The Cost of Diversity: The Diversification Discount and Inefficient Investment

We model the distortions that internal power struggles can generate in the allocation of resources between divisions of a diversified firm. The model predicts that if divisions are similar in the level of their resources and opportunities, funds will be transferred from divisions with poor opportunities to divisions with good opportunities. When diversity in resources and opportunities increases, however, resources can flow toward the most inefficient division, leading to more inefficient investment and less valuable firms. We test these predictions on a panel of diversified U.S. firms during the period from 1980 to 1993 and find evidence consistent with them.     

DERIVATIVE ASSET PRICING WITH TRANSACTION COSTS1

In the modern theory of finance, the valuation of derivative assets is commonly based on a replication argument. When there are transaction costs, this argument is no longer valid. In this paper, we try to address the general problem of finding the optimal portfolio among those which dominate a given derivative asset at maturity. We derive an interval for its price. the upper bound is the minimum amount one has to invest initially in order to obtain proceeds at least as valuable as the derivative asset. the lower bound is the maximum amount one can borrow initially against the proceeds of the derivative asset. We show that, in some instances, this interval may be strictly bounded above by the price of the replicating strategy. Prima facie, the cost of a dominating strategy should appear to be higher than that of the replicating one. But because trading is costly, it may pay to weigh the benefits of replication against those of potential savings on transaction costs.     

Normal probability plots and the estimation of distribution tails

Quantiles used in normal probability plots can be estimated more accurately from the maximum entropy (ME) distribution than from the order statistics of the sample distribution. The symmetric ME distribution yields additional improvements.     

Developing competitive technical intelligence in Indonesia

In Indonesia, political concern promotes the development of autonomy in provinces and in certain academic institutions. This paper relates that with the commencing of AFTA in 2003, there is a strong need for competitive intelligence (CI) and technology watch (TW) in Indonesian industries. The model developed takes its roots within Indonesian constraints and leads to a general guideline to introduce CI in industries and institutions in most developing countries.     

The positive maximum entropy distribution

The maximum entropy (ME) principle is applied to samples from a positive population, yielding a positive ME distribution with one truncated exponential component distribution. This approach is easily extended to double-constrained variables such as proportions (e.g., market shares and budget shares).     

The measurement of inequality by components of income

Cowell (1977) considered the inequality by components of income (wages, property income, welfare, etc.). This note shows that this measurement problem can be elegantly handled in terms of informational inequality measures.     

The independence transformation under almost additivity

When the consumer's tastes are close to preference independence, each transformed good is uniquely associated with one observed good. The off-diagonal elements of the composition matrix of the transformation are equal apart from sign and are inversely proportional to the difference between the income elasticities of the corresponding observed goods.     

Statistical inference in cross-country demand systems

Consumption data on eight goods in 15 countries are used for testing and estimating a system of demand equations across countries. The estimated income elasticities are compared with those of Clements et al. (1979) and Houthakker (1957).