Resourcing War While Containing Inflation: Debate among Australia's Second World War Economists

Early in the Second World War, Australian Government economists, including Financial and Economic Committee members, agreed that taxation was central to shifting resources from consumption to war spending and containing inflation. As Australia's war effort expanded in 1941–42, all advisers accepted the need for more economic controls. Differences emerged about the desired extent of controls. Some saw controls, including rationing and price stabilisation, as an alternative to higher taxation. In these debates and in policy determination, Keynes' views were influential, as to some extent were those of Kalecki and Balogh. Other influences included the policies of Australia's allies.     

Privatization,foreign bank entry and bank efficiency in Croatia: a Fourier-flexible function stochastic cost frontier analysis

Using bank balance sheet data for Croatia for 1994 to 2000, this study estimates a Fourier-flexible frontier cost function. Specification tests indicate that the stochastic frontier model with a Fourier-flexible form with a truncated normal distribution of the inefficiency term allowing for time varying cost efficiency is preferred. The results show that new private and privatized banks, contrary to some expectations, are not the most efficient banks through most of the period. Privatization also does not seem to have an immediate effect on improved efficiency. However, better cost efficiency is associated with a lower likelihood of failure, suggesting that better risk management and better cost management are signs of better management in general. Finally, foreign banks have substantially better efficiency scores than all categories of domestic banks.     

Evaluating Alternative Prescribed Burning Policies to Reduce Net Economic Damages from Wildfire

We estimate a wildfire risk model with a new measure of wildfire output, intensity-weighted risk and use it in Monte Carlo simulations to estimate welfare changes from alternative prescribed burning policies. Using Volusia County, Florida as a case study, an annual prescribed burning rate of 13% of all forest lands maximizes net welfare; ignoring the effects on wildfire intensity may underestimate optimal rates of prescribed burning. Our estimated supply function for prescribed fire services is inelastic, suggesting that increasing contract prescribed fire services on public lands may produce rapidly escalating costs for private landowners and unintended distributional and "leakage" effects.     

Performance compensation contracts and CEOs’ incentive to shift risk to debtholders: An empirical analysis

The paper investigates the relationships among CEO incentive contracts, manager ownership, charter value, and bank risk taking. We analyze whether the presence and magnitude of incentive contracts induce CEOs of financially distressed firms and firms with high manager ownership to take unprofitable risks that shift wealth from debtholders to equity holders. Our sample focuses on banks that had both the incentive and opportunity to shift risks, and compares them with those that did not. We compare weak and strong banks in periods when the banks’ principal creditor, the FDIC, was a lenient and then a stringent monitor. The evidence is consistent with bonus compensation inducing CEOs of financially weak firms to shift risk to debtholders only if they do not have large insider ownership. The evidence is also consistent with these contracts rewarding CEOs for their effort to manage unforeseeable risk albeit not their ability. Low charter value banks with high managerial ownership took profitable risk during the lenient regulatory period.     

寻求渠道差异化优势

新的渠道意味着公司不用受制于零售商，也不用承担巨额库存费用。实际上，它实现了最佳的效用循环：低成本高利润。戴尔解释道：“事实上你得与顾客建立某种关系，利用这种关系得到有价值的信息。将这种信息糅进技术之中，你就有基础平衡与供货商及顾客之间的关系，对通行于各大跨国公司的基本经营模式进行变革。”其它公司正在追随戴尔，开发新颖独特的营销渠道。许多案例已经证明，这些公司开发和管理营销渠道的能力，正在使所处行业发生革命性转变。越来越多的国际领先公司认识到，营销渠道管理可以改变游戏规则。营销渠道管理不仅仅是指…     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TYPES OF INNOVATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE

The relationship between adoption of administrative and technical innovations over time and its impact on organizational performance was studied. A confirmatory analysis of the data from 85 public libraries showed that, over consecutive time periods, changes in the social structure, portrayed by the adoption of administrative innovations, lead to changes in the technical system, portrayed by the adoption of technical innovations. Empirical support was also provided for Daft's (1982) framework for organizational innovation that was found to be effective in separating organizations based on their performance levels.     

Hedge funds as international liquidity providers: evidence from convertible bond arbitrage in Canada

We examine the impact of Canadian convertible bond issuance on equity market liquidity. Using issuance event dates between April 2002 and March 2011, we analyze the change in short interest and stock liquidity during a 1-year event window. We consider mainstream liquidity measures, including turnover, dollar volume, dollar spread, percentage spread, and the ratio of daily absolute stock return to dollar volume. We find that after convertible bond issuances, there are significant increases in short interest, but minimal overall improvements in liquidity. The change in liquidity is not significantly related to the change in short interest, except for the firms with large change in short interest. Interpreting increased short interest after issuance as a proxy for convertible bond arbitrage activity, the results suggest that there is limited positive liquidity externality of hedge fund activity in Canada.     

别再装好人

亲爱的劳埃德（Lloyd Blankfein是高盛董事长兼首席执行长）： 在这个时候，我或许不该也插上一脚。不过，我曾对你说过，而且我还要说——你面临一场必败无疑之仗。