EXPECTATIONS FORMATION AND RISK IN FOUR FOREIGN EXCHANGE MARKETS

[Scientific enquiry] is a matter of comparing the corollariesof a whole group of hypotheses to a whole group of facts. Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, Paris,1906.     

ECONOMIC ORIGINS OF APARTHEID

South African apartheid is a social system arising from the economic conflict of competitive interest groups. During the past four centuries, this struggle has not been linear: Changing economic and demographic conditions have tended to make white and non-white subclasses net complementary factors at certain times and net substitute factors at others. Moreover, such cross-elasticities in production are not clearly delineated along racial lines. For example, the synergy of white capital and black labor formed the essential social "evil" which apartheid, promoted by white labor and farm interests, was created to expunge. Hence, isolating apartheid via international sanctions is inherently problematic. The imposition of apartheid itself was accompanied by extensive South African-imposed trade barriers.     

EQUITY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF POSSIBLE CO2 TREATY PROPOSALS

The Montreal Protocol on chlorofluorocarbon control established an important precedent for global environmental treaties that include both developing countries and industrial countries. This paper evaluates seven possible treaty proposals to control carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Growth-rate control proposals fail on effectiveness of control or on equity differences between developing countries and industrial countries. Complex proposals link policies in population growth, economic development, world energy taxation, and forestation. These complex proposals, which appear to be both effective and equitable, can defer or avoid CO2 doubling.     

A STATISTICAL THEORY OF EQUILIBRIUM IN GAMES*

This paper describes a statistical model of equiliobrium behaviour in games, which we call Quantal Response Equilibrium (QRE). The key feature of the equilibrium is that individuals do not always play responses to the strategies of their opponents, but play better strategies with higher probability than worse strategies. we illustrate several different applications of this approach, and establish a number of theoretical properties of this equilibrium concept. We also demonstrate an equililance between this equilibrium notion and Bayesian games derived from games of complete information with perturbed payoffs     

REGULATION AND THE COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION:INTRODUCTION

Two recent court rulings have forced both law and economics to seriously reevaluate emerging marketplaces. In Sony Corporation v. Universal Studios (1983), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that videocassette recorders do not infringe upon the patent rights of a movie producer whose creation is viewed but not purchased (i.e., not bought from the producer or its assignee). This copyright issue has turned into a powerful political issue and a hot subject of conversation…in Hollywood as well as in Washington, D.C.     

Hedge Fund Activism, Corporate Governance, and Firm Performance

Using a large hand-collected data set from 2001 to 2006, we find that activist hedge funds in the United States propose strategic, operational, and financial remedies and attain success or partial success in two-thirds of the cases. Hedge funds seldom seek control and in most cases are nonconfrontational. The abnormal return around the announcement of activism is approximately 7%, with no reversal during the subsequent year. Target firms experience increases in payout, operating performance, and higher CEO turnover after activism. Our analysis provides important new evidence on the mechanisms and effects of informed shareholder monitoring.     

Growth and Public Debt: What Are the Relevant Trade‐Offs?

The interplay between growth and public debt is addressed considering a Barro‐type (1990) endogenous growth model where public spendings are financed through taxes on income and public debt. The government has a target level of public debt relative to GDP, and the long‐run debt‐to‐GDP ratio is used as a policy parameter. We show that when debt is a large enough proportion of GDP, two distinct balanced‐growth paths (BGPs) may coexist, one being indeterminate. We exhibit two types of important trade‐offs associated with self‐fulfilling expectations. First, we show that the lowest BGP is always decreasing with respect to the debt‐to‐GDP ratio while the highest one is increasing. Second, we show that the highest BGP, which provides the highest welfare, is always locally indeterminate while the lowest is always locally determinate. Therefore, local and global indeterminacy may arise and self‐fulfilling expectations appear as a crucial ingredient to understand the impact of debt on growth, welfare, and macroeconomic fluctuations. Finally, a simple calibration exercise allows to provide an understanding of the recent experiences of many OECD countries.