Not all high-alexithymia individuals are risk-takers: private self-consciousness moderates the relationship between alexithymia and risk-taking behaviours

This article concerns the influence which alexithymia exerts on risk-taking. In particular, alexithymia is seen as a factor which encourages risk-taking as it allows high-alexithymia individuals to feel emotions which are sufficiently intense to compensate for their deficit of emotional awareness. In this connection, we make the hypothesis that alexithymia’s influence is moderated by private self-consciousness (SC). This is because private SC increases the likelihood that high-alexithymia individuals become aware of their risk-taking tendency and that this tendency is discrepant with their pro-safety standards (‘putting someone in danger is bad’) or self-schemas (‘I am a responsible person’). Thus, private SC is likely to enable and motivate them to consciously regulate their behaviour in a safer direction. This hypothesis was empirically tested by a questionnaire amongst 372 French drivers, whose SC, alexithymia, as well as their current adoption of eight risky behaviours (with a more detailed analysis of speeding). The use of conditional process analyses reveal no main effects of alexithymia and private SC but strong interaction effects, while controlling for other predictors. More precisely, when private SC is low high-alexithymia individuals break more the speed limits and adopt more frequently risky behaviours than low-alexithymia drivers. Conversely, when private SC is high, they are less risk-prone. As practical implication, we recommend the use of techniques increasing private SC amongst high-alexithymia persons.     

Pareto optimal chains of reinsurance

Extending Arrow (1963), we show that coinsurance is the optimal insurance scheme if all companies belonging to a chain of reinsurance are risk averse. The extent to which Borch's (1960) theorem and corollary are still valid in this context is investigated.     

What Prompts the People＇s Bank of China to Change Its Monetary Policy Stance？ Evidence from a Discrete Choice Model

In the present paper, we model the policy stance of the People＇s Bank of China （PBC） as a latent variable, and the discrete changes in the reserve requirement ratio, policy interest rates, and the scale of open market operations are taken as signals of movement of this latent variable. We run a discrete choice regression that relates these observed indicators of policy stance to major trends of macroeconomic and financial developments, which are represented by common factors extracted from a large number of variables. The predicted value of the estimated model can then be interpreted as the implicit policy stance of the PBC. In a second step, we estimate how much of the variation in the PBC＇ s implicit stance can be explained by measures of its policy objectives on inflation, growth and financial stability. We find that deviations of CPI inflation from an implicit target and deviations of broad money growth from the announced targets, but not output gaps, figure significantly in the PBC＇s policy changes.     

Punishment,counterpunishment and sanction enforcement in a social dilemma experiment

We present the results of an experiment that explores the sanctioning behavior of individuals who experience a social dilemma. In the game we study, players choose contribution levels to a public good and subsequently have multiple opportunities to reduce the earnings of the other members of the group. The treatments vary in terms of individuals’ opportunities to (a) avenge sanctions that have been directed toward themselves, and (b) punish others’ sanctioning behavior with respect to third parties. We find that individuals do avenge sanctions they have received, and this serves to decrease contribution levels. They also punish those who fail to sanction third parties, but the resulting increase in contributions is smaller than the decrease the avenging of sanctions induces. When there are five rounds of unrestricted sanctioning, contributions and welfare are significantly lower than when only one round of sanctioning opportunities exists, and welfare is lower than at a benchmark of zero cooperation. We thank James Andreoni, participants in seminars at Emory University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of New South Wales, the University of Sydney, Deakin University, the 2004 North American Regional Meetings of the ESA in Tucson, Arizona, USA, the 2004 IMEBE Meetings in Cordoba, Spain, and the 2005 SAET meetings in Vigo, Spain, for constructive and helpful comments. We thank Elven Priour for programming and organization of the sessions. Instructions for the experiment are available from the authors.     

Price–Cost Margins and Structural Change: Sub-Contracting within the Salmon Marketing Chain

Some recent studies have benefited from advances in time series econometrics in order to evaluate price transmission mechanisms along the marketing chain. Due to the length of time series, structural changes may affect the evaluation of price–cost margins. In the case of the fresh salmon trade between Norway and France, the gross margin between producers and retailers has changed in level between January 1988 and December 1999. This article accurately identifies the date of a structural change using a range of recent ADF testing procedures (Gregory–Hansen tests, forward and backward recursive tests), before looking for the causes of the change through a survey. Two major factors can be identified: the product form and the marketing channel. Interestingly, both the increasing level of processing and the development of supermarket chains have resulted in a new role for the intermediaries, shifting from mere commercial intermediation to sub‐contracting for the big retailers.     

Central bank interventions and jumps in double long memory models of daily exchange rates

In this paper, we estimate ARFIMA–FIGARCH models for the major exchange rates (against the US dollar) which have been subject to direct central bank interventions in the last decades. We show that the normality assumption is not adequate due to the occurrence of volatility outliers and its rejection is related to these interventions. Consequently, we rely on a normal mixture distribution that allows for endogenously determined jumps in the process governing the exchange rate dynamics. This distribution performs rather well and is found to be important for the estimation of the persistence of volatility shocks. Introducing a time-varying jump probability associated to central bank interventions, we find that the central bank interventions, conducted in either a coordinated or unilateral way, induce a jump in the process and tend to increase exchange rate volatility.     

American Parisian options

In this article, we describe the various sorts of American Parisian options and propose valuation formulae. Although there is no closed-form valuation for these products in the non-perpetual case, we have been able to reformulate their price as a function of the exercise frontier. In the perpetual case, closed-form solutions or approximations are obtained by relying on excursion theory. We derive the Laplace transform of the first instant Brownian motion reaches a positive level or, without interruption, spends a given amount of time below zero. We perform a detailed comparison of perpetual standard, barrier and Parisian options.     

Learning from peers' stock prices and corporate investment

Peers' valuation matters for firms' investment: a one standard deviation increase in peers' valuation is associated with a 5.9% increase in corporate investment. This association is stronger when a firm's stock price informativeness is lower or when its managers appear less informed. Also, the sensitivity of a firm's investment to its stock price is lower when its peers' stock price informativeness is higher or when demands for its products and its peers' products are more correlated. Furthermore, the sensitivity of firms' investment to their peers' valuation drops significantly after going public. These findings are uniquely predicted by a model in which managers learn information from their peers' valuation.     

Identifying thresholds in aid effectiveness

In this paper, the author focuses on the nonlinear nature of the aid to growth relationship to show that the “Big Push” hypothesis is consistent with capacity constraints in the understanding of aid effectiveness. The Big Push hypothesis proposes the existence of one threshold below which aid is not effective, whereas the constraints inferred by the concept of absorptive capacity suggest the existence of a second threshold above which aid is no longer effective. This paper addresses the issue of these thresholds which characterize the aid to growth relationship. Using a semi-parametric econometric method, the author finds that aid becomes effective only above a critical level, but what is more it becomes detrimental to growth at high aid flows. The author also investigates how the quality of institutions and economic vulnerability modify the level of these two thresholds. He finds that economic vulnerability is a key factor conditioning aid effectiveness.