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The case of labour time reduction without wage compensation: More or less employment?

Summary In this paper a model of a closed economy, including a market sector and a public sector, is presented to analyse the consequences of a reduction of labour time with and without wage compensation. It turns out that a policy of labour time reduction without wage compensation is a very strong instrument to improve production and employment, if the economy is characterized by the Keynesiandemand model. But if the economy is characterized by the neoclassicalsupply model, a relatively large drop in wages is necessary to prevent a policy of labour time reduction from causing a process of stagflation.     

The impact of the current economic crisis on the geography of air traffic volumes: an empirical analysis

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of air services dynamics during the recent economic crisis. Through a regression analysis, we show that at the country scale, the change in the supply of seats is highly dependent on economic growth, confirming the cyclical nature of the air sector. Hence the crisis of air services has much more affected the USA, Europe and Japan than the rest of the world. However, many countries deviate from this general trend. In a second step, using the existing literature, we explain some of these deviating figures. National specificities and airline strategies seem to influence the intensity of the crisis. We argue that the intensity of the crisis in the US is due to the structural oversupply of the air sector. Through other cases, especially the Middle East, we show that hubbing strategies might reduce the impact of the crisis, or at least make it less dependent upon local economic dynamics. In contrast with other authors, we found no positive impact of the share of low-cost carriers on the supply during the crisis, despite their success in some specific contexts like between Europe and Morocco.     

Strategic Similarity and Emergent Conventions: Evidence from Similar Stag Hunt Games

This paper reports evidence on the origin of convention in laboratory cohorts confronting similar but not identical strategic situations repeatedly. The experiment preserves the action space of the game, while randomly perturbing the payoffs and scrambling the action labels in an effort to blunt the salience of retrospective selection principles. Hence, the similarity between stage games is reduced to certain strategic details, like efficiency, security, and risk dominance. Nevertheless, we do observe conventions emerging in half of the laboratory cohorts. When a convention emerges subjects's behavior conforms to the selection principles of efficiency rather than security or risk dominance. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, C78, C92, D83.     

Argumentation-Based Qualitative Preference Modelling with Incomplete and Uncertain Information

This paper presents an argumentation-based framework for the modelling of, and automated reasoning about multi-attribute preferences of a qualitative nature. The framework presents preferences according to the lexicographic ordering that is well-understood by humans. Preferences are derived in part from knowledge. Knowledge, however, may be incomplete or uncertain. The main contribution of the paper is that it shows how to reason about preferences when only incomplete or uncertain information is available. We propose a strategy that allows reasoning with incomplete information and discuss a number of strategies to handle uncertain information. It is shown how to extend the basic framework for modelling preferences to incorporate these strategies.     

Closed-form valuation of American call options on stocks paying multiple dividends

An American call option on a stock paying a single known dividend can be valued using the Roll–Geske–Whaley formula. This paper extends the Roll–Geske–Whaley model to the n dividends case by using the generalized n-fold compound option model. In this way this paper offers a closed-form solution for American options on stocks paying n known discrete dividends. Moreover, the model also offers the critical values of the early exercise boundaries at each ex-dividend date instant, making it easy to define an early exercise strategy. Numerical examples are included to illustrate this approach.