International trade warfare: Economic and political strategic considerations

An actor government may seek to change a policy of a target state by exerting an economic toll. Trade warfare can only impose high economic costs on the target if the actor can withhold noncompetitive exports or irreplaceable markets. Economic damage may not be sufficient. Decision-makers in the target will be more concerned with their own benefits and costs than with those of the national economy. Governments seem likely to continue to use economic warfare, despite its weak record of identifiable success, because the measures are valuable as signals to domestic constituencies, the target government and third nations.     

FOMC VOTING BEHAVIOR AND ELECTORAL CYCLES: PARTISAN IDEOLOGY AND PARTISAN LOYALTY

The influence of partisan and electoral considerations on the monetary policy voting behavior of Federal Reserve Governors is investigated in the context of a model permitting the estimation of reaction functions on the basis of FOMC voting records. The results suggest that once we have controlled for the state of the economy and for the prevailing stance of monetary policy, both partisan ideologies and partisan loyalties appear to play an important role in the Governors'voting calculus.     

Advertising conjectures and the nature of advertising competition in an oligopoly

We estimate advertising conjectural variations within a simultaneous system that includes advertising and demand equations for cigarette manufacturers. This allows insight into advertising decisions in an oligopoly. The advertising conjectures are positive and statistically significant, indicating that firms do not hold Cournot conjectures as is usually assumed in theoretical models. Instead, firms perceive that their rivals will respond directly to their own advertising. We also find evidence that, while cigarette advertising rearranges market share by increasing firm-level demand relative to rivals' demand, it also increases market demand for cigarettes. Hence there are positive spillovers from advertising in the cigarette industry.     

A recursion relation for the probability of the paradox of voting

For alternatives x_i, i = 1,…, m, giving rise to m! linear preference orderings of which one is selected independently by each of N voters, a recursion relation is developed which expresses the probability that x_i is the Condorcet winner when there are N voters in terms of the probability of this event when there are N ? 1 voters. Hence the probabilities of the paradox of voting when N is odd, and of Condorcet indecision when N is even may be obtained. The relationship holds for any set of probabilities, or culture, governing the selection of the preference orderings by the voters.     

DO SMALL FIRMS' PRICE-COST MARGINS FOLLOW THOSE OF LARGE FIRMS?

The paper investigates the extent to which small firms' price-cost margins follow those of large firms. A two-equation model is used with data for 36 Dutch three-digit manufacturing industries over the period 1975–86. The effects of market structure characteristics are also examined. The main result is that small firms (10-50 employees) appear to have the freedom to set prices above cost independently of larger firms in the same industry.     

Family environment,educational aspiration and performance in St. Vincent

Father-absence occurs with unusual frequency among people of African descent in the Caribbean. Yet concern over possibly harmful effects of this condition to children and society which is most obvious in the United States is not informed by scientific findings from this region. The present study yielded no evidence that father-absence retards the aspiration or performance of secondary school students in St. Vincent, West Indies, although twelve different groupings of the available cases were analyzed. Findings from this and some American studies suggest that father-absence is not harmful if it is not strongly condemned by the culture with which youths identify.