A Regime‐Switching Approach to Modeling Rental Prices of U.K. Real Estate Sectors

This article uses regime‐switching models of the threshold type to analyze the adjustment process of rental prices for three U.K. commercial real estate sectors over the period 1974–2008. The nonlinear models outperform their linear counterparts in in‐sample fit. Their out‐of‐sample forecasting ability is better whenever the corresponding linear models contain a significant amount of neglected nonlinearity. Regime switches are triggered when the growth rates of rental price exceed certain threshold levels. For the industrial and retail sectors such regime switches occur in situations of strong excess demand, for the office sector they occur when there is strong excess supply.     

Food in sub-Saharan Africa : Trends and policy challenges for the 1990s

The food situation in Africa can be expected to become increasingly serious as the end of the century approaches. The gap between domestic supply and food needs in rapidly widening. Yield-increasing technology becomes essential in view of land scarcity in high-potential areas and sustainability problems in marginal zones. The concern of governments for food self-sufficiency, however, must not divert attention from the primary objective of household food security, which is essentially a question of households' real income. Accelerated rural growth and improved rural health and sanitation services accessible to the poor are central elements for household food security improvement.     

A pre-estimation sample separation method for a labor market in disepuilibrium

The paper presents a method for separating the sample on wage rate and labor input for a labor market in disequilibrium prior to the estimation stage. It is shown how the method's economic rationale stems from the existence of Keynesian unemployment, which implies a combination of real wage and labor input off the notional labor demand and supply curves. The potential usefulness of the method for generating unbiased estimates of wage elasticities of labor demand and labor supply is demonstrated on annual U.S. data.     

New classical and austrian business cycle theory: Is there a difference?

Conclusions To compare new classical and Austrian theory seems legitimate only with respect to a particular aspect of economic reality, namely business cycles. In the past century, Austrians have covered so many fields of economic theory that the achievements of new classicals are comparatively small. The discussions of both approaches showed that it would not be appropriate to claim that Austrians have developed theonly theory of business cycles which refers to individual behavior and choice. New classicals have rediscovered this approach and used many of the tenets for their explanation. This is not to say that new classical theory completely follows Austrian traditions. But many of the differences appear to be small or are only semantic in character.     

Commonalities in the order book

This paper uses data from one of the most important European stock markets and shows that, in line with predictions from theoretical market microstructure, a small number of latent factors captures most of the variation in stock specific order books. We show that these order book commonalities are much stronger than liquidity commonality across stocks. The result that bid and ask side as well as the visible and hidden parts of the order book exhibit quite specific dynamics is interpreted as evidence that open order book markets attract a heterogeneous trader population in terms of asset valuations and impatience. Quantifying the informational content of the extracted factors with respect to the evolution of the asset price, we find that the factor information shares are highest (about 10%) for less frequently traded stocks. We also show that the informational content of hidden orders is limited.

The short-run impact of the stock market appreciation of the 1980s and 1990s on U.S. income inequality

The paper uses 1980 to 2000 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data to study the short-run effect of a stock market appreciation on U.S. household income inequality. Fixed-effects regressions suggest that a stock market appreciation raises the incomes of stockholder households more than non-stockholder households. The Gini coefficients derived from the regressions reveal a perceptible but rather volatile increase that can be attributed to the stock market appreciation, especially for the latter parts of the 1980s and 1990s. When averaged by decade, the stock market appreciation raises the Gini coefficient by about 2% for the 1980s and by 3% for the 1990s.     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FOOD PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION VARIABILITY: POLICY IMPLICATIONS FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

This paper examines whether there is increased inter-year instability in food consumption at the national level, and to what extent this is attributable to increased instability of food production in the wake of adoption of modern agricultural technology. The data analysed indicates that increased production instability does translate into increased fluctuations in consumption. Nevertheless, year-to-year consumption variability among the sample of 38 countries has declined during the past 25 years. This is attributed to improved stocking operations and trade practices which accompany economic growth. Nevertheless, food insecurity, as measured in terms of fluctuations around trend levels of consumption, does remain a problem, especially among the poor. Therefore, policy options to reduce consumption instability are outlined.     

Corporate and Individual Influences on Managers' Social Orientation

This paper reports research on the influence of corporate and individual characteristics on managers' social orientation in Germany. The results indicate that mid-level managers expressed a significantly lower social orientation than low-level managers, and that job activity did not impact social orientation. Female respondents expressed a higher social orientation than male respondents. No impact of the political system origin (former East Germany versus former West Germany) on social orientation was shown. Overall, corporate position had a significantly higher impact on social orientation than did the characteristics of the individuals surveyed.