Capital Accumulation in an Economy with Dynasties and Uncertain Lifetimes

This paper studies how the lack of an annuities market affects savings behavior and intergenerational transfers in a dynastic overlapping generations economy. I find that the answer to this question depends crucially on altruism. On the one hand, if the altruistic bequest motive is operative, then the lack of annuity markets enhances capital accumulation. On the other hand, if the altruistic bequest motive is not operative, the absence of annuity markets can either increase or decrease aggregate savings. I characterize under which conditions capital accumulation is enhanced. I also prove that an overlapping generations economy with altruism and uninsurable lifetime risk faces capital overaccumulation relative to the modified Golden Rule. The efficient allocation corresponding to the modified Golden Rule can be decentralized as a competitive equilibrium by a pay-as-you-go social security system, and this can only be done if individuals are altruistic.     

International spillovers and absorptive capacity: A cross-country cross-sector analysis based on patents and citations

This paper brings together the issues of knowledge spillovers and absorptive capacity, by assessing the role of prior R&D experience in enhancing a country's ability to understand and improve upon external knowledge. International spillovers are found effective in increasing innovative productivity in laggard countries, while technological leaders are a source rather than a destination of knowledge flows. Quantitative estimates of the effect of absorptive capacity on innovative performance, through knowledge spillovers, show that absorptive capacity increases the elasticity of a laggard country's innovation to international spillovers, while its marginal effect is negligible for countries at the technological frontier.     

Determinants of the entrepreneurial gender gap in Latin America

This paper identifies a set of factors associated with the decision to become an entrepreneur and the variables that account for the gender gap in entrepreneurial activity in Latin America. We estimate logit models for entrepreneurial activity under three different definitions of an entrepreneur. We also estimate the gender gap by using Fairlie’s decomposition method. Depending on the definition of entrepreneur used, the overall gender gap varies from 4 to 13 % points. Differences in observable characteristics explain between 23 and 38 % of the total gender gap. The factors that explain both entrepreneurial activity and gender gap are: education, risk tolerance; own car as primary means of transportation; work satisfaction; and parent business ownership. Variables such as age, access to loans, and need for achievement are significantly associated with entrepreneurial activity, but they play a negligible role in explaining the gender gap.     

Spatial income and public capital: a case of a Spanish region

The objective of this paper is to analyse major determinants of disposable per capita income at a local municipality level for a territory of Spain: the Valencian region. A cross-sectional spatial study for an averaged period (2010–2013) will allow us to control for intraregional correlation, paying special attention to the role of real public investment and its possible effects on disposable personal income. A reference framework for economic and social policymakers will be provided by the specification of the model.     

Equity ownership and control of international joint ventures in the retail sector

Abstract

This study examines the relationships that exist between consumers' perceptions of a retail environment and their emotions, satisfaction and behavioural intentions with respect to that shopping setting. A model of these relationships is developed and then tested in two distinct retail settings—shopping centres and traditional retailing areas. The results show that, in general, positive perceptions of a retail environment have a positive influence on positive emotions, on repatronage intentions, and on the desire to remain longer in the shopping area in both retail settings. However, some interesting differences emerge between shopping centres and traditional retailing areas: (i) the internal environment has a stronger effect on emotions in shopping centres than in traditional retailing areas; and (ii) the internal environment has a negative effect in shopping centres on the disposition to pay more.     

A Shortcut Way of Pricing Default Risk Through Zero-Utility Principle

Pricing the default risk is a hot challenge for every risk manager. The problem is tackled in the framework of the zero‐utility principle. According to Pratt (1964) , an approximation of the risk premium should be proportional to the Arrow–Pratt absolute risk aversion coefficient and the variance. Is that still true as a default risk is concerned? The answer appears to be negative, because the variance does not look to be an appropriate tool for asymmetrical risk. On the other hand, fear of ruin coefficient and probability of default are proved to be well‐tailored tools for a preliminary pricing. Bid and ask price approximations are both elicited and a necessary condition for risk exchange set out.     

Robustness issues regarding content-corrected tolerance limits

This article reviews the content-corrected method for tolerance limits proposed by Fernholz and Gillespie (2001) and addresses some robustness issues that affect the length of the corresponding interval as well as the corrected content value. The content-corrected method for k-factor tolerance limits consists of obtaining a bootstrap corrected value p ^* that is robust in the sense of preserving the confidence coefficient for a variety of distributions. We propose several location/scale robust alternatives to obtain robust corrected-content k-factor tolerance limits that produce shorter intervals when outlying observations are present. We analyze the Hadamard differentiability to insure bootstrap consistency for large samples. We define the breakdown point for the particular statistic to be bootstrapped, and we obtain the influence function and the value of the breakdown point for the traditional and the robust statistics. Two examples showing the advantage of using these robust alternatives are also included.     

A note on a mixing problem and the schützenberger inequality

Summary In a Bayesian context a lower bound for the mean squared error of an estimator of the unknown proportion in the mixture of two distributions is considered, which involve the symmetrized Kullback “distance” between the distributions of the mixture. Conditions under which Schützenberger’s inequality holds are then examined.     

