Socially responsible and conventional investment funds: performance comparison and the global financial crisis

We investigate the performance of socially responsible funds (SRFs) and conventional funds (CFs) in different market (geographical area and class size) segments during the period 1992–2012. From an unbalanced sample of more than 22 000 funds, we define a matched sample using a beta-distance measure to match any SRF with the ‘nearest neighbour’ CF in terms of sensitivity to risk factors. Using this matching approach and a recursive analysis, we identify several switch points in the lead/lag relationship between the two investment styles over time in different market segments. A relevant finding of our analysis is that SRFs played an ‘insurance role’ outperforming CFs during the 2007 global financial crisis.     

Securing basic well-being for all

The purpose of this article is to examine the possibility of a social choice rule to implement a social policy for “securing basic well-being for all.” The article introduces a new scheme of social choice, called a social relation function (SRF), which associates a reflexive and transitive binary relation over a set of social policies to each profile of individual well-being appraisals and each profile of group evaluations. As part of the domains of SRFs, the available class of group evaluations is constrained by three conditions. Furthermore, the non-negative response (NR) and the weak Pareto condition (WP) are introduced. NR demands giving priority to group evaluation, while treating the groups as formally equal relative to each other. WP requires treating impartially the well-being appraisals of all individuals. In conclusion, this article shows that under some reasonable assumptions, there exists an SRF that satisfies NR and WP.     

Corporate foresight in Europe: from trend based logics to open foresight

The paper analyses the role of corporate foresight (CF) as a future intelligence gathering process, which has come into widespread use in a business context where it is confronted with specific contextual, processual and methodological challenges. The results of a 2005/2006 survey on CF by the University of St Gallen in co-operation with Z_punkt are used as a starting point to provide insights into the goals, methods and use of CF in large corporations. Taking into account the challenges facing CF and the factors considered critical for its success, the paper outlines a historical contextualisation of CF practices from the 1980s onward, identifying the underlying assumptions - the 'dominant logic' - and opting for a new model of CF as 'open foresight'.     

Corporate foresight in Europe: from trend based logics to open foresight

The paper analyses the role of corporate foresight (CF) as a future intelligence gathering process, which has come into widespread use in a business context where it is confronted with specific contextual, processual and methodological challenges. The results of a 2005/2006 survey on CF by the University of St Gallen in co-operation with Z_punkt are used as a starting point to provide insights into the goals, methods and use of CF in large corporations. Taking into account the challenges facing CF and the factors considered critical for its success, the paper outlines a historical contextualisation of CF practices from the 1980s onward, identifying the underlying assumptions – the ‘dominant logic’ – and opting for a new model of CF as ‘open foresight’.     

International law as a negotiation tool in Banking Union; the case of the Single Resolution Fund

EU’s response to the recent Euro-crisis has involved a mixture of EU and international law, with the latter being linked to all the arrangements that may have fiscal implications for national Member States. The SRF embodies all the controversial characteristics of Banking Union. This article illustrates the legal implications that this political choice creates, and how the interrelation between the SRM, the SRF and the ESM, allows leading economies, including Germany, to control the resolution framework both before and after crisis. This raises questions as to the direction that European Integration is taking and its highly nationalised character.     

The HIV Epidemic,Skill Heterogeneity,and Output

This paper investigates the effect of HIV/AIDS on output using an overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents calibrated to sub‐Saharan Africa. Output is found to be below a no‐AIDS output in a range between 3% (10%), when only unskilled workers are affected, and 10% (28%), when only skilled workers are affected, whenever the overall infection rate is 7% (20%). When investigating the hypothesis that AIDS affects skilled workers more severely than unskilled at the beginning of the epidemic, with the effect switching as the epidemic becomes more mature, the findings are that the economy can be 8% smaller along the transition path. In all scenarios where the epidemic is temporary, it would take four to five generations or about 90 years for sub‐Saharan Africa to recover.     

Does international openness affect the productivity of local firms?

This paper examines how international openness can change firm productivity in south‐eastern Europe (SEE), a crucial question for middle‐income countries. Using firm‐level data for six transition economies over the 1995–2002 period, we identify whether foreign ownership and propensity to trade with more advanced countries can bring about higher learning effects. We find that: (i) foreign ownership has helped restructure and enhance the productivity of local firms in four out of six countries; (ii) exporting to advanced markets has a larger impact on productivity growth in four countries, especially when the firm's absorptive capacity is taken into account; (iii) in contrast, exporting to the less competitive markets of the former Yugoslavia seems to negatively affect productivity growth in three countries; and (iv) learning effects from importing are similar to those from exporting. Our results suggest that trade liberalization is not uniformly beneficial. Regional composition of trade flows and absorptive capacity of local firms matter. Thus, trade liberalization within the SEE region may not provide a substitute for a general trade liberalization which includes access to the more competitive markets of countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development.     

