投资圈的“红色行动”

在被戏称为“兄弟会”的华尔街,女性投资决策人的数量屈指可数,但情况正在不懈的努力下一点一点发生变化。     

Industrial reform in Jamaica in the 1980s: an export promotion strategy

Jamaica has shifted gradually from an import substitution strategy of industrialization in the 1960s and early 1970s to a much more export-orientated approach. Policy in the 1980s has been based around changes to the real exchange rate, foreign trade liberalization, fiscal incentives to new investment, particularly foreign investment, and selective support through various subsidies. Performance has been mixed, however, with only the garment sub-sector of manufacturing achieving significant export growth. Furthermore, the heavy involvement of transnational firms in the new industrial investment raises questions about the long-run viability of the form of export promotion currently being pursued     

Do Price Discreteness and Transactions Costs Affect Stock Returns? Comparing Ex‐Dividend Pricing before and after Decimalization

By the end of January 2001, all NYSE stocks had converted their price quotations from 1/8s and 1/16s to decimals. This study examines the effect of this change in price quotations on ex‐dividend day activity. We find that abnormal ex‐dividend day returns increase in the 1/16 and decimal pricing eras, relative to the 1/8 era, which is inconsistent with microstructure explanations of ex‐day price movements. We also find that abnormal returns increase in conjunction with a May 1997 reduction in the capital gains tax rate, as they should if relative taxation of dividends and capital gains affects ex‐day pricing.     

Is globalisation undermining the welfare state?

This paper analyses the evolution of the welfare states in themajority of OECD countries during the pre-globalisation (1946–80)and globalisation (1980–2000) periods. Our purpose isto find out whether globalisation has produced a convergencetowards a smaller welfare state, funded increasingly by non-mobilefactors such as labour, property and consumption rather thanby mobile factors such as capital. The data presented here challengethe claims about such a convergence, showing that social publicexpenditures and public employment have continued to expandduring the globalisation period in most OECD countries. We alsoshow that the welfare states remain rooted in the politicaltraditions that have governed them.     

On Setting Prices and Testing Cross-Subsidy with Accounting Data

Regulators are often faced with the challenge of both setting efficient prices and avoiding cross subsidy. Successful implementation of these goals requires estimates of both marginal costs and incremental costs. We present a methodology for estimating both marginal and incremental costs for postal products. The proposed algorithms combine micro-unit accounting data and econometric estimation of the cost structure. We apply the methodology to the U.S. Postal Service and produce estimates of marginal and incremental costs for eighteen postal products and incremental costs for another four groups of products.     

EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE ON ENGLISH AUCTIONS: ORAL OUTCRY VERSUS CLOCK

This paper tests experimentally, in a common value setting, the equivalence between the Japanese English auction (or clock auction) and an oral outcry auction where bidders are allowed to call their own bids. We find that (i) bidding behaviour is different in each type of auction, but also that (ii) this difference in bidding behaviour does not affect significantly the auction prices. This lends some support to the equivalence between these two types of auction. The winner's curse is present: overbidding led to higher than expected prices (under Nash bidding strategies) in both types of auction. Although interesting and encouraging, the results clearly indicate that further research is necessary, particularly with a modified experimental design.     

Conditional Dependence in Precious Metal Prices

This study investigates the time-series properties of gold and silver spot prices. Both precious metal price series are found to exhibit time dependence and pronounced generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (GARCH) effects. Splitting the data into similar economic subperiods provides superior explanation of these effects because of the observed long-run nonconstancy of the unconditional variance. Further, the power exponential distribution, as opposed to the Student-t, is found to portray accurately the thick-tailed conditional variance that remains after the GARCH effects are removed. These findings imply that constant variance pricing models are inappropriate for securities that are based on precious metal prices.     

The relationship between athletic participation and academic performance: evidence from NCAA Division III

This paper examines athletes' grades and graduation rates at an NCAA Division III institution. Thirty-seven per cent of all college athletes compete in Division III, yet this group has received little attention in the literature. Nontransfer student-athletes have higher GPAs than nonathletes, while transfer student-athletes have grades similar to nonathletes. Graduation rates are higher for athletes. Thus, athletic participation does not impair students' academic performance.