Production Efficiency and Discriminatory Hiring Practices in the National Hockey League: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

This paper studies the production process in the National Hockey League (NHL) and attempts to identify the sources of production inefficiency, including potential inefficiencies associated with preferences for, or against French-Canadians. Employing the method of stochastic frontier estimation, it is shown that production inefficiencies are prevalent in the NHL and can, in part, be traced to differences in coaching ability, team ownership, local sports competition, and management experience. In addition, it is found that teams with unusually high (or low) numbers of French-Canadian players tended to be less efficient, implying that discriminating hiring practices are costly.Jel Classifications: D21, J71, L83     

Teacher’s Interpretation of Sustainable Development

This paper describes an exploratory research project conducted with forty-five technological studies teachers in Ontario concerning their understanding and perceptions of the concept of sustainable development. The results indicate that pre-service teacher education programs need to spend more.     

Inflation and Default Dynamics

Changes in inflation, particularly if they are sharp, can have important consequences for nominal contracts, especially debt instruments such as fixed-rate bonds. This paper examines the intricate dynamics of inflation and defaults. The experience of the United States during the past four decades is subjected to empirical analysis to examine how the nature of the relationship changed as we shifted from a high inflation to a low inflation regime. The paper is organized as a three-part study. We initially examine the U.S. default experience, as summarized in Moody's speculative grade default rate, along with industry differences. The paper then scrutinizes U.S. inflation dynamics as seen in different summary measures of the general price level and delves into pricing power issues. The study proceeds to examine co-movements in the inflation and default series from a theoretical and empirical standpoint and the results confirm the intuitive postulate: higher the inflation rate, the more pricing power companies have; greater pricing power leads to, better earnings and repayment abilities for firms and a lower incidence of defaults.     

Indeterminacy of intertemporal equilibria under imperfect competition

Summary. It is known that overlapping generations models with imperfectly competitive firms may exhibit a continuum of stationary equilibria. The reason of this indeterminacy is that different price expectation functions of consumers lead to different objective demand functions against which firms maximize. All these expectation functions fulfill perfect foresight in the equilibrium, but they can be arbitrary off the equilibrium. In this paper it is shown that it is not this arbitrariness which is responsible for the indeterminacy, but that the continuum of stationary equilibria emerges even if expectation functions are rational. Received: March 25, 1999; revised version: February 16, 2000     

Networks,Internationalization & Policy

This is the introduction to this special issue of Small Business Economics, dedicated to networks, opportunity, internationalization and policy. As the drivers of globalization are removing barriers, which traditionally segmented the competitive environments of small and large firms, firms of all sizes are joining international networks. Former competitors are now working together and this symbiosis is enhancing competitiveness. Consequently, networking is giving rise to unprecedented opportunities, facilitating internationalization. Simultaneously, new realities are creating the need for new policies.     

Human capital externalities with monopsonistic competition

This paper provides a novel microeconomic foundation for pecuniary human capital externalities in a labor market model of monopsonistic competition. Multiple equilibria arise because of a strategic complementarity in investment decisions.     

Zur Rehabilitierung des Wieserschen Grenzgesetzes

Ohne ZusammenfassungDie nachstehenden Ausführungen sind den einleitenden Kapiteln meines in Kürze im Springer-Verlag, Wien, erscheinenden Buches Das Gesetz des Grenznutzens — Untersuchung über die Wirtschaftsrechnung des Konsumenten entnommen.