A Welfare Ranking of Multilateral Reductions in Real and Tariff Trade Barriers when Firms are Heterogenous

Trade liberalization comes about through reductions in various types of trade barriers. This paper introduces, apart from the customary real trade costs (i.e. iceberg and fixed export costs), two revenue generating trade barriers (i.e. an ad valorem tariff and a trade license) into a standard heterogeneous‐firms‐trade model with Pareto distributed productivities. We derive analytical welfare rankings of all four liberalization channels for an equal effect on two openness measures, for any trade cost level and while all four barriers are simultaneously present, i.e. for any initial equilibrium. We show that when openness is measured at retail prices, not border prices, the welfare rankings are sensitive to the degree of efficiency in revenue redistribution, e.g. the share of tariff revenues wasted on rent‐seeking activities. As a result, multilateral tariff reductions can switch from the least to the most preferred mode of liberalization. Among the other three barriers we establish a universal welfare ranking for any strictly positive level of revenue redistribution and for either measure of openness.     

Higher Price,Lower Costs? Minimum Prices in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme

In this paper, we examine the introduction of a price floor in an emissions trading system (ETS) when some emissions are regulated outside the ETS. We theoretically characterize the conditions under which a price floor enhances welfare. Using a numerical simulation model of the European Union (EU), we find that moderate minimum prices in the EU ETS can reduce the costs of EU climate policy by up to 30 percent. We also find that, because of tax‐interaction effects, the optimal minimum price in the EU ETS should be about four times higher than the average marginal abatement cost in non‐ETS sectors.     

Smoke screen: Estimating the tax pass‐through to cigarette prices in Pakistan

This article estimates and compares the speed and magnitude of the tax pass‐through across major cigarette brands at different price points (budget, mainstream, and premium) in Pakistan by using a novel dataset of monthly observations on cigarette prices in 50 cities during the period 2004 to 2015. The empirical analysis indicates that the pass‐through of cigarette taxes to the final consumer price is fast but incomplete in Pakistan. The pass‐through coefficient is estimated to be in the range of 70 to over 90 percent across four major cigarette brands, and most of the pass‐through occurs contemporaneously within a period of 2 months. The results imply that a 1‐Pakistan rupee (PR ) increase in taxation leads to an increase of PR s 0.8, on average, in cigarette prices. In other words, cigarette taxes are undershifted to consumers in Pakistan. With respect to the tax pass‐through at different price tiers (budget, mainstream, and premium), I find significant variation in the pass‐through coefficient, which is close to one for the premium cigarette brand and significantly lower for the budget and mainstream cigarette brands.     

ROY MODEL SORTING AND NONRANDOM SELECTION IN THE VALUATION OF A STATISTICAL LIFE*

Wage‐hedonics is used to recover the value of a statistical life (VSL) by exploiting the fact that workers choosing riskier occupations are compensated with a higher wage. Roy (Oxford Economic Papers 3 (1951), 135–46) suggests that observed wage distributions will be distorted if individuals choose jobs according to idiosyncratic returns. We describe how this type of sorting biases wage‐hedonic VSL estimates and implement two new estimation strategies that correct that bias. Using data from the Current Population Surveys, we recover VSL estimates that are three to four times larger than those based on the traditional techniques, statistically significant, and robust to a wide array of specifications.     

Government Versus Non‐Government Schools: A Nation‐Wide Assessment Using Australian Naplan Data

There are considerable differences in school outcomes on the NAPLAN tests in Australia between Government and non‐Government schools. This paper documents these for four years of study (Years 3, 5, 7 and 9), and for the five NAPLAN domains (Grammar and Punctuation, Numeracy, Reading, Spelling and Writing). It then examines the extent to which the differences are due to characteristics of the schools, such as the socioeconomic status of the school and the gender mix of the total enrolment at the school. It is shown that a greater share of the difference in marks between Government and non‐Government schools in Year 9 than in Year 3 is due to the characteristics of the schools. This implies that, consistent with recent press coverage, the better outcomes of the non‐Government schools are due, in part at least, to a selection process that favours academically advantaged students.     

Why is free education so popular? A political economy explanation

This paper analyzes the political support for different funding regimes of education in a one‐person, one‐vote democracy. We focus the analysis on four systems that have had a preponderant presence in the political debate on education: a private system, a public system that delivers the same resources to each student (universal‐free education), a public system that intends to equalize results, and a public system that aims to maximize the output of the economy. We show that a system of universal free education is the Condorcet winner. The level of income inequality and the degree to which income distribution is skewed to the right are key factors behind this conclusion. We also show that the voting outcome of public versus private funding for education depends crucially on the type of public funding under consideration.     

