At the Edge of Longitudinal Analysis. Welfare Institutions and Social Assistance Dynamics

The main aim of this contribution is to present and discuss critically some of the results from the longitudinal analysis carried out in eight cities in five European countries within the general framework of the ESOPO project. In particular I will use these results in order to understand what longitudinal analysis can tell us as soon as we compare different citizenship systems using process-produced data from social assistance schemes as a relevant indicator. The contribution is divided into three sections. The first section will address some methodological issues and illustrate the driving hypothesis. The second section will present some main results from the longitudinal analysis carried out in the ESOPO project. The third section will highlight the institutional dimension and its role in shaping clients' recipiency dynamics, paying particular attention to the development of an interpretative framework.     

Preemptive Bidding in Takeover Auctions: An Experimental Study

This paper presents the results of an experimental study on jump bidding in takeover auctions with entry costs. It provides support for signaling hypothesis behind jump bidding and analyzes how the size of the entry costs affects the bidders' behavior and their expected profits. It also shows that jump bidding allows the reallocation of the surplus from the seller to the first bidder but has little effect on the social surplus and the profits of the second bidder. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Can real options explain financing behavior?

Trade-off models commonly invoke financial transaction costs in order to explain observed leverage fluctuations. This paper offers an alternative explanation based on real options. The model is frictionless on the financing side but incorporates irreversibility and fixed costs of investment. Results obtained from simulating the model are broadly consistent with observed financing patterns. Market leverage ratios are negatively related to profitability, mean-reverting, and depend on past stock returns. The gradual and lumpy leverage adjustments can occur in the absence of financial transaction costs. This evidence shows that incorporating real frictions into structural models increases their explanatory power.     

Optimal taxation and top incomes

In many high-income countries over the past three decades there has been both large growth in inequality of wages and income and a shift in the burden of taxation from the top to the middle of the income distribution. A literature has developed which focuses on optimal tax rates for the top 1 % of the income distribution. In contrast, this paper considers the effect of inequality growth on the structure of a piecewise linear tax system defined over the entire income distribution. Our results suggest that the appropriate response to the increases in inequality would have been a shift towards a tax system with a lower tax rate in the lower half of the distribution together with a highly marginal rate progressive structure in the upper half, a clear differentiation between the top 10 % and the top 1 % and a higher top tax rate. Further inequality growth strengthens these characteristics of the optimal tax structure.     

What does the financial market pricing do? A simulation analysis with a view to systemic volatility,exuberance and vagary

Biondi et al. (Phys A 391(22):5532–5545, 2012) develop an analytical model to examine the emergent dynamic properties of share market price formation over time, capable to capture important stylized facts. These latter properties prove to be sensitive to regulatory regimes for fundamental information provision, as well as to market confidence conditions among actual and potential investors. We comparatively assess accounting models belonging to two main families: historical cost accounting and mark-to-market (fair value) accounting regimes. Regimes based upon mark-to-market measurement of traded security, while generating higher linear correlation between market prices and fundamental signals, also involve higher market instability and volatility. These regimes also incur more relevant episodes of market exuberance and vagary in some regions of the market confidence space, where lower market liquidity further occurs.     

Preemptive bidding in takeover auctions with affiliated values

This paper extends Fishman's (1988) model of preemptive bidding in takeover auctions to auctions with affiliated values. It shows that preemptive bidding transfers wealth from the seller to the first bidder without affecting the profit of the second bidder and social welfare. It also shows that higher correlation between bidders’ values leads to higher preemption rates but has an ambiguous effect on the size of the opening bid. Finally, it shows that in auctions with affiliated values, even infinitesimal entry costs may lead to a preemptive jump bidding that allows the reallocation of the entire surplus from the seller to the first bidder.     

PERFECT AND PARTIAL HEDGING FOR SWING GAME OPTIONS IN DISCRETE TIME

The paper introduces and studies hedging for game (Israeli) style extension of swing options considered as multiple exercise derivatives. Assuming that the underlying security can be traded without restrictions, we derive a formula for valuation of multiple exercise options via classical hedging arguments. Introducing the notion of the shortfall risk for such options we study also partial hedging which leads to minimization of this risk.