Antitrust Sanctions and a Firm's Ability to Pay

Review of Industrial Organization - Gallo et al. (1994) analyze the sanctions imposed on firms convicted of criminal price-fixing under the antitrust laws. An element not included explicitly in...     

The response of the Dollar/Yen exchange rate to economic announcements

The paper examines the impact of major U.S. macroeconomic announcements on the Dollar/Yen exchange rate. We find that these announcements are responsible for most intraday and day-of-the-week volatility patterns in this market and we identify the most important announcements. The initial reaction to a major 8:30 announcement begins around 8:30:10 and lasts until about 8:30:50. A partial price correction is normally observed between 8:31 and 8:32. Price movements after 8:32 are basically independent of those observed earlier although volatility continues to be higher than normal until about 8:55.     

Mapping information technology

The information technology (IT) industries are dynamic in nature. Technological change is rapid and product life-cycles short. Convergence is profoundly changing the structure and dynamics of the IT industries. To successfully track these trends and understand the IT industries it is essential to have a framework for ordering thoughts and data, and for analysing what is going on. This article outlines the development of a new framework for the IT industries, which can encompass a range of industry and market statistics and provide a model capable of generating insights into the relationships between IT products, services, markets and industry subsectors.     

To Gamble or Not? Perceptions of Macau Among Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong Visitors

Macau's casino sector has been expanding rapidly, particularly targeting mainland Chinese gamblers. The novelty and under‐researched nature of this market is a challenge for Macau's casino and destination marketers. This study explores the characteristics of the mainland market and compares this with the second placed and more mature Hong Kong market. The profiling of visitors from Macau's main source markets including demographic, region of origin, trip behaviour and motivation characteristics provides insights into the future success of the destination. Adaption theory is used to explain the implications of differences between Gambling and Non‐Gambling visitors from the two source markets. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Chinese contractors in developing countries

This paper uses turnover data from Chinese contracted projects in as many as 87 low and lower middle income countries from 1998 to 2009. Economic fundamentals motivate Chinese contractor presence in developing countries as their revenues are positively associated with countries’ per capita income and expected growth. All else equal, contractor project revenues are higher in countries with stronger political rights regimes. Moreover, the estimated positive effect of improvements in political freedom is largest among countries with high fuel endowment, but lowest among countries with high ores and metals endowments. Conclusions relating Chinese contractor activities, perceptions on the level corruption, and resource endowment among sub-Saharan African countries must remain tentative as the estimated relationships are sensitive to the corruption indices used.     

Technological convergence among US regions and states

We test whether predictions of the Aghion et al. (Aghion, P., Bloom, N., Blundell, R., Griffith, R. and Howitt, P. (2004) Competition and Innovation: An Inverted U Relationship. NBER Working Paper series, No. 9269.) model are supported by firm-level data. In particular, we analyze if there is an inverted U-shaped relation between competition and R&;D. Results show that the inverted U-shaped relation is supported by the Herfindahl index but not by the price cost margin. Using the Herfindahl index, results suggest that breaking up monopolies increases R&;D, whereas further increases in competition most likely lead to reduced R&;D. Comparing different estimators, we find that time series-based estimators typically result in less clear-cut results, probably driven by a lack of time series variation in measures of competition.