Agglomeration Effects versus Policy Effects: The Case of the Electronics Industry in Malaysia

The present study analyses investments within the Malaysian electronics industry in 1991 to assess the effectiveness of development policy in light of strong agglomeration effects in the electronics industry. We find that agglomeration and the use of industrial estates as development policy have had positive effects on firms' location choice. However, agglomeration has a much larger effect than industrial estates. In addition, we find that the marginal effect of industrial estates is positively correlated with the degree of agglomeration. This suggests that improvement of problems of regional inequality by industry estates would be very difficult in reality.     

Equivalence of the weak and strong axioms of revealed preference without demand continuity assumptions: A “regularity condition” approach

The main result of this paper is that, provided the range of the demand function is convex and the whole budget is spent, the strong axiom of revealed preference holds if and only if the weak axiom of revealed preference and a certain “regularity” condition both hold. The regularity condition is a relationship between two definitions of expenditure compensation function that must hold if the strong axiom holds. The paper distinguishes itself from previous work in that no continuity assumptions are made on the demand function. It also discusses the relationship of the regularity condition used in this paper to the one used by Uzawa and van Moeseke.     

Revealed favorability,indirect utility,and direct utility

This paper studies the axiomatic foundations of the indirect utility function, based upon a revealed preference approach. A chain of comparisons of budgets is regarded as giving a relation on the price-income space (a revealed favorability relation) rather than a relation on the commodity space (a revealed preference relation). The weak and strong axioms of revealed favorability are introduced by analogy with the weak and strong axioms of revealed preference, and the relationship between the former two axioms is investigated. The indirect and direct utility functions are then derived on the basis of the strong axiom of revealed favorability. Neither the continuity property of the demand function nor the convex property of its range is required for the approach taken in the paper.     

How do bankruptcy laws affect entrepreneurship development around the world?

How do bankruptcy laws as formal institutions affect entrepreneurship development around the world? Do entrepreneur-friendly bankruptcy laws encourage more entrepreneurship development at a societal level? We posit that if bankrupt entrepreneurs are excessively punished for failure, they may give up potentially high-return but inherently high-risk opportunities to start new businesses. Amassing a cross-country database from 29 countries spanning 19 years (1990-2008), we find that lenient, entrepreneur-friendly bankruptcy laws are significantly correlated with the level of entrepreneurship development as measured by the rate of new firm entry.     

Macroeconomic factors and the empirical content of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory in the Japanese stock market

This paper investigates the empirical evidence of the pricing of macroeconomic factors in the Japanese stock market during the bubble period using Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) model. We also examine pre- and post-bubble periods in order to compare the robustness of priced factors over the bubble period. We find that the empirical content of the APT, namely the implied across-equation pricing restrictions, is not rejected in any of the sample period.     

The role of information in profit-maximizing and labor-managed duopoly models

This paper analyzes the welfare implications of acquiring information for profit-maximizing and labor-managed duopolies. We invent a unified method of exploring the role of information in a two-person game under uncertainty on the basis of comparative static analysis, and then apply the method to both the PMF and the LMF. It is shown that whereas the LMF's behavior is analogous to that of the PMF twin in some circumstances, the former may be entirely different from the latter in others. Because a special status is accorded to labor as a variable factor of production, the informational analysis of the LM economy requires special care for both computations and interpretations.     

Portfolio optimization using dynamic factor and stochastic volatility: evidence on Fat‐tailed errors and leverage

The portfolio optimization problem is investigated using a multivariate stochastic volatility model with factor dynamics, fat‐tailed errors and leverage effects. The efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo method is used to estimate model parameters, and the Rao–Blackwellized auxiliary particle filter is used to compute the likelihood and to predict conditional means and covariances. The proposed models are applied to sector indices of the Tokyo Stock Price Index (TOPIX), which consists of 33 stock market indices classified by industrial sectors. The portfolio is dynamically optimized under several expected utilities and two additional static strategies are considered as benchmarks. An extensive empirical study indicates that our proposed dynamic factor model with leverage or fat‐tailed errors significantly improves the predictions of the conditional mean and covariances, as well as various measures of portfolio performance.     

Consumption externalities with endogenous time preference

This paper shows that in a model with inelastic labor supply, consumption externalities have impacts on stationary consumption and capital. The key element in observing the effects of consumption externalities on stationary consumption and capital is the endogeneity of the time preference rate, which depends on future-oriented resources rather than on private consumption. We conclude that when individuals experience jealousy, they become more impatient, leading to a lower level of capital stock and a higher level of consumption relative to those of the social optimum, while when they experience admiration, these relationships are reversed. We examine an optimal tax policy that replicates the socially optimal path in the centrally planned economy. Finally, using numerical analysis we explore how this economy evolves through time.      

International commodity taxation in the presence of unemployment

In this paper, we evaluate the impact of commodity tax competition on welfare and employment under the destination and origin principles, when the labor market is imperfectly competitive owing to a binding fixed wage. Our main finding is that commodity taxation causes an employment externality whose signs may be opposite under the two principles. While tax competition leads to inefficient tax rates under both principles, we also prove that the origin principle guarantees lower unemployment and higher welfare when the fixed wage is high. Finally, we show that the employment externality still exists in a standard union model of wage determination.