Market Participation and Share Prices

Share prices are analyzed in an overlapping generations model in which the generational size is random. This models stochastic fluctuations of market participants and can explain noninformational volatility of share prices. There exists a (stochastic) stationary equilibrium, which may be nonunique. In equilibrium, (a) the share price increases and (b) expected utility decreases with the generational size. A decline of this size below a critical level induces a crash: the stock price falls substantially, shares are undervalued, and investors' demand is restricted by illiquidity. Further, the model predicts the empirically observed positive correlation between volume of trade and absolute price changes.     

Insecure property rights and growth: the role of appropriation costs, wealth effects, and heterogeneity

Summary. We extend the model from Tornell and Velasco [13] and Tornell and Lane [12] by adding three features: (i) extracting the common property asset involves a private appropriation cost, (ii) agents derive utility from wealth as well as from consumption, and (iii) agents can be heterogeneous. We show that both an increase in the appropriation cost and, when appropriation costs vary across agents, an increase in the degree of heterogeneity of these costs reduce the growth rate of the public capital stock. We also show that, in the interior equilibrium, the private asset can have either a lower or a higher money rate of return than the common property asset.Received: 22 June 2004, Revised: 20 April 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: C73, O40.This research is supported by SSHRC, FQRSC, and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Thanks are due to Hassan Benchekroun, Parkash Chander, Gerard Gaudet, Basant Kapur, Kim Long, Colin Rowat, Koji Shimomura, and an anonymous referee for comments and discussions.     

Product design planning with the analytic hierarchy process in inter–organizational networks

In the second half of inter–organizational product development, the new product is likely to face significant design changes. Our study focused on the adequacy of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to support the collaborative partners to steer and align the accompanying design activities. It quantitatively supported discussions between researchers, engineers, manufacturers and future users involved in the development of a voice–producing prosthesis. These discussions focused on the planning of respectively the product design objectives, design changes, and design activities. This product design planning was based on the product requirements relevant to the diverse groups involved, a pro–active view on the market circumstances, the available knowledge, skills and resources, lead–time and costs. The outcomes showed that the AHP is an adequate tool for R&D managers to support inter–organizational product development.     

Discrimination between alternative arima model specifications

Summary The use of ARIMA models in applied economic forecasting has become more and more popular in recent years. In order to secure a good forecasting performance of these models, great care should be spent on the correct identification and the efficient estimation of models of this type.The present paper deals with problems often encountered in applied time series analysis. When fitting an ARIMA model to an observed macroeconomic time series, it might be detected that several models seem to represent this series equally well. The problem here is how to discriminate between alternative ARIMA model specifications representing the same macroeconomic time series.In the first part of the paperthe theoretical concepts, used in the identification and estimation of an ARIMA model, are briefly reviewed. In the second part, these techniques are then applied in a case-study in order to obtain ARIMA models for private consumer expenditure and disposable personal income.

---

Zusammenfassung Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit einigen Problemen der angewandten Zeitreihen-analyse. Beim Versuch, ein ARIMA-Modell für beobachtete makroökonomische Zeitreihen zu schätzen, entdeckt man bisweilen, daß mehrere Modelle die Zeitreihe gleich gut zu repräsentieren scheinen. Hier stellt sich dann die Frage, ob es verläßliche Kriterien gibt, die eine Auswahl aus alternativen Modellansätzen gestatten. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit werden kurz die Konzepte, die für die Identifikation und Schätzung von ARIMA-Modellen zur Verfügung stehen, dargestellt. Der zweite Teil stellt eine Fallstudie dar, in der ARIMA-Modelle für den privaten Konsum und das verfügbare persönliche Einkommen entwickelt werden.

---

---

I would like to thankJohannes Ledolter from the University of Iowa for his very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Konsumentenverhalten als Zeichen für Marktversagen Anmerkungen zu Sellerberg

Ohne ZusammenfassungGerhard Scherhorn ist Professor für Konsumtheorie und Verbraucherpolitik an der Universität Hohenheim, Postfach 106, D-7000 Stuttgart 70.     

How Political Institutions Determine Corporate Governance Reforms: The Polity,Law and Corporate Practices in the Case of Switzerland

The aim of this article is to contribute to our understanding of the role that political institutions play in the reform processes of national corporate governance regimes. I argue that existing theories are limited in that they conceive of political institutions' impact on corporate governance largely in terms of a deterministic influence on the political coalitions that emerge and on the policy outcomes. Based on the analysis of the paradigmatic case of a consensual democracy – Switzerland – I show that the consensual polity does not directly determine the outcome of a reform process, but rather the direction of causality between legal changes and changes in practices as well as the nature of the changes. Consensual polities require large parliamentary majorities for legal change to happen. Therefore, corporate practices are likely to change before legal rules and less demanding forms of institutional change, such as ‘layering’, are favoured.