Can investors time their exposure to private equity?

Private equity performance, both for buyouts and venture capital, has been highly cyclical: periods of high fundraising have been followed by periods of low performance. Despite this seemingly predictable variation, we find modest gains, at best, to pursuing realistic, investable strategies that time capital commitments to private equity. This occurs, in part, because investors can only time their commitments to funds; they cannot time when commitments are called or when investments are exited. There is a high degree of time-series correlation in net cash flows even across commitment strategies that allocate capital in a very different manner over time.     

Development in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Statistics at the Australian Bureau of Statistics

This paper outlines the ICT statistical developments that the ABS has undertaken over recent years. These developments have been on both the supply side (ICT industry) and the demand side (use of IT by sector). The content of ABS ICT surveys has changed significantly over the last few years and are expected to develop further in line with industry changes and emerging policy needs.
Recent developments in household collections have been the inclusion of IT use questions in the 2001 Census of Population and Housing and in various ABS social surveys such as Children's Participation in Culture and Leisure Activities. Annual business IT use surveys are now conducted and include topics such as Internet commerce and IT security. Biennial ICT industry surveys are conducted to provide data on ICT production, imports and exports, ICT industry employment, performance and structure information. An Internet activity survey is run every six months and provides regional Internet access details and infrastructure details on Internet service providers.
A major development for 2002–03 will be the compilation of an ICT satellite account. ABS intends to produce an ICT Information Development Plan to guide its future statistical development work in the ICT field.     

Legal Infrastructure and Governance Reform in Post-Crisis Asia: The case of Indonesia

This article reflects on problems encountered in implementing legal infrastructure reform in the light of current theory and recent, post-crisis experience in East Asia. Indonesia's experience of radical legal infrastructure reform in the six years since the crisis began has been both extensive and troubled. It is therefore a compelling case study of whether the new paradigm of Post-Washington Consensus Governance reform has delivered the kind of legal institutional changes that its proponents believe might have prevented the crisis. The article begins with an examination of the Governance paradigm rationale for legal infrastructure reform before surveying the Indonesian experience. It concludes with a critique of Governance reform practices and suggest some 'lessons learned' for future legal infrastructure reform, drawn from the Indonesia case study. It argues that the Governance paradigm promotes overly simplistic approaches to the complex and political project of legal infrastructure reform in developing states.     

Global Integration in Primary Equity Markets: The Role of U.S. Banks and U.S. Investors

We examine the costs and benefits of the global integrationof initial public offering (IPO) markets associated with thediffusion of U.S. underwriting methods in the 1990s. Bookbuildingis becoming increasingly popular outside the United States andtypically costs twice as much as a fixed-price offer. However,on its own, bookbuilding only leads to lower underpricing whenconducted by U.S. banks and/or targeted at U.S. investors. Formost issuers, the gains associated with lower underpricing outweighedthe additional costs associated with hiring U.S. banks or marketingin the United States. This suggests a quality/price trade-offcontrasting with the findings of Chen and Ritter, particularlysince non-U.S. issuers raising US$20 million–US$80 millionalso typically pay a 7% spread when U.S. banks and investorsare involved.     

Bounding the inefficiency of equilibria in nonatomic congestion games

Equilibria in noncooperative games are typically inefficient, as illustrated by the Prisoner's Dilemma. In this paper, we quantify this inefficiency by comparing the payoffs of equilibria to the payoffs of a “best possible” outcome. We study a nonatomic version of the congestion games defined by Rosenthal [Int. J. Game Theory 2 (1973) 65], and identify games in which equilibria are approximately optimal in the sense that no other outcome achieves a significantly larger total payoff to the players—games in which optimization by individuals approximately optimizes the social good, in spite of the lack of coordination between players. Our results extend previous work on traffic routing games.     

The durability of consumer durables

The life span of a product is a key component in assessing its environmental impact. Until very recently, however, product durability was far from prominent in the environmental debate. This has begun to change due to mounting concern about waste, the prospect of producer ‘take back’ schemes and the importance of quality in highly competitive international markets. This has led to product durability emerging on the business and environment agenda. This paper explores the significance of product life spans and identifies currently available data on the life-span of consumer durables. It defines product life and argues that, from an environmental perspective, optimum product life, rather than maximum product life should be the goal. It suggests that potential advantages to businesses of manufacturing and retailing products with longer life spans include improved environmental foresight (i.e. a greater responsiveness to new social trends, changes in consumer behaviour and tighter government regulations), an enhanced reputation for quality, greater potential market share and increased customer loyalty. Addressing claims that manufacturers deliberately make products with the intention that they should have life spans below the known technical potential, the paper identifies some of the influences upon manufacturers which encourage shorter product life spans. Finally, some means by which longer life products might be encouraged are proposed.