Money, Monetary Policy, and Central Banking

Anna Schwartz's insights and careful analysis of the forces shaping institutions have contributed greatly to our understanding of money, central banks, and monetary policy. We discuss these contributions in the context of three issues. The first concerns governments' role in money. First, we focus on Anna's contribution to our understanding of the quality of money. In this context, we consider how the acceleration of globalization and developments in information technology has, as an external development, forced improvements in institutions and social arrangements. The second issue concerns the potential for currency boards to serve as an intermediate institution in the evolution toward and, perhaps now, away from so many central banks and sovereign monetary authorities. Finally, we turn our attention to current issues in the implementation of monetary policy.     

Ownership Structure, Firm Performance and Top Executive Change: An Analysis of UK Firms

The results of this paper reveal a significantly negative relationship between the equity stake owned by a senior executive and the likelihood that this executive will be removed from office. We also establish the existence of a strong positive relationship between poor company performance and the likelihood that the top managers responsible will be forced out of their firms; this forced departure only tends to occur when the managers' stake in the firm is less than 1%; as the level of ownership rises, managers become increasingly entrenched in their posts. The stock market reaction to management change is greatest (a) when the departure is unexpected and (b) when the dismissed executive owns more than 5% of the equity of his company. This study also examines the influence of other aspects of ownership structure and board composition upon the likelihood of a top executive dismissal.     

Business travelers’ ticketing,refund, and exchange behavior

This study investigates when and why business travelers make changes to their airline itineraries. Results are based on tickets purchased over a 9-month period by employees of a university in Atlanta, US. The ability to track repeat passengers purchases across time allows analysis of how passenger cancellation behavior differs by frequency of travel as well as by carrier. Results indicate that frequent travelers and those purchasing from Delta versus AirTran are more likely to request ticketing changes. Other factors influencing cancellation behavior include the time from ticket purchase, time before flight departure, and whether the itinerary is for the outbound or inbound portion of a trip.     

An analysis of members' perspectives of service quality in Hong Kong tourist association membership system

The objectives of the study were (1) to evaluate members' satisfaction and expectation towards the quality of services provided by the HKTA membership system; (2) to identify the performance “gap” between members' satisfaction and expectation in the HKTA membership system; and, (3) to explore the impact of members' satisfaction level in participating in the HKTA membership system. A comprehensive survey was conducted and a Simple Random Sampling plan was used to survey 600 members. It was found that 28 out of 32 attributes had negative performance “gaps.” The likelihood of participating in HKTA activities was dependant on the members' satisfaction in “Increase social awareness,” “Opportunities to liaise with business associates” and “Upgrading staff through training courses.” The implications of the findings were discussed and recommendations were proposed.     

Simulation theory can provide practical solutions to complex industrial marketing problems

To maintain adequate levels of production and profit despite prevailing economic recession and inflation, many firms have explored various sectors of potential cost savings within the logistics framework. Models, algorithms, and mathematical-solution techniques have been devised and implemented for warehouse layout and/or location, inventory control, and other problem areas. For instance, for many distribution managers the acceptance of the public warehouse and the centralized distribution center as solutions to profit-squeeze problems has brought to the forefront the intricate problems and high costs associated with advanced shipment scheduling and delivery techniques.     

Consumer Bankruptcy in the United States: A Study of Alleged Abuse and of Local Legal Culture

This paper describes certain central aspects of the operation of the consumer bankruptcy system in the United States. It combines government data with the investigators' empirical data from two large studies done over a decade to explore two types of questions. The first area of investigation relates specifically to bankruptcy policy. The object is to identify the categories of persons principally served by the consumer bankruptcy system and to determine if suggestions of widespread abuse of that system by debtors are well-founded. The paper reports that the system is used primarily by the middle-class. It also reports that there is no evidence of widespread abuse. The second area of investigation is explanation of differences in the operation of the system in different regions of the country, differences that have persisted over twenty years despite major changes in legal rules and economic conditions. The paper argues that these differences are not explicable in terms of formal legal rules or a simple economic model and that a better explanation of the data is that the differences are the product of a "local legal culture" in each region.     

Fixed exchange rates and trade

A classic argument for a fixed exchange rate is its promotion of trade. Empirical support for this, however, is mixed. While one branch of research consistently shows a small negative effect of exchange rate volatility on trade, another, more recent, branch presents evidence of a large positive impact of currency unions on trade. This paper helps resolve this disconnect. Our results, which use a new data-based classification of fixed exchange rate regimes, show a large, significant effect of a fixed exchange rate on bilateral trade between a base country and a country that pegs to it. These results suggest an economically relevant role for exchange rate regimes in trade determination since a significant amount of world trade is conducted between countries with fixed exchange rates.     

Media Appropriateness in the Conduct and Discovery of Deceptive Communication: The Relative Influence of Richness and Synchronicity

We investigate the role that media synchronicity and media richness play in the particular communication context of deception. Hypotheses are developed based on prior models of mediated-deception as well as media richness theory and channel expansion theory. Two survey-based studies were conducted to look at this construct from the separate standpoints of the deceiver and the receiver. Study 1 (the deceiver) provided respondents with a detailed scenario and asked them to select a medium to use to accomplish a specific deceptive act. Results indicate a general preference for highly synchronous (and non-reprocessable) media. Study 2 (the receiver) focused each respondent on a specific medium and used 4 short scenarios to investigate how confidence in their ability to detect deception was affected by synchronicity, media richness, media familiarity, and co-participant (deceiver) familiarity. When making media selections, results indicate that synchronicity and media familiarity are relatively less important to receivers; instead, receivers engaged in deception detection clearly value rich media and co-participants with whom they have more experience and familiarity.