The Impact of Power Distance and Uncertainty Avoidance on Real Options Exercise: Potential for Suboptimal Time Delays and Value Destruction

Real options (RO) valuation has been promoted as a way to evaluate investment opportunities and make investment decisions that takes into account the value of managerial flexibility in the face of uncertainty. Although RO enjoys a substantial body of literature considering its application and suitability in different situations, the impact of national culture on the application of RO has received little attention. Values embedded in national culture affect the behavior of managers. In particular, these values play a role in how managers frame information, communicate, and make decisions, directly and indirectly affecting behavior through cultural layers such as organizational culture. National culture, therefore, can systematically affect the application of RO, potentially leading to suboptimal outcomes. In this article, we hypothesize how 2 particularly relevant dimensions of culture, power distance and uncertainty avoidance, affect RO exercise, and estimate the magnitude suboptimality of these effects using a model we develop for the case of a put option. Our estimates suggest RO may not always be a superior valuation approach to net present value for national cultures with certain characteristics.     

This Little Piggy Went to Market with a Passport: The Impacts of U.S. Country of Origin Labeling on the Canadian Pork Sector

This paper examines the potential impacts of U.S. mandatory country of origin labeling. North American hog and pork markets are represented as vertically related in a partial equilibrium non-spatial model. A synthetic model is calibrated to historic data and then used to trace the program's added costs as they are passed through the market to determine who wins and who loses. The transactions costs reduce the welfare of all agents in the United States. Canadian welfare depends primarily on whether mixed supply chains continue to be accepted in the United States and trade in hogs continues. A closed border significantly reduces the welfare of Canadian hog producers and increases the welfare of Canadian pork processors.
Le présent article porte sur les répercussions éventuelles de l'étiquetage obligatoire du pays d'origine réclamée par les États‐Unis. Les marchés nord-américains du porc vivant et de la viande de porc sont représentés comme étant verticalement liés dans un modèle non spatial d'équilibre partiel. Un modèle synthétique est étalonné avec des données historiques et est ensuite utilisé pour déterminer les coûts supplémentaires qu'occasionne le programme à mesure qu'ils sont répartis sur le marché pour déterminer les gagnants et les perdants. Les coûts de transaction diminuent le bien‐être de tous les agents aux États‐Unis. Le bien-être au Canada dépend principalement de l'acceptation ou non des chaînes d'approvisionnement mixtes et de la continuité ou non du commerce du porc vivant. La fermeture des frontières diminue considérablement le bien-être des producteurs de porcs canadiens et augmente celui des transformateurs de porcs canadiens.     

LABOUR SUPPLY ESTIMATION AND PUBLIC POLICY

Abstract. Economists devote considerable energies towards refining their econometric techniques to overcome difficulties connected with conducting empirical research. Despite advances in technique. it is not clear whether further refinement in this direction is worthwhile for policy purposes. It may be that no further amount of statistical adjustment of inadequate data will increase understanding, and that better data is simply necessary to add to our knowledge. But rarely is sufficient credit paid to new forms of data. In short, econometric technique is emphasized to the neglect of data innovation, as if new data were merely lying about waiting for an ingenious suggestion for use. This paper surveys advances of the last twenty five years in estimating labour supply for policy purposes with a view towards appreciating the relative contribution of both improvements in econometric technique as well as developments of new data.
After briefly detailing the key parameters which economists have sought to estimate, we describe the early 'first generation' research (circa 1970), which is plagued by problems of unobservable variables, measurement errors, truncation and selectivity bias, and non linear budget constraints. 'Second generation' research constitute attempts to resolve one or more of these difficulties, and the respective contribution of econometric technique and new data is acknowledged and assessed, including the contribution of data generated by large scale social experiments in which participants are randomly assigned to different guaranteed income plans and their labour supply behaviour measured.     

Forecasting residential burglary

Following the work of Dhiri et al. [Modelling and predicting property crime trends. Home Office Research Study 198 (1999). London: HMSO] at the Home Office predicting recorded burglary and theft for England and Wales to the year 2001, econometric and time series models were constructed for predicting recorded residential burglary to the same date. A comparison between the Home Office econometric predictions and the less alarming econometric predictions made in this paper identified the differences as stemming from the particular set of variables used in the models. However, the Home Office and one of our econometric models adopted an error correction form which appeared to be the main reason why these models predicted increases in burglary. To identify the role of error correction in these models, time series models were built for the purpose of comparison, all of which predicted substantially lower numbers of residential burglaries. The years 1998–2001 appeared to offer an opportunity to test the utility of error correction models in the analysis of criminal behaviour. Subsequent to the forecasting exercise carried out in 1999, recorded outcomes have materialised, which point to the superiority of time series models compared to error correction models for the short-run forecasting of property crime. This result calls into question the concept of a long-run equilibrium relationship for crime.     

How Does a Development Moratorium Affect Development Timing Choices and Land Values?

This paper investigates how a development moratorium affects choices of development timing and land values in a framework where both the value of developed property evolves stochastically and the development costs are fully irreversible. We assume that a regulator initially announces that land is not allowed to be developed during a finite period of time in the future. A developer, thus, must decide whether to develop land before the timing ordinance is imposed, or after it expires. The development moratorium reduces the developer’s option value from waiting and, thus, accelerates development. We also use simulation analysis to demonstrate how the other factors that relate to the demand and supply conditions of the real estate market affect this accelerating effect.     

The use of the postal questionnaire in accounting history research

This methodological article discusses the first project in accounting history to use the postal questionnaire as a research tool. The historical context was the changing nature of the company audit in Britain, and this article outlines the process by which the questionnaire was devised, the stages through which the project developed, the data that were collected, and how these were analysed and interpreted. A significant innovation was to sample, in equal proportions, accountants who qualified in each decade from the 1920s and 1930s down to the 1980s, and direct the questioning toward their early training and careers, thereby generating historical trends in the responses. Some of the results of the survey are given here by way of illustrating the weaknesses and strengths/costs and benefits of the technique in comparison with oral history and traditional documentary sources.     

CRIME AND POVERTY: A SEARCH‐THEORETIC APPROACH*

Numerous studies document that criminal activity is positively related to unemployment and negatively related to educational attainment levels within given communities. We study this phenomenon in the context of a search‐equilibrium model, in which agents choose between formal employment and pursuing crime‐related activities (theft). Prior to their “occupational choices,” agents undertake costly schooling, raising their productivity. Crime acts, in essence, as a tax on human capital by affecting the probability that a worker's earnings (possessions) are subsequently appropriated. There are multiple equilibria. High crime, low levels of educational attainment, long spells of unemployment, and poverty are correlated across them.