REVERSE REGRESSIONS AND LONG‐HORIZON FORECASTING

Long‐horizon predictive regressions in finance pose formidable econometric problems when estimated using available sample sizes. Hodrick in 1992 proposed a remedy that is based on running a reverse regression of short‐horizon returns on the long‐run mean of the predictor. Unfortunately, this only allows the null of no predictability to be tested, and assumes stationary regressors. In this paper, we revisit long‐horizon forecasting from reverse regressions, and argue that reverse regression methods avoid serious size distortions in long‐horizon predictive regressions, even when there is some predictability and/or near unit roots. Meanwhile, the reverse regression methodology has the practical advantage of being easily applicable when there are many predictors. We apply these methods to forecasting excess bond returns using the term structure of forward rates, and find that there is indeed some return forecastability. However, confidence intervals for the coefficients of the predictive regressions are about twice as wide as those obtained with the conventional approach to inference. We also include an application to forecasting excess stock returns. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Beyond survival: the implementation of new forms of work organization in the UK and German steel industries

This paper outlines and analyses the major changes in work-force organization that have been introduced by British and German steel producers in the past decade, against a backcloth of retrenchment in the industry, new product development and technological change. Including multiskilling, a reduction in demarcation and team–working, these changes have had a major effect upon the composition of the work–force and the nature of work undertaken at the shopfloor level.

While these changes have had a common broad trajectory, they have been introduced at a different pace and in different forms. The contrasts are provided not only at the international level, but between plants in the same countries. The paper further outlines the response of trade unions to these changes and the implications for industrial relations at the shopfloor level.     

Public Service Leaders as ‘Change Agents’ – for Whom?

Abstract

This article examines how far senior staff in English educational and health service organizations view themselves as leaders who are ‘change agents’ for government-driven reform and independent change agendas. The contribution of external leadership development provision to shaping these self-perceptions is explored. Special attention is paid to national leadership development bodies with different degrees of formal association with government. Whatever this relationship, such provision and other development support apparently reinforced a strong sense of personal agency (choice of action) associated with being a leader, empowering senior staff to adopt a modestly mediatory stance towards both reform and leadership development provision.     

Factor-Market Distortions, Dynamic Stability, and Paradoxical Comparative Statics

In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a strong revival of interest in the role of factor-market distortions in those branches of our subject which rely on the Lerner–Samuelson two-by-two model of production. Among the legacies from that period were several comparative statical propositions which seemed counterintuitive or paradoxical. However, the revival lost momentum when confronted with Neary's observation that the major paradoxes are associated with unstable equilibria and therefore rarely observed. On the other hand, there are now seen to be several errors in Neary's analysis. For example, in the important case of a closed economy (and, by interpretation, in the case of a large open economy) he overlooked the fact that paradoxes can be associated with stable equilibria.     

Using Market Structure to Regulate a Vertically Integrated Monopolist

A natural monopolist whose cost is private information produces a good which is combined with another good that can be produced by the monopolist or by other firms. The agency that regulates the monopolist can impose any of several different market structures in the industry: integrated monopoly, vertical separation with free entry downstream, or liberalization downstream (both integrated and independent production). When several firms produce downstream, a Cournot quantity-setting game with free entry determines the market price. We derive the optimal contracts to offer the monopolist under all three market structures and examine the influence of downstream cost differences on access prices.We then study the optimal regulatory policy where the regulator can condition the downstream market structure on the monopolist's cost report to the regulator. The optimal regulatory policy awards a monopoly to a low-cost upstream firm, but requires free entry downstream if the monopolist reports high upstream costs. Thus, the choice of market structure is an additional tool to limit rent extraction by the monopolist. Simulation analysis reveals the possibility of significant welfare gains from this additional regulatory tool.     

Optimal Two‐Part Pricing in a Carbon Offset Market: A Comparison of Organizational Types

This article examines the optimal two‐part pricing by an intermediary in a carbon offset market. In addition to creating a framework for analyzing carbon offset pricing, this article makes two contributions to the theoretical literature. First, we provide an in‐depth examination of the roles played by the upstream inframarginal supply and participation elasticities and the downstream demand elasticity in determining the optimal two‐part pricing strategy. Second, we compare the pricing decisions of three different organizational types: a for‐profit firm, a public agency, and a producer association. The producer association problem, which has received little attention in the literature, yields counterintuitive results because a producer association must simultaneously reduce output and distribute all profits back to its members.     

The Internationalization of the World Economy and its Implication for National Welfare

There is no generally accepted definition of internationalization or globalization. The present paper offers three alternative definitions, in terms of (i) an enlargement of the set of trading countries, (ii) an enlargement of the set of traded commodities, or (iii) the international sharing of technology. It is shown that if each country adopts a Paretian scheme of internal compensation then internationalization in each sense leaves at least one country better off, and that if international compensation is admitted then internationalization in each sense makes every country better off.     

Strategic Goals and Practices of Innovative Family Businesses

A profile of 231 Washington state family businesses is presented. This article focuses on the business strategies of these firms, analyzing the relationship between strategy, performance, and business practices. Firms categorized as Prospector firms reported more gains in their current market position than all other strategic types. These firms were more likely to value an effective management and employee team and to develop new quality products and services and career development plans for non-family employees. Implications for family businesses are discussed.     

The geography of output volatility

This paper examines the structural determinants of output volatility in developing countries, and especially the roles of geography and institutions. We investigate the volatility effects of market access, climate variability, the geographic predisposition to trade, and various measures of institutional quality. We find an especially important role for market access: remote countries are more likely to have undiversified exports and to experience greater volatility in output growth. Our results are based on Bayesian methods that allow us to address formally the problem of model uncertainty and to examine robustness across a wide range of specifications.     

The Effects of Market Network Heterogeneity on Innovation Diffusion: An Agent‐Based Modeling Approach

Innovations usually have an initial impact on very few people. The period of learning or early evaluation precedes the diffusion of the technology into the wider addressed population. More than a transfer, this is best characterized as communication of benefits, costs, and compatibility with earlier technologies and a relative assessment of the new state of the art. Innovation development by an organization or individual creates not just a device (i.e., process or tacit knowledge) but concomitantly a capacity on the part of other organizations or persons to use, adopt, replicate, enhance, or modify the technology, skills, or knowledge for their own purposes. How innovations actually diffuse is to understand the communication of progress, and this framing helps one to design innovations and also design the marketing and testing programs to ready innovations for market and launch them efficiently. Diffusion theory's main focus is on the flow of information within a social system, such as via mass media and word‐of‐mouth communications. This theory presents often in the form of mathematical models of innovation and imitation. Distinct from classical diffusion models, however, consumers are not all identical in how they connect to others within a market or how they respond to information. We examine the effects of various network structures and relational heterogeneity on innovation diffusion within market networks. Specifically, network topology (the structure of how individuals in the market are connected) and the strength of communication links between innovator and follower market segments (a form of relational heterogeneity) are studied. Several research questions concerning network heterogeneity are addressed with an agent‐based modeling approach. The present study's findings are based on simulation results that show important effects of network structure on the diffusion process. The ability to speed diffusion varies significantly according to within‐ and cross‐segment communications within a heterogeneous network structure. The implications of the present approach for new product diffusion are discussed, and future research directions are suggested that may add useful insights into the complex social networks inherent to diffusion. A simple summary is that discovery of significant prime communicator nodes in a network allows innovation development practices to be better calibrated to realistically multiple market segments.