Regional Economic Impacts of Fusarium Head Blight in Wheat and Barley

Fusarium Head Blight is a fungus affecting wheat and barley in the upper Midwest region of the United States. The purpose of this study is to estimate the direct and secondary regional economic impacts of Fusarium Head Blight infestations from 1998 to 2000. Cumulative direct production and price impacts from Fusarium Head Blight in hard red spring, soft red winter, durum wheat, and barley are estimated at $871 million over the period, with secondary economic losses of $1.8 billion. The total impacts of $2.7 billion were concentrated in North Dakota and Minnesota, which accounted for 55% of total losses over the period.     

A NOTE ON VICTORIAN WHEAT YIELD DISTRIBUTIONS

An analysis of wheat yield series from ten localities in Victoria was undertaken to investigate for independence of observations and to test for normality of the distributions. The conclusion was reached that Victorian wheat yield series are composed of random observations and form frequency distributions which display slight negative skewness. The situation may be different for other crops or for wheat in other areas.     

The effect of potential emigration on the optimal linear income tax

This paper amends a standard model of optimal linear income taxation to allow individuals to escape taxation by migrating. The income tax is used only to redistribute income in this model. It is found that, if individuals with low and high ability levels are prevented from migrating, then the optimal marginal tax and poll subsidy increase. But preventing migration at ability levels in some intermediate interval lowers the optimal marginal tax.     

A model of project evaluation with limited attention

Summary This paper characterizes the optimal policy for a model in which manager may adopt an endogenous number of projects but has only limited resources to devote to their evaluation and maintenance. In any period, the manager may discard any subset of existing projects but may evaluate only one existing or one new project which is then either discarded or restored. Both its current return and the probability with which a project may be restored depends only on the number of periods since its last evaluated. For a manager whose objective is to maximize the sum of discounted returns, the optimal policy takes one of two forms. A discard policy specifies that the manager evaluate a new project in each period and discard current projects at some critical age. An age inspection policy specifies that the manager evaluate a new project only if all current projects are sufficiently young.Support from the C. V. Starr Center for Applied Economics and the Research Resource Committee of the Rutgers Graduate School of Management is gratefully acknowledged. We thank Roy Radner for valuable assistance in the early stages of the work.     

构建领导能力补给线：从哪里开始

构建领导能力补给线对所有企业而言都是一种竞争上的必要之举。如果得到成功执行,它将创造出竞争优势     

What Do Bettors Want? Determinants of Pari‐Mutuel Betting Preference

A bstract .   This paper is an analysis of the demand for thoroughbred racetrack wagers, examining evidence that would support the existence of two types of bettors: the risk-averse informed bettor versus the uninformed bettor. Looking at 12 major racetracks over the fall of 2002, we undertake an empirical examination of the determinants of bettors' preferences for particular wagers on specific races. The goal is to try to determine what individual aspects of a race (conditions, surface, participants, etc.) will encourage increased wagering dollars. With the advent of simulcasting, the competition for the wagering dollar is fierce, as the bettor can choose from more than 100 races daily, each race offering numerous betting options. We find for most wagers that higher quality participants, larger and more competitive fields, and turf races increase betting volume while higher pari-mutuel takeout, poor track conditions, and other races run concurrently reduce volume. However, more competitive fields reduce betting volume in the show and trifecta pools. Optimal field size is determined to be between 10 and 12 betting interests. Overall, we find support for the existence of a significant share of risk-averse informed bettors.     

Does reputation of sponsors matter in IPO? Evidence from Hong Kong

Contrary to other markets where underwriters perform a combined role of underwriting and sponsoring in an Initial Public Offering (IPO), IPO issuers in Hong Kong must appoint at least one sponsor in addition to the underwriters. The splitting of the single role of underwriters into two separate ones offers an ideal setting to disentangle the effects of the two roles and to examine which of the two roles—sponsor or underwriter—is more important in explaining IPO underpricing and initial volatility in the Hong Kong equity market. Interestingly, our findings provide supportive evidence that the sponsor reputation does matter in an IPO and it is even more significant than the underwriter reputation in explaining the IPO underpricing phenomenon. Given the recent high-tech fervor, our research goes deeper to examine specifically the role of sponsors on high-tech firms, with results indicating that the reliance on sponsors is higher for traditional issuers than for technology firms. We further discover that sponsors and underwriters are playing substitution roles rather than complementary roles. In order to examine the regulatory policy impact, our research also compares the role of IPO sponsors before and after the launch of the new sponsor regulatory regime in 2013. The empirical findings lend support to our argument that after the launch of the new regulations, public awareness of sponsors is raised, respect towards more reputable sponsor increases, and thus, the role of sponsors becomes more important than before.     

The Simple Analytics of Evaluating NFL Trades

Atlantic Economic Journal -     

Information in stock prices: the case of the 2016 U.S. presidential election

On the day before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the odds of Hillary Clinton winning the presidency, according to political prediction markets, were above 90%. Surprisingly, Donald Trump won the Electoral College handily. In this study, we examine how movements in specific stock prices foreshadowed the eventual outcome. Specifically, we conduct a series of standard event-study tests focused on pharmaceutical companies, which became a focal point during the presidential campaign. Results show that while stocks of pharmaceutical companies significantly underperformed the market prior to the election, prices substantially increased beginning three days before the election outcome. This increase is both statistically significant and economically meaningful and robust to various event-study methodologies. These results suggest that some sectors of the stock market seemed to anticipate the election outcome.