German rail vehicle construction in the context of market globalisation

Conclusion In the guise of ABB Daimler-Benz Transportation and Siemens, Germany has two powerful systems suppliers in a good position to keep pace with other systems suppliers on global markets. As in the air-travel industry it is conceivable that developments are moving towards a uniform rail technology. Although the buy national principle still dominates procurement practices, and national egos still dominate the development of rail systems (ICE, TGV), growing competition from Japan could force Europe to develop a European system. This would significantly increase the chances of European industry in bidding for international contracts. For this reason the EU should not relent in its efforts to standardise European rail systems.     

A note on black economic well-being in the North and West

Conclusion These very positive gains in economic well-being for certain categories of black families do not surprise us. Those in which the head is under 35 and live in the North and the West have had relatively more opportunity open to them as a result of some of the strong enforcement policies of the late sixties and affirmative action programs. This group of the black population, by and large, is better educated, more mobile, and more job-ready. It is, therefore, in a position to be more productive and thereby earn relatively higher incomes when society relaxes some of its discriminating tendencies. No such advantages, however, are available to the households headed by females or older households which comprise the overwhelming members of families in poverty.     

Chinese Walls in German Banks*

Analysts in a bank’s research department cover firms that have no relationship with the bank as well as companies in which the bank has a strategic interest. Officially, banks must establish Chinese Walls around their research departments to allow the analysts to work independently and to avoid the flow of insider information. We examine analyst behavior under long-term bank-firm relationships using ownership data and analysts’ earnings per share forecasts for German companies from 1994 to 2001. We find evidence that is consistent with analysts reconciling their employers’ interests with their own career concerns. They seem to use their information advantage strategically by releasing favorable and thereby more precise reports when the market underestimates earnings. In order not to jeopardize the bank-client relationship, they suppress negative information when the market is too optimistic. Combining situations where the market over- and underestimates earnings, we can replicate the unconditional positive bias in analyst forecasts found in the previous literature. Despite the bias in affiliated analysts’ forecasts, they nonetheless selectively communicate valuable information to investors. *We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of I/B/E/S International Inc. for providing earnings per share forecast data. This data has been provided as part of a broad academic program to encourage earnings expectations research. We thankfully acknowledge financial support from the Austrian National Bank (OeNB) under the Jubil?umsfonds grant number 8523. We thank Werner Antweiler, Michael Halling, Helmut Elsinger, Evelyn Hayden, Greg Hebb, Cornelia Kullmann, Kai Li, Colin Mayer, Stefan Pichler, Duane Seppi, Alex Stomper, Neal Stoghton, Michael Stutzer, Suresh Sundaresan, Yishay Yafeh, Josef Zechner, Christine Zulehner, an anonymous referee, and seminar participants at UBC, the Northern Finance Association meetings, the Western Finance Association meetings, and the European Finance Association meetings for helpful comments and Eva Smolen for excellent research assistance.     

Collectivist values for learning in organizational relationships in China: the role of trust and vertical coordination

Partners must engage in integrative interaction in order to combine diverse expertise and experiences into effective learning. Results from 103 pairs of customer and supplier organizations in China indicate that trust and vertical coordination are useful ways to characterize this integrative interaction and together they promote learning. Structural equation analysis suggests that collectivist but not individualist values are important foundations for integrative interaction between partners that result in learning. These findings were interpreted as reaffirming the value of effective relationships for coordination between partners and suggesting that collectivist values can be a source of effective organizational relationships.     

Industry aspects of takeovers and divestitures: Evidence from the UK

This paper examines takeover and divestiture activity at the industry level for the population of UK firms over the period 1986–2000. Consistent with US research, takeovers in the UK cluster both across industries and over time. The evidence for divestitures indicates clustering across industries only. The paper further investigates whether broad and specific industry shocks (e.g., growth, free cash flow, concentration, deregulation, foreign competition, technology, stock market performance) explain takeover and divestiture clustering at the industry level. The results suggest that broad shocks increase (decrease) the likelihood of takeovers (divestitures), although not significantly for takeovers. Specific industry shocks that increase the likelihood of takeover activity include low growth, the threat of foreign competition and high stock market performance. For divestitures, high industry concentration and deregulation increase activity. Little evidence is found for deregulation as a significant factor in explaining takeover activity.     

TAXATION IN MATCHING MARKETS

We analyze the effects of taxation in two-sided matching markets where agents have heterogeneous preferences over potential partners. Our model provides a continuous link between models of matching with and without transfers. Taxes generate inefficiency on the allocative margin, by changing who matches with whom. This allocative inefficiency can be nonmonotonic, but is weakly increasing in the tax rate under linear taxation if each worker has negative nonpecuniary utility of working. We adapt existing econometric methods for markets without taxes to our setting, and estimate preferences in the college-coach football market. We show through simulations that standard methods inaccurately measure deadweight loss.