Discrimination and job search theories for black British young men

The paper examines empirically the relationship between government revenues and expenditures in four European countries: Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal. In relative terms all four may be considered as the poorest members of the European Union. Yet, they present a fairly diverse picture as far as their macroeconomic performance and fiscal position is concerned. The empirical findings from cointegration and causality tests that are reported here indicate that in the case of Greece and Ireland tax and spending decisions are taken simultaneously by the fiscal authority, the tax-and-spend hypothesis is supported in the case of Spain, while absence of any causal ordering between government expenditure and tax revenues has been established for Portugal.     

Climate change: fiscal and international trade issues—introduction

The challenges to dealing with climate change are broad and complex. This special section reviews some of—but also brings new insights to—the challenges.     

Technical efficiency of alternative farming systems: the case of Greek organic and conventional olive-growing farms

Olive-growing is a major farming activity in Greek agriculture. This paper analyzes empirically the technical efficiency of organic and conventional olive-growing farms using a stochastic production frontier methodology and a translog functional specification. Findings indicate that the organic olive-growing farms examined exhibit a higher degree of technical efficiency (relative to their production frontier) than do conventional olive-growing farms. Reasons may include lower profit margins and restrictions on inputs permitted, thus forcing organic farmers to be more cautious with input use. However, both input- and output-oriented technical efficiency scores are still relatively low for both types of olive-farming. Thus there is considerable scope for cost reducing and farm income improvement in both farming modes. This could prove crucial for the long-run viability and the future course of the sector.     

Why do firms cross-list? International evidence from the US market

Using a modified international asset-pricing model we find strong evidence that publicly quoted firms cross-list when exhibiting strong performance in their domestic market and wish to take advantage of this situation. After cross-listing, this advantage disappears. Our sample consists of daily data for 1165 firms from 47 countries that have cross-listed on the US equity markets over the period 1976–2007. Within the context of this model we provide tests of the validity of the main hypotheses of capital market segmentation and investor protection, which provide explanations for equity cross-listing and investigate whether the nature of the market (regulated or unregulated) and the accompanying legal framework (common or civil law) can account for the impact of cross-listing on returns. Supporting the segmentation hypothesis, we report a decrease in local market risk after cross-listing. However, we find that the magnitude of such a decrease is diminishing over time as international markets become more integrated. On the other hand, we do not find any change in the global market risk after cross-listing, except for firms that cross-listed between 2001 and 2007, where their exposure to international market risk decreases. Furthermore, we find no evidence to support the investor protection hypothesis.     

GLOBAL FINANCE, INCOME DISTRIBUTION AND CAPITAL ACCUMULATION

The appreciation of the consequences of financial globalizationis an important task for contemporary political economy. Thispaper maintains that industrial and macroeconomic instabilityfaced by many developed and developing countries is likely tobe attributed, to an extent, to changes in income distributionin favour of rentiers, financiers and other groups of financialcapitalists. We elaborate on Marx's and Keynes's ideas and arguethat a rise in rentiers' income might have been an obstacleto industry's investment decisions, and detrimental to capitalaccumulation. The econometric analysis conducted provides evidencein line with the paper's major hypothesis for the United Statesand the UK.     

The influence of inflation on differential price changes across European markets

This paper provides the results of an empirical study of the dispersion of consumer price inflation for each of 19 product groups across 11 European countries using monthly data covering the 1980s. The study relates the degree of inflation dispersion in a market to the mean inflation rate. Thus, we show how differential price changes across European markets are influenced by inflation. A model of asymmetric response of relative inflation variability to inflation is tested. Hypotheses are also tested regarding broad categories of traded, nontraded, and regulated products, and results are provided for individual product groups.     

Nominal uncertainty and inflation: The role of European union membership

We provide evidence that higher inflation uncertainty leads to higher inflation in the new European Union (EU) member states and candidate countries only prior to EU accession. During EU accession and entry, inflation uncertainty has no effect on mean inflation.     

Parametric decomposition of the input-oriented Malmquist productivity index: with an application to Greek aquaculture

Using a stochastic frontier approach and a translog input distance function, this paper implements the input-oriented Malmquist productivity index to a sample of Greek aquaculture farms. It is decomposed into the effects of technical efficiency change, scale efficiency change, input-mix and, technical change, which is further attributed to neutral, output- and input-induced shifts of the frontier. Implementable expressions for the aforementioned components are obtained using a discrete changes-approach that is consistent with the usual discrete-form data. Empirical findings indicate that the productivity of the farms in the sample increased during the period 1995–1999 and it was shaped up primarily by the input mix-effect and technical change.     

Markets change every day: Evidence from the memory of trade direction

We present empirical evidence that there are periodic, specifically daily, structural breaks in the trade direction time series process, a fact with implications for several key intra-day characteristics of markets. We suggest that breaks arise as a consequence of daily variation in order flow direction independently of intra-day events and as a consequence of a natural and widespread daily periodicity in the timing of investment decisions. Empirical implementation of our short memory AR model with daily level shifts captures the striking long horizon predictability of trade direction, performs better out-of-sample than the standard long memory ARFIMA alternative and is computationally easier to estimate.     

A theory of optimal expropriation, mergers and industry competition

We model a competitive industry where managers choose quantities and costs to maximize a combination of firm profits and benefits from expropriation. Expropriation is possible because of corporate governance ‘slack’ permitted by the government. We show that corporate governance slack induces managers to choose levels of output and costs that are higher than would otherwise be optimal. This, in turn, benefits consumers - the equilibrium price is lower - and other stakeholders such as suppliers and employees. Depending on the government’s social welfare objective, less-than-perfect investor protection can be optimal. We show why some mechanisms suggested by the literature as improving investor protection - legal change, cross-listing, domestic mergers - may not be effective. We provide a theoretical argument showing the efficacy of cross-border mergers. The stronger corporate governance of a foreign acquirer, imposed on the domestic target firm, benefits merging shareholders and those of competing unmerged domestic firms.