Arbitrage Bounds and UK Unit Trust Performance

Abstract:  We use the arbitrage performance bounds of Ahn, Cao and Chretien (2003) to evaluate UK unit trust performance between January 1988 and December 2002. We find that trust performance is sensitive to the admissible stochastic discount factor used for both the average trust and the majority of individual trusts. The investment style, size, load charge, and annual charge of the trust all have an impact on trust performance. We find for some trusts, the Jensen (1968) and Ferson and Schadt (1996) measures do not satisfy arbitrage bounds by the base assets.     

Between the State and the Market: Can Informal Insurance Patch the Safety Net?

Most households in low-income countries deal with economic hardshipsthrough informal insurance arrangements between individualsand communities rather than through publicly managed programsor market-provided insurance schemes. Households may, for example,draw on savings, sell physical assets, rely on reciprocal giftexchanges, or diversify into alternative income-generating activities.These mechanisms can be highly effective in the right circumstances,but most recent studies show that informal insurance arrangementsare often weak. Poor households, in particular, have substantialdifficulties coping with even local, idiosyncratic risks. Publicpolicy can help reduce vulnerability by encouraging private,flexible coping mechanisms while discouraging those that arefragile or that hinder economic and social mobility. Promisingpolicies include creating self-regulating workfare programsand providing a supportive setting for institutions workingto improve access to credit, crop and health insurance, andsafe and convenient saving opportunities.      

Poverty,gender and migrancy: Lesotho's migrant farmworkers in South Africa

During the 1990s, eastern Free State vegetable farmers increasingly relied on migrants from neighbouring Lesotho for seasonal labour. This coincided with a major downsizing of the mine labour force in South Africa, hitherto the major employer of Basotho migrant workers. However, there was no simple process of transfer of unemployed migrants from the mining to the farming sector; rather, decisions were mediated by domestic relationships and household poverty in Lesotho. Basotho women and girls have been a major casualty of mine retrenchments and the drying up of remittances, and those with domestic skills but little formal training have been forced into the labour market, mainly domestic work in towns and labour on farms. This article examines the Basotho migrants' experiences and conditions of employment, the regulatory environment within which they are recruited and employed, and their future in the context of changing immigration and migration legislation in South Africa.     

Estimators of distance distributions for spatial patterns

Baddeley and Gill (1994, 1996) have introduced an edge-corrected Kaplan–Meier type estimator of the empty space function, which is very important in point process statistics. The present paper suggests a further estimator of this function, which is based on a method used by Hanisch (1984) for unbiased edge-corrected estimation of the nearest neighbour distance distribution function. Moreover, it turns out that the Kaplan–Meier and the new estimator are closely related, since their densities are border method or minus-sampling type estimators.     

The Position of Women in UK Academic Economics

This paper reports the results of the Royal Economic Society Women's Committee 1998 survey on the gender balance in UK academic economics. In 1998, female representation was 4%fessors, 11% of senior lecturers or readers, 17% of permanent lecturers, 28% of fixed term lecturers, and 33% of PhD/research students. The main growth in female representation since 1996 has been in fixed term lectureships and in PhD/research students (a 5 percentage point increase for each). We suggest reasons for the low representation of women in academic economics, and also argue that it is a cause for concern.     

Mergers in Regulated Industries: the Uses and Abuses of Event Studies

Merging utilities are frequently required to share the economic benefits of a merger with ratepayers. These benefits are often measured using stock price movements at the time of the merger announcement. While event studies of this sort can be a powerful and appropriate tool, improper application and interpretation can lead to misleading conclusions. In this paper, we review the basic event study approach to merger evaluation and discuss some of the complicating factors. We describe both flawed and correctly done event studies submitted in the merger application of SBC Communications and Pacific Telesis and some additional case studies.     

聚财容易守财难

想使自己退休后过上富足的生活吗?只要做到按时储蓄及合理投资,即使是普通人也能积攒下惊人的财富。但这些财富可能很难守住很长时间。现实情况是,在漫长的退休岁月中,很难保证自己养老的钱能不发生亏蚀,更不用说将其代代相传了。