Exploring Formula Allocation for the European Union

This paper explores the efficiency impacts of two methods of consolidated base taxation with formula allocation under consideration in the European Union. The first method, common (consolidated) base taxation (CCBT), would allow companies to choose a single tax base for their EU-wide operations. This tax base would be common throughout the participating member states. The second method, Home State taxation (HST), would also allow companies to choose a single tax base for their EU-wide operations. But, unlike with CCBT, the tax base would be defined according to the rules in the company's residence, or home, state. Thus, several different tax bases would exist within the EU. Both methods would use a common formula to distribute profits across countries. This paper finds that since countries continue to set corporate income tax rates, economic inefficiencies continue to exist under both methods. However, under HST, since the tax base differs according to residence, additional inefficiencies may arise depending on whether countries reduced their tax rates to combat the incentive for companies to relocate to locations with narrow tax bases.     

Environmental groups in monopolistic markets

We examine a market in which a monopolistic firm supplies a good. The production of the good causes damage to the environment. Consumers are heterogeneous with respect to their disutility of the environmental damage. An environmental group can enter the market and set up a campaign in order to influence consumers’ preferences. We characterize the equilibrium of the resulting entry-deterrence game and investigate its properties. It turns out that the aggregated environmental damage is lowest if the firm is able to deter entry of the environmental group and, moreover, the fixed entry cost of the environmental group is small enough.      

The Moderating Role of Tangibility in Synchronous Innovation in Services

A synchronous pattern of innovation as between technological and management innovation, for example, can help firms improve their performance. This article explores this idea with respect to servitizing companies that introduce service delivery innovation as a means of gaining competitive advantage. It finds that the degree of tangibility, an indicator of the firm’s position on the product–service continuum, affects whether and how managers recognize the need for management innovation when introducing service delivery innovation. Using a socio‐technical perspective in conjunction with insights from managerial cognition, the relationship between management innovation and two central types of service delivery innovation—technological and customer interface—is examined. Tangibility shapes the managerial cognitive structures that are related to the enterprise’s technical and social subsystems in a paradigm that is capable of demonstrating contrasting effects. Technological delivery innovation is related to management innovation in firms with high tangibility. Customer interface delivery innovation, on the other hand, relates to management innovation in firms with low tangibility. This study uses a sample of diverse firms with varying degrees of tangibility to provide support for this theory.     

Belgian economic policy uncertainty index: Improvement through text mining

Recently, the literature has measured economic policy uncertainty using news references, resulting in the frequently-mentioned ‘Economic Policy Uncertainty index’ (EPU). In the original setup, a news article is assumed to address policy uncertainty if it contains certain predefined keywords. We argue that the original setup is prone to measurement error, and propose an alternative methodology using text mining techniques. We compare the original method to modality annotation and support vector machines (SVM) classification in order to create an EPU index for Belgium. Validation on an out-of-sample test set speaks in favour of using an SVM classification model for constructing a news-based policy uncertainty indicator. The indicators are then used to forecast 10 macroeconomic and financial variables. The original method of measuring EPU does not have predictive power for any of these 10 variables. The SVM indicator has a higher predictive power and, notably, changes in the level of policy uncertainty during tumultuous periods of high uncertainty and risk can predict changes in the sovereign bond yield and spread, the credit default swap spread, and consumer confidence.     

Asymmetric effects of federal funds target rate changes on S&P100 stock returns,volatilities and correlations

We study the effects of FOMC announcements of federal funds target rate decisions on individual stock returns, volatilities and correlations at the intraday level. For all three characteristics we find that the stock market responds differently to positive and negative target rate surprises. First, the average response to positive surprises (that is, bad news for stocks) is larger. Second, in case of bad news the mere occurrence of a surprise matters most, whereas for good news its magnitude is more important. These new insights are possible due to the use of high-frequency intraday data.     

A threshold error-correction model for intraday futures and index returns

Index-futures arbitragers only enter into the market if the deviation from the arbitrage relation is sufficiently large to compensate for transaction costs and associated interest rate and dividend risks. We estimate the band around the theoretical futures price within which arbitrage is not profitable for most arbitragers, using a threshold autoregression model. Combining these thresholds with an error-correction model, we show that the impact of the mispricing error is increasing with the magnitude of that error and that the information effect of lagged futures returns on index returns is significantly larger when the mispricing error is negative. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transitions at Different Moments in Time: A Spatial Probit Approach

This paper adopts a spatial probit approach to explain interaction effects among cross‐sectional units when the dependent variable takes the form of a binary response variable and transitions from state 0 to 1 occur at different moments in time. The model has two spatially lagged variables: one for units that are still in state 0 and one for units that had already transferred to state 1. The parameters are estimated on observations for those units that are still in state 0 at the start of the different time periods, whereas observations on units after they transferred to state 1 are discarded, just as in the literature on duration modeling. Furthermore, neighboring units that had not yet transferred may have a different impact from units that had already transferred. We illustrate our approach with an empirical study of the adoption of inflation targeting for a sample of 58 countries over the period 1985–2008. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Residual momentum

Conventional momentum strategies exhibit substantial time-varying exposures to the Fama and French factors. We show that these exposures can be reduced by ranking stocks on residual stock returns instead of total returns. As a consequence, residual momentum earns risk-adjusted profits that are about twice as large as those associated with total return momentum; is more consistent over time; and less concentrated in the extremes of the cross-section of stocks. Our results are inconsistent with the notion that the momentum phenomenon can be attributed to a priced risk factor or market microstructure effects.