Auctioning the Airwaves: The Contest for Broadband pcs Spectrum

The House and Senate of the United States Congress recently passed legislation that directs the FCC to establish a system for using auctions to allocate the use of radio spectrum for personal communications services. There is a unique and unprecedented set of issues that arise in this context, which are of interest to economists, industry analysts, regulators, and policymakers. We discuss these issues and evaluate their likely impact on the outcome of the spectrum auctions. In addition, we argue that there may be pitfalls in the auction procedure adopted by the FCC, and we discuss possible alternative procedures.     

Takeoffs

This paper identifies factors associated with takeoff—a sustained period of high growth following a period of stagnation. Countries that experience takeoffs average 2.3% annual growth following their stagnation episodes, while those that do not average 0%. Using probit, we find that de jure trade openness is positively and significantly associated with takeoffs. A one‐standard‐deviation increase in de jure trade openness is associated with a 55% increase in the probability of a takeoff in our default specification. Capital account openness encourages takeoff responses, but measures of de facto trade openness are found to be poor predictors of takeoffs. We also examine the determinants of nations achieving “sustained” takeoffs; i.e. those lasting eight years or longer. Takeoffs in countries with more commodity‐intensive output bundles are less likely to be sustained, suggesting that adverse terms‐of‐trade shocks may play a role in ending long‐term high growth episodes.     

“Business and Government” Then and Now

Socio-environmental conflicts are widespread, and global economic growth will likely increase them in the coming decades. While political ecology, the analysis of common pool resources, and ecological economics, among others, have provided praiseworthy insights into such conflicts, institutional approaches to these phenomena are still scarce. Classical institutional economics has occasionally been put to work on environmental issues, but proposed frameworks remain relatively underdeveloped. We wish to contribute to institutional research on environmental issues by building upon Bruno Théret’s interpretation of John R. Commons’s transactional model and applying the framework to a case of socio-environmental conflicts. First, we briefly sketch the landscape of institutional contributions (especially those that follow the classical institutionalist tradition) to the analysis of environmental issues. We explain why Commons has largely been ignored on these issues. Then, we analyze some of the key concepts of Commonsian economics that are of particular interest to our theoretical elaboration. Following this, we depict Commons’s transactional scheme and propose an application to a case of socioenvironmental mining conflict in Peru. Our framework could complement existing ones and shed light on the institutional dynamics of natural-resource management through conflict.     

The optimum size of the labor-managed firm

Ward's [1958] main result is that an increase in the output price of the labor-managed firm (LMF) decreases its output and members. However, Ward and his followers have not addressed two important elements: the benefit of sharing a public good among LMF members and the increased coordination costs among these members. This paper incorporates these elements to derive the LMF's optimal size and suggests conditions which may alter Ward's perverse result. The example of the Israeli Kibbutzim concerning both incorporating the public goods as well as coordination costs serves as a motivation to the model developed in this paper.     

Financial Turbulence and the Japanese Main Bank Relationship

Under the Japanese main bank relationship, a bank holds equity in a firm and plays a leading role in its decision-making and financing. This may leave a firm dependent on its main bank for financing due to its information advantage over other potential lenders. This dependency may be particularly severe during episodes of financial turbulence. We examine the sensitivity of returns on portfolios of Japanese firm equity to the returns of their main banks using a three-factor arbitrage-pricing model. We find no significant dependence when coefficient values are held constant over the entire sample. However, the data strongly suggest a structural break in the relationship subsequent to the last quarter of 1997, a turbulent period for Japanese financial markets. When a structural break is introduced, main bank sensitivity increases after the break, usually to significantly positive levels.     

Market price accounting and depositor discipline: The case of Japanese regional banks

We examine the determinants of Japanese regional bank pricing-to-market decisions and their impact on the intensity of depositor discipline, in the form of the sensitivity of deposit growth to bank financial conditions. To obtain consistent estimates, we first model and estimate the bank pricing-to-market decision and then estimate the intensity of depositor discipline after conditioning for that decision. We find that banks were less likely to adopt market price accounting the larger were their unrealized securities losses. We also find statistically significant evidence of depositor discipline among banks that elected to price to market. Our results indicate that depositor discipline was more intense for the subset of banks that adopted market price accounting.     

Price Discrimination by Coupons Restriction

In this paper we show how the use of a restricted number of coupons in the presence of different types of customers is an effective means of implementing a price discriminating policy. Hence, firm profits can be increased even when traditional price discrimination is forbidden.     

Traditional space vs. cyberspace: The changing role of geography in current international politics

In the post‐Cold War world, the competition and restraint of the bipolar Cold War are both gone, giving rise to two opposing forces: the unifying force of globalisation and the fragmenting impact of nationalism and geographic conflict. In the current international system, these two forces are confronted in different ways by three types of states, each with its own priorities and place for geography. For high technology, or twenty‐first century states, the focus is on globalisation and disputes cannot be solved by territorial acquisition. For nationalistic, or nineteenth century states, nationalist hostilities still predominate and gaining land is often still more important than wealth. Transitional, or twentieth century states, are caught in a vice between their advanced technological potential and their economic and social crises. Any accurate depiction of the current system must include all three types of states, as well as how their interaction affects the goals and behaviour of each type.