Determinants of Operational Efficiency and Total Factor Productivity Change of Major Cambodian Financial Institutions: A Data Envelopment Analysis During 2006–13

We examine the determinants of efficiency and the total factor productivity (TFP) change of major financial institutions in Cambodia using data envelopment analysis (DEA). We apply two-stage bootstrapping estimation method to a panel data of twenty-seven financial institutions in the period of 2006–13. The empirical results reveal that the size and ownership structure of financial institutions are significantly correlated with the efficiency and TFP growth of banks. The efficiency of domestic institutions is found to be better than that of their foreign counterpart, and there is no significant difference in TFP growth between domestic and foreign institutions.     

Discrete-time delay dynamics of boundedly rational monopoly

This paper discusses the delay dynamics of monopoly with discrete timescales. It is assumed that a monopoly has delayed and limited information on demand. It is also assumed that the firm wants to react to an average of past data instead of reacting to sudden market changes and this average is used to determine the marginal profit. In the case of one-step delay, the output of the previous time period is selected. In the cases of two and three delays where data at one, two, and three previous time periods are available, it is shown that the steady state undergoes to complex dynamics through either a period-doubling or a Neimark–Sacker bifurcation, depending on the specified values of the parameters. Numerical examples illustrate the theoretical results. Finally, the case of geometric delay is also analyzed to show the birth of the period-doubling bifurcation.     

Upstream and downstream pollution taxations in vertically related markets with imperfect competition

When two markets are vertically related, the government can control pollution at the upstream as well as the downstream market levels. This paper employs the stylized model of input price discrimination and compares the effectiveness of upstream and downstream pollution taxations. We consider the situation in which downstream firms have heterogeneous abatement technologies and an upstream monopolist performs input price discrimination against them. In order to mitigate pollution, the government imposes input tax on the intermediate inputs and emission tax on the pollutant. We show that the degree of input price discrimination decreases with a rise in the input tax and increases with a rise in the emission tax. We further examine the effect of a green tax reform in which the government changes the source of taxation from input tax to emission tax. We argue that although this green tax reform may reduce the tax revenue of the government, it will certainly increase social welfare.      

Productivity-enhancing public investment and benefit taxation: the case of factor-augmenting public inputs

Government expenditure on public inputs such as human capital formation and public infrastructure can significantly affect productivity. An interesting and highly relevant policy question is whether such expenditure should be financed according to the benefit-taxation principle. Focusing on factor-augmenting public inputs, in this paper we derive the specification of the appropriate set of benefit taxes. Rather than fall on industries according to the degree to which the public input increases their productivities, these taxes must take the form of differential taxes on factor incomes. JEL Classification: H21, H54
Les investissements publics accroissant la productivité et l'imposition des avantages: le cas des intrants publics qui augmentent la productivité des facteurs de production. Les dépenses gouvernementales en intrants publics comme la formation de capital humain ou les infrastructures publiques peuvent affecter de manière significative la productivité. Une question intéressante et pertinente de politique publique est de savoir si des telles dépenses devraient être financées à l'aide d'un impôt sur les avantages ainsi dérivés. Mettant l'accent sur les intrants publics qui augmentent la productivité des facteurs, ce mémoire définit la spécification des impôts appropriés sur les avantages tirés de l'investissement public. Plutôt que de retomber sur les industries selon le degré d'accroissement de productivité qui s'ensuit, ces impôts doivent prendre la forme de taxes différentielles sur les revenus des divers facteurs de production.     

Maternal full-time employment and overweight children: Parametric, semi-parametric, and non-parametric assessment

We use the matched mother-child data from the 2000 wave of the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 79 (NLSY79) to assess the impact of full-time working mothers on children’s body mass index (BMI) and the likelihood of becoming overweight. Parametric, semi-parametric and non-parametric methods are employed to correct the bias of selection on observables and unobservables. Pros and cons of various methods are discussed and specification tests are conducted. In general, we find that a mother’s full-time employment does have some impact on her children’s BMI and likelihood of becoming overweight across models and inference procedures.     

