The Political Economy of IMF Conditionality: A Common Agency Model

The paper models the relationship between an aid‐providing international financial institution (IFI) and an aid‐receiving government whose economic policy choices are influenced by a domestic interest group. Two assistance schemes are evaluated: conditional aid in which the IFI makes assistance contingent on less‐ distorting economic policies and unconditional aid which is provided without such conditions. Conditional aid is shown to raise welfare of the receiving country and the world as a whole relative to unconditional aid. The paper also examines how conditional and unconditional aid schemes are influenced by the IFI's opportunity cost of providing assistance and the receiving government's political dependence on a domestic interest group.     

Multinational Firms and Labor Market Pooling

In the presence of increasing specialization of workers it becomes more and more difficult for firms to find the most suitable workers. In such an environment a multinational enterprise (MNE) has an advantage because it can exchange workers between plants in different countries. Recruiting from the home and foreign plant leads to a larger labor market pool for an MNE, reducing the mismatch of its workforce. This paper analyzes the consequences of this advantage for production, employment, prices and wages. In line with recent empirical results, we find that the additional ability to recruit workers from the home and foreign labor market leads to lower mismatch, higher average productivity of workers, lower prices, higher output, and higher employment of a plant of an MNE as compared with a national firm, while the wage‐effects depend on firm productivity.     

Spectrum allocation and its relevance for competition

Spectrum is one of the most important production factors for mobile telecommunications operators. Spectrum policy is paramount as spectrum is a scarce resource allocated by regulatory authorities. Hence, when allocating spectrum and determining the potential use of spectrum, the regulatory authorities have a significant influence on the competitive situation in mobile markets.     

On least favourable two point priors and minimax estimators under absolute error loss

Summary In case of absolute error loss we investigate for an arbitrary class of probability distributions, if or if not a two point prior can be least favourable and a corresponding Bayes estimator can be minimax when the parameter is restricted to a closed and bounded interval of ℝ. The general results are applied to several examples, for instance location and scale parameter families are considered. We give examples for which, independent of the length of the parameter interval, no two point priors exist. On the other hand examples are given having a least favourable two point prior when the parameter interval is sufficiently small.     

Dynamics of state price densities

State price densities (SPDs) are an important element in applied quantitative finance. In a Black–Scholes world they are lognormal distributions, but in practice volatility changes and the distribution deviates from log-normality. In order to study the degree of this deviation, we estimate SPDs using EUREX option data on the DAX index via a nonparametric estimator of the second derivative of the (European) call pricing function. The estimator is constrained so as to satisfy no-arbitrage constraints and corrects for the intraday covariance structure in option prices. In contrast to existing methods, we do not use any parametric or smoothness assumptions.     

Conditional Probabilistic Population Forecasting

Since policy-makers often prefer to think in terms of alternative scenarios, the question has arisen as to whether it is possible to make conditional population forecasts in a probabilistic context. This paper shows that it is both possible and useful to make these forecasts. We do this with two different kinds of examples. The first is the probabilistic analog of deterministic scenario analysis. Conditional probabilistic scenario analysis is essential for policy-makers because it allows them to answer "what if" type questions properly when outcomes are uncertain. The second is a new category that we call "future jump-off date forecasts". Future jump-off date forecasts are valuable because they show policy-makers the likelihood that crucial features of today's forecasts will also be present in forecasts made in the future.     

Portfolio Optimization in Discontinuous Markets under Incomplete Information

We consider the problem of maximization of expected utility from terminal wealth for log and power utility functions in a market model that leads to purely discontinuous processes. We study this problem as a stochastic control problem both under complete as well as incomplete information. Our contribution consists in showing that the optimal strategy can be obtained by solving a system of equations that in some cases is linear and that a certainty equivalence property holds not only for log-utility but also for a power utility function. For the case of a power utility under incomplete information we also present an independent direct approach based on a Zakai-type equation.      

Problems with leakages at large flanges in the BASF new ammonia plant

Leakage from large diameter flanges had occurred several times in a new 1360 t/d ammonia plant. One such incident resulted in a large fire. The causes of this incident are examined.