Migration and Regional Trade Agreements: A (New) Gravity Estimation

This paper investigates the role of regional trade agreements (RTAs) on bilateral international migration. Building on a gravity model for migration, our econometric strategy controls for the multilateral resistance to migration and solves the zero migration flows problem by using a censored quantile regression approach. Further, the endogeneity problem of RTAs in migration settlement is addressed by using instrumental variable censored quantile regression. Our results suggest that the presence of a RTA stimulates the migration stocks among member countries. The pro‐migration effect of RTAs is magnified if the agreement includes also provisions easing bureaucratic procedures for visa and asylum among member countries. Finally, we find an asymmetric effect of RTAs across the quantiles of the distribution of migration settlements.     

Profit margins and business cycles in the Brazilian industry: a panel data study

The paper investigates the relationship between profit margins and business cycle in the Brazilian industry during the 1992–1998 period, taking as reference a dynamic panel data model founded around a conjectural variation framework. The empirical results indicate procyclical behaviour of profit margins for the aggregate business cycle but is less clear in the case of sector-specific business cycle variables. Among the most robust results, one can highlight the roles of lagged profitability and import intensity and the negligible role of union density. Schmalensee in (American Economic Review 75, pp. 341–51) outlined three theoretical interpretations associated with the empirical model (classical, revisionist and managerial). Econometric tests on the related restrictions do not allow one to exclusively legitimate any of the three interpretations.     

On demand responsiveness in additive cost sharing

Under partial responsibility, the ranking of cost shares should never contradict that of demands.The Solidarity axiom says that if agent i demands more, j should not pay more if k pays less. It characterizes the quasi-proportional methods, sharing cost in proportion to `rescaled' demands.Full responsibility rules out cross-subsidization for additively separable costs. Restricting solidarity to submodular cost characterizes the fixed-flow methods, containing the Shapley-Shubik and serial methods.The quasi-proportional methods meet—but most fixed-flow methods fail—Group Monotonicity: if a group of agents increase their demands, not all of them pay less. Serial cost sharing is an exception.     

实施CMMS的五项原则及其使用——一个石化工厂的案例研究

大多数计算机维修管理系统(CMMS)没有起到管理系统应有的作用,或者实施以后限制了管理的能力.另一个重要的事实是:如果实施时间少于二年,大约有50%的CMMS实施是注定要失败的.笔者采用Peter Senge的观点,把学习组织(Learning Organisations)作为新方法来实施和使用CMMS.探讨如何成功地把这个方法应用于Rio de Janeiro天然气化工厂,保证全面使用CMMS.     

Thailand: Opportunities and risks in a fast‐changing business environment

Thailand's business environment is changing dramatically in the wake of the worst financial crisis and economic recession in the country's recent history. Some of these changes may be ephemeral, and Thailand will return to old business practices once the crisis eases, but many of the economic and political reforms now being implemented can make trade and investment in Thailand easier, more transparent, and less affected by corruption. Some of the reforms will not deliver the expected results. Others may increase uncertainty that will be counterproductive in the short run. But some of the constitutional changes—the restructuring of family controlled conglomerates, better regulation of the financial sector, demands for stronger corporate governance, and new incentives for private investment—can have profound impacts on the country's business climate and the way American companies do business in Thailand. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Implementing just and efficient decision-making

In an economy with one public good, one private good and quasi-linear utilities we explore decision-making mechanisms to non-cooperatively implement an efficient outcome. By auctioning the leadership role among agents, one implements egalitarianism, namely the efficient outcome that distributes equally the surplus available from an a priori given status quo. A refinement of this mechanism (so-called autioning the leadership with differentiated buds) allows us to implement an efficient anonymous and neutral outcome: it achieves egalitarianism above the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves decision.     

Can everyone benefit from growth? : Two difficulties

We consider the problem of fair division in economies where the amount to be divided may vary. We show that there is no solution to this problem jointly satisfying the following requirements: (i) Pareto-optimality; (ii) resource monotonicity; an increase in the aggregate endowment should benefit all agents; (iii) individual rationality from equal division: all agents should be better off than at equal division. The first two requirements are also incompatible with (iv) no agent should consume more of every good than any other agent.     

Implementing the Kalai-Smorodinsky bargaining solution

The bargaining game is proposed where the agents bid fractions of dictatorship that are used by all non-winners of the auction to threaten acceptance of the winner's proposal. That procedure non-cooperatively implements the Kalai-Smorodinsky bargaining solution.     

Property development firms IPOs in Brazil： Was there overpricing or not？

Between September 2005 and October 2007, representative companies of the Brazilian residential real estate market adopted a strategy intended to increase their investment capacity by Initial Public Offer （IPO）. The setting at that time was favorable for constructing residential real estate designed for the middle class, in view of two main factors： First, in 2005, a restructuring of the Brazilian finance system had relaxed requirements needed to receive financing for the purchase of residential property; Second, there was substantial demand in the middle class market because most developers had been focusing on the upper class market in order to guarantee the sale resources in the production phase. Thus, it was necessary to enhance the investment capacity of the real estate companies to attend the middle-class demand. These two factors, associated with a favorable outlook for the Brazilian, as well as the global economy, encouraged those representative companies to rapidly increase their investment capacity by IPO in a short time. The focus of this article is to analyze the quality of the investments in the stock of these real estate companies （21 offers were taken into account in the analysis）. In order to identify what these companies＇ expectations were and how they supported their decisions to enter BOVESPA with their designated prices and amounts, correlating offers against the BOVESPA Index （market index） were also analyzed. The results allow concluding that these offers were not supported by validated procedures of pricing, but rather were just speculative offers, even though we do take into account the investment grade granted to the Brazilian economy within the period concerned in our analysis.