The effectiveness of a devaluation with money as a producers’ good

Zusammenfassung Die Wirksamkeit einer Abwertung unter dem Aspekt, da\ Geld als Produktionsmittel behandelt wird. — Diese Arbeit berücksichtigt bei der Anpassung der Zahlungsbilanz das Geld als Produktionsmittel. Es zeigt sich, da\ diese Funktion die Wirksamkeit der Zahlungsbilanzanpassung vermindert und — wenn sie hinreichend bedeutend ist — sogar zu Defiziten führen kann. Externe Stabilit?tsbedingungen werden für den Fall geprüft, da\ Inl?nder Devisen halten, die ebenfalls als Input dienen k?nnen. Schlie\lich werden in dem Modell vor der Abwertung Defizite und überschüsse zugelassen mit dem Ergebnis, da\ die Bedin-gungen für eine Reduktion der Wirksamkeit noch komplizierter werden, weil die Entwicklung der internationalen Preise ungewi\ ist.

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Résumé L’efficacité d’une dépréciation du taux de change si l’argent est bien de production. — Cet article incorpore le r?le de l’argent comme bien de production dans l’ajustement de la balance des paiements. Les auteurs démontrent que cette fonction réduit l’efficacité d’ajustement de la balance des paiements et, si la fonction est assez significative, peut mener même aux déficits. Les conditions pour la stabilite externe sont examinées pour le cas où les résidants tiennent des monnaies non-locales qui aussi peuvent servir d’input. Finalement, le modèle permet des déficits et des surplus avant la dévaluation et montre pour cette constellation des conditions plus compliquées pour l’efficacité réduite parce que le mouvement des prix mondiaux est incertain.

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Resumen La efectividad de una devaluatión con dinero como un bien de la productión. — En este artículo se incorpora el rol del dinero como un bien de la productión dentro del ajuste de la balanza de pagos. Se demuestra que esta función reduce la efectividad del ajuste de balanza de pagos y, si es de suficiente magnitud, puede llevar en realidad a déficits. Se examinan condiciones de estabilidad externa cuando residentes mantienen monedas extranjeras, que también pueden servir como factores de entrada. Finalmente se permiten déficits y superávits en el modelo antes de la devaluatión, con el resultado de condiciones más complicadas por efectividad reducida, debido a que los movimientos mundiales de precios son inciertos.

     

Trade Credit, Financial Intermediary Development, and Industry Growth

Recent work suggests that financial development is important for economic growth, since financial markets more effectively allocate capital to firms with high value projects. For firms in poorly developed financial markets, implicit borrowing in the form of trade credit may provide an alternative source of funds. We show that industries with higher dependence on trade credit financing exhibit higher rates of growth in countries with weaker financial institutions. Furthermore, consistent with barriers to trade credit access among young firms, we show that most of the effect that we report comes from growth in the size of preexisting firms.     

Nonparametric Estimation of State-Price Densities Implicit in Financial Asset Prices

Implicit in the prices of traded financial assets are Arrow–Debreu prices or, with continuous states, the state-price density (SPD). We construct a nonparametric estimator for the SPD implicit in option prices and we derive its asymptotic sampling theory. This estimator provides an arbitrage-free method of pricing new, complex, or illiquid securities while capturing those features of the data that are most relevant from an asset-pricing perspective, for example, negative skewness and excess kurtosis for asset returns, and volatility "smiles" for option prices. We perform Monte Carlo experiments and extract the SPD from actual S&P 500 option prices.     

The influence of management perception of environmental variables on the choice of international transfer-pricing methods

In this paper, we provide an empirical study of the association between the management's perception of the importance of environmental variables and their choice of international transfer-pricing methods in the context of a developing economy. Given the sizable investment flowing to developing countries and the amount of economic exchange that occurs through foreign investment in these countries, we believe this is a significant issue. For this study, we collected the data from field interviews with the management of large foreign investment enterprises (FIEs) in China. These FIEs include mainly investors from the United States, Japan, and Europe. Our evidence indicates that the more important management perceives the interests of local partners and the maintenance of a good relationship with host government to be, the more likely that the FIE will use a market-based transfer-pricing method. On the other hand, the more important the management perceives foreign exchange controls in transfer-pricing decisions, the more likely the FIE will choose a cost-based method. Finally, there is a moderate agreement between U.S. and non-U.S. FIEs on the relative importance of the environmental variables.     

Income and Appraised Values: A Reexamination of the FRC Returns Data

This paper compares the income of those office properties that are included in the FRC index, with the appraised values that are used to determine the index's appreciation component. We find that the appraised value of the portfolio was a constant multiple of its current income, over the 1978–1988 period. This seems at odds with what modern valuation theory would suggest, since both nominal interest rates and several measures of real rates varied widely over the sample. An alternate interpretation of our results is that the appraised values were based on a set of expectations about future income growth, that turned out over the period, to be continually at odds with respect to actual income.     

Managing corporate identity: An internal perspective

Management plays a key role in the development and maintenance of corporate identity, including paying particular attention to the internal and controllable aspects of the process. The progression of research that examines corporate identity is contingent on clarification of the scope of corporate identity management (CIM) and development of generalizable and applicable measures of the construct. This study develops an interdisciplinary measure of the CIM construct by drawing on the literature and primary data, such as exploratory research, a survey, and a follow-up phase. Overall, CIM involves (1) the endorsement of consistent behavior through the diffusion of a company’s mission, values, and goals; (2) the expression and pursuit of brand and image consistency in the organization’s symbols and forms of communication; and (3) the implementation, support, and maintenance of visual systems. The results suggest that CIM includes the dissemination of mission and values, consistent image implementation, and visual identity implementation.     

The state of research on markets for sports betting and suggested future directions

Studies of markets for sports betting can be a rich source of knowledge on the process of price formation and the information content of market prices. But recent research in this field examines questions of a technical nature, questions of interest mostly to active participants in the literature. A change in direction, motivated by creative use of the efficiency hypothesis, may deliver insights that would be valuable to the profession in general. Some preliminary analyses along these lines are presented in the hope of stimulating new lines of inquiry in the field.     

Ranking Economics Journals,Economics Departments,and Economists Using Teaching-Focused Research Productivity

This paper constructs new rankings of economics journals, economics departments, and economists that employ a measure of teaching-focused research productivity, an area of growing importance in recent years. The ranking methodologies presented here use information from articles that were published from 1991 through the early part of 2005 within the Journal of Economic Literature's “economic education” classifications (A200-A290). The Journal of Economic Literature tops the list of journals, followed by the Review of Economics and Statistics and the American Economic Review. Among the top institutions are Vanderbilt University, Indiana University, and the University of Wisconsin. Others that rank high here, such as Oberlin College and Denison University, do not often fare as well using methodologies that evaluate more traditional types of economics research. Finally, among the economists we find that John Siegfried, William Becker, and Michael Watts are ranked above other economists.