Should more local governments purchase a bond rating?

We investigate whether issuers that choose to forgo a bond rating suffer an interest cost penalty greater than the cost of the rating. We use estimated ratings provided by Moody’s Investor Service to proxy for what the rating would have been if it had been purchased. We find that the primary factors associated with an issuer’s decision to purchase a rating are the rating expected by the issuer and the extent to which an issue is marketed locally. After controlling for self-selection bias, we find that the issuers that forgo a rating do not suffer an interest cost penalty.

Cardinality-based equality of opportunities

We study possible rankings of opportunity profiles. An opportunity profile is a list of opportunity sets, one for each agent in the society. We compare profiles on the basis of the notion of “equality of opportunities”. Our main results show the necessary and sufficient conditions for this comparison to be made using exclusively the information provided by two cardinal measures: the number of common alternatives in all sets of a given profile and the difference between the number of alternatives in the individual sets. We also show that, under additional axioms, we can combine these criteria only in a weighted procedure or in some lexicographic refinements of a weighted procedure.      

DS-optimal designs in one way ANOVA

Characterization and construction of optimal designs using the familiar optimality criteria, for example A-, D- and E-optimality are well studied in the literature. However the study of the Distance Optimality (DS-) criterion introduced by Sinha (1970) has very recently drawn attention of researchers. In the present article, we consider the singularly estimable full rank problem of estimating the full set of elementary treatment contrasts using the DS optimality criterion in the set up of a one way ANOVA model. Using a limit argument it turns out that a CRD in which difference between any two allocation numbers is at the most unity is uniquely DS-optimal. Acknowledgement. We are thankful to Prof. B. K. Sinha for suggesting the problem to us and many helpful discussions with him. We are also thankful to the referees for drawing our attention to the reference of Bischoff (1995) and many helpful comments.     

Budget deficits and real interest rates: Updated empirical evidence on causality

Using error-correction model (ECM) estimation, the paper empirically examines the causality relationship between the federal government budget deficit and the ex ante real interest rate yield on high grade long term tax free municipal bonds in the U.S. To clarify this deficit or interest rate relationship, the budget deficit is measured by the primary budget deficit, which excludes net interest payments by the Treasury. In a model that includes federal personal income tax rates and net international capital flows, as well as money supply growth, the ECM estimates strongly suggest a bi-directional relationship between the primary budget deficit and the ex ante real interest rate yield. Budget deficits apparently do matter! William Simon's concerns were justified.The author is indebted to P. A. V. B. Swamy for ideas and helpful suggestions and Will Perry for data assembly and processing.     

如何做好销售谈判的准备工作

一次销售谈判大致划分为三个阶段:计划与准备阶段、面谈阶段、后续收尾阶段。虽然讲到谈判,大多数人总联想到面谈,但计划与准备阶段是这三个阶段最关键的,至少一个典型的谈判其结果如何,有50%在你和客户见面之前就已经决定了。计划与准备阶段如此之重要,而大多数销售人员进行谈判时仍是仓促上阵,未能做充分的准备,使得谈判结果不能尽如人意。因此,在每一次销售谈判之前做好充分的计划与准备,是我们取得良好谈判结果的基石。销售谈判的计划与准备阶段涉及以下几项内容:一.确定谈判目标1.知道自己需要什么:如果没有事先考虑好自己应该从谈判中…