CIVIL WAR EXPOSURE AND VIOLENCE

In recent years scholars have begun to focus on the consequences of individuals' exposure to civil war, including its severe health and psychological consequences. Our innovation is to move beyond the survey methodology that is widespread in this literature to analyze the actual behavior of individuals with varying degrees of exposure to civil war in a common institutional setting. We exploit the presence of thousands of international soccer (football) players with different exposures to civil conflict in the European professional leagues, and find a strong relationship between the extent of civil conflict in a player's home country and his propensity to behave violently on the soccer field, as measured by yellow and red cards. This link is robust to region fixed effects, country characteristics (e.g. rule of law, per capita income), player characteristics (e.g. age, field position, quality), outliers, and team fixed effects. Reinforcing our claim that we isolate the effect of civil war exposure rather than simple rule breaking or something else entirely, there is no meaningful correlation between our measure of exposure to civil war and soccer performance measures not closely related to violent conduct. The result is also robust to controlling for civil wars before a player's birth, suggesting that it is not driven by factors from the distant historical past.     

A model for estimating fish population and optimal fishing effort in lakes and rivers

We developed a model for estimating the fish population for various species in lakes and rivers. Our estimation focuses, in its first step, on fish species that breed outside the lake. Using the annual outside supply of fingerlings, natural survival rate and reported amounts of fish caught, we estimated fish stock. Given the estimated stock for fish bred outside the lake, we can evaluate the catch rate. Assuming equal catch rates for other species, and given the amount caught for each species, we are able to evaluate each species stock. Using the proposed technique, we evaluated various species stocks in the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret) in Israel. Using our suggested technique for evaluating fish stock, we calculated the optimal effort of fishing needed for maximizing steady state profit of the fishers.     

Competitive balance versus competitive intensity before a match: is one of these two concepts more relevant in explaining attendance? The case of the French football Ligue 1 over the period 2008–2011

The aim of this article is to investigate the determinants of attendance at French football Ligue 1 matches over the period 2008–2011 with an emphasis on examining the effects of both competitive balance and intensity before a match. Competitive balance is measured by the point difference between the two teams concerned by a match in the championship. Competitive intensity is measured by the point difference for the home team in relation to ranks with sporting stakes. Results show that competitive balance has an insignificant impact whereas competitive intensity has a significantly positive impact. Implications are drawn.     

Stock return reversal and continuance anomaly: new evidence from Hong Kong

Using weekly data, this article conducts a comprehensive analysis and presents new empirical evidences on the short-term stock return reversal and continuance anomaly in the Hong Kong stock market. We confirm that winner stocks behave differently from loser stocks in that the return reversal phenomenon is pervasive within past winner stocks only while past loser stocks tend to show weak return continuance. The arbitrage strategy can earn significantly positive contrarian profits, especially for small firms and illiquid stocks. The anomaly varies across different industries and is also sensitive to the market movement. Despite the existence of the anomaly, our results still in general suggest that the Hong Kong stock market is weak-form efficient because arbitrage trading costs would largely overwhelm the available profits in most cases.     

Cattle as a consistently resilient agricultural commodity

This study compares a range of agricultural commodities over periods of varying economic circumstances. These commodities are examined over three categories, including returns, risk, and contribution to portfolio optimisation. Consistency in these categories is determined over four equal three-year stages which comprise pre-GFC (Global Financial Crisis), GFC, post-GFC and post-post GFC. To demonstrate resilience in the most extreme circumstances, the study uses Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR), which measures extreme risk in the tail of a distribution, as the risk measure and risk-return optimiser. The study thus provides a unique and comprehensive extreme-risk based focus which identifies and ranks the consistency of performance of agricultural commodities over a range of criteria and conditions. Cattle commodities consistently demonstrate the strongest overall performance in the categories examined.     

The macrostructure of Adam Smith's theoretical system: a reconstruction

The paper is an attempt to solve - in the style of circumstantial evidence - a few riddles which concern Smith's puzzling ranking of sectors in the fifth chapter of Book II of the Wealth of Nations. In that short (15 pages) chapter ‘Of the different Employments of Capitals’ Smith presents the final element of his theoretical system. The interpretations offered by the modern secondary literature are, as far as I can see, nor correct.

What is Smith's own interpretation? What is his theory behind that ranking? Do his statements really lack consistency? A solution to these riddles can help to clarify Smith's system as a whole and to reconstruct its macroeconomic structure in particular, which is based on a very special but often overlooked conception of sectoral verticality.     

Bringing science to market: commercializing from NIH SBIR awards

We offer empirical information on the correlates of commercialization activity for research projects funded through the US National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award program. Based on this analysis we suggest possible recommendations for improving this aspect of the performance of NIH's SBIR program. Specifically, we estimate a model of the probability of commercialization as a function of the project's ability to attract additional developmental funding, along with other control variables. We find that additional developmental funding from non-SBIR federal sources and from own internal sources are important predictors of commercialization success, relatively more so than additional developmental funding from venture capitalists. We also find, among other things, that university involvement in the underlying research increases the probability of commercialization. Thus, these factors should be considered by NIH when making awards, if increased commercialization is an objective.     

What was wrong with the old institutional economics (and what is still wrong with the new)?

This paper is a comparison and critique of the old and the new institutional economics, with principal focus on the former. The paper argues that the old institutional economics (OIE) lacks methodological consistency and overall persuasiveness because of the preconceptions it took from the philosophy of pragmatism and its late nineteenth-century attitude towards science. The paper starts from the methodological problem posted by Thorstein Veblen; argues that the OIE was never able to solve that problem; and then poses a resolution of Veblen's dilemma in terms of a ‘benchmark’ programme useful in appraising both the OIE and the NIE. The paper also argues that the most appealing areas of OIE rhetoric–institutions and evolution–do not distinguish that programme from the NIE. What distinguishes the OIE are the less appealing doctrines of holism and instrumental valuing. The paper closes with a brief critique of the neoclassical core of the NIE.