The inconsistency of common scale estimators when output prices are unobserved and endogenous

This paper explores the inconsistency of common scale estimators when output is proxied by deflated sales, based on a common output deflator across firms. The problem arises when firms operate in an imperfectly competitive environment and prices differ between them. In particular, we show that this problem reveals itself as a downward bias in the scale estimates obtained from production function regressions, under a variety of assumptions about the pattern of technology, demand and factor price shocks. The result also holds for scale estimates obtained from cost functions. The analysis is carried one step further by adding a model of product demand. Within this augmented model we examine the probability limit of the scale estimate obtained from an ordinary production function regression. This analysis reveals that the OLS estimate will be biased towards a value below one, and how this bias is affected by the magnitude of the parameters and the amount of variation in the various shocks. We have included an empirical section which illustrates the issues. The empirical analysis presents a tentative approach to solve the problem discussed in the theoretical part of this paper.     

Stakeholders and the composition of the voting rights of the board of directors

We propose a new approach to dynamic representation of different groups of stakeholders on the board of directors. This approach is based on a simple economic model of the firm, with an objective function to maximize its market value. We look at the marginal claim of each stakeholder on the assets of the firm. It divides the voting rights based on the change in value of each stakeholder with a one dollar change in the value of the firm as a whole. We translate these conditions to relative voting powers on the board. While there are many claims in the academic and popular literature on sharing voting rights on the board, our paper is the first to propose a quantitative dynamic model of the power sharing in the corporation.     

中国金融创新和技术进步的前景展望--2001年中国金融国际论坛发言集萃

首先,我想谈谈金融在促进技术进步方面的历史地位。然后我想讲讲它在为新企业融资方面所起的作用及其形式。其中的主要观点是美国现代风险投资公司只是发挥为新企业创建初期提供资金的功能的一种组织形式。这种功能就是为新企业提供资金。有许多途径可以实现这种功能,从使用个人储蓄到使用家庭储蓄等等。所以在讨论金     

Job and wage mobility with minimum wages and imperfect compliance

We propose a job search model with minimum wage regulations and imperfect compliance to explain the doubling of the mean and variance of hourly earnings of white males during the first 18 years of labor market experience. The model encompasses job mobility and on‐the‐job wage growth as sources of wage dynamics, and is estimated by simulated generalized method of moments using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youths 1979. Our estimates provide a good fit for the observed levels and trends of the main job and wage mobility data, and for the increase in the mean and variance of wages over the life cycle, as well as for the fall in the fraction of workers paid below the minimum wage. Job mobility explains 40–50% of the observed wage growth. Increases in the minimum wage and/or compliance deliver small effects on the wage distribution and the nonemployment rate. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transition to smallholder agriculture in Central Asia

The article reviews the development of smallholder farming in Central Asia's former Soviet republics. One of the striking features of the agricultural transition in Central Asia (and Commonwealth of Independent States [CIS] in general) is the dramatic shift, since 1992, from the predominance of large corporate farms to individual or family agriculture based on a spectrum of small farms. Evidence shows that individualization of agriculture is associated with the observed posttransition recovery in Central Asia (and in CIS in general) and that small family farms outperform the large enterprises. This clashes with the traditional philosophy of economies of scale and with the inherited view of small family farms as an undesirable aberration. We discuss the policies that helped smallholder farms in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan and severely restricted their growth and development in Uzbekistan and especially Turkmenistan.     

Existence and Uniqueness of Ordinal Nash Outcomes

In this paper we present necessary and sufficient conditions for existence and uniqueness of ordinal Nash outcomes. These outcomes are derived from the ordinal Nash solution—a reinterpretation and an extension of the Nash bargaining solution that allows bargainers to have preference relations that are more general than expected utility. Our task is undertaken by the construction of a new notion called “induced utilities”. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: C78.     

On measuring serial correlation: Implications for finance and accounting research studies

Accounting and finance studies that measure serial correlation implicitly make two assumptions. One, the studies assume that the sample estimate of the autocorrelation coefficient is unbiased. The assumption is intuitively appealing, but incorrect. This article provides a measure of the size of the bias. Two, the studies assume that the target of the time series is constant over time. However, over a long period target values may change. This article models the general case in which not only do random shocks affect actual values, but also random changes affect target values.