Spanning with futures contracts

Regression-based testing techniques have long been used to quantify whether the efficient frontier of a set of assets spans the frontier of a larger collection of investments. This paper derives regression-based spanning tests for the case in which the investment possibilities set contains, or is constituted by, futures contracts for which marked-to-market margins are explicitly taken into account. Two empirical applications illustrate our results.     

Is the influence of the industrial district on international activities being eroded by globalization?: Evidence from a traditional manufacturing industry

This study provides insight into the impact of industrial districts on the international activities of firms, in the particular context of one traditional manufacturing industry: the Spanish home-textile industry. Using a sample of 128 manufacturing firms, the paper shows how location influences the timing and levels of exports and imports. Moreover, our results demonstrate how these influences have been diluted in recent years as the home-textile industry becomes more involved in the global arena. Our findings challenge some key arguments exploring the advantages of the district in the international activities of firms; in particular, first, in questioning the capacity of the district to prevent international sourcing, and second, its vulnerability to the threats created by the growing integration of the world economy.     

Teaching the history of economic thought

The main purpose of this survey is to present the results of a questionnaire recently sent to historians of economic thought. This questionnaire — presented in the appendix - was devised so as to provide data on the approaches and experiences of teaching the history of economic thought in a wide range of universities throughout the world.

A summary of the most significant results is presented in section 2 of this survey. Section 1 provides a general introduction to the methodological context of the discussion of problems concerning the teaching of the discipline.     

Economic Order Quantities, Volume Discounts, and Wealth Maximization

This study challenges the generally accepted managerial decision to accept a quantity discount if total, perperiod inventory and acquisition costs are reduced. In this paper, the economic order quantity model is reformulated within an explicit wealth maximization framework, and the reformulated model is then utilized to analyze inventory decisions when volume discounts are available. The results of the study indicate that the traditional method of analyszing volume discount opportunities may invoke wealth decreasing decisions.     

Firm size and the demand for energy in Dutch manufacturing, 1978–1986

As in most other industrialized countries the oil price shocks in the seventies led to major rearrangements in the production processes in Dutch manufacturing. The substitution of (expensive) energy consuming processes by less energy intensive ones is analyzed by means of a dynamic equation, relating the energy demand to the level of output, the price of energy and the prices of other inputs. Using a rather unique data set, consisting of panel data pertaining to several thousands of manufacturing firms, it is found that large firms can reduce energy costs more than small firms.This article reports on research carried out in the MOPS-project. Participants of MOPS are the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics, the Research Institute for Small and Medium-sized Business in the Netherlands, and the Erasmus University Rotterdam. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the policies of the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics.The authors thank Bert Balk, Jos van Deventer, Peter Kooiman, Huib van de Stadt, Roy Thurik, Wim Vosselman, Ton Werkhoven and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.     

Defence expenditure and development in South Africa

This article explores the channels through which defence can either promote or compromise economic development. It reviews the roles of the military as an agent for modernisation in developing societies and as an absorber of scarce resources. The article then examines how the military affected development in South Africa in the past and how it could do so in the future, given the decline in defence expenditure.     

Revisiting the objectives of worker-managed firms: An empirical assessment

This paper provides new evidence on the objectives pursued by worker-managed firms (WMFs). The basic neoclassical model assumes that WMFs maximizes net income per member instead of total profits (Ward, 1958). Even though it has been largely criticized, the Ward model has dominated the self-management literature. Alternative models suggest that WMFs are not only concerned about income per worker but also about the level of employment. However, the empirical content of these competing theoretical models has been rarely analyzed. This paper contributes to fill this gap by estimating the parameters of a generic welfare function, following the methodology proposed by Craig and Pencavel (1993). These parameters determine the relative importance that a WMF places on income per worker vis-a-vis the level of employment. Estimates are based on a long micro-panel of Uruguayan firms covering the entire population of Uruguayan worker-managed firm and conventional firms in 31 3-digit sectors over the period April 1996-December 2005. Following a strictly neoclassical framework, but simply allowing a more general specification of the WMF goals, we show that the assumption of the basic neoclassical model of the WMF is misleading. Our results support the view that WMFs are concerned with both employment and income per worker.     

Internal validity assessment of conjoint estimated attribute importance weights

This paper investigates how various conjoint designs (full versus fractional) and estimation procedures (LINMAP, MONANOVA, OLS) may interact with basic characteristics of the “true” utility functions (i.e., their range, shape, and curvature) when estimating attribute importance weights. Substantial weight distortions are found, especially under a fractional design.     

A Model of Elitist Qualification

This paper deals with the collective qualification of members of society as belonging to a certain category or group based on a fixed attribute. Our model contains three main features: the existence of individual gradual opinions, the notion of elitism (only the opinions of certain individuals are taken into account to delineate the reference group), and the idea of sequentiality (elites are successively created by using the previous elites’ opinions on a social decision scheme). The main results of the paper characterize when this sequential procedure converges for some intuitive ways of aggregating individual opinions. Finally, we analyze the role of convergence for two extra basic properties (symmetry and contractiveness) that elitist rules should possess.