Port reform without tears – the New Zealand experience

New Zealanďs port reforms in 1989 and 1990 were part of a wider programme of economic reform. The paper analyses their effects, concluding that there have been substantial benefits in terms of improved port performance which have helped New Zealand exporters and the economy generally.     

Provision of Step-Level Public Goods with Uncertain Provision Threshold and Continuous Contribution

Common to most theoretical and empirical research on public goods is the assumption that the parameters of the game are common knowledge. Recent theoretical and empirical studies have questioned this assumption by arguing that many public goods situations are characterized by uncertainty regarding various aspects of the situation. In particular, Suleiman (1997) argued that members of production groups of step-level public goods are often uncertain about the value of the provision threshold. For this type of uncertainty he proposed three distinct models to account for the individual's contribution.The present study reports the results of an experiment designed primarily to test and contrast the predictions derived from two of these models – a subjective expected utility model and a cooperative model – regarding the effects of threshold uncertainty on contribution for the provision of step-level public goods. Other goals of the study were to test the joint effect of the threshold uncertainty level, and its mean (low vs. high), on contribution, and to examine the effect of threshold uncertainty on the individuals' estimates regarding the contributions of other group members.The results show that the effect of threshold uncertainty is moderated by the threshold mean: Contribution to the public good increased as a function of uncertainty for the lower threshold mean, and decreased (though not significantly) for the higher threshold mean. In contrast, for the two threshold means the subjects' estimates of the mean and variability of others' contribution increased with threshold uncertainty.The models' comparison revealed that the cooperative model was superior to the subjective expected utility model. This result adds to a substantial body of research on social dilemmas showing that under conditions of social (strategic) uncertainty, group members tacitly coordinate their choice behavior by anchoring their decisions on rules of fairness.     

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT STOCK REPURCHASES?

Stock repurchases by U.S. companies experienced a remarkable surge in the 1980s and ‘90s. Indeed, in 1998, the total value of all stock repurchased by U.S. companies exceeded for the first time the total amount paid out as cash dividends. And the U.S. repurchase movement has gone global in the past few years, spreading not only to Canada and the U.K., but also to countries like Japan and Germany, where such transactions were prohibited until recently. Why are companies buying back their stock in such amounts? After dismissing the popular argument that stock repurchases boost earnings per share, the authors argue that repurchases serve to add value in two main ways: (1) they provide managers with a tax‐efficient means of returning excess capital to shareholders and (2) they allow managers to “signal” to investors their view that the firm is undervalued. Returning excess capital is value‐adding for two reasons: First, it helps prevent companies from pursuing growth and size at the expense of profitability and value. Second, by returning capital to investors, repurchases (like dividends) play the critically important economic function of allowing investors to channel their investment from mature or declining sectors of the economy to more promising ones. But if stock repurchases and dividends serve the same basic economic function, why are repurchases growing more rapidly? Part of the explanation is that, because repurchases are taxed as capital gains and dividends as ordinary income, repurchases are a more tax‐efficient way of distributing excess capital. But perhaps even more important than their tax treatment is the flexibility that (at least) open market repurchases provide corporate managers‐flexibility to make small adjustments in capital structure, to exploit (or correct) perceived undervaluation of the firm's shares, and possibly even to increase the liquidity of the stock, which could be particularly valuable in bear markets. For U.S. regulators, the growth in open market stock repurchases raises some interesting issues. Perhaps most important, companies are not required to (and rarely do) furnish their investors with details about a given program's structure, execution method, number of shares repurchased, or even its duration. Policy regulators (and corporate executives as well) should consider some of the benefits provided by other systems, notably Canada's, which provide greater transparency and more guidelines for the repurchase process.     

Technological and Design Innovation Effects in Regional New Product Rollouts: A European Illustration

Firms are increasingly recognizing the importance of understanding regional dynamics and their effects on competitiveness. One such area that is gaining increased importance due to intra‐regional trade is the factors contributing to the successful rollouts of new products within a region. New product rollouts are complicated by nature but are further compounded by intricacies in the type of innovation (i.e., technological or design) being introduced into a region. Unfortunately, limited research has investigated this area. This study works to address this limitation by examining the per country performance effects of regional new product rollouts of technological and design innovations. The study examines the introduction of 14 technological innovations and 12 design innovations across 17 unique firms operating in eight European countries from 2000 to 2007. Specifically, this study attempts to show (1) an important role of the type of innovation on a firm's regional new product rollout strategy; (2) a relationship between national culture and the effectiveness of regional rollout strategies; and (3) an influence of economic openness on the type of innovation for regional new product rollout strategies. The results indicate that a longer regional new product rollout strategy is a more effective strategy for technological innovations, while a shorter regional new product rollout strategy is a more effective strategy for design innovations. The study also presents significant interaction effects in relation to the cultural dimensions of uncertainty avoidance and power distance as well as a significant effect of economic openness. Implications for practitioners and academics are presented.     

