INTRADAY MARKET BEHAVIOR AND THE EXTENT OF FEEDBACK BETWEEN S&P 500 FUTURES PRICES AND THE S&P 500 INDEX

In this study we empirically examine the intraday lead/lag relation between S&P 500 futures prices and the S&P 500 index, and whether daily market characteristics are associated with changes in the relation. We estimate daily Geweke measures of feedback and regress time series of these measures on daily price volatility and volume characteristics. Results indicate that the contemporaneous price relation is substantive and that measures of contemporaneous feedback are positively associated with the daily range of the futures price. The primary implication is that the relation between cash and futures prices becomes stronger as futures price volatility increases. As volatility increases, information is being impounded at a faster rate so that futures and equity markets operate more closely as one market. Large futures price moves, by themselves, are not responsible for breakdowns in the stock-futures price relation.     

Unemployment or protectionism: Some choices for the USA and Western Europe to the year 2000

This article reports on the economic implications to the USA and Western European economies after imposing protectionist trade policies on selected groups of imports till 2000. The effects of this policy are also presented for Japan and the non-oil-producing developing countries. Before discussing the results of the computations and the import restricting assumptions, a summary of the methodological framework, the World Input-Output Model, used in the computation is presented.     

Estimating compensating and equivalent income variations from hedonic price models

Estimates of welfare changes obtained from hedonic price models usually consist of changes in Marshallian consumer's surplus. This note shows how compensating and equivalent income variations can be computed from the information available in hedonicprice models.     

Bootstrapping the Box–Pierce Q test: A robust test of uncorrelatedness

This paper describes a test of the null hypothesis that the first K autocorrelations of a covariance stationary time series are zero in the presence of statistical dependence. The test is based on the Box–Pierce Q statistic with bootstrap-based P-values. The bootstrap is implemented using a double blocks-of-blocks procedure with prewhitening. The finite sample performance of the bootstrap Q   test is investigated by simulation. In our experiments, the performance is satisfactory for samples of n=500$n=500$. At this sample size, the differences between the empirical and nominal rejection probabilities are essentially eliminated.     

Runway safety at airports: A systematic approach for implementing ultra-safe options

Enhancing airport runway safety is a difficult problem because runway accidents are rare events. Nonetheless, investments are being directed at improving safety for US airport ground traffic control systems. This paper shows that under these circumstances it is difficult to assess and measure the added safety offered by new replacement systems. We develop a framework for introducing and sequencing system improvements to provide greater assurances in enhancing safety. This framework shows how a new method can first be introduced as a secondary system, to test and verify its efficacy prior to its adoption as a primary system.     

Public trust and corruption perception: disaster relief

Public trust in government and nongovernment organizations is essential to the public’s willingness to donate and to support those organizations. We measure public trust in disaster aid using people’s perception of these organizations’ effectiveness in delivering aid relief to the victims of two recent major earthquakes in China. Based on the survey data collected in 2013 from about 2100 residents in Hong Kong, we document the vulnerability of these residents’ trust perceptions in aid delivery. We find that the sharp decline in trust perception is highly negatively correlated with their perception of corruption of local governments in China.     

Prostitutes,Pimps, and Brothels: Intermediaries,Information, and Market Structure in Prostitution Markets

Prostitution is a multi‐billion dollar, globally distributed, low‐concentration service industry that is receiving increasing attention in the economics literature. This article focuses on a widespread, but little studied, feature of this environment—the role of intermediaries (pimps or brothel owners) on market outcomes. Prostitution laws and markets are perhaps unique in that transactions between principals (prostitutes and johns) are legal in many countries, while intermediary activity (pimping) is illegal. After surveying the varying cross‐country legality of agents we develop a simple theoretical model to analyze how the presence or absence of intermediaries shifts the distribution of market surplus. We show that eliminating pimps and brothels may shift surplus in non‐obvious ways, depending on the precise function they perform and on whether equilibrium is pooling or separating across “high quality” and “low quality” market segments. The implications of alternative policy regimes (intermediaries legal or illegal) are considered.