Asymmetric price rigidity and the responsiveness of customers to price changes: The case of deposit interest rates

This article examines differences in the level and type of price rigidity as it applies to different types of deposits offered by commercial banks. Numerous characteristics of the data set employed make it ideally suited for such an investigation. Three basic findings are presented. First, the degree of price rigidity observed for a product varies systematically with the quantity response to a price change likely to be exhibited by customers,with greater rigidity associated with less customer responsiveness. Second, price rigidity is asymmetric in the sense that greater rigidity is observed for upward movements in deposit rates than for downward changes. Finally, this observed asymmetry appears to be greater for cases in which customers are likely to exhibit less of a quantity response to a change in deposit rates.     

The militarization of space: From passive support to active weapons systems

Space has become an essential element of the strategic balance. Large investments in passive satellites and a growing dependence on them have created potential new strategic problems and arms control challenges. there is also a resurgence of interest in ‘active’ weapon systems based on developments in laser and particle beam technology. This paper reviews the evolution of military space programmes, and explores the present and future challenges and dilemmas.     

人口老龄化对住院费用增长的贡献——基于CFPS数据的分析

在中国,许多人认为,人口老龄化是医疗费用增长的主要驱动力,极度担忧人口老龄化带来医疗费用的快速膨胀。本文首先利用CFPS 2010年和2012年的调查数据,计算了2009-2011年间中国(老年)人口年龄结构变动和(老年)人口数量变动对住院总费用增长的贡献。接下来,利用2009年和2011年全国人口抽样调查数据进行了校正。结果发现,(老年)人口年龄结构变动不是住院医疗费用增长的主要原因,(老年)人口数量剧烈变动可能对住院医疗费用增长产生较大的影响。但是,就中国现实而言,不论是人口老龄化还是老年人口数量变动,对中国住院费用增长的贡献均极其有限。这既是因为人口老龄化本身的速度很慢,老年人相对于非老年人的平均住院费用较低,并且老年人平均住院费用随年龄升高而下降,也是因为中国年龄别平均住院费用增长过快。为此,未来应进一步提高老年人医疗保障水平,加强慢性病预防和康复体系建设,关注医疗保险支付方式改革,遏制医疗技术快速发展和医师诱导需求现象,以控制医疗费用快速上涨。     

The price of fear: Estimating the financial cost of bullying and harassment to the NHS in England

Using a spectrum of measures, this paper estimates some of the financial costs of bullying and harassment to the NHS in England. By means of specific impacts resulting from bullying and harassment to staff health, sickness absence costs to the employer, employee turnover, diminished productivity, sickness presenteeism, compensation, litigation and industrial relations costs, we conservatively estimate bullying and harassment to cost the taxpayer £2.281 billion per annum.     

The choice between private and public capital markets: The importance of disclosure standards and auditor discipline to countries divesting state-owned enterprises

For a sample of 1866 privatizations from 37 countries, we estimate the impact of disclosure standards and legal institutions that discipline auditors on the method chosen to divest state-owned enterprises. The agency conflict between minority and controlling shareholders can impede a government from privatizing by selling its stake to diffuse investors in the public capital market with a share-issue privatization (SIP) that typically generates important spillover economic benefits, rather than an asset sale to a small group of buyers. However, prior research implies that accounting transparency plays a natural role in preventing controlling shareholders from siphoning corporate resources by helping minority investors identify any diversionary practices. After controlling for firm-level and other country-level characteristics, we find that SIPs become more likely when countries mandate strict disclosure standards, although this result is sensitive to model specification. In comparison, we provide strong, robust evidence that SIPs are more likely in jurisdictions that relax the burden of proof in civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions against auditors, leading to more credible financial statements. From a policy perspective, our cross-country research suggests that investors value reforms that subject auditors to more severe private and public enforcement over several other legal determinants, including enhancing disclosure standards.     

From space to time : The music of old earth and new time

With this article I.F. Clarke resumes his series on the long advance towards modern ways of looking at the future. Two hundred years ago, he says, the world still managed well enough with the old short-scale measure of time. According to that system the beginning of human life dated from the creation of Adam and Eve on the afternoon of Friday, 28 October 4004 BC. Then came the first palaeontologists who pushed back the origins of organic life by millions of years. Their discoveries changed the perceived role of Homo sapiens in earth history as decisively as the Renaissance astronomers transformed all thinking about the place of our planet in the universe. The dominant evolutionary ideas of the 19th century joined with the evident technological advances to confirm the idea of progress as the most favoured doctrine of the age. It is still with us.     

The market for new issues of municipal bonds: The roles of transparency and limited access to retail investors

I examine how transparency and interdealer trading affects prices investors pay in municipal bond offerings. Real-time trade reporting for municipal bonds started January 31, 2005. The dispersion of purchase prices fell sharply at that time. There was little impact on average markups for most trades, but they increased for purchases of more than $100,000. Bonds often pass through a series of dealers before being placed with a buy-and-hold investor. As the interdealer trades progress, trade sizes decline and trade prices rise. Markups on investor purchases increase with the amount of interdealer trading before the trade.     

The reaction of asset prices to macroeconomic announcements in new EU markets: Evidence from intraday data

We estimate the impact of macroeconomic news on composite stock returns in three emerging European Union financial markets (the Budapest BUX, Prague PX-50, and Warsaw WIG-20), using intraday data and macroeconomic announcements. Our contribution is twofold. We employ a larger set of macroeconomic data releases than used in previous studies and also use intraday data, an excess impact approach, and foreign news to provide more reliable inferences. Composite stock returns are computed based on 5-min intervals (ticks) and macroeconomic news are measured based on the deviations of the actual announcement values from their expectations. Overall, we find that all three new EU stock markets are subject to significant spillovers directly via the composite index returns from the EU, the U.S. and neighboring markets; Budapest exhibits the strongest spillover effect, followed by Warsaw and Prague. The Czech and Hungarian markets are also subject to spillovers indirectly through the transmission of macroeconomic news. The impact of EU-wide announcements is evidenced more in the case of Hungary, while the Czech market is more impacted by U.S. news. The Polish market is marginally affected by EU news. In addition, after decomposing pooled announcements, we show that the impact of multiple announcements is stronger than that of single news. Our results suggest that the impact of foreign macroeconomic announcements goes beyond the impact of the foreign stock markets on Central and Eastern European indices. We also discuss the implications of the findings for financial stability in the three emerging European markets.