X-inefficiency and market power

This paper argues that dominant firms (those firms which, according to the theory, can tolerate inefficiency) face a number of external and internal constraints which force them to act more like the competitive firm assumed in neoclassical theory.     

Bettor preferences and market efficiency in football totals markets

The betting markets for totals in college football and arena football provide additional evidence of bettor preference for scoring. The results for college football and arena football markets are similar to those found in the professional football and professional basketball totals market. In all of these leagues, the overs are overbet. We suggest that there is a clear preference for bettors to bet the over and the extent of the bias depends upon the volume of uninformed bettors to informed bettors and limits placed on bets in these markets.     

Vacancy transfers and job restructuring in regional labor markets

Transformation of and adjustments in a regional labor market system are analyzed through a Markov model of job vacancy transfers. Adjustments in response to a labor demand shock are examined for disequilibrium and time characteristics for closed and open labor systems with inmigration absorbing job vacancies. The regional labor market is specified for active employer recruitment of workers which introduces planning and control over labor demand and vacancy dynamics.     

构建新型电力市场体系及电价机制

完善电力市场体系及其价格机制是我国电力体制改革的核心。针对我国电力市场建设面临的外部环境、电力市场的建设目标及在建的电力市场体系存在的问题,应构建发电有效容量交易市场、电能量交易市场、辅助服务交易市场、绿证交易市场有机统一的中国特色的新型电力市场体系;形成有效容量、电能量、辅助服务、绿证交易方式及价格机制;研究新型电力市场体系运行后对发电企业、减排目标及用户的影响,以解决发电行业搁浅成本的回收各类发电机组协调发展、不同的发电机组公平竞争、在电能量市场上短期边际成本差别较大机组的竞争报价等问题。     

Overeducation, regional labor markets, and spatial flexibility

For most workers, access to suitable employment is severely restricted by the fact that they look for jobs in the regional labor market rather than the global one. In this paper we analyze how macrolevel opportunities (regional market characteristics) and microlevel restrictions (the extent to which job searchers are restricted to the regional market) can help to explain the phenomenon of overeducation. We use a two-step procedure to control selective access to employment. The results show that the size of the labor market is an important factor in avoiding overeducation.     

基于建材行业用电市场研究报告及电力营销策略

建材工业是我国重要的材料工业。建材行业又是高耗能行业,能源的消耗在建材业的成本构成占到30%至60%。对建材行业开展用电市场分析,对我们分析电力市场、研究电力市场具有重要的指导意义。     

电力配网存在的不足与电力配网可靠性的提升研究

随着我国社会的发展,人们的生活水平也在不断提高,对于电力配网的供电可靠性要求也日渐增强。电力配网面对的是电网直接用电客户,电力配网的可靠性关系到整个电网运行的稳定,也是判断电力配网安全性能最重要的指标,所以提高电力配网可靠性的工作非常重要。文章对电力配网中存在的不足进行了分析,并对电力配网可靠性的提升提出了措施建议,希望能够有效的解决电力配网可靠性问题,为我国电力服务水平的提升奠定扎实可靠的基础。     

Competition and accessibility on a regional labour market

This paper presents an empirical study of competition among applicants for job openings in the Stockholm region and a multinomial logit model of allotment of job openings among applicants. The model is applied to the empirical data in a micro-oriented evaluation of accessibility to employment oppurtunities in the Stockholm region. The results suggest that competition has a strong and uneven effect on job searchers' prospects. Extensions and variations of the model are discussed.     

Monetary policy implications of housing shift-contagion across regional markets

This paper extends the shift-contagion concept to housing price returns in order to examine co-movements between pairs of regional housing markets in the US. It associates nonlinearities of housing prices with the monetary policy criteria at disaggregate levels. The framework with Markov-switching volatility in Gravelle et al. (Journal of International Economics 68:409–423, 2006) is utilized to investigate housing contagion phenomena which are defined as the switches in the structural transmission of common shocks across regional housing markets. The empirical results suggest that interactions between regional and nationwide housing markets switch across low-volatility and high-volatility regimes of common shocks for the Northeast and the West whose housing price returns are nonlinear. In addition, there is the significantly time-varying interdependence between the West and each of the other three regional housing markets. The estimated indicator of the monetary policy effectiveness implies that monetary policies can be effective in the Northeast and the West because they are more closely linked with other regional housing markets in volatile phases which are subject to housing crises. Noticeably, the broken interrelationships between regional housing markets and real economies in the 2001 recession imply high vulnerability to housing bubbles for regional markets, while short-term monetary policies can be effective in stabilizing the housing market turmoil around 2007.     

Understanding the employment relationship: markets,hierarchies and power

The employment relationship is fiercely contested both in theory and practice. This article examines recent theoretical initiatives in economics that have sought to illuminate the nature, specificity, and complexities of the employment relationship. It examines claims by proponents of the new institutional economics (NIE) that they can account for the historical emergence of authority relations and the dominance of hierarchical work organisations without reference to the forces of class power, coercion and labour subordination. The NIE is contrasted with the ‘old’ institutional economics (OIE) and the distinctive insights of an industrial relations perspective. The paper considers in conclusion whether a synthesis of NIE and industrial relations research would achieve a deeper understanding of the institutional forms of wage‐labour in contemporary capitalist economies.     

