Universalism and the recognition of group proceedings under the UNCITRAL Model Law in Montenegro

Among the most topical insolvency issues in 2017 was the Croatian “Lex Agrokor”—a controversial “tailor‐made” law providing a unique restructuring opportunity for the largest Croatian conglomerate, the parent company of which was otherwise facing bankruptcy. Soon after the “extraordinary administration procedure” began, the appointed administrator started filing motions for the recognition of the alleged group insolvency as foreign insolvency proceedings in a number of neighbouring and other European countries, most of which have adopted the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross‐Border Insolvency. It was an attempt to save the conglomerate's property from being seized in a disorderly fashion by various secured creditors, most noticeably, the largest Russian financial institution Sberbank, which contested these motions with varying success. This article, however, does not present an effort to comprehensively analyse the ongoing legal battle but rather adopts a broader approach to examining the Lex Agrokor to establish grounds for more general conclusions. More precisely, the purpose of this article is twofold. First, to offer strong arguments that, from the standpoint of typical insolvency legislation based on the Model Law, such as that of Montenegro, both the actual and future group proceedings initiated under the Lex Agrokor should fail to meet recognition requirements. Second, based on the preceding case study, to offer conclusions on how to further promote universal approach regarding group insolvencies by emphasizing exactly what the national laws regulating group insolvency should not feature so as to have the proceedings introduced therewith recognized in countries adopting the Model Law.     

On the properties of a multiple sequential test

We consider a multiple testing problem based on an i.i.d. sample of K-dimensional observations. We want to test whether at least one of the unknown means is positive. We propose a sequential test which is of the nature of a multiple truncated sequential probability ratio test. We asymptotically analyse the expected sample size and compare it to the sample sizes which arise when one looks at effects separately.     

Protesting and Justifying: A Latent Class Model for Contingent Valuation with Attitudinal Data

This article develops a latent class model for estimating willingness-to-pay (WTP) for public goods using simultaneously contingent valuation (CV) and attitudinal data to identify individuals with similar characteristics, such as WTP and protest attitudes. We find evidence that the answer to the CV question influences the responses to the attitudinal questions. In our case, this influence reflects rational behavior (budget constraint issues) and justification biases related to protest reasons, such as lack of trust in institutions or fairness issues with respect to the distribution of the burden of preservation. The results from our empirical application confirm the importance of accounting for those biases.     

MIDAS vs. mixed-frequency VAR: Nowcasting GDP in the euro area

This paper compares the mixed-data sampling (MIDAS) and mixed-frequency VAR (MF-VAR) approaches to model specification in the presence of mixed-frequency data, e.g. monthly and quarterly series. MIDAS leads to parsimonious models which are based on exponential lag polynomials for the coefficients, whereas MF-VAR does not restrict the dynamics and can therefore suffer from the curse of dimensionality. However, if the restrictions imposed by MIDAS are too stringent, the MF-VAR can perform better. Hence, it is difficult to rank MIDAS and MF-VAR a priori, and their relative rankings are better evaluated empirically. In this paper, we compare their performances in a case which is relevant for policy making, namely nowcasting and forecasting quarterly GDP growth in the euro area on a monthly basis, using a set of about 20 monthly indicators. It turns out that the two approaches are more complements than substitutes, since MIDAS tends to perform better for horizons up to four to five months, whereas MF-VAR performs better for longer horizons, up to nine months.     

Cycles and multiple equilibria in the market for durable lemons

Summary. The paper investigates the nature of market failure in a dynamic version of Akerlof (1970) where identical cohorts of a durable good enter the market over time. In the dynamic model, equilibria with qualitatively different properties emerge. Typically, in equilibria of the dynamic model, sellers with higher quality wait in order to sell and wait more than sellers of lower quality. The main result is that for any distribution of quality there exist an infinite number of cyclical equilibria where all goods are traded within a certain number of periods after entering the market. Received: December 21, 2000; revised version: September 5, 2001     

Bi‐currency versus Single‐currency Targeting: Lessons from the Russian Experience

This paper examines how the 2005 shift in Russian exchange rate policy from US dollar (USD) single‐currency to USD–EUR (euro) bi‐currency targeting has impacted domestic interest rates. The finding show that this policy shift has disconnected Russian interest rates from US dollar‐denominated interest rates, while instead linking them to a synthetic interest rate composed of USD and EUR rates at the same proportion as that of these two currencies in the currency basket against which the ruble's exchange rate is set. The Russian experience shows that while the adoption of bi‐currency targeting may help ensure that domestic interest rates are less dependent on the monetary cycle of a single country, these rates are instead likely to reflect financial developments in all countries whose currencies are included in the currency basket. This insight is likely to be relevant for other countries that pursue basket‐targeting policies.     

A bound on the expected overshoot for some concave boundaries

LetX ₁,X ₂,… be i.i.d. with finite meanμ>0,S _n =X ₁+…+X _n . Forf(n)=n ^β ,c>0 we consider the stopping timesT _c =inf{n:S _n >c+f(n)} with overshootR _c =S _{T c} −(c+f(T _c )). For 0<β<1 we give a bound for sup _c≥0 ER _c in the spirit of Lorden’s well-known inequality forf=0.     

Investigating the Impact of SERVQUAL Dimensions on Customer Satisfaction: The Lessons Learnt from Serbian Travel Agencies

Despite the rise of online travel booking services, it seems that traditional travel agencies remain an intractable part in the process of making travel arrangements for most travelers. Nevertheless, the question remains as to what triggers travelers' satisfaction with travel agencies. In order to explore this, we focused on Serbian travel agencies and researched the impact of the five individual SERVQUAL dimensions on travelers' satisfaction. Results revealed that four SERVQUAL dimensions (reliability, responsiveness, empathy and tangibility) had a significant influence on customer satisfaction. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.