Price differences between equity classes. Corporate control,foreign ownership or liquidity?

This paper is the first comprehensive study of price differences for dual class equity at the Oslo Stock Exchange. It analyzes the relative importance of corporate control, foreign ownership restrictions and stock market liquidity for the price differences. The Norwegian market has the peculiar feature that in part of the sample period non-voting shares were trading at a premium to voting shares, i.e., what is usually termed the “voting premium” was negative. This result can be rationalized by restrictions on foreign ownership. In the later part of the period, with no regulatory restrictions on foreign ownership, the voting premium is positive, and related to corporate governance and liquidity.     

Employers' Flexibility and Employment Volatility

A bstract .   Previous analyses of the strong secular growth in personnel supply employment have focused primarily on the relative impacts of demand and supply factors. This industry's dramatic growth has tended to mask its high degree of volatility, which may be more useful in understanding employers' motivations for hiring temporary employees. This article examines alternative explanations for the volatility of employment in the temporary supply industry from 1972 to 2000. Using a seemingly unrelated time-series estimator, we compare the volatility of temporary employment to that of regular full-time employment. We find that quarterly changes in temporary employment are more sensitive to the business cycle than regular full-time employment are and argue that temporary employment is likely to have a number of disadvantages as a reemployment strategy during a recession, since temporary employment typically declines during that time. Additionally, employment growth during this period is better explained by employers' efforts to achieve numerical rather than wage flexibility.     

Ranking Economics Journals Using Data From a National Research Evaluation Exercise

This paper describes an algorithm for creating a ranking of economics journals, using data from the 2014 UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise. The ranking generated by the algorithm can be viewed as a measure of the average quality of the papers published in the journal, as judged by the REF Economics and Econometrics sub‐panel, based on the outputs submitted to the REF.     

The European Central Bank’s Ethical Rules

Intereconomics - The study analyses the private securities transactions at the US Federal Reserve that have been made public since late 2021 and are worthy of criticism. It is shown by way of...     

Sollten Zentralbanken unabhängig sein? Ergänzungen zu Stefan Schäfer

This article extends the inspection of Central Bank Independence (CBI) with respect to inflation performance to an examination of the relationship between CBI and economic welfare in general. The common view of monetary neutrality, i.e. a “free lunch” of CBI with respect to economic growth and employment, is contested on the basis of neo- and post-Keynesian theories of policy interactions and market constellations. Nevertheless, the fact has to be taken seriously that there is a broad discussion under way about the merits of CBI. The defenders of CBI must be on the lookout against a broad political and scientific offensive against the cornerstones of “German stability culture”.     

European Governance: Institutionelle Reformen nach der Krise

Durch die Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise sind einschneidende Ver?nderungen im ?konomischen Governance-System der EU ausgel?st worden. Die im Zuge der Krise ergriffenen Ma?nahmen werden hier kritisch untersucht. Dabei stellt der Autor fest, dass die Ver?nderungen den Empfehlungen des „Old View“ folgen, und beschreibt, welche Alternativen m?glich sind.