Are All Professional Investors Sophisticated?

Abstract. Existing empirical evidence is inconclusive as to whether professional investors show more sophisticated behavior than individual investors. Therefore, we study two important groups of professional investors and compare them with laymen by means of a survey covering about 500 investors. We find that some professionals, i.e. institutional investors, behave in a more sophisticated manner than laymen, whereas the less researched investment advisors seem to do even worse. Our survey approach complements available evidence due to its design: it compares professionals with (qualified) interested laymen, it covers six measures of sophisticated behavior, uses several control variables and strictly compares investment decisions in the private domain.     

Awareness and perceptions of the Johnson & Johnson Campaign for Nursing's Future: views from nursing students, RNs, and CNOs

Johnson & Johnson launched the Campaign in February 2002. Data from surveys of nursing students, RNs, and CNOs reflect a high level of awareness of several key elements of the Campaign--advertisements, recruitment materials, the discovernursing.com Web site, and regional "Promise of Nursing" fundraising events. The J & J Campaign for Nursing's Future represents the largest involvement of the private corporate sector, and through this initiative we are learning new and innovative ways to examine the challenges confronting the nursing workforce and develop actions to help resolve them.     

Financial price fluctuations in a stock market model with many interacting agents

Summary. We consider a financial market model with a large number of interacting agents. Investors are heterogeneous in their expectations about the future evolution of an asset price process. Their current expectation is based on the previous states of their neighbors and on a random signal about the mood of the market. We analyze the asymptotics of both aggregate behavior and asset prices. We give sufficient conditions for the distribution of equilibrium prices to converge to a unique equilibrium, and provide a microeconomic foundation for the use of diffusion models in the analysis of financial price fluctuations.Received: 16 April 2003, Revised: 1 March 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D40, D84, G10.I thank Peter Bank, Dirk Becherer, Hans Föllmer, Peter Leukert, José Scheinkman, Alexander Schied, Ching-Tang Wu, and seminar participants at various institutions for many suggestions and discussions. Thanks are due to two anonymous referees and the editor, C.D. Aliprantis, for valuable comments which helped to improve the presentation of the results. Financial support of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft via SFB 373, Quantification and Simulation of Economic Processes, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and DFG Research Center Mathematics for Key Technologies (FZT 86) is gratefully acknowledged.     

Accounting for Growth and Output Gaps: Evidence from New Zealand

We evaluate New Zealand's macroeconomic performance over the 1967–1996 period, which witnessed numerous economic reforms. Using both index–number and econometric techniques, we decompose nominal GDP growth and the output gap into contributions from price level changes, productivity growth and changes in factor utilisation. Changes in domestic prices accounted for four–fifths of the growth in nominal GDP, while capital accumulation and employment growth were the most important factors determining real–output growth. Deviations in the domestic price level around its long–run trend contributed most heavily to changes in the nominal output gap. The real gap was influenced in any year variously by deviations of the terms of trade and labour input from their long–run trends, as well as by productivity shocks.     

EC Agricultural reform ad infinitum?

After protracted negotiations, the EC Ministers of Agriculture agreed on a reform of the Common Agricultural Policy on July 1st. Will this reform solve the fundamental problems plaguing the common agricultural market? Is it compatible with the GATT?