The European economy at the cross roads: Structural reforms, fiscal constraints, and the Lisbon Agenda

This paper studies the incentives to sustain and extend a monetary union under alternative assumptions about the extent of market reform within the union and accession countries. Lack of labour mobility, or wage/price flexibility, or fiscal reform, brings costs for both new entrants and in the existing union. Countries will therefore want a union where there has been sufficient reform, and also one where markets are more flexible than their own. But existing members will want the same properties of their partners. Fiscal restrictions may exaggerate this incentive mismatch and could therefore delay the necessary reforms. Similarly, too large costs up front may also delay those reforms.     

Action-oriented approaches to technology assessment and working life in scandinavia

Several approaches to action-oriented technology assessment of aspects of working life have been tried out in Scandinavia over the past 15-20 years. This article gives an overview of the experiences in Scandinavia, with emphasis on a Danish point of view. Five different approaches to action-oriented technology assessment are described, based on an analysis of the social actors involved, the target groups for the technology assessment and the associated social mechanisms. These techniques follow the collective resource approach, the cooperative strategies, expert strategies and alternative technology, legal reform strategies and governmental technology promotion policy. None of the approaches proved to be totally effective on its own. The conclusion is that a new combination of approaches to action-oriented technology assessment and the development of a theoretical basis are needed.     

Product Differentiation and Public Education

We demonstrate that differentiation in public services can arise as a way of reducing competition among cities. Quality differentiation can be particularly relevant to the provision of education. If cities finance education through a property tax that generates "tax competition," we find that quality differentiation in education changes the amount of educational services provided. In the case of property-value maximization, this means a reduction in educational services in both the city with high quality and that with low quality. The reduction in educational services means that under reasonable conditions property values in both cities can increase.     

International monetary policy cooperation in economies with centralized wage setting

We consider a standard two-country monetary policy game with fixed nominal wage contracts. The policy regime is either non-cooperative or cooperative. We extend conventional analyses by deriving the natural rate of employment endogenously through monopoly union decision-making. As unions attempt to affect the real exchange rate, wages are set inefficiently high. Such attempts are shown to be strongest under monetary cooperation. Therefore, in comparison with non-cooperation, employment is lowest, and, in effect, consumer price inflation is highest, under monetary cooperation, i.e., international monetary cooperation is disadvantageous.     

Climate for Scandal: Corporate Environments that Contribute to Accounting Fraud

We examine the governance characteristics, earnings quality, growth rates, dividend policy, and compensation structure of 97 firms recently under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for accounting fraud. Our results show that the corporate environment most likely to lead to an accounting scandal manifests significant growth and accounting practices that are already pushing the envelope of earnings smoothing. Firms operating in this environment seem more likely to tip over the edge into fraud if there are fewer outsiders on the audit committee and outside directors appear overcommitted.     

Dynamics and Long-run Structure in U.S. Meat Demand

Empirical analysis, based on a general dynamic Almost Ideal Demand System, shows the commonly used autoregressive and partial adjustment processes are restrictive to meat demand data. This study derives a linear specification in levels form to investigate dynamics in a general framework. Merging a long-run steady state structure with short-run dynamics results in consistent and robust long-run demand elasticities Une analyse empirique, basée sur un systéme dynamique général de demande quasi optimale, montre que les mécanismes courants d'ajustement autorégressif et d'ajustement partiel ont un effect restrictif sur l'évaluation des données de la demande de viande. Les auteurs proposent une spécifcation linéaire par niveaux pour examiner la dynamique du cadre général. La combinaison d'une structure stable de longue durée avec une dynamique de courte période a produit des élasticités cohérentes et solides de la demande à long terme     

Optimal portfolio choice with wash sale constraints

We analytically solve the portfolio choice problem in the presence of wash sale constraints in a two-period model with one risky asset. Our results show that wash sale constraints can heavily affect portfolio choice of investors with unrealized losses. The trading behavior of such investors is to a large extent driven by the desire to realize those losses, either immediately by sharply decreasing the holding of assets carrying unrealized losses, or indirectly by increasing such holdings in order to prepare for a decrease in a future period to earn the tax rebate payment. Our findings are robust to increasing the number of trading dates and introducing a second risky asset and a correlation structure.