Cointegration analysis and the UK demand for nitrogen fertilizer

Nitrogen fertilizer taxes have been proposed as a means of controlling agricultural ‘over-production’ and nitrate pollution of water courses in the EC. This paper constructs time-series models of fertilizer demand which provide quantitative information relevant to this issue. Time-series data on the use of nitrogen fertilizer in UK agriculture is found to have a unit root with non-zero drift coupled with a one-time change in drift after testing against the alternative hypothesis that the process is trend-stationary with a break in trend. The stochastic component of the nitrogen use series is cointegrated with the ratio of the price of nitrogen fertilizer to the price of agricultural output. Appropriate error correction models are estimated. Both the short-run and long-run price elasticities of the response of nitrogen use are found to be rather low. Some brief policy conclusions are drawn.     

危机:危险与机遇——哈佛大学理查德·库珀教授访谈

编者按:理查德·库珀(Richard N.cooper)是哈佛大学经济系教授,世界著名的国际经济问题专家.曾任美国副国务卿、国家情报委员会主席、波士顿联邦储备银行主席、耶鲁大学教务长等职.他的主要著作包括:<经济的相互依存>、<相互依存世界中的经济政策>、<国际货币体系>、<发展中国家的经济稳定和债务>、<世界经济的环境与资源政策>、<转型经济体的贸易增长>等.近日,本刊邀请哈佛大学经济系中国社会科学院访问学者赵瑾教授对他进行了专访,内容主要涉及美国次贷危机、美国经济"双赤字"、中国通货膨胀、中国对世界经济的影响和资本市场开放等.     

UK Assessment: Can Recession be Avoided?

There is a growing danger that the UK will suffer a serious recession in 1999. In this article, Adrian Cooper assesses the risks to the OEF/LBS forecast and considers what steps policy-makers might take to support demand and activity. With the weakness of consumer and business confidence currently posing the biggest threat, they must be seen to be decisive, with further substantial interest rate cuts essential.     

A Rose.com by Any Other Name

We document a striking positive stock price reaction to the announcement of corporate name changes to Internet-related dotcom names. This "dotcom" effect produces cumulative abnormal returns on the order of 74 percent for the 10 days surrounding the announcement day. The effect does not appear to be transitory; there is no evidence of a postannouncement negative drift. The announcement day effect is also similar across all firms, regardless of the firm's level of involvement with the Internet. A mere association with the Internet seems enough to provide a firm with a large and permanent value increase.     

Value versus Glamour

The fragility of the CAPM has led to a resurgence of research that frequently uses trading strategies based on sorting procedures to uncover relations between firm characteristics (such as “value” or “glamour”) and equity returns. We examine the propensity of these strategies to generate statistically and economically significant profits due to our familiarity with the data. Under plausible assumptions, data snooping can account for up to 50 percent of the in‐sample relations between firm characteristics and returns uncovered using single (one‐way) sorts. The biases can be much larger if we simultaneously condition returns on two (or more) characteristics.     

Measuring moral judgement and the implications of cooperative education and rule-based learning

The Defining Issues Test (DIT), developed by Rest (1986) , measures a person's level of moral development using hypothetical social dilemmas. Although the DIT is useful for measuring moral development in social settings, it might not adequately capture an individual's moral judgement abilities in solving work‐related problems ( Weber, 1990 ; Trevino, 1992 ; Welton et al., 1994 ). In the present study, the moral judgement levels of 97 accounting students were measured over a 1 year period using two separate test instruments, the DIT and a context‐specific instrument developed by Welton et al. (1994) . The test scores are significantly higher on the DIT than the Welton instrument (between the instruments and over time), suggesting that accounting students use higher levels of moral reasoning in resolving hypothetical social dilemmas and lower levels of moral reasoning in resolving context‐specific dilemmas. The difference in test scores was highest during cooperative education (work placement programme), implying that the environment is a significant determinant on students’ test scores.