The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and the CommonMediterranean Strategy? European Union Policy from a Discursive Perspective

This article assesses the European Union's Mediterranean policy from a discursive perspective and focuses specifically on the actual, identifiable impact of the Union's security discourse. In doing so it seeks to demonstrate how the Union's Mediterranean security policy has impacted on issues of identity. The implicit reference to sub-regional cooperation in the Union's Common Mediterranean Strategy may be read as a way to facilitate the lack of a clear definition of exactly what type of security or rather insecurity the European Union as a whole is trying to address when dealing with its ‘Mediterranean’.     

Factor Substitutability in Australian Manufacturing with Emphasis on Energy Inputs*

In this paper a model of the production structure in the aggregate Australian manufacturing sector is estimated, emphasizing the use this sector makes of energy inputs. A translog cost function is estimated with time-series data for four inputs, capital services, labour services, energy and materials and likewise an energy submodel is estimated for solid fuels, oil, electricity and gas. The substitutabilily and the complementarity relationships between the various factor inputs and between the various fuels are examined: an interesting finding is that capital and energy are substitutes and labour and energy are complements. Factor price elasticities are calculated and turn out to be quite significant. The study concludes that rising energy prices will induce significant shifts in both the mix of fuel inputs and the level of aggregate energy utilization.     

Measuring the Information Content of the Beige Book: A Mixed Data Sampling Approach

Studies of the predictive ability of the Federal Reserve's Beige Book for aggregate output and employment have proven inconclusive. This might be attributed, in part, to its irregular release schedule. We use a model that allows for data sampling at mixed frequencies to analyze the predictive power of the Beige Book. We find that the Beige Book's national summary and District reports predict GDP and aggregate employment and that most District reports provide information content for regional employment. In addition, there appears to be an asymmetry in the predictive content of the Beige Book language.     

Adult and Teenage Use of Consumer,Business, and Entertainment Technology: Potholes on the Information Superhighway?

Adults and teenagers were surveyed to determine their use and ownership of 32 consumer, business, and entertainment technology devices. Demographics, technology experience, and “technophobia” were examined as potential discriminators between Confident Users, Hesitant Users, and Nonusers of each technological device. Results indicated that older, technophobic adults with little computer training and lower income, black and Hispanic, technophobic teenagers did not use most technological devices.     

What do Australian Annual Reports Say About Future Earnings?

Prospective earnings information in Australian firms' annual reports has been claimed to be of sufficient importance to warrant its statutory requirement, or at least its "active encouragement". With the introduction of AASB 1039 Concise Financial Reports, management discussion and analysis is required in some circumstances, although there is no explicit requirement to provide prospective earnings disclosures. A survey of a sample of ASX-listed firms shows that about 25% include some form of earnings forecast, although most are qualitative, while even a coarse measure of their accuracy suggests they are relatively unreliable. These results give rise to some concern that encouraging the provision of prospective earnings data may not necessarily assist investors.     

Taking the Long Way Home: U.S. Tax Evasion and Offshore Investments in U.S. Equity and Debt Markets

We empirically investigate one form of illegal investor‐level tax evasion and its effect on foreign portfolio investment. In particular, we examine a form of round‐tripping tax evasion in which U.S. individuals hide funds in entities located in offshore tax havens and then invest those funds in U.S. securities markets. Employing Becker's ( 1968 ) economic theory of crime, we identify the tax evasion component by examining how foreign portfolio investment varies with changes in the incentives to evade and the risks of detection. To our knowledge, this is the first empirical evidence of investor‐level tax evasion affecting cross‐border equity and debt investment.     

Consumer Attitudes and Their Forecasting Power for Consumer Spending

The University of Michigan's Surveys of Consumers is summarized with principal components of consumer attitudes with respect to income and wealth, prices, and interest rates and credit availability. These summary measures contain information beyond that captured by the Index of Consumer Sentiment. The summary measures have forecasting power for aggregate consumption behavior, even when controlling for economic fundamentals. These measures also help to improve significantly upon Survey of Professional Forecasters, Blue Chip Consensus, and Federal Reserve Board's forecasts of consumption and other real activity measures, consistent with their predictive ability conditioned upon a broader set of fundamentals and forecasters’ judgment.     

The Variability of IPO Initial Returns

The monthly volatility of IPO initial returns is substantial, fluctuates dramatically over time, and is considerably larger during “hot” IPO markets. Consistent with IPO theory, the volatility of initial returns is higher for firms that are more difficult to value because of higher information asymmetry. Our findings highlight underwriters’ difficulty in valuing companies characterized by high uncertainty, and raise serious questions about the efficacy of the traditional firm‐commitment IPO process. One implication of our results is that alternate mechanisms, such as auctions, could be beneficial for firms that value price discovery over the auxiliary services provided by underwriters.     

Real Effects of Accounting Rules: Evidence from Multinational Firms’ Investment Location and Profit Repatriation Decisions

We analyze survey responses from nearly 600 tax executives to better understand corporate decisions about real investment location and profit repatriation. Our evidence indicates that avoiding financial accounting income tax expense is as important as avoiding cash income taxes when corporations decide where to locate operations and whether to repatriate foreign earnings. This result is important in light of the recent research about whether financial accounting affects investment and in light of the decades of research on foreign investment that examines the role of cash income taxes but heretofore has not investigated the importance of financial reporting effects. Our analysis suggests that financial reporting is an important factor to be considered in the policy debates focused on bringing investment to the United States.