Impact of the US–EC price war on major wheat exporters' shares of the Chinese market

China is both the world's largest producer and consumer of wheat. In an attempt to gain a larger slice of the important Chinese market, both the European Community and the United States have offered China subsidised wheat. In addition, other exporters have offered attractive credit arrangements to China. The objective of this paper is to measure the overall impact of these policies on each exporter's share of the Chinese market. To that end, an improved version of the constant market shares model is applied to data on Chinese wheat imports in the 1980's. The results indicate that the United States has been outperforming the other exporters since subsidised US wheat sales were authorised for China in 1987. The implications of the analysis for the smaller exporters and international wheat trade are discussed.     

HOW EFFECTIVE ARE STATE EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES? JOBCENTRE USE AND JOB MATCHING IN BRITAIN

Abstract State sponsored employment agencies are an important source of job matching in Britain. This study tracks Jobcentre use in Britain over the previous decade and the effectiveness of Jobcentre use in securing entry into employment for those who utilise its services. Amongst the unemployed, use of Jobcentres is highly counter-cyclical. This can be attributed principally to the changing composition of the stock over the economic cycle. In good times, there are relatively more short duration, voluntary quits in the stock, who tend to rely on Jobcentres least. Jobcentres are found to have a significant positive effect on the job entry rates of its clients. The greatest beneficial impact is amongst those, the low skilled and the long term unemployed with the lowest exit rates from unemployment.     

What do interest rates reveal about the functioning of real business cycle models?

This paper begins by documenting the extent to which the predictions of standard Real Business Cycle (RBC) models are incompatible with observed movements in real interest rates. The main finding of the paper is that extending the baseline model to include habit persistence in consumption and adjustment costs to capital significantly improves the model's empirical performance. In our evaluation of the model's performance, we take special care of estimating and testing predictions of the model using both moments drawn directly from the data and moments calculated after identifying shocks to the stochastic trend.     

LOGISTICS OUTSOURCING RELATIONSHIPS: CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVES

This study attempts to infuse relationship marketing theory into the study of logistics outsourcing relationships. In particular, the study demonstrates that not all of the partnerships between customers and providers of third‐party logistics services are the same in terms of their level of development. The existence of distinct levels of partnership established previously in the logistics literature is partially supported and a relationship between level of partnership development and the customer perceptions of key relationship marketing elements and outcomes is established. While exploratory in nature, these findings suggest there are benefits for the increased costs of developing closer partnerships.     

The Recognition and Timing of Deferred Tax Liabilities

Abstract:   This paper examines the characteristics of firms that account for deferred tax liabilities related to government investment grants under an extended adoption timing period. Not only the recognition but also the timing decision is associated with changes in future performance and changes in the debt structure. Recognisers outperform non‐recognisers in the future, while early recognition is related to post recognition performance but only for those firms that currently perform well. Changes in the balance sheet structure are also related to both decisions. Firms with recent increases in the debt level tend to postpone recognition, while currently well‐performing firms that increase their future debt level are less likely to recognise deferred taxes.     

The relevance of currency risk in the EMU

We investigate how the elimination of intra-European exchange risk may affect international financial markets using a conditional version of the International CAPM. We estimate the EMU and non-EMU components of aggregate currency risk and document significant exposures to both. The premium for EMU risk is positive and associated with exposure to the French, Italian and Spanish currencies. The premium for non-EMU risk is consistently negative and accounts for most of the aggregate currency premiums. In the 1990s, exposures to EMU risk declined significantly while exposures to non-EMU risk increased. Hence the adoption of the Euro is unlikely to have a large impact on aggregate currency risk premiums.     

Myopic loss aversion and the equity premium puzzle reconsidered

Benartzi and Thaler [The Quarterly Journal of Economics 110 (1995) 73–92] offer a quasi-rational explanation for the equity premium puzzle. We reconsider their methodology and, making a simple modification to it, find that their analysis is not robust.     

State takeover legislation and share values: The wealth effects of Pennsylvania's Act 36

Proponents of state antitakeover legislation argue that previous empirical tests by financial economists of the wealth effects of Pennsylvania's 1990 antitakeover law are biased. We show that the proponents are correct. In particular, firm size, event-time clustering, and non-synchronous trading effects account for the wealth decreases reported in earlier studies. We also show, however, that both proponents and critics of the Pennsylvania legislation have ignored the earliest press release about it. The wealth effect associated with this announcement is negative, large, and statistically significant. These results therefore are consistent with the hypothesis that the Pennsylvania law decreased company values and with the hypothesis that the initial market reaction is an unbiased estimate of the law's effect on firm values.     

Consistency of UK Pension Fund Investment Performance

Transition matrix techniques are used to relate the past and present performance of pension fund portfolios. In particular, funds are ranked to study the tendency of portfolios to remain in the same quartile of the ranking as they were in the previous period. For raw returns, funds in both of the top quartiles are found to be more likely to remain in the same quartile than would be expected by chance. This result can be taken as limited evidence for the consistency of performance. Similar systemic effects are observed on a risk-adjusted basis. There appears to be clear evidence that some fund managers can offer a degree of consistent good performance.