Foreign Factor Ownership and Optimal Tariffs

In the presence of foreign factor ownership tariffs change not only the terms of (goods) trade but also income flows between countries. Assume that only the home country owns factors abroad. Then the optimal tariff is negative if and only if foreign factor ownership entails trade-pattern reversals. Trade-pattern reversals are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a negative optimal tariff if the foreign country owns factors in the home country. Changes in the home country's tariff shift the foreign country's offer curve. This adds a new dimension to optimal tariff analysis.     

Working-time reduction and employment: experiences in Europe and economic policy recommendations

The paper seeks to evaluate the evidence on the employment effectsof the collective working-time reductions in Europe over thepast 20 years. While theoretical analyses produce contradictoryassessments, most empirical studies show positive employmenteffects but take insufficient account of these conditions underwhich the reductions in working time were implemented. Theseconditions for the success of collective working-time reductionsinclude an active training policy designed to minimise skillshortages in the labour market, the modernisation of work organisation,wage increases in conjunction with productivity gains and amore equal income distribution.     

R&D–Marketing Integration Mechanisms, Communication Flows, and Innovation Success

Rudy Moenaert, William Souder, Arnoud De Meyer, and Dirk Deschoolmeester report the results of their study of forty technologically innovative Belgian companies to examine the interaction between marketing and R&D. They studied one commercially successful and one commercially unsuccessful technological product innovation project in each participating company and collected data from one marketing and one R&D respondent per project. Communication flows between marketing and R&D are increased under conditions involving formalization of projects, decentralization, positive interfunctional climate, and role flexibility.     

Regime Shifts in Asian Equity and Real Estate Markets

This paper applies a new statistical technology for identifying regime shifts to analyze recent data on real estate and equity markets in eight developing Far Eastern countries in the 1992–1998 time period. We find that regime shifts in volatility occur in the summer of 1997; however, most of the regime shifts in returns occur in the spring of 1998. While the clustering of regime breaks does not seem to follow any obvious pattern, the country's exposure to trade and firm leverage are important. An analysis of Granger causality suggests that, in most cases, equity returns cause real estate returns but the converse is not true. We also find two-way causality in volatility, suggesting that a common factor drives volatility in these markets. Finally, we provide evidence that the regime shifts generally imply higher relative risk for real estate securities after the estimated breaks.     

Value of Multinationality: Internalization, Managerial Self-interest, and Managerial Compensation

In this paper, we examine the impact of managerial self-interest on the value of multinationality. Since agency theory also suggests that a divergence between the interests of managers and shareholders can be aligned by effective managerial incentive, we also examine the effect of managerial compensation on the value of multinationality. Our results show that for high- Q (Tobin's Q > 1 ) firms, investors do not associate the spending of free cash flow on multinationality with the problem of overinvestments. For high- Q firms, it is also found that the value of multinationality can be enhanced by effective managerial incentives. For low- Q firms (Tobin's Q < 1 ), it is found that the concern of managerial self-interest overwhelms the benefits of internalization, making multinationality a value-decreasing event. For low- Q firms, managerial compensation is also ineffective in promoting value-enhancing foreign direct investments.     

A Conceptual Model of the Household's Housing Decision–Making Process: The Economic Perspective

At some stage in every household's family life cycle, the household is likely to make certain decisions with regard to its housing environment. Although the household's housing decisions essentially comprise the decision to move, and the selection of a new residence, the process from which these decisions are derived is very complex because varying circumstances could produce a multitude of different housing decisions. Due to the sheer complexity of the household's housing decision–making process, researchers have generally focused on individual decision–making stages rather than on the process as a whole. This paper therefore attempts to conceptualize the entire household housing decision–making process using theoretical concepts from the economic perspective, and then tests the conceptual model with empirical evidence drawn from the moving population within the multi–racial society in Singapore.     

北极冰川融化影响几何？

北极冰川融化将使跨北极通航成为可能，运输公司可减少40％的航运距离。马六甲海峡也将不再垄断国际通运。国际经济将进一步融合。     

Playing for Your Own Audience: Extremism in Two‐Party Elections

This paper considers a two‐party election with a single‐dimensional policy space. We assume that each voter has a higher probability of observing the position of the party he is affiliated with than the position of the other party, an assumption that is consistent with the National Election Studies (NES) electoral data set. In equilibrium, the two parties locate away from the median, because the voters who dislike a party's platform observe its policy choice with a lower probability, and its own audience like policy choices that cater to its taste. As the asymmetry in voter information or the cost of voting increases, the parties adopt more extreme platforms, while if there are fewer extreme voters the opposite effect occurs. Making voters more symmetrically informed about the two parties' platforms increases the welfare of society, while asymmetric information acquisition by the voters is worse than no information acquisition at all.