Monetary Policy and Natural Disasters in a DSGE Model

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, speculation arose that the Federal Reserve might respond by easing monetary policy. This article uses a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to investigate the appropriate monetary policy response to a natural disaster. We show that the standard Taylor rule response in models with and without nominal rigidities is to increase the nominal interest rate. That finding is unchanged when we consider the optimal policy response to a disaster. A nominal interest rate increase following a disaster mitigates both temporary inflation effects and output distortions that are attributable to nominal rigidities.     

Informed or speculative: Short selling analyst recommendations

Christophe et al. (2010) find evidence of abnormal short activity prior to analyst downgrades and argue that short sellers may be violating SEC insider-trading laws by trading on information obtained from analysts about upcoming downgrades. However, observing abnormal shorting prior to downgrades is not tantamount to determining that short sellers are trading on tips from analysts unless shorting is abnormally low prior to upgrades. This paper revisits this issue. While we observe abnormal shorting prior to downgrades, we also find markedly higher shorting prior to upgrades. In fact, the short-selling patterns surrounding both downgrades and upgrades are remarkably symmetric indicating that short sellers during the pre-recommendation period are not unusually informed about the direction of upcoming recommendation changes. If anything, our findings indicate that short selling prior to analyst recommendations is more likely speculative than informed.     

The jackknife and the variance part of the credibility premium

Introduction and summary

Much of the recent literature in credibility theory has concentrated on the expected value part of Bühlmann's (1970) decomposition of the credibility premium. The expected value part is the Bayes rule for the mean relative to squared error loss and its linearization does not present any problems in terms of estimating the so-called structural parameters.     

Shopping motives,store attributes and shopping enjoyment among Malaysian youth

Youth shoppers are an emerging age group that is recognized as a meaningful market segment, yet there is lack of extant shopping enjoyment research explicit to the cohort especially in Malaysia context. This study endeavors to measure shoppers' shopping enjoyment and to explore the effect of both internal and external factors in influencing their shopping enjoyment levels. Shopping motives as the internal contributor is personal-specific while store attributes serve as the external aspect is regarded as situational-specific. By employing hierarchical multiple regression analysis, it was found that anticipated utility dimension from shopping motive variable and enhancement dimension from store attribute variable explained the variance in shopping enjoyment. Narrowing to the two variables identified, anticipated utility (β=0.198) from shopping motives was having more influential power than enhancement derived from store attributes (β=0.163) in explaining shopping enjoyment. The findings assist retailers in enhancing the perceived value of customers.     

通往3G的长征

每次我们参加3G相关的研讨会时，发言人和参会人员都显得那么陶醉，似乎3G是解决一切潜在问题的终极答案。从运营商角度看，中国移动通信行业一切都很好，但是服务提供商、制造商、投资者，甚至部分手机用户，他们会问：3G来临时，自己是否也能分享这种移动快乐？     

Investing back homeReturn migration and business ownership in Albania1

This study uses data from the 2005 Albania Living Standards Measurement Study survey to assess the impact of past migration experience of Albanian households on non‐farm business ownership through instrumental variables regression techniques. Considering the differences in earning potentials and opportunities for skill acquisition in different destination countries, we differentiate the impact of past household migration experience by main migrant destinations. The study also explores the heterogeneity of impact based on the timing of migration. The empirical results indicate that past household migration experience exerts a positive impact on the probability of owning a non‐farm business. While one additional year in Greece increases the probability of household business ownership by roughly 6 percent, a similar experience in Italy or farther destinations raises the probability by over 25 percent. Although past household migration experience for the period of 1990–2000 is positively associated with the likelihood of owning a household enterprise, a similar association does not exist for the period of 2001–2004.     

The European Redemption Pact: Implementation and macroeconomic effects

One possible solution to the sovereign debt crisis is the European Redemption Pact (ERP) proposed by the German Council of Economic Experts. The ERP provides sustainable financing conditions for participating sovereigns to facilitate bringing public debt ratios below the reference value of 60% within the next 20 to 25 years. In this paper, we describe one possible way of implementing the ERP and analyse the fiscal effects of participating in the ERP. The macroeconomic impact of the proposal is illustrated with the multi-country model NiGEM.     

Die Verteilung der Abstimmungsmacht im Bundesrat

Die Stimmanteile der Bundesl?nder im Bundesrat basieren auf einem Stufenmodell in Abh?ngigkeit von der Einwohnerzahl. Da die Abstimmungsmacht nicht dem relativen Stimmanteil eines Bundeslands entspricht, analysieren die Autoren die Verteilung der Abstimmungsmacht im Bundesrat mit Hilfe von Machtindizes. Sie untersuchen darüber hinaus, wie sich die Abstimmungsmacht ver?ndert, wenn die Abstimmungsregel variiert wird oder es zu L?nderfusionen kommt.     

A Note on Relevant Comparisons of Corporations and Countries

A bstract . Attempts to compare the magnitude of corporations and countries are frequently biased by the use of inconsistent measures. While Gross National Product reflects the output obtained from a nation's land, labor and capital resources, corporate sales reflect not only the firm's output but also that of its suppliers. A more realistic picture can be obtained by comparing corporate value added to national output. While available information permits only an approximation of the former, it appears that the average company is responsible for less than 50 percent of the value of the product it sells. The basic conclusion that some firms are in this sense comparable to Nation-States remains valid. However, the rank of the largest companies relative to countries is reduced substantially.