Effects of limit order book information level on market stability metrics

Using an agent-based model of the limit order book, we explore how the levels of information available to participants, exchanges, and regulators can be used to improve our understanding of the stability and resiliency of a market. Ultimately, we want to know if electronic market data contains previously undetected information that could allow us to better assess market stability. Using data produced in the controlled environment of an agent-based model’s limit order book, we examine various resiliency indicators to determine their predictive capabilities. Most of the types of data created have traditionally been available either publicly or on a restricted basis to regulators and exchanges, but other types have never been collected. We confirmed our findings using actual order flow data with user identifications included from the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) and New York Mercantile Exchange. Our findings strongly suggest that high-fidelity microstructure data in combination with price data can be used to define stability indicators capable of reliably signaling a high likelihood for an imminent flash crash event about one minute before it occurs.     

Experience-based learning in innovation and production

How can we model and document the impact of experience in product innovation? We use data on the innovation and production histories of 294 product platforms to explore experience‐based learning. We extend learning curve concepts from their traditional domain – the production process – into the product innovation process to build and test a richer, quantitative model of learning. The results suggest that learning occurs differently in the innovation process than in production. They also suggest that how and where a firm learns depend in part on the complexity of product components and sub‐systems. Finally, we discuss the competitive implications for product innovation.     

Towards Trade Equalisation: A Network Perspective on Trade and Income Convergence Across the Twentieth Century

An enduring dynamic of the twentieth century is the dramatic expansion of global trade with increased partners, goods, frequency and volumes. Most trade explanations such as the Heckscher–Ohlin, new trade theory, gravity models, and Ricardo and Sraffa focus on how bilateral import and export volumes and intermediate input goods are driven by decreased financial and information transaction costs. Extending work on trade flows and economic development, we derive several network measures of degree, betweenness and eigenvector centrality from dyadic trade flows from 1960 to 2009. We then empirically explore the interactive effects of trade connectivity, economic production and stages of development on income convergence and trade equalisation. We empirically find clear patterns towards a new phenomenon, both sigma levels and beta rates trade convergence and equalisation for our entire sample. Visualising sigma and beta convergence for seven major trading nations from 1920 to 2010, we believe offers new insights into economic development theory if only beginning to loosen the knot of trade, growth and globalisation.     

The Future European Labor Supply: The Critical Role of the Family

The European employment strategy initiated in 1997 is critically dependent upon the further integration of women into the labor market. The European Union has set a specific target employment rate for women of 60 percent by 2010 and is also committed to providing more and better child care facilities. This gender focus is reinforced by the requirement for gender mainstreaming in all aspects of European employment policy. There is an implied Europe-wide, universal policy of encouraging female labor-market participation and reducing the care work performed by domestic labor. However, the European Commission continues to have limited competence in areas of family, social, and welfare policy. As a result, these common employment objectives for women are thus being pursued against a background of quite different systems of social, family, welfare, and indeed labor-market organization. These systems have different economic and employment implications, such that the outcomes of the common European employment strategy will also be highly variable.     

Strategic alignment and organizational options in biotechnology firms

Biotechnology has created a number of oflfiortunities for new start-up firms. A feu of these fims have grown rapidly and have ambitious strategies. These strategies reflect the fim growing organizational competences i n the context of rapidly changing technological, competitive, Jinanczal and regulatory circumstances. The firms have pursued adaptive, learning-based strategies which give them advantages over large firms. Underpinning these strategies have been long-term efforts to establish a highly motivated and creative workforce. Using the examples fo the UK's two leading biotechnology firms, some of the features of these strategies are exumined. It is found that there are dgerences i n the organizational forms selected by the two fims. These reflect temporal factors, differing environmental conditioru, and elements of manugement choice. The difficulty oj strategic management in turbulent conditions 6s highlighted by considering some of the strengths and weaknesses of both options.     

The Political Economy of State Government Subsidy Adoption: The Case of Ethanol

In this study, we examine the factors that determine the adoption of state economic development incentives in the ethanol industry. We compile data on the implementation dates for subsidies/tax credits for all states for the years 1984–2007, a period that covers the complete emergence of the biofuel industry in the United States and that was characterized by the passage of numerous state‐level subsidies and tax breaks aimed at increasing ethanol production. Using Cox proportional hazard regression analysis, we find that states are more likely to adopt ethanol subsidies when corn production is high, when corn prices are low and gasoline prices are high, when a state is affiliated with the National Corn Growers Association, when a check‐off is present, when a state has a high environmental score, and when state government is under the control of Democrats.     

A Kantian critique of neoclassical law and economics

Abstract

This paper outlines a critique of neoclassical law and economics based on the ethics of Immanuel Kant, focusing on four central topics: efficiency as the sole evaluative criterion for policy-making, hypothetical compensation in Kaldor–Hicks efficiency, the instrumental nature of rights and the assumption of reciprocal causation, and the role of punishment to both society and the individual. This overview addresses issues of concern not just to Kantians, but to anyone dissatisfied with the utilitarian foundations of law and economics and the amoral view of law upon which it is based.     

The Point of Effective Demand

Abstract

Keynes's principle of effective demand conceives competitive equilibrium in terms of the choices of entrepreneurs, investors and consumers, rather than of the optimal allocation of factors of production. In The General Theory, effective demand is distinguished from aggregate demand and from income, expected or realised, and there is no suggestion that equilibrium means the convergence of expectations. Reconsideration of Keynes's use of time and equilibrium periods leads to the conclusion that he treats employment as in continuous equilibrium, at the point of effective demand, determined by the state of expectation, the correctness of which is strictly irrelevant. The nature of the equilibrium represented by the point of effective demand is here described, not in terms of the multiplier, but in terms of the continuous equilibrium of supply and demand in short-term forward markets. This reading is faithful to Keynes's conception of aggregate demand as dependent upon the expectations of entrepreneurs, and it resolves the meaning of his ‘long-period employment.’ Formal appendices identify the differences between Keynes and Walras and the nature of the multiplier. The paper concludes that the Keynesian cross and ‘Swedish’ analysis should be abandoned, and the Walrasian conception recognised as only the limiting case of general competitive equilibrium in a monetary economy.