New ways of achieving debt sustainability beyond the enhanced HIPC Initiative

In 1996 the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative was launched by the Bretton Woods institutions to reduce the external debt burden of low-income countries (LICs) to sustainable levels in a reasonably short period of time because debt constitutes an obstacle to sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction. In some HIPCs, however, debt sustainability has been in danger despite debt relief under the HIPC Initiative. Debt relief is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for development. It can do no more than play a catalytic role. The question, then, is how to achieve debt sustainability beyond the HIPC Initiative.     

The index futures markets: Is screen trading more efficient?

This article uses a nonparametric test based on the arc‐sine law (see, e.g., Feller, 1965 ), which involves comparing the theoretical distribution implied by an intraday random walk with the empirical frequency distribution of the daily high/low times, in order to address the question of whether the abandonment of pit trading has been associated with greater market efficiency. If market inefficiencies result from flaws in the market microstructure of pit trading, they ought to have been eliminated by the introduction of screen trading. If, on the other hand, the inefficiencies are a reflection of investor psychology, they are likely to have survived, unaffected by the changeover. We focus here on four cases. Both the FTSE‐100 and CAC‐40 index futures contracts were originally traded by open outcry and have moved over to electronic trading in recent years, so that we are able to compare pricing behavior before and after the changeover. The equivalent contracts in Germany and Korea, on the other hand, have been traded electronically ever since their inception. Our results overwhelmingly reject the random‐walk hypothesis both for open‐outcry and electronic‐trading data sets, suggesting there has been no increase in efficiency as a result of the introduction of screen trading. One possible explanation consistent with our results would be that the index futures market is characterized by intraday overreaction. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 24:337–357, 2004     

Multilateral and Bilateral Loans versus Grants: Issues and Evidence

This paper examines a wide range of issues relating to the mix between loans and grants as well as the degree of concessionality of loans. A number of empirical tests are carried out based on annual panel data over 1970 to 1999 for 22 donor countries and 72 recipient countries. Based on the tests, we observe that for bilateral donors, past grant‐loan mix (and, hence, reflows from past transfers) do not influence the volume of current resource transfers. Our tests also show that the rate of official borrowing by the recipients (and, by deduction, the extent of their past debt burden) is positively influenced by the extent of the concessionality of such loans – irrespective of whether it is in the form of subsidised interest rates or longer grace periods. The paper concludes with a review of the circumstances in which grants, soft loans and non‐concessional loans might have their respective comparative advantage, as well as a discussion of the need, so as to overcome the negative incentive problems of soft loans, for a typical concessional loan package to be separated into two constituent parts. This would enable the recipient to be given the grant component and the option to take from the non‐concessional loan component as much as desired.     

SUPPLY CHAIN INFORMATION SHARING IN A VENDOR MANAGED INVENTORY PARTNERSHIP

Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) involves the vendor making the replenishment decision for products supplied to a customer based on various inventory and supply chain policies. Information sharing between supply chain members is required in VMI. Sometimes VMI decisions are delayed and/or the information shared is inaccurate. This research examines the effects of information delay and accuracy, and the sharing of sales and forecast information in a VMI environment facing stationary and nonstationary demand. The simulation experiments show the impact of information delay, information inaccuracy, and information sharing on a variety of performance measures, including inventory levels and fill rates.