The Determinants of Regulatory Compliance: An Analysis of Insider Trading Disclosures in Italy

This paper investigates the determinants of regulatory compliance in corporate organizations. Exploiting a unique enforcement and reporting framework for insider trading in Italy, we present three main findings. First, board governance, such as chief executive–chairman duality and the proportion of non-executive directors, does not increase the propensity of firms to comply with regulation. Second, family firms and firms with a high degree of separation of ownership from control are most likely to comply with regulation. Third, corporate ethos is more important in predicting regulatory compliance than explicit corporate governance structures.     

Online forecast combinations of distributions: Worst case bounds

This paper considers forecasts with distribution functions that may vary through time. The forecast is achieved by time varying combinations of individual forecasts. We derive theoretical worst case bounds for general algorithms based on multiplicative updates of the combination weights. The bounds are useful for studying properties of forecast combinations when data are non-stationary and there is no unique best model.     

When is multidimensional screening a convex program?

A principal wishes to transact business with a multidimensional distribution of agents whose preferences are known only in the aggregate. Assuming a twist (= generalized Spence-Mirrlees single-crossing) hypothesis, quasi-linear utilities, and that agents can choose only pure strategies, we identify a structural condition on the value b(x,y) of product type y to agent type x — and on the principal?s costs c(y) — which is necessary and sufficient for reducing the profit maximization problem faced by the principal to a convex program. This is a key step toward making the principal?s problem theoretically and computationally tractable; in particular, it allows us to derive uniqueness and stability of the principal?s optimal strategy — and similarly of the strategy maximizing the expected welfare of the agents when the principal?s profitability is constrained. We call this condition non-negative cross-curvature: it is also (i) necessary and sufficient to guarantee convexity of the set of b-convex functions, (ii) invariant under reparametrization of agent and/or product types by diffeomorphisms, and (iii) a strengthening of Ma, Trudinger and Wang?s necessary and sufficient condition (A3w) for continuity of the correspondence between an exogenously prescribed distribution of agents and of products. We derive the persistence of economic effects such as the desirability for a monopoly to establish prices so high they effectively exclude a positive fraction of its potential customers, in nearly the full range of non-negatively cross-curved models.     

Political and Fiscal Risk Determinants of Sovereign Spreads in Emerging Markets

Using a panel of 46 emerging market economies from 1997 to 2008, this paper investigates the key determinants of country risk premiums as measured by sovereign bond spreads. Unlike previous studies, the results indicate that both political and fiscal factors matter for credit risk in emerging markets. Lower levels of political risk are associated with tighter spreads, particularly during financial turmoil. Efforts at fiscal consolidation narrow credit spreads, especially in countries with high initial public debt levels. The composition of fiscal policy also matters as higher public investment lowers spreads as long as the fiscal position remains sustainable and the fiscal deficit does not worsen.     

State intervention and economic growth in Southern Italy: the rise and fall of the ‘Cassa per il Mezzogiorno’ (1950–1986)

In the second half of the twentieth century, the Italian government carried out a massive regional policy in southern Italy, through the State-owned agency ‘Cassa per il Mezzogiorno’ (1950–1986). The article reconstructs the activities of this agency, making use of its yearly reports and of national and local archives. The Cassa was effective in the first two decades, thanks to substantial technical autonomy and, in the 1960s, to a strong focus on industrial development; however, from the 1970s it progressively became an instrument of waste and misallocation. At the local level, we find significant differences between the southern regions, and correspondence between the quality of state intervention and the regional patterns of GDP and productivity.     

Arctic ‘concessions’ and icebreaker diplomacy? Chinese tourism development in Iceland

This paper is based on a case study on a Chinese investment proposal in Iceland and sets out to explore the different ways in which actors from different backgrounds, with an extensive range of expectations and ideas of what a destination could and should be, produce and sustain ideas about tourism development. Our point of departure is how tourism represents a new globalised economic expansion possibly reflecting processes of empire building of days gone by. This research suggests that the conflicting worlds of Chinese investment plans, seemingly pregnant with imperial aspirations, core-periphery dichotomies, as well as contesting ideas of regional development, represent a need to begin re-thinking our understanding of tourism regional development from the perspective of what empires are.     

Russian Roulette at the Trade Table: A Specific Factors CGE Analysis of an Agri‐food Import Ban

In the summer of 2014 Russia imposed a ban on most agri‐food products from countries enforcing Ukraine‐related sanctions against Russia. We use a specific factors computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to simulate the short‐run impact of this retaliatory policy. The baseline is carefully designed to isolate the impacts of the ban on the European Union (EU), Russia itself and a selection of key trade partners. The modelling of the ban follows a novel approach, where it is treated as a loss of established trade preferences via reductions in consumer utility in the Armington import function. Not surprisingly, the results indicate that Russia bears the highest income loss (about €3.4 billion) while the EU recovers part of its lost trade through expansion of exports to other markets. An ex‐post comparison between simulation results and observed trade data reveals the model predictions to be broadly accurate, thereby validating the robustness of the modelling approach.     

Auction failures and the market for auction rate securities

The market for auction rate securities (ARS) made headlines during the second week of February 2008 when auctions at which the bonds’ interest rates reset experienced a wave of “failures.” Contrary to headlines that attribute the failures to a “frozen” market or investors’ “irrationality,” we find that (1) even at their height, less than 50% of ARS experienced auction failures, (2) the likelihood of auction failure was directly related to the level of the bonds’ “maximum auction rates,” (3) the implied market clearing yields of bonds with failed auctions were significantly above their maximum auction rates, and (4) ARS yields were generally higher than yields of various cash equivalent investment alternatives. We infer that investors priced the possibility of auctions failures into ARS yields and rationally declined to bid for bonds for which required market yields exceeded their maximum auction rates.     

Cross-section of option returns and volatility

We study the cross-section of stock option returns by sorting stocks on the difference between historical realized volatility and at-the-money implied volatility. We find that a zero-cost trading strategy that is long (short) in the portfolio with a large positive (negative) difference between these two volatility measures produces an economically and statistically significant average monthly return. The results are robust to different market conditions, to stock risks-characteristics, to various industry groupings, to option liquidity characteristics, and are not explained by usual risk factor models.     

Technology Adoption and the Emergence of Regional Asymmetries

The model explains the emergence of asymmetric productive structures among regions based on adoption of a quality improving technology. Firms' products are differentiated both in location and quality, location is given. We characterize symmetric and asymmetric equilibria of the two stage game in price and adoption. Asymmetric equilibria display partial adoption frequencies and regular geographical patterns of adoptions. The asymmetry of the economy has, often, a reverse U-shaped relation with the innovation size. Market integration is an obstacle for the full adoption of the new technology and favours the emergence of regional asymmetries.