Airbus versus Boeing revisited: international competition in the aircraft market

This paper examines international competition in the commercial aircraft industry. We estimate a discrete choice, differentiated products demand system for wide-body aircraft and examine the Airbus-Boeing rivalry under various assumptions on firm conduct. We then use this structure to evaluate two trade disputes between the United States and European Union. Our results suggest that aircraft prices increased by about 3.7% after the 1992 US-EU agreement on trade in civil aircraft that limits subsidies. This price hike is consistent with a 5% increase in firms' marginal costs after the subsidy cuts. We also simulate the impact of the future entry of the Airbus A-380 super-jumbo aircraft on the demand for other wide-bodied aircraft, notably the Boeing 747. We find that the A-380 could reduce the market share of the 747 by up to 14.8 percentage points in the long-range wide-body market segment (depending upon the discounts offered on the A-380), but would reduce the market for Airbus's existing wide-bodies by an even greater margin.     

Contingent Valuation Versus Choice Experiments: Estimating the Benefits of Environmentally Sensitive Areas in Scotland

This paper reports results from a study of the economic value of the conservation benefits of Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESAs) in Scotland. The main novelty of the approach taken is in comparing two direct valuation methods, namely contingent valuation and choice experiments, to value these benefits. The Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) is well-established as a technique for valuing the sorts of landscape and wildlife enhancements associated with ESAs. The CVM experiment reported here uses a dichotomous choice format, and includes a new correction for part-whole bias. Choice experiments are much less used as an environmental valuation technique. We note several advantages of such experiments over CVM, and then report characteristic values and ‘programme values’ estimated using the method. This application brings to light some problems in applying the choice experiment method. Finally, we discuss the issue of benefits transfer in the context of these two approaches to valuation.     

Inflation Forecast Targeting: An Alternative Approach to Estimating the Inflation‐Output Variability Tradeoff

We suggest a new way of computing the inflation‐output variability tradeoff under inflation forecast targeting. Our approach is based on dynamic, stochastic simulations of the average inflation rate over a two‐year horizon using the moving average representation of a vector autoregressive (VAR) model. Using real‐time data over two samples, we estimate the inflation‐output variability tradeoff for the United States and show that it has shifted favorably over time. We analyze the policy interventions required to achieve target inflation in each sample and compare these interventions over time.     

鬼国京都 步步惊心

提起＂鬼城＂,无人不晓,这几乎成为烙刻在每一个中国人心目中的特定文化符号,而西方人则称这里是＂东方神曲之乡＂。这就是蜚声中外的丰都,自古以来的旅游名城。丰都原称酆都,周属巴国,曾建＂巴子别都＂,东汉和帝永元二年建县。     

陈志超的旅行 得失寸心知

<正>陈志超,超哥。朋友介绍时,只说他走过很多地方,他的旅行与很多人不一样,可以聊聊,至于更多的细节就需要我们在沟通中寻找了。采访地点约在宽窄巷子里的一个书局内。我到的时候陈志超已经在书局后院里候着了。我们坐在院里的藤蔓架下,简单的寒暄后,就聊开了。陈志超给了我一张大名片,装帧精美,是本诗歌、书法、国画、园林合集。前半部分是书法,中     

Heading for the Hills? Effects of Community Flood Management on Local Adaptation to Flood Risks

The Community Rating System (CRS) program was implemented by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1990 as an optional program to encourage communities to voluntarily engage in flood mitigation initiatives. This article uses national census tract‐level data from 1980 to 2010 to estimate whether CRS participation and flood risk affect a community's local patterns of population change. We employ an instrumental‐variables strategy to address the potential endogeneity of CRS participation, based on community‐scale demographic factors that predict when a tract's host community joins the CRS. The results find significant effects of the CRS program and flood risk on population change. Taken together, the findings point to greater propensity for community‐scale flood management in areas with more newcomers and programs such as CRS stabilizing population, though not especially in flood‐prone areas. We observe the CRS neither displacing population toward lower‐risk areas nor attracting more people to flood‐prone areas.     

Auditing Goodwill in the Post‐Amortization Era: Challenges for Auditors

The elimination of goodwill amortization in 2001 brought about significant change in how companies are required to account for goodwill. This change in accounting also brought with it new challenges for auditors, namely evaluating the reasonableness of management's assumptions related to goodwill valuation. In addition to introducing technical challenges, this task is particularly difficult given the misalignment in incentives it creates between managers who likely prefer to avoid recording an impairment and auditors who seek to minimize the bias in management's impairment testing. This study focuses on the consequences of the misaligned incentives that auditors face under the current goodwill assessment process. We find that the decision to record a goodwill impairment is associated with an increase in the probability of auditor dismissal. Consistent with the presence of significant friction with clients, our results also indicate that the likelihood of auditor dismissals is negatively related to the favorability of the impairment decision. Furthermore, we find that companies impairing goodwill prior to dismissing auditors subsequently employ auditors that are, on average, more favorable to clients in their impairment decisions.     

姥姥的西瓜酱

孔子说食不厌精,还说不得其酱不食,看来圣人的嘴头也够挑,不同的食物要搭配不同的酱才下箸。其实在古代酱与菜肴的结伴出席是周礼的一部分,规矩极多,官宴或祭祀的场合都是先上酱,继而搭配进食的菜肴,如此一道一道间杂呈上,赴宴的贵族通过看酱预知下道菜的名目,方使得不会失礼。到后来以至今日,礼崩乐坏的年代,自然是不讲究这些了,不过各乡制酱的风俗却源远流长下来。东北大酱,老北京甜面酱,郫县豆瓣酱,福建沙茶酱,苏州虾子酱,广东梅子酱,菌菇酱,牛肉酱,豉酱,阿香婆辣酱,西洋番茄酱......数起来恐怕是很难一气讲完的,我乡有一种西瓜酱,不知是否独美,至少我不曾在别处见过。     

Structural constraints on organizational change: A longitudinal analysis

The results of a longitudinal study assessing the impact of internal constraints upon both organizational responsiveness to the environment and efforts to change structures for symbolic signaling of policy are presented. The causal model used is developed from a theoretical elaboration of Williamson, Thompson, and Meyer. The implications of the analysis for the signaling metaphor of organizational change are emphasized. The data indicate (i) that the varying resistance to change observed within core dimensions of organizational structure may be largely due to durable capital investments, (ii) that within capitalized dimensions of organizational structure, the resulting resistance to change leads to a longitudinal persistence of centralized decision making, and (iii) that failure to incorporate such constraints in analyses of organizational change leads to misleading results.