Information Use and Transference among Legally Separated Share Markets—An Experimental Approach

Several countries have adopted legally separated share markets (LSSM), where local firms market separate claims to the same dividend flow to domestic and foreign investors who cannot arbitrage across LSSM. We designed a laboratory experiment to test whether the inside information in one LSSM is reflected in the prices of both markets. We find that insider information does transfer across markets. The extent of this transfer depends upon whether the location of insiders is publicly known, how close prices in the informed market get to the full information equilibrium, and how much the price variance is in this market. We also observe insiders' behavior and performance under different market conditions. Efforts by insiders to manipulate the market increase when their location is unknown to the public. On average such efforts pay off to the whole group of insiders but not to the initiator of these manipulative transactions.     

Long run productivity risk and aggregate investment

Long-run productivity risk – shocks to the growth rate of productivity – offers an alternative to microfrictions explanations of aggregate investment non-linearities, in particular the heteroscedasticity of investment rate. Additionally, consistent with the data, these shocks imply that investment rate is history dependent (rising through expansions), its growth is positively autocorrelated, and it is positively correlated with output growth at various leads and lags. A standard model with shocks to the level of productivity either predicts opposite investment behavior or fails to quantitatively capture these features in the data.     

THE PARADOX OF POWER*

In power struggles, the strong might be expected to grow ever stronger and the weak weaker still. But in actuality, poorer or smaller combatants often end up improving their position relative to richer or larger ones. This is the paradox of power. The explanation is that initially poorer contenders are rationally motivated to fight harder, to invest relatively more in conflictual activity. Only when the decisiveness of conflict is sufficiently high does the richer side gain relatively in terms of achieved income. Among other things, the paradox of power explains political redistributions of income from the rich to the poor.     

如何利用质量管理体系进行业绩改进

在当今的市场环境中，大部分组织面临着棘手的条件，包括来自对手的扩张性竞争战略、令人胆怯的法律法规和全球化的压力。但最后，组织的经营一般都会归结到简单的问题，比如，以更低的价格提供比竞争对手更好的产品和服务。     

The importance of seasonal variability and tactical responses to risk on estimating the economic benefits of integrated weed management

Seasonal variability is an important source of risk faced by farmers and, regardless of an individual's attitude to risk, there are options to tactically adjust production strategies as the outcomes of risk become known. The objective of this article is to measure the economic benefits of alternative approaches to managing weeds, one of the most serious production problems in Australian cropping systems. A bioeconomic model that combines weed biology, crop growth and economics is developed to value the effects of seasonal variability and the role of tactical responses and sequential decision making in determining an optimal integrated weed management strategy. This shows that there are substantial differences in the measured long‐term benefits from deterministic and stochastic simulations. It is concluded that, for research evaluation of technologies that involve complex biological and dynamic systems, ignoring the impacts of seasonal variability, responses to risk and sequential decision making can lead to an incorrect estimate of the economic benefits of a technology. In this case study of optimal weed management strategies in Australia, the size of the error is high.     

Work-Family Conflict: A Virtue Ethics Analysis

Work-family conflict has been examined quite often in human resources management and industrial/organizational psychology literature. Numerous statistics show that the magnitude of this employment issue will continue to grow. As employees attempt to balance work demands and family responsibilities, organizations will have to decide to what extent they will go to minimize this conflict. Research has identified numerous negative consequences of work-family stressors for organizations, for employees and for employees' families. There are however many options to reduce this strain, each with advantages and disadvantages. An ethical analysis, from a virtue ethics perspective, is applied to this timely issue to present an alternative view in addressing this critical business decision. In addition, a strong connection between the virtue ethics analysis and a well-known management theory is given to provide a foundation for managerial implications for resolving work-family conflict.     

Seasonal labor constraints and intra-household dynamics in the female fields of southern Cameroon

African agricultural production is modeled as a sequential decision process, with men's labor first allotted to clearing, then women's labor allotted to harvesting. A switching regression is then used to measure the constraints due to clearing labor capacity and harvesting labor capacity. The import of men's clearing labor depends on the valuation of shadow wages. Output appears to be more frequently constrained by husband's clearing labor, and in this situation male labor appears under‐utilized. However, output is also significantly constrained by female harvest labor, although the findings imply that female labor is over‐utilized at this stage.     

ANALYST BEHAVIOR SURROUNDING TENDER OFFER ANNOUNCEMENTS

We examine the usefulness and credibility of analyst recommendations by focusing on their behavior surrounding tender offer announcements. For our 1998–2001 sample, we find analysts did not identify takeover targets through their recommendations nor did they distinguish between wealth‐increasing and wealth‐decreasing tender offers. We find some evidence of conflicts of interest in analyst recommendations, but it is confined to the 1999–2000 dot‐com period. However, the long‐run performance following recommendations suggests that these conflicts have little ultimate cost to investors.     

Henry George and the Ethics of Economics

Abstract . Henry George's Progress and Poverty (1879) is a great ethical masterpiece. Its moral tone distinguishes the book. More than an economics test, it is a philosophic quest for justice, an impassioned declaration of the rule of natural law. Indignantly attacking the contention that economics has no place for natural law or ethics, George exclaims: “She [economics] has been degraded and shackled; her truths dislocated; her harmonies ignored.” On the contrary, George stresses, political economy (economics) is a science, and like all sciences, is governed by natural law. Furthermore, it is basically “moral.” Science must, of necessity, always lead to ethics. Natural law must, of necessity, always lead to morality, or justice.“The law of human progress, what is it but the moral law?” George asks. “Unless its foundation be laid in justice the social structure cannot stand.” The social ill that perpetuates poverty and the manifold evils it causes is private ownership of land and the private privilege of collecting its rent. “The fundamental law of nature, that the enjoyment by man shall be consequent upon his exertion, is thus violated.”     

Neuroeconomics as a Natural Extension of Bioeconomics: The Shifting Scope of Standard Economic Theory

Synopsis Neuroeconomics rightly has been claimed to be a natural extension of bioeconomics. One of the things bioeconomics investigates is what behavioral dispositions and what behavioral patterns evolutionary processes have produced. Neuroeconomics extends this to the study of evolved mechanisms that are at work in decision-making at the neural level of the brain. The paper argues that in another respect neuroeconomics and bioeconomics are discontinuous, however. Bioeconomics maintains that the applicability of standard economic theory’s constrained maximization framework is not confined to human behavior. The constrained maximization framework is believed to be suitable to describe behavior throughout the animal kingdom. By contrast, despite some minor internal disagreements all neuroeconomists seem to agree that human behavior is predicted poorly by standard economic theory in several social and economic situations. Neuroscience is believed to hold out the hope of an advanced understanding of when and why this is the case.