Industrial and Spatial Spillovers and Productivity Growth: Evidence from Taiwan High-Technology Plant Level Data

The purpose of this paper is to recognize the importance of innovation networks and incorporate various types of knowledge and spatial spillovers and their associated adjustments on productivity growth. We explore the temporal, spatial, and industrial/sectoral spillovers using a dynamic external spillover model that assumes each firm derives an optimal plan such that the expected present value of current and future cost streams is minimized. The goal is to measure and evaluate various types of spillover mechanisms, which allow us both to quantify their cost effects and evaluate the contribution of such inter-dependencies on productive performance.JEL Classification: D2, L6, O3     

The Impact of Macroeconomic Announcements on Stock Prices: In Search of State Dependence

Federal bureaus make regularly scheduled public announcements of macroeconomic variables such as employment, the price level, and the money stock. Recently, several studies claim to establish an empirical relationship between the impact of these announcements on financial markets and the state of the business cycle. The present article estimates the impact of several announcement variables on daily closing values of the Standard and Poor's (S&P) 500. Contrary to previous studies, this study finds no significant evidence that the marginal effects of announcements vary with the state of the economy.     

The End of Cost Allocations as We Know Them

Cost allocation issues have befuddled management around the world for over a century. And, because of "informational asymmetries" and agency conflicts between operating management and headquarters, there is no clear theoretical solution to the problem. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for allocating costs. If properly structured, transfer-pricing schemes can serve the same purpose as a market price. By communicating useful information about the relative scarcity of resources within an organization, they can serve to balance supply and demand for the product or service being priced.
Unfortunately, most transfer-pricing approaches, like Activity Based Costing, attempt to solve the problem by refining standard cost measures. In contrast to ABC, this article begins by recognizing that efforts to develop more precise cost allocations are bound to be frustrated by the information and incentive problems noted above. And in place of more precisely formulated measures of cost, the author proposes a process of negotiation between two parties to an exchange—a process that is reinforced by a performance measurement system that gives both parties incentives to reveal their "reservation" prices for the good or service in question. For transfers involving multiple users of a given service or products, the author recommends a transfer auction process that is also designed to make would-be users reveal their assessments of value.     

PO Lock-in Agreements in the UK

When a company offers shares in an initial public offering (IPO), existing owners often enter into lock-in agreements prohibiting them from selling shares for a specified period after the IPO. There is some recent US evidence of predictable share-price movements at the time of expiry of these lock-in agreements. Using a sample of 188 firms, 83 classified as high-tech and 105 others, that went public on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) during 1992–1998, we focus on the characteristics of lock-in agreements in the UK and on the behaviour of stocks returns around the lock-in expiry date. We find that the lock-in contracts of LSE-listed firms are much more complex, varied and diverse than US contracts, which usually standardise the lock-in period at 180 days after the IPO. We also find evidence of negative abnormal stock returns at and around lock-in expiry of similar magnitude to those reported in US studies. However, these abnormal returns are typically not statistically significant. While the deterioration in stock returns immediately around the expiry date appears to be particularly much more pronounced for high-tech stocks than for others, the differences in performance are not statistically significant.     

Von Thünen's model of the dual economy

We are indebted to Heinz König, John Mellor, and Hans van Beek, and to three anonymous referees of the journal for helpful comments, and to Victoria Dalko for her able research assistance. Financial assistance from the Foerder Institute for Economic Research and the International Food Policy Research Institute is gratefully acknowledged. A version of the paper also appears as Working Paper No. 989 of the Foerder Institute and Discussion Paper No. A 269 of the University of Bonn.     

Contingent Claims and Market Completeness in a Stochastic Volatility Model

In an incomplete market framework, contingent claims are of particular interest since they improve the market efficiency. This paper addresses the problem of market completeness when trading in contingent claims is allowed. We extend recent results by Bajeux and Rochet (1996) in a stochastic volatility model to the case where the asset price and its volatility variations are correlated. We also relate the ability of a given contingent claim to complete the market to the convexity of its price function in the current asset price. This allows us to state our results for general contingent claims by examining the convexity of their "admissible arbitrage prices."     

Multimarket and multiproject collusion

Summary If firms meet in a number of markets, they may respond to an action in one market by reacting in another market. Fear for such retaliation may induce multimarket firms to collude across markets. The paper assesses available theoretical and empirical evidence on the multimarket collusion theory. Moreover, the paper suggests that the theory can be fruitfully applied in the context of European integration. The focus is on collusion by firms which meet in product markets as well as in joint R&D projects. A model develops three propositions, which shed light on the subsequently provided (tentative) evidence on multidimensional contact in an integrating Europe. The discussion may serve as a framework for future research into both the theoretical and the empirical domain with applications to the issue of European integration.We gratefully acknowledge John Hagedoorn for providing access to the MERIT/CATI database, and two referees for their comments. Of course, the usual disclaimer applies