Private business sales environments in the United Kingdom

When an owner-manager of a business firm decides to sell the company, it is not a trivial decision. Whether it is a sale forced by circumstances outside company control, or a positive, strategic choice, it is certainly significant. Moreover, the method of “exit,” the advice taken, and the deal that is eventually struck will clearly affect the nature of the owner's eventual lifestyle. In such circumstances, there are four choices open to the owner: (1) Sale to a third party; (2) Sale to the management and/or employees; (3) Public quotation on the Stock Exchange; (4) Liquidation.This research first analyzes the magnitude of activity in the United Kingdom in each of the above categories during the five-year period 1983–1987. The results show very clearly that there is a strategic loosening taking place in the corporate marketplace—more firms are being sold, and more owner-managers are choosing to exit from ownership of their firms. Moreover, the most frequently used exit route by far is that of the private advertized sale.The second part of this paper analyzes in detail the data for the private advertized sale. By means of principal-component analysis and cluster analysis seven, ecological incubator environments were constructed at a county level. Significant differences were observed between the environments in respect to private advertized sales, private advertized sales rates, and industrial structure. These results show clearly that the nature of the supply of owner-managers wishing to realize their ownership is geographically biased and is, in part, a reflection of the existing industrial and commercial base.     

Sequential simultaneous estimation of the mean and variance: The rate of convergence

We reconsider the problem of simultaneous estimation of the mean and variance of a normal distribution along the lines of Mukhopadhyay (1981), and derive the rate of convergence of the appropriately normalized stopping time to normality. The Berry-Esseen type results for randomly stoppedU-statistics have been utilized repeatedly in this context.     

Fiscal policy switching in Japan, the US, and the UK

This paper estimates fiscal policy feedback rules in Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom for more than a century, allowing for stochastic regime changes. Estimating a Markov-switching model by the Bayesian method, we find the following: First, the Japanese data clearly reject the view that the fiscal policy regime is fixed, i.e., that the Japanese government adopted a Ricardian or a non-Ricardian regime throughout the entire period. Instead, our results indicate a stochastic switch of the debt-GDP ratio between stationary and nonstationary processes, and thus a stochastic switch between Ricardian and non-Ricardian regimes. Second, our simulation exercises using the estimated parameters and transition probabilities do not necessarily reject the possibility that the debt-GDP ratio may be nonstationary even in the long run (i.e., globally nonstationary). Third, the Japanese result is in sharp contrast with the results for the US and the UK which indicate that in these countries the government’s fiscal behavior is consistently characterized by Ricardian policy.     

一代巨擘褒与贬

作为结构现实主义国际关系理论的创始人和领军人物,肯尼思·沃尔兹的学术思想影响既深且远,却不像表面上那么容易理解。他对传统国际关系理论进行了科学改造,单枪匹马地改变了国际关系学科的面貌,却又坚决反对科学实证主义。他的理论因其高度简约、针对性强以及拒绝具体预测而备受诟病,沃尔兹却不为所动,绝不放松对科学理论的严苛要求。在明智的利益和谨慎的权力等原则指引下,一位貌似崇尚实力的现实主义者却成了现实国际政治中的温和派。     

The Savings Ratio and Financial Repression in Trinidad and Tobago *

This paper investigates the hypothesis financial repression in the context of the Determinates of the private savings ratio in Trinidad and Tobago, using the Multivariate, cointegration time-series methodology. Four alternative proxies are Used to represent financial repression, including the real interest rate, the real interest Rate differential between the world and domestic economy and two alternative Measures of exchange rate misalignment, We find that there is strong evidence to Support the hypothesis of financial repression in Trinidad and Tobago over the sample Period and that financial liberalization may significantly enhance the growth of real Per capita income. [E2, F4, O1]