Technical Progress and Product Reliability under Competition and Monopoly

Technical progress lowers costs and prices but appears to have an ambiguous effect on product reliability. This paper presents a simple model which explains this observation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Banknotes And Economic Growth

Modern paper currency contributes little to productive investment. This shortcoming is not inherent to paper money. It stems from the fact that currency today is monopolistically supplied by public monetary authorities that are poor intermediaries. Commercial banknotes may, in contrast, support efficient intermediation, just as private bank deposits do. We demonstrate this advantage in an endogenous growth model, and use the model to simulate, for a sample of developing countries, steady‐state growth‐rate gains from various degrees of banknote deregulation. The simulated gains are generally large compared with those from conventional forms of financial liberalization.     

The global LeChatelier Principle and multimarket equilibria

LeChatelier (Comptes Rendus 99:786, 1884) and LeChatelier (Ann Mines 13(2):157, 1888) proposed that the adjustment of a physical system to a disturbance in its equilibrium was smaller as constraints are added to the adjustment process. Samuelson (Econometrica 28:368–379, 1960) showed that this Principle applied to a stable multimarket equilibrium for the case that all commodities are gross substitutes. We note that the Principle also applies to the stable equilibria of markets for which commodities can also be gross complements as formulated by Morishima (Osaka Econ Pap 1:101–113, 1952). Further, the Morishima and gross substitute cases are the only cases to which the Principle can apply, based only upon the stability hypothesis and a specification of the gross substitute/complement relations among commodities. We show that the Milgrom and Shannon (Econometrica 62:157–180, 1994) single crossing conditions specified for monotone comparative statics can be configured appropriate to the Morishima case to give global conditions for the LeChatelier Principle to apply to a multimarket equilibrium.     

Academic content,research productivity,and tenure

This study examines the influence of a Finance doctoral program’s academic content on the research productivity of the graduates at the time of the tenure decision. The results of this investigation show that a Finance program’s academic content has no influence on the total number of publications of program graduates, but finds a significant relationship between academic content and graduate’s records of publications in top finance journals by the time of the tenure evaluation. More precisely, doctoral programs requiring more mathematically oriented classes such as Continuous Time Finance and/or Stochastic Calculus produce graduates who have a better record of publication in top finance journals at the time of tenure than those graduating from programs without these requirements.     

THE BENEFITS AND COSTS OF MONETARY UNION IN SOUTHERN AFRICA: A CRITICAL SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE

Abstract.  With the 14 members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) having set the objective of adopting a common currency for the year 2018, an expanding empirical literature has emerged evaluating the benefits and costs of a common-currency area in Southern Africa. This paper reviews that literature, focusing on two categories of studies: (1) those that assume that a country's characteristics are invariant to the adoption of a common currency and (2) those that assume that a monetary union alters an economy's structure, resulting in trade creation and credibility gains. The literature reviewed suggests that a relatively small group of countries, typically including South Africa, satisfies the criteria necessary for monetary unification. The literature also suggests that, in a monetary union comprising all SADC countries and a regional central bank that sets monetary policy to reflect the average economic conditions (e.g. fiscal balances) in the region, the potential losses (i.e. higher inflation) from giving up an existing credible national central bank, a relevant consideration for South Africa, could outweigh any potential benefits of trade creation resulting from a common currency.     

MULTIVARIATE METHODS FOR MONITORING STRUCTURAL CHANGE

Detection of structural change is a critical empirical activity, but continuous ‘monitoring’ for changes in real time raises well‐known econometric issues that have been explored in a single series context. If multiple series co‐break then it is possible that simultaneous examination of a set of series helps identify changes with higher probability or more rapidly than when series are examined on a case‐by‐case basis. Some asymptotic theory is developed for maximum and average CUSUM detection tests. Monte Carlo experiments suggest that these both provide an improvement in detection relative to a univariate detector over a wide range of experimental parameters, given a sufficiently large number of co‐breaking series. This is robust to a cross‐sectional correlation in the errors (a factor structure) and heterogeneity in the break dates. We apply the test to a panel of UK price indices. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Two‐Stage Double Bootstrap DEA: The Case of the Top 25 European Football Clubs' Efficiency Levels

This paper analyzes how European football clubs' current value and debt levels influence their performance. The Simar and Wilson (J Econometrics, 136: 31–64, 2007) procedure is used to bootstrap the data envelopment analysis scores in order to establish the effect of football clubs' current value and debt levels on their obtained efficiency scores. The results reveal that football clubs' current value levels have a negative influence on their performances, indicating that football clubs' high value does not ensure higher performance. At the same time, the empirical evidence suggests that football clubs' debt levels do not influence their efficiency levels. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Networks and linkages among firms and organizations in the Ottawa-region technology cluster

This paper reports on a study of the networking and linkage practices of technology and non-technology firms within the Ottawa cluster. The work seeks to understand how and why particular patterns of networks and linkages evolve and it examines empirically the usage and value of networks and linkages. Previous work argues that technology firms need to be relatively more adept at developing external relationships in order to be successful than do non-technology based companies. This work, however, finds that technology firms exhibit fewer linkages than non-technology based companies do within the Ottawa cluster. The research suggests that the vitality of the Ottawa cluster could be further enhanced through the promotion of additional networking and linkages among regional firms. A key implication for management practice is that CEOs of technology-based firms should work towards establishing and maintaining additional valued relationships.     

Performance Contracting In Practice: Experience and lessons from the water sector in Ghana

This article provides some insights into how performance contracting works in practice in a developing country context, using the case of the Ghana Water and Sewerage Corporation (GWSC). Performance contracting has been a useful instrument for restructuring the state-owned enterprises (SOE) sector in Ghana, and the GWSC has made some moderate improvements since its introduction. However, the article highlights some of the institutional constraints and capacity issues that reformers will have to pay attention to, including overstretched capacity of the monitoring agency, a weak information management system and inconsistent compliance to contract by government. The findings also highlight the difficulty of separating politics from operational/management issues, especially in politically sensitive public services, yet performance contracting relies on such separation to be effective. Also it shows how informal behaviour undermines the formality of performance contracting.