Cohabitation or forced marriage? A study of the costs of failing to coordinate fiscal and monetary policies

Conclusions The costs of uncoordinated fiscal and monetary policies involve more than just efficiency losses. Of course there will be the usual efficiency losses associated with noncooperative decision making and they have appeared here. But these are not the main costs. A lack of cooperation between the government and the central bank also imposes a policy conflict which would not otherwise exist. A lack of co-operation provides one player (the central bank) with the opportunity to block the policy options of the other (the government). Hence noncooperation can cost the government its freedom to choose its preferred policy option. These two costs, additional policy conflicts and the loss of policy choice, may be more important than the efficiency losses which are traditionally cited as the reason for cooperating. In any case, they will have important implications both for domestic policy design and for international policy making since central banks evidently find it easier to cooperate among themselves than they do with their own (national) fiscal authorities. Thus, an independent central bank may be necessary to guarantee financial discipline, but it will not be much help if it and the fiscal authorities then fail to coordinate their activities.

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Zusammenfassung “Kohabitation” oder Zwangsheirat? Eine Untersuchung der Kosten einer unterlassenen Koordination von Fiskal- und Geldpolitik. — In vielen L?ndern existieren zwei Entscheidungstr?ger, die jeder für sich die Fiskal- und Geldpolitik betreiben, n?mlich die Regierung und die Zentralbank. Sind die Entscheidungen dezentralisiert, dann kann dies den optimalen Tradeoff zwischen Inflation und Wachstum ver?ndern. In diesem Aufsatz wird im Rahmen der dynamischen Spieltheorie in einem ?konometrischen Modell der italienischen Wirtschaft der effiziente Tradeoff zwischen Inflation und Wachstum gesch?tzt, um zu untersuchen, wie sich die politischen Spielr?ume unterscheiden, wenn die Entscheidungen entweder kooperativ oder nicht kooperativ getroffen werden. Es zeigt sich, da? die Ergebnisse im Fall von Kooperation besser sind als ohne Kooperation. Darüber hinaus wird, wenn es keine Kooperation gibt, die Spanne der Wahlm?glichkeiten verringert, die den Politikern zur Verfügung steht. Demnach sprechen nicht nur Effizienzgewinne, sondern auch andere Gründe dafür, die Fiskal- und Geldpolitik zu koordinieren.

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Résumé Cohabitation ou marriage forcé? Une étude sur les co?ts de l’absence d’une coordination des politiques fiscales et monétaires. — Dans beaucoup de pays ce sont deux institutions qui prennent les décisions et qui coexistent et règlent la politique fiscale et monétaire séparément. Le fait que les décisions sont prises d’une manière décentralisée peut changer l’arbitrage le plus favorable de l’inflation-output. Dans l’article on utilise la théorie dynamique des jeux pour calculer l’arbitrage efficace d’inflation-output dans un modèle économétrique de l’économie italienne pour examiner les différences entre les courbes des possibilités politiques qui résultent des décisions coopératives et non-coopératives. Les résultats montrent que les conséquences obtenues au cas de non-coopération sont inférieures à celles d’une coopération et imposent un conflit politique qui n’existe pas d’autrement. En outre, au cas de non-coopération le nombre d’actions politiques possibles est réduit. Par conséquent, il y a plus de raisons que seulement l’augmentation de l’efficacité pour le désir de coordonner les politiques fiscales et monétaires.

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Resumen Cohabitación o casamíento forzoso? Un estudio de los costos de la falta de coordinatión de la política fiscal y monetaria. — En muchos paises dos instituciones ejecutivas, el gobierno y el banco central, coexisten y manejan la política fiscal y la monetaria separadamente. La toma de decisiones de manera decentralizada puede conducir a un cambio en la relación óptima entre inflatión y producto. En este trabajo se utilizan juegos diferenciales para calcular la relación eficiente entre inflación y producto dentro del marco de un modelo econométrico de tiempo continuo de la economía italiana, con el fin de examinar las diferencias en las fronteras de posibilidad de políticas derivadas de decisiones cooperativas y no cooperativas. Se demuestra que los resultados obtenidos en el caso de no cooperation son inferiores a los del caso cooperativo, y que además imponen un conflicto de política no existente en otros casos. Además, la gama de politicas a election de los que deaden es reducida bajo no cooperacion. Por ello, hay más razones para desear una coordination de politicas fiscales y monetarias que la que representan los beneficios derivados de la eficiencia.

     

QUALITY MARKET ORIENTATION: Tourist Agencies’ Perceived Effects

This paper analyzes the effects of market orientation from two perspectives. First, its direct influences on tourist agencies’ perceived performance, and its indirect ones on performance through the perceived value of market information. Second, direct effects on the perceived service quality offered by the firm and indirect influences derived from the utilization of quality measurement systems are analyzed. Hypothesized relationships are tested in an empirical study of tourist managers. Research findings confirm the proposed relationships, except the influence of using quality measurement systems on service. A positive direct influence between perceived service quality and performance is also analyzed and confirmed.