Trade Liberalization and Industry Dynamics

This paper uses a large data set for 28 industries in 40 countries to examine the effects of trade liberalization on the number of firms, the average size of surviving firms, and markups. We extend previous studies by examining not only tariff changes in the liberalizing country but also trade reforms in the rest of the world. In addition, we look at whether these effects differ across industries depending on their degree of comparative advantage. The results show that a reduction in home tariffs decreases the number of establishments, firms average size, and markups. All of these three effects are found to be of lower magnitude for comparative advantage industries. In the case of foreign tariffs, our results show that a reduction in protection in the rest of the world is associated with an increase in the number of establishments (which is likely to be reflecting an increase in export profitability), a decrease in average size, while markups are mostly unaffected. As with home tariffs, these effects tend to be less pronounced in comparative advantage industries.     

Fiscal Consolidations in the Central and Eastern European Countries

We study fiscal consolidations in the Central and Eastern European countries and what determines the probability of their success. We define consolidation events as substantive improvements in fiscal balances adjusting for the impact of cyclical effects. We use logit models for the period 1991–2003 to assess the determinants of the success of a fiscal adjustment. The results seem to suggest that for these countries expenditure based consolidations have tended to be more successful. By contrast, revenue-based consolidations have a tendency to be less successful. JEL no. C25, E62, H62     

Transparency to Reduce Corruption?

Corruption within the private sector has often not been dealt with in Brazil. Organizations may find corrupt acts in its operations or practices, but specific concepts and programs to avoid them are neither concrete nor clear. Some Brazilian stockholders have become aware of the risks involved in unethical procedures and are adopting the Best Practices of Corporate Governance initiative. International agencies have intensively supported organizations and governments in an effort to define policies that inhibit illegal or corrupt cultural habits throughout the world, but Brazilian practitioners show insufficient response. Skepticism may indicate a lack of understanding about how an ethical leadership can guide employees, setting high standards for the organizational culture and climate, clearly defining limits of correct behavior, and creating appropriate codes of ethics. Transparency still has to be discovered as a significant tool to encourage professionalism in performance and reporting of data in Brazilian companies. In this article, we analyze the ethical behavior of the purchasing department of a multinational company in its host country, Brazil. It focuses specifically on the supplier–buyer relationship. The results indicate that despite the negative reputation Brazilians have in business ethics, a company can still develop a positive and ethical relationship with its stakeholders. Communication, transparency, compliance with the company’s code of conduct as well as the supplier’s awareness of the buyer’s code of conduct are the factors which influence the supplier–buyer relationship. Transparency can be used as a tool to reduce corruption, thereby increasing ethical behavior and company image. Good ethical behavior can help to build up a company’s image.     

Behavior of Household Portfolios in France: the Role of Housing

The two-dimensional aspects of dwellings occupied by their owner, consumption and investment, make the analysis of households' portfolio choice and the analysis of housing purchases more difficult. But it seems difficult to analyze portfolio decisions without taking account of owner-occupied housing that has an important effect on wealth composition over the life cycle. In this paper we estimated a portfolio choice model where the different dwellings are defined as assets and we showed that we cannot separate investment decisions from housing consumption. Especially, risky assets demand should be greatly influenced by attitudes toward home property.     

The use of Monte Carlo techniques for determining optimal size of substitute teacher pools in large urban school districts

Providing substitute teachers in large school districts usually requires both an extensive organizational structure to coordinate substitute teacher demands with available supply and a large operating budget. In addition, the temporary nature of the substitute teacher position tends to preclude their effective integrating into regular school district inservice programs. The replacement of present substitute teacher procurement practices by a permanent pool of substitute teachers has been suggested as one possible method for improving substitute teacher quality and morale as well as reducing school district cost. This study demonstrates how Monte Carlo techniques might be utilized to determine the optimal size for a substitute teacher pool in a given district where optimal size is defined as (1) the size required to minimize cost to the district, (2) the size required to maintain present substitute teacher service levels in the district, and (3) the size needed to financially break even with the current substitute teacher program. Both uniform and non-uniform by day in the school week substitute teacher pool sizes were calculated for a school district using this technique. The results of the study strongly suggest that not only might permanent substitute teacher pools result in their better integration into regular school district programs, but substantial cost savings might also result.     

Empirical evidence on the dependence of credit default swaps and equity prices

We investigate the common practice of estimating the dependence structure between credit default swap prices on multi‐name credit instruments from the dependence structure of the equity returns of the underlying firms. We find convincing evidence that the practice is inappropriate for high‐yield instruments and that it may even be flawed for instruments containing only firms within a sector. To do this, we model individual credit ratings by univariate continuous time Markov chains, and their joint dynamics by copulas. The use of copulas allows us to incorporate our knowledge of the modeling of univariate processes, into a multivariate framework. However, our test and results are robust to the choice of copula. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 29:695–712, 2009     

A multi-country test of the Fisher model for stock returns

This article provides a test of the Fisher model, linking expected stock returns and inflation, based on international data. Since the Fisher model is ‘universal’ and calls for a slope of 1 in any country, we improve the testing power by conducting a joint test over eight countries. The pooling of data for several countries seems to reduce the small-sample bias. We test the Fisher model, using an instrumental variable approach, for holding-period horizons ranging from 1–12 months. The Fisher model is not rejected at any horizon: however, the magnitude of the slope coefficient lends stronger support at long horizons. This study using multi-country panel data provides evidence corroborating the finding of Boudoukh and Richardson (1993) that the Fisher model holds at long horizons (5 years), using 180 years of US data.