Momentum strategies of German mutual funds

The existence of the momentum effect in stock returns has been documented for the US (e.g., Jegadeesh and Titman in J. Finance 48(1), 65–91, 1993) and many other national equity markets worldwide (e.g., Griffin et al. in J. Finance 58(6), 2515–2547, 2003). However, little is known about the active employment of momentum strategies among institutional investors outside the US. This paper provides first evidence of momentum behavior among German mutual funds. We find the fund trades to follow stock returns on an aggregated institutional level. Moreover, we detect significant momentum behavior among funds with a European and global equity focus, as well as among funds predominantly investing in Asia. In contrast, German funds do not seem to engage in momentum strategies when trading domestic stocks. While only half the funds in our sample trade in accordance with past returns, 66 % of the funds within the largest size quintile follow momentum strategies. Finally, we do not find momentum trading funds to outperform the other funds.     

Common trends and common cycles in regional crime

This paper uses the Vahid and Engle (Journal of Applied Econometrics, 8, 341-360, 1993) common trend - common cycle approach to model the dynamics of regional crime rates in England over the period 1975–1996. The evidence indicates the existence of common trends and common cycles in regional crime rates. This result is exploited to examine the system-wide effects of shocks emanating in a particular region.     

Progressive taxes and firm births

Tax reform proposals in the spirit of the “flat tax” model typically aim to reduce three parameters: the average tax burden, the progressivity of the tax schedule, and the complexity of the tax code. We explore the implications of changes in these parameters for entrepreneurial activity, measured by counts of firm births. The Swiss fiscal system offers sufficient intra-national variation in tax codes to allow us to estimate such effects with considerable precision. We find that high average taxes and complicated tax codes depress firm birth rates, while tax progressivity per se promotes firm births. The latter result supports the existence of an insurance effect from progressive corporate income taxes for risk-averse entrepreneurs. However, implied elasticities with respect to the level and complexity of corporate taxes are an order of magnitude larger than elasticities with respect to the progressivity of tax schedules.     

Registered nurses' perspectives on health care and the 2008 presidential election

As this historic presidential election draws near, what do RNs think of our nation's priorities? Which candidates do they think will be most effective in shaping our health care system and addressing the most pressing issues of our time? The results of this survey show that RNs do not identify overwhelmingly with one political ideology or party and, in fact, they closely resemble the public on these political dimensions. The data also show that RNs identify health care issues as the most important problem facing the nation. RNs who believe that it is the responsibility of the government to provide health insurance to those without it, have more confidence in the government to achieve this outcome, and are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. The presidential election is expected to be highly contested and could be determined by a relatively small margin of votes and, thus, nurses should recognize their chances of influencing the outcome of the election. The data from this survey provide baseline information potentially useful to increasing the political influence of the nursing profession, informing other organizations about where they might align with nurses, and helping candidates and the political parties compete more effectively in seeking the support of roughly 3 million RN voters.     

Trade creation and the status of FTAs: empirical evidence from East Asia

East Asia has been considered a latecomer with respect to Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Since the turn of the last century, however, FTAs with East Asian participation have seen an intra- and extra-regional expansion. Many trade initiatives have been proposed, negotiated or even implemented. This introduces interesting perspectives for the analysis of trade agreements regarding their anticipatory trade effects. This paper focuses on the trade impact of FTAs at different stages that East Asian economies participate in. The central part of this study is an econometric analysis that applies panel data to the gravity model of international trade flows. We augment the traditional model with variables to estimate trade effects of bilateral and multilateral agreements and year-to-year changes in the stages of their implementation. Our results reveal that there exist anticipatory effects preceding the actual implementation of bilateral FTAs with East Asian participation. Further, anticipation effects are larger for bilateral than for multilateral agreements, possibly because the realisation of bilateral agreements is considered more realistic.     

Technology commercialization intelligence: Organizational antecedents and performance consequences

External technology commercialization, e.g., by means of technology licensing, has recently gained in importance. Despite imperfections in technology markets, out-licensing constitutes a major technology commercialization channel. Although the identification of licensing opportunities represents a significant managerial challenge, prior research has relatively neglected these activities. Therefore, we develop the concept of ‘technology commercialization intelligence’ (TCI), which refers to the observation of a firm's environment with particular focus on identifying technology licensing opportunities. Grounded in a dynamic capabilities perspective, we test five hypotheses regarding organizational antecedents and performance consequences of TCI, drawing on data from a survey of 152 companies. The empirical findings provide strong support for the importance of the TCI concept. The findings deepen our understanding of the discrepancies between successful pioneering firms active in technology licensing and many others being less successful. The results have major implications for technology exploitation in open innovation processes.     

EU Emission Allowances and the stock market: Evidence from the electricity industry

This paper constitutes - to our best knowledge - the first econometric analysis on stock market effects of the EU Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS). Our results suggest that EU Emission Allowance (EUA) price developments matter to the stock performance of electricity firms: EUA price changes and stock returns of the most important European electricity corporations are shown to be positively related. This effect does not work asymmetrically, so that stock markets do not seem to react differently to EUA appreciations in comparison to depreciations. The carbon market effect is shown to be both time- and country-specific: It is particularly strong for the period of EUA market shock in early 2006, and differs with respect to the countries where the electricity corporations analysed are headquartered. Stock market reactions to EUA volatility could not be shown.