Experiments on lotteries for shrouded and bundled goods: Investigating the economics of fukubukuro

Fukubukuro (or lucky bag) is a familiar institution in Japan and elsewhere in which the exact contents of a New Year sales item are hidden from the consumer before purchase. Motivated by the fukubukuro example and the lack of evidence on risk attitudes in lotteries involving goods, we conduct a laboratory experiment in which the outcomes are bundled or unbundled goods. The implied gains to a monopoly seller for marketing goods in lottery form rather than separately are only clearly positive for lotteries where there is a higher probability of obtaining the more highly valued good.     

The accountable governance of provincial governments of a Pacific island country

ABSTRACT

Using the theory of indigenous alternatives and a benchmark of indigenous financial reporting expectations, this paper examines the challenges to accountable governance of the nine provincial governments of the Solomon Islands for the years 1998 to 2017. Every provincial government consistently received disclaimed or qualified opinions from the state auditor. The author explains why the regional development of all provinces of the Solomon Islands could be improved if rudimentary forms of financial reporting were to be addressed.     

A decade of hybrid reporting and accountabilities of the Hanyeping Company (1909–1919)

Using a model of hybrid reporting and accountabilities, this article considers the reporting and accountability of the Hanyeping Company in the Beiyang era. The results of the study suggest that the Hanyeping Company attempted to provide comprehensive accounts of its activities to satisfy the needs of a plethora of domestic and foreign stakeholders through a combination of detailed Western and Chinese accounts. In keeping with Western and indigenous Chinese expectations of accounting, the Hanyeping Company prepared accounts that demonstrated characteristics of Auyeung’s demonstrated features of nineteenth-century Westernised reporting and the traditional reporting model. This suggests that the period between 1909 and 1919 experienced a decade of reporting hybridisation in direct contrast to the so-called period of accounting stagnation of the late Qing Dynasty.     

Allied Breweries and the Development of the Area Manager in British Brewing, 1950-1984

Brewing in the United Kingdom in the years following 1950 sawa shift from a production to a retailing orientation. As partof this shift, the role of the area manager started to movefrom production and sales discipline to retail development.This article explores the job of the area manager during theperiod, seeking to demonstrate the weakness in recent accountsthat suggest that area managers serve only as an "informationrelay" between senior managers and unit managers. Although theevidence is limited, because of problems with the survival ofrecords, it suggests a more complex picture, which has implicationsfor area managers in retail and service industries more generally.     

Efficiency characteristics of a market for state contingent claims

This paper concludes that a market for state-contingent claims (UK horserace betting) displays evidence of pervasive but heterogeneous forms of inefficiency, in significant contrast to earlier investigations. Using hitherto unavailable data, comparison of notional returns implicit in parallel sets of bookmaker and parimutuel odds identifies inefficiency in terms of zones of distinct but contrasting forms of cross-;market returns differential. The inefficiency is rationalized in terms of both buyer and supplier behaviour; its durability is explained in terms of limited arbitrage opportunities.     

Takeovers and cooperatives: governance and stability in non-corporate firms

If consumers wholly or partially control a firm with market power they will charge less than the profit maximizing price. Starting at the usual monopoly price, a small price reduction will have a second order effect on profits but a first order effect on consumer surplus. Despite this desirable static result, it has been argued that cooperatives are vulnerable to take-over by outsiders who will run them as for-profit businesses. This paper studies takeovers of cooperatives. We argue that there will not be excessive takeovers of cooperatives due to the Grossman-Hart problem of free riding during takeovers.     

The explanatory power of trading volume and insider activity in a pari-mutuel betting market

In this paper, we examine the role played by the holders of privileged information (insiders) in stimulating trading volume which adds explanatory power to a price-based model of returns in a market where the actions of insiders can be isolated – a pari-mutuel betting market. We conduct conditional logit analyses based on data relating to 19,164 horses running in 2078 races (49 racetracks) staged across the UK between 1 June and 31 August 1996. These analyses indicate that prices generally fail to incorporate fully information contained in trading volumes. However, the betting public fully discounts volume information in markets most commonly viewed as attracting bets from insiders. Isolation of the actual degree of insider activity sheds light on the variation in volume effects.     

The ECB's New Multi-Country Model for the euro area: NMCM — Simulated with rational expectations

The model presented here is an estimated medium-scale New Multi-Country Model (NMCM) which covers the five largest euro area countries and is used for forecasting and scenario analysis at the European Central Bank. The model has a tight theoretical structure which allows for non-unitary elasticity of substitution, non-constant augmenting technical progress and heterogeneous sectors with differentiated price and income elasticities of demand across sectors. Furthermore, it has the explicit inclusion of expectations on the basis of three optimising private sector decision making units: i.e. firms, trade unions and households, where output is in the short run demand-determined and monopolistically competing firms set prices and factor demands. Labour is indivisible and monopoly-unions set wages and households make consumption/saving decisions.We assume that agents optimise under limited information where each agent knows only the parameters related to his/her optimisation problem. Therefore we estimate with GMM, which implicitly assumes limited information boundedly rational expectations. In this paper we provide some simulation results under the assumption of model-consistent rational expectations, we show that there is some heterogeneity across countries and that the reactions of the economies to shocks depend strongly on whether the shocks are pre-announced, announced and credible or unannounced and uncredible.