International risk sharing during the globalization era

Abstract. Though financial globalization should improve international risk sharing, empirical support is lacking. We develop a simple welfare‐based measure that captures how far countries are from the ideal of perfect risk sharing. Applying it to data, we find some evidence that international risk sharing has improved during globalization. Improved risk sharing comes mostly from the convergence in rates of consumption growth among countries rather than from synchronization of consumption at the business cycle frequency.     

Implied Default Probability and Credit Derivatives

Recently many kinds of credit derivatives are traded in the market. The default probability implied in the market becomes important to price some credit derivatives. Also it is useful for managing the credit risk because it includes the market information. In this paper we show how to calculate the implied default probability in the default swap market or the defaultable bond market.This paper is developed from author’s master thesis (Matsumoto, 2000), Graduate School of Systems Management, the University of Tsukuba.     

Technological diversification and assimilation of spillover technology: Canon's scenario for sustainable growth

Under the paradigm shift from an industrial society to an information society in the 1990s, contrary to the decrease of profits in Japan's electrical machinery firms, only Canon demonstrated its increasing trend. This contrasting performance corresponds to Canon's another contrast with respect to increasing technological diversification while reverse trends in other electrical machinery firms. These contrasts suggest us that Canon's technological diversification strategy can be the source of high level of its profits.Prompted by this hypothetical view, this paper analyzes Canon's scenario for sustainable growth and attempts to elucidate its technological diversification dynamism with special attention to its contribution to high level of profits. On the basis of the identification of the correlation between technological diversification and assimilation of spillover technology, comparative empirical analyses are conducted focusing on the consequence of technological diversification and development trajectory in Japan's leading electrical machinery firms over the last two decades.     

Effects of Price Regulations and Dark Pools on Financial Market Stability: An Investigation by Multiagent Simulations

We built an artificial market model and investigated the impact of large erroneous orders on financial market price formations. Comparing the case of consented large erroneous orders in the short term with that of continuous small erroneous orders in the long term, if amounts of orders are the same, we found that the orders induced almost the same price fall range. We also analysed effects of price variation limits for erroneous orders and found that price variation limits that employ a limitation term shorter than the time erroneous orders exist effectively prevent large price fluctuations. We also investigated effects of up-tick rules, adopting the trigger method that the Japan Financial Services Agency adopted in November 2013. We also investigated whether dark pools that never provide any order books stabilize markets or not using the model including one lit market, which provides all order books to investors, and one dark pool. We found that markets become more stable as the dark pool is increasingly used. We also found that using the dark pool more reduces the market impacts. However, if other investors’ usage rates of dark pools become too large, investors must use the dark pool more than other investors to avoid market impacts. When a tick size of a lit market is larger, dark pools are more useful to avoid market impacts. These results suggest that dark pools stabilize markets when the usage rate is under some threshold and negatively affect the market when the usage rate is over that threshold. Our simulation results suggest the threshold might be much larger than the usage rate in present real financial markets. This study is the first to discuss whether or not several concrete and actually adoptable regulations, including those that have never been employed (e.g. price variation limits with various parameters), could prevent large fluctuations of market prices, including those beyond our experience, using artificial market simulations, and to discuss quantitatively how spreading of dark pools beyond our experience could affect market price formations using the artificial market simulations. In short, this study is the first study to comprehensively discuss how regulations and financial systems beyond our experience could affect price formations using the artificial market simulations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Resolving service quality uncertainty through word-of-mouth communication

People use various information sources to resolve service quality uncertainty. This paper focuses on word-of-mouth communication among mothers. We conduct a survey of mothers with children in kindergarten to determine whether they use information from their friends on the choice of kindergartens and children’s clinics. We identify the factors that influence mothers’ word-of-mouth communication. We find that younger and wealthier mothers use information from friends more frequently for the choice of children’s clinics. We also examine whether the behavior of mothers is influenced by the communication skills of other mothers in the classroom. We do not find network externalities in mothers’ word-of-mouth communication.