Duration and the price behavior of fixed-rate level payment mortgages: An analytical investigation

In this research we use a continuous payment formula for duration to examine the price behavior of a fixed-rate level payment mortgage. In the case where the mortgage is held to maturity, duration increases monotonically as term-to-maturity increases, regardless of changes in the market rate of interest. In the case where the mortgage is prepaid prior to maturity, there exists a unique market interest rate below which duration is a monotonically increasing function of time of prepayment, but above which duration has a global maximum at some time of prepayment prior to the term-to-maturity.     

Price Variability and Industrial Concentration in U.S. Food Industries

This paper focuses on the sources of intra‐industry price variability in US food industries during a period of increasing concentration, while accounting for the impact of variations in prices of primary agricultural products. Results suggest that intra‐industry price variability in food industries increases with their respective mean rate of inflation and product heterogeneity. However, industrial concentration lowers the sensitivity of relative prices to changes in the mean rate of inflation. Hence, static welfare losses to consumers from increasing concentration in food industries, a subject of recent and intensive investigation, can partly be offset by gains such as reduced price variability.     

Cross-Listings and Home Market Trading Volume: The Case of Malaysia and Singapore

Cross‐listings of equities internationally are becoming more common. Using data for Europe and North America, previous studies reject the order flow diversion hypothesis, which states that international cross‐listings reduce home‐country trading volume. We test this hypothesis using data for equities cross‐listed in Singapore and Malaysia. We find that trading volume in Malaysia fell 42.9% when Singapore markets were closed for holidays. Furthermore, we show that trading volume in Malaysia did not increase following the implementation of regulations that ended the trading of Malaysian equities in Singapore in 1998. Hence, we reject the order flow diversion hypothesis.     

Assessing Applied Protection across the World*

This paper presents MAcMap–HS‐6, a database providing a consistent, ad valorem equivalent measure of tariff duties and tariff rate quotas for 163 countries and 208 partners, at the six‐digit level of the Harmonized System (5111 products), accounting for all preferential agreements. We describe the methodology used to compute and aggregate an ad valorem equivalent of applied protection. Emphasis is placed on minimizing the endogeneity bias in the aggregation procedure, while acknowledging structural differences in export specialization. The resulting quantitative assessment is illustrated by giving an overview of applied protection across the world in 2001, in terms of average as well as distribution.     

Hierarchical Arrow Social Welfare Functions

Supported by SNF Grant No: DMS 8803556.     

Ecosystems,externalities, and economies

This paper incorporates an ecosystem model into a model of a simple economy. The decisionmaking agents in the ecosystem are individual organisms aggregated to the species level. A species may provide utility directly to humans, or it may provide utility indirectly because it is used either as a raw material in goods fabrication or as sustenance for other species. We describe a comparative static equilibrium of the ecosystem where species' demands for other species are equal to the supplies of those other species, and energy is conserved. The ecosystem is then embedded in the economy so that the effects of human intervention can be traced through both the ecosystem and the economy. Human intervention creates ecosystem externalities such that ecosystem equilibria are shifted and the new equilibria affect the utility or the production processes of other humans. This framework allows us to describe in principle which ecosystem services can be efficiently usurped by humans, which waste flows can be efficiently allowed into ecosystems, and which ecosystem organisms and physical attributes can be efficiently maintained.