Property rights as a complex adaptive system: how entrepreneurship transforms intellectual property structures

This article aims to provide some elements of an evolutionary theory of property rights. It applies a systems-based capital-theoretic perspective to explain the formation and transformation of property rights structures. The approach emphasizes how entrepreneurs create capital combinations by connecting capital goods—defined widely to include property rights, such as patents—in their production plans. Their actions change complementarity relations between property rights as used in production. We treat the property rights structure as a complex adaptive system that exhibits increasing structural complexity as it evolves. Entrepreneurs discover gaps in the property rights system. As they organize production to exploit profit opportunities, entrepreneurs regroup existing intellectual property rights (IPR) into new modules, such as patent pools, that encapsulate more complex combinations of basic building blocks of intellectual property. A patent pool constitutes an interpolation of a new meso level within the macro IPR structure. We apply our framework to the first of the patent pools for digital video compression technology used in digital television and DVDs.     

THE DECISIONS OF THE SHADOW MONETARY POLICY COMMITTEE AND MONETARY POLICY COMMITTEE SINCE 2002: A REJOINDER

Koo, Paya and Peel make some very worthwhile points regarding the operation of the SMPC. Their analysis is interesting and helpful. However, the particular structure of the SMPC and the way it operates is, to some extent, determined by practicalities but also, more importantly, by the fact that it tries to operate as a discussion forum bringing together academics, bankers and financial experts rather than simply providing opinions on what the MPC should do.     

Habits,Complementarities and Heterogeneity in Alcohol and Tobacco Demand: A Multivariate Dynamic Model*

In this paper we test the existence of forward‐looking behaviour in a multivariate model for alcohol and tobacco consumption. The theoretical framework, based on a dynamic adjustment cost model with forward‐looking behaviour, is enhanced to include the intertemporal interactions between the two goods. The analysis of the within‐period preferences completes the intertemporal model, allowing to evaluate the static substitutability/complementarity relationships. The empirical strategy consists in a two‐step estimation procedure. In a first stage, we obtain the parameters of the demand system, while in a second stage Euler equations are estimated. Results, based on a cohort data set constructed from a series of cross‐sections of the Italian Household Budget Survey, reveal a significant complementarity relationship between alcohol and tobacco. Estimation of the Euler equations does not lead to rejection of the hypothesis of intertemporal dependence, providing evidence for a forward‐looking behaviour in alcohol and tobacco consumption. Moreover, we find significant intertemporal interactions that support the adjustment cost setting in a multivariate model with rational expectations.     

Confidence,opinions of market efficiency,and investment behavior of finance professors

We identify finance professors’ opinions on the efficiency of the stock markets in the United States and assess whether their views on efficiency influence their investing behavior. Employing a survey distributed to over 4,000 professors, we obtain four main results. First, most professors believe the market is weak to semi-strong efficient. Second, twice as many professors passively invest than actively invest. Third, our respondents’ perceptions regarding market efficiency are almost entirely unrelated to their trading behavior. Fourth, the investment objectives of professors are, instead, largely driven by the same behavioral factor as for amateur investors–one's confidence in his own abilities to beat the market, independent of his opinion of market efficiency.     

Temporary open market operation on MBS repos: any foreshadowing of the financial crisis of 2008?

The financial crisis of 2008 was significantly influenced by housing, mortgage markets and mortgage-backed securities (MBS). The Federal Reserve (Fed) conducts temporary open market operations on a daily basis and frequently uses repos on MBS. With this daily interaction with MBS, we examine whether any signal about the impending financial crisis could have been seen in the Fed’s temporary open market operations. We identify four anomalous events in MBS temporary open market operations and examine those events for signals of the financial crisis. We find nothing in the four events that would have provided signals of the financial crisis. Instead, the common feature of the four events is an unusually large supply of MBS made available to the Fed for those day’s temporary open market operations.