The paper represents the authors’ personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Deutsche Bundesbank.     

The market reaction to announced deep cuts in capital expenditures

The objective of the study reported in this paper was to examine the role of deep cuts in capital expenditures as a firm's strategy for becoming more efficient and, in turn, more competitive. Based on an empirical study, support is provided for the argument that deep cuts in capital expenditures may be a viable strategy for realigning corporate priorities toward a more efficient operation. The measure of performance utilized in this paper is the stock market reaction to announced deep cuts.     

Negligent hiring: Reducing the risk

In recent years, the responsibility of employers to hire people who are not dangerous or violent has been heightened by the tort, negligent hiring. The courts have ruled that certain employers owe a special duty to employees and third parties (e.g., customers or clients) to protect them from the harmful or criminal acts of other employees. This article contrasts negligent hiring to respondent superior and negligent entrustment, describes the components of negligent hiring, and reviews important legal cases. The article also discusses how employers can minimize the risk of negligent hiring through prudent human resource practices.     

Aggregation effects on price and expenditure elasticities in a quadratic almost ideal demand system

Abstract.  While it is well known that demand elasticities calculated at the macro level will in general differ from those calculated at the micro level because of aggregation effects, there remain the questions of how large the effects are and how they vary with the degree of inequality in the income distribution. We explore these questions with models based on a quadratic version of the Almost Ideal Demand System. We investigate the elasticity differences theoretically and then calibrate the models and generate numerical results, using income data for seven countries with widely different distributions. The aggregation effects are found generally to be rather small, even with highly unequal income distributions.     

Market games with differential information and infinite dimensional commodity spaces: The core

Summary We provide an alternative proof of the existence of core allocations in exchange economies with differential information and infinite dimensional commodity spaces. We also identify a critical feature of information sharing rules that ensures nonemptiness of the core. In essence, the only condition we require on the sharing rules is that profitable insider trading be prohibited. In the absence of insider trading, balancedness is guaranteed and core nonemptiness follows.I thank Dan Arce, Erik Balder, Myrna Wooders, and Nicholas Yannelis for helpful comments. This paper is a greatly revised version of my paper entitled. A Variational Problem Arising in Market Games with Differential Information, written in August of 1991.     

The managerial response to regulation of financial reporting for segments of a business enterprise

To properly assess the performance and monitor the management of industrially diversified firms, investors and other stakeholders may want companies to report separate financial data for each of their lines of business. In the mid-1970s, following a major increase in diversification of American firms, private and public regulators began requiring firms to disclose financial data for individual industry segments. Company managers, however, were given the authority to determine the degree to which data reported to outsiders was disaggregated. This article examines the managerial response to segmented financial disclosure regulations. Analysis of longitudinal data reveals that the extent of segmentation in reporting has been both low and declining, relative to the true extent of industrial diversification. In 1985, the fraction of companies with more than one reported segment was only 29.7 percent, whereas the fraction of companies operating in more than one line of business (assigned more than one SIC code by Compustat) was 83.5 percent. In 1977, about half of the included companies reported at least two industry segments, and a third reported at least three; by 1987, these fractions had declined to about one-quarter and one-seventh, respectively. A potential explanation of these findings is that managers perceive minimal disclosure of segmented information to be in their own self-interest.