Derivatives market and economic growth nexus: Policy implications for emerging markets

The derivatives market plays a crucial role in an economy. However, its link to economic growth and macroeconomic factors seem to be insufficiently covered in academic research despite the publication of many empirical studies on the causality of finance and growth. Recently, many emerging markets, such as Vietnam, have decided to establish a derivatives markets for risk management to ensure stability in the economy. This paper investigates the dynamic relationship among these key variables using up-to-date panel data on 17 countries, for which required data are available until 2017. This study yields various findings. First, bidirectional Granger causality between derivatives markets and economic growth exists internationally. Second, using panel vector autoregression, impulse-response functions, variance decomposition techniques as well as panel econometrics estimations, we find that trade openness and government spending have more effects on the derivatives market than economic growth and inflation. Third, we document that the derivatives market has a more integrated direct relationship with economic growth and macroeconomic factors in high-income countries than their upper-middle-income counterparts. These new findings are essential for consideration by policy makers in emerging markets in relation to the development of their derivatives markets.     

The impact of equity markets and corporate governance on labour market flexibility

Drawing from various literatures, this article explores links between equity markets and labour market flexibility. Various data sources are used to test relationships for a set of OECD countries, controlling for other likely influences on flexibility such as government and industrial relations institutions. The results are generally supportive as regards employment flexibility: equity market trading activity is associated with shorter job tenure, higher activity rates, and greater employment change over the cycle. However, the relationship between equity markets and pay flexibility is less statistically robust to the addition of controls.     

Economies of scale and market power in policing

The objective of this paper is to use a simultaneous equations method for estimating police production and demand to determine whether or not there are economies of scale in policing. In addition, the effect of market power on productivity, using the Herfindahl–Hirschmann Index, is to be measured. The estimation yields the result that there are diseconomies of scale with respect to the amount of crime beyond about 22 000 people in the policing jurisdiction and diseconomies of scale in numbers of police beyond about 36 000 people. Efficiency is also reduced where there is greater market power. This is conjectured to be the public sector equivalent of taking market power profits. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Islamic equity market integration and volatility spillover between emerging and US stock markets

The purpose of this paper is to study the conditional correlations across the US market and a sample of five Islamic emerging markets, namely Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar, and Malaysia. The empirical design uses MSCI (Morgan Stanley Capital International) Islamic equity index since it applies stringent restrictions to include companies. Indeed, two main restrictions must be met: (i) the business activity must be compliant with Shari’ah (i.e., Islamic law) guidelines and (ii) interest-bearing investments and leverage ratios should not exceed upper limits. Three models are used: multivariate GARCH BEKK, CCC, and DCC. The estimation results of the three models show that the US and Islamic emerging equity markets are weakly correlated over time. No sheer evidence supports that the US market spills over into the Islamic emerging equity markets. Besides interpreting the results in terms of weak market integration, the peculiar specificities of the Islamic finance industry and the admittance conditions to the MSCI Islamic equity index contribute to explaining them. Indeed, Islamic finance bans interest-bearing investments and imposes some rules, such as asset-backing, which has sizeable impacts on volatility spillover and shocks transmissions, alongside with the close linkage between real and financial sectors. These findings suggest that investors should take caution when investing in the Islamic emerging equity markets and diversifying their portfolios in order to minimize risk.     

Determining market power exertion between buyers and sellers

Empirical techniques commonly used in industrial organization to measure market power exertion typically assume imperfectly competitive behaviour by firms on only one side of the market. Firms on the other side are assumed to be perfectly competitive. In this paper we extend traditional NEIO methods by developing a method to estimate market power exertion when firms on both sides have potential market power. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we find that the model correctly estimates market power exercised by firms on either or both sides of a market and also correctly estimates firms' technology parameters. When applied to the US leaf tobacco market, findings indicate that cigarette manufacturers exert some monopsony power in purchasing leaf tobacco while producers, organized as a cartel, exhibit no countervailing monopoly market power. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Import competition and market power: Canadian evidence

This study estimates price–marginal cost mark-ups for Canadian manufacturing industries during the 1970s in order to assess the impact of import competition on domestic market power. The results are mixed. Based on the analysis, there is no consistent evidence that imports reduced the mark-ups of Canadian firms during that period.     

Oligopsony/oligopoly power and factor market performance

This paper is concerned with the economic performance of factor markets in an oligopsony/ oligopoly setting. Firm arid industry indexes are developed to measure factor market price distortions caused by exerted oligopsony/oligopoly power. These measures indicate that the elasticity of output demand, the elasticity of input supply, and the input and output conjectural elasticities determine the degree of non-competitive performance in factor markets. It is also shown that under special conditions the firm index equals the Lerner index and the industry index equals the Herfindahl-Hirschman index.     

浅析构建区域资本市场对区域经济发展的影响

区域经济是整个国民经济的基础,但各个区域由于历史,经济基础和国家政策等不同的原因,产生了发展不平衡的现象,现阶段最为突出的就是“中部塌陷”。一般来说,资本往往是区域经济发展中最稀缺的要素,而构建区域资本市场就是一条较好的途径。文章主要从区域资本市场的特点和规律出发,以及对区域经济的作用入手,对构建区域资本市场提出了建议。