MERGERS AND PRODUCT QUALITY: A SILVER LINING FROM DE‐HUBBING IN THE U.S. AIRLINE INDUSTRY

This paper investigates how de‐hubbing, which occurs when an airline ceases hub operations, impacts product quality. Examining four cases of de‐hubbing following U.S. airline mergers between 1998 and 2016, we analyze three product quality measures: on‐time performance, travel time, and flight cancellations. In order to isolate a merger's impact on product quality, we compare the results of four de‐hubbing events that followed a merger with three de‐hubbing cases that occurred independently of a merger. We find a silver lining from mergers because product quality improvements are isolated to de‐hubbing events which follow airline mergers rather than nonmerger‐induced de‐hubbing. (JEL L15, L93)     

构建我国财务会计概念框架的设想

自美国FASB发布其首份财务会计概念公告之后,一些国家和国际组织等都纷纷效尤,建立起了各自的概念框架体系。我国迄今为止真正意义的财务会计概念框架尚未建立,修订后的《企业会计准则—基本准则》虽然具有财务会计概念框架的雏形,但当作我国的财务会计概念框架还不成熟。对我国基本准则与财务会计概念框架进行了比较分析,并在此基础上提出了构建我国财务会计概念框架的总体设想。     

Shedding Light on Price‐ and Non‐price‐competitiveness Determinants of Foreign Trade in the Four Largest Euro‐area Countries

Since the mid‐2000s standard price‐competitiveness indicators for euro‐area countries have recently provided conflicting signals, particularly in Italy. The manufacturing unit labor cost (ULCM)‐based indicator reports a major competitiveness loss in Italy. Owing to the internationalization of production processes and to the fading representativeness of labor on overall costs we argue that price‐based measures are more appropriate than those based on ULCMs to assess external competitiveness and play a more important role in explaining export growth. Measuring non‐price competitiveness and considering global value chains are also crucial to correctly identify the determinants of trade flows in the four largest euro‐area countries.     

Role of psychological variables in the determination of the worker's wage: Further evidence from the United States

The current study examines the roles of three psychological variables, job satisfaction, positive attitude and self‐satisfaction, in the determination of the worker's wage. Using two samples from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youths, 1979 (NLSY79), the study for the first time models a possible simultaneous relationship among these four variables and estimates these equations by an appropriate two‐stage procedure. Our results indicate that the worker's wage is positively related to these psychological variables. This finding has important policy implications and thus it calls for future research in this direction.     

众包供应链创新发展路径分析

众包供应链(Crowdsourcing Supply Chain,CSC)作为一种新型供应链,正成为研究热点。在文献综述的基础上,分析了众包和供应链关系,并对众包供应链进行界定,通过众包供应链特征分析,对众包供应链和外包的关系进行了比较,研究了众包供应链耦合的3种创新模式;最后,重点探讨了众包供应链创新发展的4个阶段（萌芽阶段、探索阶段、成长阶段和成熟阶段）及各阶段的表现形式。     

Female Earnings and Divorce Rates: Some Australian Evidence

The purpose of this article is to examine whether female earnings have influenced divorce rates in Australia, using state‐level data for the past four decades. Following a recent study by Ressler and Waters (2000), which concludes from comparable US data that female earnings and divorce rates may be jointly endogenous, initial testing is performed to identify whether female earnings can be treated as exogenous. A Hausman specification error test finds no evidence of a simultaneous relationship in the Australian data, in contrast to the findings of Ressler and Waters. The test result supports the hypothesis that other underlying factors affect female earnings, of which higher divorce rates are merely another symptom. A divorce rate equation is estimated. In accordance with much of the literature, the rise in female earnings over the past four decades is found to have increased Australian divorce rates.     

Correlated Equilibrium,Conformity, and Stereotyping in Social Groups

We argue that a social norm and the coordination of behavior within social groups can be expressed by a correlated equilibrium. Given a social group structure (a partition of individuals into social groups), we propose four conditions that one may expect of a correlated equilibrium consistent with social norms. These are: (1) within‐group anonymity (conformity within groups), (2) group independence (no conformity between groups), (3) homophily (individuals in the same group have similar attributes), and (4) predictable group behavior (ex post stability). We demonstrate that correlated equilibrium satisfying (1)–(3) exist very generally and equilibrium satisfying (1)–(4) exist in games with many players. We also consider stereotyped beliefs—beliefs that all individuals in a social group can be expected to behave in the same way—and show that stereotyping is not costly to the person who stereotypes but may or may not be beneficial to society.