The ‘Market’ for contingent protection

Anti‐dumping and countervailing duty law and policy has, for several decades, been one of the most contentious issues affecting trading relations between members of the World Trade Organization. A major concern among researchers and policy‐makers is that the decision‐making process of regulatory authorities responsible for the administration of anti‐dumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) laws is biased in favour of providing protectionist outcomes for national applicant firms and industries. In this paper a new, broader approach for testing empirically AD/CVD outcome decisions is advocated that analyses the provision of contingent protection as the outcome of a quasi‐market process involving supply and demand behaviour played out in a quasi‐market context susceptible to market failure. This approach provides, arguably, a fairer test of AD/CVD outcomes. Using data from Australia, historically a heavy user of AD/CVD laws and policy, the paper finds support for the hypothesis that regulatory process bias including administrative and statutory biases, are important explanators of AD/CVD outcomes. Moreover the findings of this paper suggest that failure to include variables capturing these effects in other studies that have modelled empirically AD/CVD outcomes may have led to missing variable bias and false conclusions.     

PUBLIC FINANCE AND INDIVIDUAL PREFERENCES OVER GLOBALIZATION STRATEGIES

Do preferences toward globalization strategies vary across public‐finance regimes? In this paper, we use data on individual preferences toward immigration and trade policy to examine how pre‐tax and post‐tax cleavages differ across globalization strategies and state fiscal jurisdictions. High exposure to immigrant fiscal pressures reduces support for freer immigration among U.S. natives, especially the more skilled. The magnitude of this post‐tax fiscal cleavage is comparable to the pre‐tax labor‐market effects of skill itself. There is no public‐finance variation in opinion over trade policy, consistent with U.S. trade policy having negligible fiscal‐policy impacts. Public finance thus appears to shape opinions toward globalization strategies.     

Advertisers' Responses to Requests for Substantiation of Product Claims: Differences by Product Category,Type of Claim and Advertising Medium

A sample of major advertisers of durable and nondurable consumer products were asked to provide substantiation of scientific and puffery product claims made in television and magazine advertising. The companies were asked to respond directly to an interested consumer and the responses were evaluated on an “average man” basis. The results indicated that many advertisers cannot or will not successfully substantiate their product claims despite the efforts of the Federal Trade Commission's advertising substantiation program. One proposed remedy is to require advertisers to substantiate claims directly to consumers, on request.     

Media Advocacy: A Case Study of Philip Sokolof's Cholesterol Awareness Campaigns

Elevated blood cholesterol has been identified as a major causal factor underlying heart disease. Through effective use of the mass media, Philip Sokolof was instrumental in increasing cholesterol awareness, forcing major changes in the food industry, and facilitating the passage of tough, new food labeling legislation. Drawing on a variety of published sources and a personal interview with Mr. Sokolof, this article describes his efforts to use the mass media to promote change in the public health domain.     

Does the Scope of the Sell‐Side Analyst Industry Matter? An Examination of Bias,Accuracy, and Information Content of Analyst Reports

We examine changes in the scope of the sell‐side analyst industry and whether these changes impact information dissemination and the quality of analysts’ reports. Our findings suggest that changes in the number of analysts covering an industry impact analyst competition and have significant spillover effects on other analysts’ forecast accuracy, bias, report informativeness, and effort. These spillover industry effects are incremental to the effects of firm level changes in analyst coverage. Overall, a more significant sell‐side analyst industry presence has positive externalities that can result in better functioning capital markets.     

Presidential Address: The Cost of Active Investing

I compare the fees, expenses, and trading costs society pays to invest in the U.S. stock market with an estimate of what would be paid if everyone invested passively. Averaging over 1980–2006, I find investors spend 0.67% of the aggregate value of the market each year searching for superior returns. Society's capitalized cost of price discovery is at least 10% of the current market cap. Under reasonable assumptions, the typical investor would increase his average annual return by 67 basis points over the 1980–2006 period if he switched to a passive market portfolio.