A Cost–Benefit Approach to the Evaluation of Regional Selective Assistance

The ‘Green Book’ and the recent EGRUP report support exchequer cost per job as a key input in the ex-ante appraisal of individual applications for Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) and the ex-post evaluation of the RSA scheme as a whole. In this paper, following a recommendation in the House of Commons Trade and Industry Committee's report on regional policy, the merits of an alternative, explicitly cost-benefit, framework are outlined. This approach incorporates the administration and compliance costs of the subsidy, costs at present ignored in RSA evaluation studies. An optimal ex-ante appraisal rule is developed. This takes the form of a cost-per-job ceiling, and a representative value is calculated for this figure. JEL classification: H20.     

Internal Capital Markets in Business Groups: Evidence from the Asian Financial Crisis

This paper examines capital reallocation among firms in Korean business groups ( $chaebol$) in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and the consequences of this capital reallocation for the investment and performance of $chaebol$ firms. We show that $chaebol$ transferred cash from low‐growth to high‐growth member firms, using cross‐firm equity investments. This capital reallocation allowed chaebol firms with greater investment opportunities to invest more than control firms after the crisis. These firms also showed higher profitability and lower declines in valuation than control firms following the crisis. Our results suggest that chaebol internal capital markets helped them mitigate the negative effects of the Asian crisis on investment and performance.     

Experience Goods, Expectations and Pricing*

This paper studies a peculiar problem involved in the pricing of an 'experience good' whose value is not known to consumers until it is actually consumed It shows that the producer faces an expectational problem that does not arise in the framework of a 'search good'. Noticing a link between markets in earlier and later periods due to the expectational problem, the present paper analyzes equilibrium price patterns when a producer can precommit to a certain future price path and when he cannot It also discusses social welfare implications.     

A Capital Budgeting Analysis of Life Insurance Costs in the United States: 1950–1979

A capital budgeting procedure is applied in developing a real price index for life insurance over three decades. Individual life policies of three types are analyzed. The analysis reveals that although the cost of whole life insurance, measured in nominal values, has decreased over the past thirty years, when properly measured in present value or constant dollar terms, the cost has risen substantially. Term life insurance has been characterized by decreasing costs in both nominal and real terms. The amounts of the cost variations attributable to improving survival rates, changing policy terms, varying discount rates and differing tax status are identified.     

The Impact of Attribute Importance in the Effects of Option Framing on Choice: Budget Range and Justification as Moderators of Loss Aversion

Loss aversion or an endowment‐based explanation clearly predicts that subtractive option framing (i.e. deleting mode or starting from a full model) will have a stronger effect on choice than additive option framing (i.e. adding mode or starting from a base model). This research examines whether the differential effects of option framing (additive vs. subtractive) on choice vary depending on the importance of attributes that constitute the defaults. Furthermore, this research proposes that consumers’ budget range and justification for choice serve to moderate the differential effects of option framing on choice.     

Determinants of Labor Market Participation and Wages of North Korean Female Refugees in South Korea

This paper uses data from a survey on 289 North Korean female refugees who arrived in South Korea in 2007 to understand the determinants of their economic adaption in the South Korean labor market. More specifically, we look at the effects of job finding channels and government policies on the labor market participation and wages of these women. We find that job finding through both personal contacts and public employment networks increases the probability of finding employment, but the former, especially job finding through contacts with South Koreans, is the most effective route to finding employment. In addition, jobs with higher wages are acquired in employment attained from South Korean referrals, followed by South Korean government agencies and those from North Korean refugee contacts. We further find that labor market participation is negatively affected by both public benefits and private transfers possibly because of increases in the reservation wages of job seekers.     

供应链视角下的企业社会责任管理研究

将社会责任延伸到包括核心企业的整个供应链视角,探讨供应链视角下的企业社会责任管理,并分别从供应链视角下企业社会责任的整体管理和供应链视角下核心企业的社会责任管理两个方面构建具体的社会责任管理模型,以期对企业社会责任的研究有所拓展和创新.     

SYNCHRONIZATION OF ECONOMIC SHOCKS BETWEEN GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL AND UNITED STATES,EUROPE, JAPAN,AND OIL MARKET: CHOICE OF EXCHANGE RATE REGIME†

Using a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) with block exogeneity, this study examines the impacts of external shocks originating from the United States, the European Union, Japan, and the oil market as well as those of the regional shocks, on the oil‐rich countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), viewed as a prospective monetary union. It takes into account the implications of the shock impacts for selecting an appropriate common exchange rate arrangement. The SVAR variance decomposition and impulse response analyses strongly underscore the relative impacts of the global shocks over the regional ones. The findings imply that the world's two major currencies, the U.S. dollar and the euro, should figure highly in a GCC's common basket of currencies. Accordingly, a transitional movement to a more flexible exchange rate arrangement such as a basket peg may be desirable for these trade‐dependent economies in the long run, as is argued in the optimal currency literature for developing countries. (JEL E52, O52, C22)     

BIASES IN STATIC OLIGOPOLY MODELS? EVIDENCE FROM THE CALIFORNIA ELECTRICITY MARKET*

Estimating market power is often complicated by a lack of reliable marginal cost data. A number of empirical studies identify industry competition and marginal cost levels by estimating the firms' first order condition within a conjectural variations framework. Few studies, however, have analyzed the accuracy of this technique. In this paper, we use direct measures of marginal cost for the California electricity market to measure the extent to which estimated mark‐ups and marginal costs are biased. Our results suggest that the technique poorly estimates mark‐ups and the sensitivity of marginal cost to cost shifters.     

Regime Shifts in Price‐Dividend Ratios and Expected Stock Returns: A Present‐Value Approach

We incorporate regime shifts in the mean of price‐dividend ratios into the present value model of van Binsbergen and Koijen (2010) who propose a latent variable approach to modeling expected returns and dividend growth rates. We find that accounting for regime shifts results in much lower persistence of expected returns and higher volatility of expected returns, and thus higher in‐sample predictability, when compared to the results from the van Binsbergen and Koijen (2010) model. We also show that the main source of the increase in the mean of price‐dividend ratios in the mid‐1990s is a decrease in the mean of expected returns.