Opportunistic tendencies in IJVS with the Japanese: The effects of culture,shared decision making,and relationship age

This study investigated how partners' self-reported opportunism and shared decision making varied by culture in international joint ventures (IJVs) with the Japanese. Data were gathered by a mail survey of senior officials in IJVs located in 11 host countries. Significant differences were found between partners from Western cultures and the Japanese, but not between other Asians and the Japanese. Indirect effects suggest that shared decision making neutralizes cultural tendencies toward opportunism. Results indicated that opportunistic tendencies did not diminish as the IJV relationship aged, and that shared decision making did diminish as the relationship aged.     

Evolutionary Stability in the Investment-Opportunism-Retaliation Game

Can economically efficient outcomes be obtained and sustained in the absence of externally enforced property rights? We study the evolutionary properties of a game that exhibits two well-defined Nash equilibria: one generates an inefficient outcome while the other set generates an efficient outcome supported by the potential for retaliation. Although standard forward-looking refinements eliminate the efficient equilibrium, neither equilibrium type satisfies strict evolutionary stability criteria. However, both types of equilibrium define strategies that are neutrally stable, which makes them vulnerable to drift in dynamic environments. We conduct computer simulation experiments in which players learn adaptively via a tournament selection mechanism called sophisticated experimentation. Our simulations demonstrate that while the system spends a disproportionately high proportion of time in the inefficient equilibrium set, the efficient equilibrium is pervasive as the system drifts back and forth between the equilibrium sets, never settling on one or the other.     

Application of replacement theory in dairy cows and its use in disease treatment

A model to simulate the costs and returns of an individual dairy cow over 14 years under various assumptions of genetic potential, health status and management was developed especially to evaluate the effects of diseases that reduce production and reproduction efficiency and to evaluate alternative management interventions. Data were collected from the Food Animal Health Resource Management System (FAHRMX), Today's Electronic Planning (TELPLAN), Today's Electric Farm Accounting (TELFARM) databases and secondary sources at Michigan State University. A case study of cystic ovaries was analysed using the model. The results showed that it is more economical to treat cystic ovaries than not to treat, and treatment with Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone (GNRH) was superior to Human Chrionic Gonadotropin (HCG). Four to five lactations were the optimum for keeping a dairy cow to replacement and it was estimated that there is a loss of US$0.45 per day of extended calving interval (days open beyond the optimal 70 days).     

The welfare effects of disclosure under cognitive dissonance

Atlantic Economic Journal -     

Asymptotically optimal estimation of smooth functionals for interval censoring, part 1

Estimation in the interval censoring model is considered. A class of smooth functionals is introduced, of which the mean is an example. The asymptotic information lower bound for such functionals can be represented as an inner product of two functions. In case 1, i.e. one observation time per unobservable event time, both functions can be given explicitly. We mainly consider case 2, with two observation times for each unobservable event time, in the situation that the observation times can not become arbitrarily close to each other. For case 2, one of the functions in the inner product can only be given implicitly as solution to a Fredholm integral equation. We study properties of this solution and, in a sequel to this paper, prove that the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator of the functional asymptotically reaches the information lower bound.     

Measuring Integrated Market and Credit Risk in Bank Portfolios: An Application to a Set of Hypothetical Banks Operating in South Africa

The banking crises of the ‘90s emphasize the need to model the connections between financial environment volatility and the potential losses faced by financial institutions resulting from correlated market and credit risks. Due to the number of variables that must be modeled and the complexity of the relationships an analytical solution is not feasible. We present here a numerical solution based on a simulation model that explicitly links changes in the relevant variables that characterize the financial environment and the distribution of possible future bank capital ratios. This forward looking quantitative risk assessment methodology allows banks and regulators to identify potential risks before they materialize and make appropriate adjustments to bank portfolio credit qualities, sector and region concentrations, and capital ratios on a bank by bank basis. It also has the potential to be extended so as to assess the risks of correlated failures among a group of financial institutions (i.e., systemic risk analyses). This model was applied by the authors to the study of the risk profile of the largest South African Banks in the context of the Financial System Stability Assessment program undertaken by the IMF in 1999. In the current study, we apply the model to various hypothetical banks operating in the South African financial environment and assess the correlated market and credit risks associated with business lending, mortgage lending, asset and liability maturity matches, foreign lending and borrowing, and direct equity, real estate, and gold investments. It is shown to produce simulated financial environments (interest rates, exchange rates, equity indices, real estate price indices, commodity prices, and economic indicators) that match closely the assumed parameters, and generate reasonable credit transition probabilities and security prices. As expected, the credit quality and diversification characteristics of the loan portfolio, asset and liability maturity mismatches, and financial environment volatility, are shown to interact to determine bank risk levels. We find that the credit quality of a bank's loan portfolio is the most important risk factor. We also show the risk reduction benefits of diversifying the loan portfolio across various sectors and regions of the economy and the importance of accounting for volatility shocks that occur periodically in emerging economies. Banks with high credit risk and concentrated portfolios are shown to have a high risk of failure during periods of financial stress. Alternatively, banks with lower credit risk and broadly diversified loan portfolios across business and mortgage lending are unlikely to fail even during very volatile periods. Asset and liability maturity mismatches generally increase bank risk levels. However, because credit losses are positively correlated with interest rate increases, banks with high credit risk may reduce overall risk levels by holding liabilities with longer maturities than their assets. Risk assessment methodologies which measure market and credit risk separately do not capture these various interactions and thus misestimate overall risk levels.     

Wavelet Analysis of the Bombay Stock Exchange Index

The fluctuations in the rate of returns of the Bombay stock exchange are analyzed through wavelet transform. The fluctuations, in various time scales, naturally separated by the wavelets, are subjected to statistical analysis. The localization and multiresolution properties of the wavelets enable one to identify collective behaviour in the stock market and the extent of their influence at various time scales. The Gaussian nature of the rate of returns at certain scales and the periodic nature of the same, at other scales, are clearly brought out by this analysis. The utility of this approach for modeling purpose is also elucidated.