Testing for ‘news’ in foreign exchange markets

Traditional tests of the role of interest rate news on foreign exchange rates are analysed and found to be of little empirical value.     

Labor's share fluctuations, biased technical change, and the business cycle

We extend the basic RBC model to allow for biased technical changes. One broad definition of biased technical changes is changes that directly affect factor elasticities. Given the link between changes in factor elasticities and factor shares, observed fluctuations in US labor's share are motivation for this study. We find that when the technology shock process is calibrated according to US labor's share dynamics, 93 percent of US GDP volatility is accounted for. The observed countercyclical nature of labor's share is accounted for, although the model correlation is too high. As well, the model exhibits business cycles that are qualitatively similar to those of the standard model with neutral technology shocks. These findings, while robust to the short-run properties of various measures of labor's share, are sensitive to the average labor's share used in calibration, e.g., departing from a baseline calibration value of 63 percent, for steady-state labor's shares of 50 percent and 70 percent the model accounts for 107 percent and 84 percent of US GDP volatility respectively.     

Corruption and change: the impact of foreign direct investment

This study examines influences on the level of corruption in countries from a strategic perspective. Corruption is one of the country‐level influences on market entry, investment, and other decisions fundamental to strategic management at the international level. The study examines the impact on corruption of change in levels of foreign direct investment (FDI). It uses the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) scores computed by Transparency International for 1999 and 2000. Results indicate that the more rapid the rate of change in FDI, the higher the level of corruption. Higher levels of perceived corruption are associated with each of two dimensions of national culture: uncertainty avoidance and masculinity. Research and managerial implications are also discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Monotone Matching in Perfect and Imperfect Worlds

We study frictionless matching in large economies with and without market imperfections, providing sufficient conditions for monotone matching that are weaker than those previously known. Necessary conditions, which depend on a key analytical object we call the surplus function , are also offered. Changes in the surplus yield valuable information about the comparative statics of matching patterns across environments. We apply our framework to some examples adapted from the literature, accounting for and extending several comparative–static and welfare results. We also explore the dependence of the matching pattern on the type distribution.     

A conceptual framework for the location of public facilities in the urban areas of developing countries: the Nigerian case

The provision of adequate public services to their urban populations within the constraints of financial resources is a major problem of most developing countries. The fact that the few available facilities are unevenly distributed in the urban areas suggests a need for efficient physical planning of public services. This paper suggests a conceptual framework for the provision of public services in Nigerian urban areas. The paper identifies the supply and demand factors which should govern the distribution of public services in the urban areas of the country.     

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

LAW OF EMPLOYMENT Norman N. Selwyn UNFAIR DISMISSAL CASES John E. McGlyne REFERENCE BOOKS: A Bibliography of the Literature on British and Irish Labour Law B. A. Hepple, J. M. Neeson and Paul O'Higgins REFERENCE BOOKS: I.P.M. Bibliography Part 1 REFERENCE BOOKS: I.P.M. Bibliography Part 2 REFERENCE BOOKS: The Dictionary of Industrial Relations A. I. Marsh and E. O. Evans REFERENCE BOOKS: A Dictionary of Arbitration and its Terms - a concise encyclopedia of peaceful dispute settlement K. Seide THE MULTINATIONAL COMPANY: Bargaining Without - Boundaries - The Multinational Corporation and International Labour Relations R. J. Flanagan and A. R. Weber THE MULTINATIONAL COMPANY: Nationalism and the Multinational Enterprise: Legal, Economic and Managerial Aspects M. R. Hahlo, J. G. Smith and R. W. Wright THE MULTINATIONAL COMPANY: The Multinational Corporation and Social Policy Special reference to General Motors in South Africa R. A. Jackson THE MULTINATIONAL COMPANY: Managing Multinational Corporations A. V. Phatak THE MULTINATIONAL COMPANY: The Dictionary of Industrial Relations A. I. Marsh and E. O. Evans THE MULTINATIONAL COMPANY: A Dictionary of Arbitration and its Terms - a concise encyclopedia of peaceful dispute settlement K. Seide THE MULTINATIONAL COMPANY: Bargaining Without - Boundaries - The Multinational Corporation and International Labour Relations R. J. Flanagan and A. R. Weber     

Understanding gentrification: an empirical analysis of the determinants of urban housing renovation

The “back-to-the-city” phenomenon presented an unpredicted countercurrent in the prevalent tide of suburbanization, and this process of upper-income resettlement in the inner city has been thoroughly analyzed in the urban economic literature. Housing renovation, a process that always accompanies gentrification and constitutes a significant portion of residential housing investment, has been studied much less. Contrary to the expectation that “location matters,” the existing empirical studies have concluded that most neighborhood amenities and structural attributes are insignificant as determinants of renovation. Using a detailed parcel-level data set that documents all residential renovation activity in Chicago between 1995 and 2000, this paper establishes that the characteristics of a building and its neighborhood do indeed influence the likelihood that it will be renovated.     

Agriculture looks for ‘shoes that fit’: The production responsibility system and its implications

by the end of 1981 problems clearly recognized within the communes included low productivity, the failure to accumulate funds for modern inputs, inefficient and corrupt cadres, hidden unemployment, inability to stimulate growth in other than major crops and disappointingly low levels of peasant incomes in many counties. In north China, peasants in 1980 began to divide up the collective fields on communes into smaller plots for cultivation by households and labour groups. Since then the face of China has been altered — physically, politically and organizationally — by the creation of the ‘responsibility system’ largely outside party control and influence. ‘Document 75’ of September 1980 sanctioning some form of ‘production responsibility system’ was itself overtaken by events, as a bewildering variety of forms emerged, swamping the cadres. Practice was rapidly expanding beyond the theoretical discussions, or pronouncements of officials like Du Runsheng The paper describes each of the many forms of contracting between peasant groups and the State now current in China, with estimates of the relative proportions of the accounting units involved in each type (Table 3). New contradictions are already emerging in the changed rural set-up, partly because farm management problems bear similarities to those that confronted the open-field strip farming of the European Manor, while the incentive to have more hands on family farms contradicts official Chinese population policy.