The Challenge Facing SMEs in the Eu’s New Member States

The paper considers the main threats and opportunities for SMEs in new member states, arising out of EU membership, including the implications for SMEs at the micro level. Whilst accession-related changes have important potential implications for firms of all sizes, the distinctive size-related characteristics of SMEs affect their ability to identify, cope with and respond to new sources of threat and opportunity. These potential impacts face new member countries at a relatively early stage in the development of market-based systems, which still contain many deficiencies (particularly in institutional terms) and a SME sector with many characteristics that reflect its fledgling status.     

Advertising and Coordination in Markets with Consumption Scale Effects

Many advertised products are established and have little quality variation. For these products advertising signaling explanations are unconvincing. We develop a coordination model of advertising with consumers observing ads probabilistically and never observing advertising levels. Consumers who fail to see an ad for a product believe it will likely have low sales and so be of low value. Firms advertise to avoid these beliefs. The model's predictions on advertising, market share, and profitability are consistent with observed outcomes. The model produces the time series behavior for prices and market share observed in the data and not available from existing coordination models.     

Memory recall errors in retrospective surveys: A reverse record check study

This paper reports on a study to compare self-reports during an interview with staff who attended a University health centre in Turkey, with the records of visits to the same health centre over the previous 12 months. Design of the study reflects the effects of importance of the event, duration since the event, frequency of the occurrence of the event, measurement scale of the event, and bounded and unbounded recalling. In order to assess the extent of recall error, responses to retrospective questions on health centre visits are compared with administrative records. Statistical models are proposed for short and long term human memory recall error effects on responses.     

The causal relation between government revenue and spending: Evidence from Egypt and Jordan

In investigating the causal relation between government revenue and spending, our empirical results support the tax-and-spend hypothesis for Egypt and the fiscal synchronization hypothesis for Jordan. Breaking away from these historical trends is essential for both countries to eliminate the budget deficit and therefore ensure the availability of domestic saving for private investment. To cope with unemployment and poverty, continuing privatization is recommended for both countries to improve productivity and efficiency in the domestic economy. Privatization should lead to higher domestic saving and investment and at the same time eliminate the budget deficit by enhancing revenue and curbing spending. (JEL H62, H63)     

Environmental standards as barriers to trade

This paper examines the case of a good, polluting in consumption, whose pollutive content is restricted by a government with strong environmental policies. When foreign producers are unable to comply with the restrictive environmental standard of such a country, to which they wish to export, they often allege that those standards constitute illegal barriers to free trade. An example of such a good is gasoline, excessively pollutive formulations of which are prohibited from importation into the United States by the 1970 Clean Air Act. Rather than banning them, such imports should be taxed, along with the domestically produced substitute good, according to their respective pollutant contents. This would foster economic efficiency and should be more acceptable to foreign producers than the outright prohibition mandated by the Clean Air Act. The results of this paper reaffirm the argument in a previous article in this journal (Socio-Economic Planning Sciences 29 (1995) 187), though the countries’ roles in the two papers are reversed, that free trade and Pigouvian environmental policies increase international welfare.     

The Morishima gross elasticity of substitution

We show that the Hotelling–Lau elasticity of substitution, an extension of the Allen–Uzawa elasticity to allow for optimal output-quantity (or utility) responses to changes in factor prices, inherits all of the failings of the Allen–Uzawa elasticity identified by Blackorby and Russell [(1989) Am Econ Rev 79: 882–888]. An analogous extension of the Morishima elasticity of substitution to allow for output quantity changes preserves the salient properties of the original Hicksian notion of elasticity of substitution. We thank Paolo Bertoletti for drawing our attention to the issue addressed in this paper and for his comments on an earlier draft.     

Nash-equilibria in a heterogeneous oligopoly with fuzzy information

We consider a model of an oligopolistic market with heterogeneous firms and products where neither the cost nor the demand functions are common knowledge. Instead, each firm only has some vague ideas about the price strategies adopted by its competitors which is modelled by a fuzzy set. In analogy to the notion of an "equilibrium of actions and beliefs" we define and characterize a generalized Nash-equilibrium and show its existence under general conditions. Furthermore, the impact of the fuzzy information on the equilibrium outcome is analyzed by means of a comparative static analysis within a particular model framework.Received: 28 May 2002, Accepted: 25 December 2002, JEL Classification: D43, D80, L13We wish to thank Bernhard F. Arnold, the editor Murat Sertel , and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. Of course, we are responsible for all remaining errors.     

A note on the determination of A-optimal type block designs under fixed and mixed effects models

In this paper, we consider the problem of estimating a selected set of contrasts between v treatments using a block design consisting of b blocks of size k. Traditionally, the construction of A-optimal block designs for such situations has been carried out assuming a fixed effects model. In this paper, we show that A-optimal designs constructed under a fixed effects model are robust in the sense that these designs have maximal minimal efficiency when considered among all available designs and under all possible mixed effects models. AMS 1991 subject classifications: Primary 62K05; Secondary 62K10     

Duration dependence testing for speculative bubbles

Prior research has employed a number of methods to test for speculative bubbles in asset prices, including a method based on the concept of duration dependence. This study explores whether duration dependence tests for speculative bubbles are sensitive to specification decisions. Our results question the efficacy of using measures of duration dependence to test for speculative bubbles. In particular, we find that evidence of duration dependence is sensitive to the method of correcting for discrete observation of continuous duration, the use of value-weighted versus equally weighted portfolios, and the use of monthly versus weekly runs of abnormal returns. (JEL C41, G12)     

Book briefs

Key variables in social investigation, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1986, vii + 276 pp.

Reproductive change in developing countries, Insights from the World Fertility Survey, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985, xvi + 301 pp, ISBN 0‐19‐828465‐9.

The world crisis in education, The view from the eighties, Oxford University Press, New York, 1985, vii + 353 pp ISBN 0‐19‐503503‐8

Reaching the Urban Poor, Project implementation in developing countries, Westview Press, Boulder Colorado. 1986, vii + 264 pp, ISBN 0‐8133‐7129‐5

Housing policy, An international bibliography, Mansell Publishing Limited, New York, 1986, ix ‐ 398 pp, ISBN 0‐7201‐1785‐2

Agribusiness and the small‐scale farmer: A dynamic partner for development, Westview Press, Boulder, 1985

Agriculture and employment in developing countries: Strategies for effective rural development, Westview Press, Boulder, 1985

Progress in natural resource economics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1985

International agricultural trade: Advanced readings in price formation, market structure and price instability 1984

The role of markets in the world food economy, Westview Press, Boulder, 1983