The Role of Ethnic Nepotism vs. Economic Pragmatism in Inter-group Conflict: Data on the Yugoslavian Civil War*

Neo-Darwinian concepts such as van den Berghe's ethnic nepotism infer that the origin of inter-group conflict resides primarily in ethnocentrism, defined as the extension of inclusive fitness to extra-familial interactions. Silverman, however, has proposed an alternative view, based on the presumption that natural selection favors pragmatism and plasticity in the formation of group alliances. Silverman's theory holds that the motives for inter-group oppression and warfare, including so-called ethnic cleansing movements, are economic, whereby out-group prejudices represent rationalizations rather than root causes. The present paper reviews Silverman's and Silverman and Case's evidence for this theory and provides further supporting data in terms of relationships between changes in economic conditions and ethnocentric attitudes during the years immediately preceding the recent Yugoslavian hostilities. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

On the diversification benefits of commodities from the perspective of euro investors

This paper investigates the diversification contribution of several commodities to a portfolio of traditional assets from the perspective of a euro investor. The approach applied in our analysis has high informational content as it differentiates between the sources of the diversification benefits in a statistically significant way. The results indicate that the diversification contribution varies greatly amongst the different commodities. Industrial metals, agriculturals and livestock contribute to the reduction of risk, while energy and precious metals contribute to both the reduction of the level of risk and to the improvement of return. The differentiation between bull and bear markets reveals that investors can enhance the portfolio performance by changing exposure into individual commodities. Investors can benefit from the diversification gains through financial instruments as the diversification gains hold both in the sample of physical commodity and commodity futures. Overall, the results confirm that commodities are valuable investments from the perspective of diversification.     

Identifying the new Keynesian Phillips curve

Phillips curves are central to discussions of inflation dynamics and monetary policy. The hybrid new Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) describes how past inflation, expected future inflation, and a measure of real aggregate demand drive the current inflation rate. This paper studies the (potential) weak identification of the NKPC under Generalized Method of Moments and traces this syndrome to a lack of higher‐order dynamics in exogenous variables. We employ analytic methods to understand the economics of the NKPC identification problem in the canonical three‐equation, new Keynesian model. We revisit the empirical evidence for the USA, the UK, and Canada by constructing tests and confidence intervals based on the Anderson and Rubin ( 1949 ) statistic, which is robust to weak identification. We also apply the Guggenberger and Smith ( 2008 ) LM test to the underlying NKPC pricing parameters. Both tests yield little evidence of forward‐looking inflation dynamics. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

TAXATION OF ECONOMIC RENTS

Economic rents have long been identified as an efficient tax base. In addition, the recent literature documents that rent income is highly concentrated and that rents are quickly increasing. Rent taxation thus seems attractive for reasons of both efficiency and equity. Nevertheless, rent taxation remains a marginal topic in research and policy making. In a systematic review of the neoclassical literature on different rent types, we find that some types of rents reflect inefficiencies and should thus be minimized, while others reward investments and should be supported in line with social welfare. What remains for taxation are land rents, one of the few true scarcity rents. Land rents have significant potential to improve the efficiency of the tax system. We then begin to develop a comprehensive theory of land rent taxation by identifying relevant efficiency and equity effects. The interaction of many of these effects remains unexplored, which might explain policymakers' hesitation in using land taxes to date.     

Using the endowment effect to explain managerial resistance towards codetermination: Implications for employment relations from the German case

This article provides an innovative defence of codetermination by way of exploring two of the most significant theorised objections to it from neo‐liberal and libertarian perspectives, namely the defence of the right to manage as freely chosen by employees and employers alike, and the right to manage being the most efficient, lowest transaction cost mode of employee governance. Instead, we focus upon management preference emanating from the endowment effect, and manifested in management style and ideology, as a more credible explanation for management's support for its prerogative to manage. The endowment effect prompts both strong employer and manager objections to codetermination and weak employee willingness to seek it because humans place more value upon items currently in their possession than upon those they do not possess. We explore this argument by examining the experience of codetermination in Germany. The significance of our argument lies in identifying managerial preference as the key variable to be challenged and changed in order to pacify management opposition to codetermination through political, ideological, and institutional means.     

中国劳动关系研究的演变——基于1978-2015年期刊文献的历史分析

本研究通过对1978-2015年我国期刊文献的量化及内容、文本分析,从研究主题、方法论、学科视角及认识论上等维度,挖掘了自改革开放以来我国劳动关系研究领域的发展变化.为认识中国劳动关系研究领域提供了一个历史的视角,有助于深化对中国劳动关系研究发展的理解.总体而言,改革开放以来,中国劳动关系研究在研究主题、研究方法、学科专业等维度均有变化,但也存在着稳定不变的特征.无论是对劳动关系认识、理念的变化,还是对研究主题侧重点的变化,都体现了改革过程中国家意志,也说明了历史、国家情景对劳动关系研究本身重要作用.     

The impact of the National Minimum Wage in low‐wage sectors: does the Earnings Top‐up Evaluation study add to our understanding?

Recent work investigating the possible impact of the introduction of the UK National Minimum Wage (NMW) in April 1999 has focused on the analysis of care homes, a sector particularly associated with low‐wage employment. In this article we attempt to add to these findings by utilising the Earnings Top‐up Evaluation (ETUE) survey which was carried out in 1996, 1997 and 1999, and aimed to over‐sample establishments operating in low‐wage sectors. Initially, we utilise the panel element of the ETUE to carry out a similar analysis to that adopted for the care homes data. However, in addition to this ‘establishment‐level’ analysis, we also utilise information on wages and employment in three non‐managerial skill groups, within this panel of establishments, to carry out an analysis at the level of the skill group. In this second set of analyses we are able to reject the null hypotheses of parameter insignificance, identifying a negative employment effect of the 1999 NMW, although this is only true of one of our indicators of NMW impact and its magnitude is small. In the conclusion to the article, we discuss our results in light of the findings from other similar studies.     

Is the corn futures market noisier? The impact of high frequency quoting

ABSTRACT

The paper pioneers research on high frequency (HF) quoting noise in electronically traded agricultural futures markets. HF quoting – quickly cancelling posted limit orders and replacing them with new ones – emerges as a strategy for liquidity-providing traders. HF quoting can generate noise in price quotes which adds uncertainty to order execution and impairs the informational value of bid and ask prices. It can also lead to the perception that markets cannot be trusted for commercial transactions. Using intraday Best Bid Offer data for 2008–2013 and wavelet-based measures of volatility, we investigate the excess variance and co-movement discrepancies in the bid and ask prices. We find excess HF quoting variance exists. It is the highest at 250-ms scale – 90% higher than the variance implied by a random walk – but declines quickly to 7% at the 32 s scale. But its economic magnitude is negligibly small. Bid and ask price co-movements show a low degree of discrepancy with average correlations at 0.67 at 250 ms and reaching 0.95 at 8 s. All measures indicate that HF quoting noise has declined through the period. Overall, HF quoting has not caused excess variance during the transition to electronic trading in the liquid corn futures market.     

Economic research in Canada: Evolution and convergence

We describe the history and current state of economic research in Canada, including the role of the Canadian Economics Association (CEA) and other institutions. Our paper is organized around two central questions. Is Canadian economic research distinctive? And should it be more distinctive? We argue that a distinct Canadian “school” of economics existed in the past, but that economic research in Canada has converged on an evolving global standard in both method and topics. We ask whether this convergence serves the Canadian public interest and we raise some questions about the future of the CEA and its flagship journal, the CJE.