Ergänzendes zur Genossenschaftsbesteuerung

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

V. Wrischaftsordnung und soziale verfassung

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Ringing the changes? Union recognition and organisation in call centres in the UK finance sector

The massive rise in UK call centre employment in recent years has been closely related to developments in the finance sector. This paper analyses these developments in order to contextualise the organisational experiences of unions in the sector. Recruitment activity in both hostile and compliant employer environments, and findings from the first national survey of call centre employees’ attitudes towards trade unionism, are discussed, and the prospects for union recruitment and organisation are assessed.     

Statistical Assessment of Numerical Models*

Evaluation of physically based computer models for air quality applications is crucial to assist in control strategy selection. The high risk of getting the wrong control strategy has costly economic and social consequences. The objective comparison of modeled concentrations with observed field data is one approach to assessment of model performance. For dry deposition fluxes and concentrations of air pollutants there is a very limited supply of evaluation data sets. We develop a formal method for evaluation of the performance of numerical models, which can be implemented even when the field measurements are very sparse. This approach is applied to a current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency air quality model. In other cases, exemplified by an ozone study from the California Central Valley, the observed field is relatively data rich, and more or less standard geostatistical tools can be used to compare model to data. Yet another situation is when the cost of model runs is prohibitive, and a statistical approach to approximating the model output is needed. We describe two ways of obtaining such approximations. A common technical issue in the assessment of environmental numerical models is the need for tools to estimate nonstationary spatial covariance structures. We describe in detail two such approaches.     

The strategy of professional forecasting

We develop and compare two theories of professional forecasters’ strategic behavior. The first theory, reputational cheap talk, posits that forecasters endeavor to convince the market that they are well informed. The market evaluates their forecasting talent on the basis of the forecasts and the realized state. If the market expects forecasters to report their posterior expectations honestly, then forecasts are shaded toward the prior mean. With correct market expectations, equilibrium forecasts are imprecise but not shaded. The second theory posits that forecasters compete in a forecasting contest with pre-specified rules. In a winner-take-all contest, equilibrium forecasts are excessively differentiated.     

A TEST OF A GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM STOCK OPTION PRICING MODEL

An empirical version of the Cox, Ingersoll, and Ross (1985a) call option pricing model is derived, assuming execution price uncertainty in the options market. the pricing restrictions come in the form of moment conditions in the option pricing error. These can be estimated and tested using a version of the method of simulated moments (MSM). Simulation estimates, obtained by discretely approximating the risk-neutral processes of the underlying stock price and the interest rate, are substituted for analytically unknown call prices. the asymptotics and other aspects of the MSM estimator are discussed. the model is tested on transaction prices at 15-minute intervals. It substantially outperforms the Black-Scholes model. the empirical success of the Cox-Ingersoll-Ross model implies that the continuous-time interest rate implicit in synchronous transaction quotes of 90-day Treasury-bill futures contracts is an-albeit noisy-proxy for the instantaneous volatility on common stock. the process of the instantaneous volatility is found to be close to nonstationary. It is well approximated by a heteroskedastic unit-root process. With this approximation, the Cox-Ingersoll-Ross model only slightly overprices long-maturity options.     

Risk and the User Cost of Housing Services

This paper derives a risk-adjusted user cost for housing services, capable of application in price indexes, demand, and the measurement of income and returns to homeownership. The risk-adjusted user cost is the after-tax sum of an interest rate and a risk premium, less expected capital gains. Expected capital gains are based on a factor pricing specification. It is shown that both national and local factors affect capital gains on housing.     

Monetary Policy in Australia: The Conflict between Short-Term and Medium-Term Objectives

This article argues that the recent implementation of monetary policy in Australia has been dominated by the response to a large range of unanticipated shocks. In the process of trying to minimise the adverse effects of such shocks, considerable uncertainty has been created about likely outcomes in the medium term. This makes medium-term objectives harder to achieve. Taking the reduction of inflation as an example of an appropriate medium-term objective, simulations are presented using the Murphy model of the Australian economy. The simulations demonstrate that a tightening of monetary policy will reduce inflation more slowly if private agents believe that the tightening is unlikely to be sustained for long. Under uncertainty, monetary policy will have to be tighter and real GDP significantly lower to achieve a given reduction in inflation. A confingency rule of medium complexity is suggested as one way in which appropriate medium-term objectives might be achieved while allowing some flexibility to react to unexpected outcomes in the short run.