Measuring the Competitive Threat from China for other Southern Exporters

In recent years there has been a growing literature which analyses the threat which Chinese exports pose to the exports of other developing countries. This paper provides a critique of the standard measures of export similarity which have been used to estimate the threat from China in these studies. Two alternative indices, the Static and the Dynamic Index of Competitive Threat, are developed and estimated for 18 developing countries and compared with estimates for the standard measures. It is shown that the latter tend to underestimate the extent to which countries are threatened by China. They also distort both the rankings of countries according to the extent to which they face competition from China and the direction of change in the competitive threat over time.     

Analysing Deprivation and Local Authority Performance: The Implications for CPA

This article uses regression analysis to explore the statistical relationship between deprivation and the performance indicators used for the first round of Comprehensive Performance Assessments (CPAs) for English local authorities. The statistical significance of the results is described and analysed in light of the Audit Commission's decision to exclude deprivation from the CPA framework. For over one third of the PIs tested, deprivation had a statistically significant adverse effect on performance. The author shows that external environmental constraints on local authority performance must be recognized for accurate and equitable performance assessments.     

DURATION AND INTEREST RATE RISK FOR UNCERTAIN CASH FLOW STREAMS

This paper amends the Hicks-Macaulay-Samuelson duration analysis to allow for uncertainty in asset cash flows. An asset's duration measure then becomes a random variable which may possess no central moments. We show, however, that a transformed version of the duration measure is normally distributed. This can be used to make probability assessments of the sensitivity ofthe present value of an asset's cash flow stream to interest rate movements.