Exchange rate volatility and regime change: A Visegrad comparison

We analyze exchange rate volatility in the Visegrad Four countries during the period in which they abandoned tight regimes for more flexible ones. We account for path dependency, asymmetric shocks, and movements in interest rates. In addition, we allow for a generalized error distribution. The overall findings are that path-dependent volatility has a limited effect on exchange rate developments and that the introduction of floating regimes tends to increase exchange rate volatility. During the period of flexible regimes, volatility was mainly driven by surprises. Asymmetric effects of news tend to decrease volatility under the floating regime. Interest differentials impact exchange rate volatility contemporaneously under either regime, although we find no intertemporal effect of interest differentials. Journal of Comparative Economics 34 (4) (2006) 727–753.     

Leveraging Information Across Categories

Companies are collecting increasing amounts of information about their customers. This effort is based on the assumption that more information is better and that this information can be leveraged to predict customers' behavior in a variety of situations and product categories. For example, information about a customer's purchase behavior in one category can be helpful in predicting his potential behavior in a related category, which in turn could help a firm in its cross-selling efforts. In this paper, we present a model to better understand and predict a consumer's purchases and preferences when we may have limited or no information about him in one or more product categories. Conceptually this involves leveraging information from purchases of other consumers in multiple categories as well as partial information (e.g., purchase in one of the categories) of the target consumer. Our approach builds on the pioneering work of (Rossi et al. (1996)) who demonstrate the value of purchase information in the context of a single product category. We present results from an extensive simulation as well as an application on scanner panel data. Our simulation shows many interesting and somewhat surprising results. Specifically, we find that compared to a single-category analysis, a cross-category analysis does not lead to any significant improvement in data likelihood in most cases. Therefore, the single-category analysis of (Rossi et al. (1996)) is even more powerful than previously thought. However, we also find that a cross-category analysis does improve parameter recovery in many situations as compared to a single-category analysis. It is in these conditions that retailers can use cross-category information to better implement micro marketing programs. We demonstrate the transfer of information across categories in an application of two grocery products—Breakfast Foods and Table Syrup. In spite of a reasonable correlation (0.21) in the price parameter across these two categories, our simulation guidelines predict very little benefit of cross-category analysis over single-category analysis. Our empirical results confirm this prediction.     

Fundraising and Optimal Policy Rules

This paper develops a simple spatial model of fundraising, in which charities select a target population to solicit donations. First, we show that in a competitive charity market without any intervention, the number of charities in the market and/or the overall net funds raised by charities may be suboptimal. Next, we analyze whether a social planner can prevent such shortcomings and show that a regulatory mechanism can be designed to achieve socially desirable outcomes. In contrast to the previous literature, our model does not necessarily produce monopoly as the optimal market structure. We show that if fixed costs associated with establishing charities are sufficiently low, then the optimal market structure is not a monopoly. Given the importance of the trade‐off between the volume and variety of charitable services, we argue that this result may be of particular interest to policy makers.     

壳聚糖对水中重金属吸附性能的研究进展

为了有效处理水中重金属污染和提高虾头虾壳中壳聚糖的利用效率,本文对提取壳聚糖的化学降解法、微生物培养法、酶解法和微波技术法进行综述,分析壳聚糖的吸附原理、最优吸附条件和壳聚糖复合材料的优点,发现化学降解法为目前普遍使用的壳聚糖提取方法,溶液的pH值、反应温度、吸附剂用量及壳聚糖复合物的种类均会影响壳聚糖对水中重金属的吸...     

Der US-Dollar als Leitwährung – alternativlos?

The importance of the industrialized countries – including the USA – for world production has been declining for a long time. By contrast, China’s share in particular has increased significantly. Nevertheless, the US dollar has largely fulfilled the criteria for a leading currency function so far, even if this is increasingly criticised due to the protectionist rhetoric of the US. Accordingly, central banks worldwide hold their reserves primarily in US dollars and transactions are largely conducted in US currency. This position brings great advantages–such as making it easier for the US to monitor and enforce sanctions, among other things–and therefore great incentives for the US to maintain its position as the leading currency. Whether other currencies, especially the renminbi, will be able to fulfil the lead currency function is questionable. Similarly, it does not seem realistic that market participants will be able to engage in a global currency.     

Financial Exposure and the International Transmission of Financial Shocks

This paper analyzes the transmission mechanism of banking sector shocks in an international real business cycle model with heterogeneous bank sizes. We examine to what extent the financial exposure of the banking sector affects the transmission of foreign banking sector shocks. In our model, the more exposed domestic banks are to the foreign economy via lending to foreign firms, the greater are the spillovers from foreign financial shocks to the home economy. The model highlights the role of openness to trade and the dynamics of the terms of trade in the international transmission mechanism of banking sector shocks: spillovers from foreign banking sector shocks are greater the more open the home economy is to trade and the less the terms of trade respond to foreign shocks.     

Manual dishwashing process – a pre‐assigned behaviour?

Global studies have observed many techniques of manual dishwashing causing different levels of performance and using quite different amounts of water, energy, time and detergent. It is not known, however, if these techniques are pre‐assigned to a person and persist when dishes are washed under different conditions, or are adapted to the specific type of dish‐cleaning process. Here we explored this question in a study with 40 test subjects selected equally from Germany and East European countries by asking them to wash two place settings of dishes with different amounts of soil three times. The results showed that the test subjects did not adapt their washing‐up behaviour to the amount of soil. In general, no significant differences were found in the water, energy and detergent consumption for all test subjects. Only the time used by the German test subjects to wash the fully soiled dishes was significantly longer compared with the dishes with only a quarter the quantity of soil, and no significant difference was observed for all other parts. The only significant difference found between the level of soiling of the dishes was the cleaning result achieved: The less soiled the dishes were, the better the final cleaning result was, and this related to all test subjects. This lends support to the proposition that the consumers did not adapt their washing‐up behaviour to the specific circumstances of the dishwashing job to be done but retained some pre‐assigned behaviour.