The spatial effects of trade openness: a survey

This paper surveys the literature on the implications of trade liberalisation for intra-national economic geographies. Three results stand out. First, neither urban systems models nor new economic geography models imply a robust prediction for the impact of trade openness on spatial concentration. Whether trade promotes concentration or dispersion depends on subtle modelling choices among which it is impossible to adjudicate a priori. Second, empirical evidence mirrors the theoretical indeterminacy: a majority of cross-country studies find no significant effect of openness on urban concentration or regional inequality. Third, the available models predict that, other things equal, regions with inherently less costly access to foreign markets, such as border or port regions, stand to reap the largest gains from trade liberalisation. This prediction is confirmed by the available evidence. Whether trade liberalisation raises or lowers regional inequality therefore depends on each country’s specific geography.     

Ein Modell für existenzsichernde Beschäftigung

Die hohe Langzeit-Arbeitslosigkeit ist nach wie vor ein schwerwiegendes wirtschaftspolitisches Problem. Die aktuellen Regelungen an der Schnittstelle zwischen Transferund Arbeitseinkommen haben bisher nur unzureichend zu seiner L?sung beigetragen. Die verschiedenen diskutierten Kombilohnmodelle sind dagegen oft nicht praxistauglich. Die Autoren stellen hier das Modell für eine existenzsichernde Besch?ftigung des Bundesministeriums für Arbeit und Technologie vor. Dr. Walther Otremba, 55, ist Staatssekret?r im Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie; Dr. Daniela B?nstrup, 34, ist dort Referentin im Referat für Arbeitsmarktpolitik.     

IPO underpricing,signaling, and property returns

This paper investigates whether IPO signals reveal proprietary information about the prospects of an issuing firm’s underlying industry. By analyzing a sample of European property company (EPC) IPOs from 1997 to 2007, we take advantage of a heterogeneous set of industry performance measures, i.e., yields and total returns of direct property investments in various European property markets that can be clearly assigned to each individual IPO. The results reveal that the main signal of interest, underpricing, is in fact positively related to average property yields for a 12-month post-IPO period; a result that supports our assumption. Other signals, as proposed in previous research, do not appear to contain any information about the prospects of the IPO firm’s target property investment market. We also show that total returns seem to be a biased measure for direct property performance. Further tests for the signaling model’s preconditioned presence of information asymmetry among EPCs reveal that underpricing levels are a function of company-specific ex ante uncertainty proxies. In contrast, property-specific ex ante uncertainty proxies do not explain underpricing levels.     

On the equivalence of location choice models: Conditional logit, nested logit and Poisson

It is well understood that the two most popular empirical models of location choice - conditional logit and Poisson - return identical coefficient estimates when the regressors are not individual specific. We show that these two models differ starkly in terms of their implied predictions. The conditional logit model represents a zero-sum world, in which one region’s gain is the other regions’ loss. In contrast, the Poisson model implies a positive-sum economy, in which one region’s gain is no other region’s loss. We also show that all intermediate cases can be represented as a nested logit model with a single outside option. The nested logit turns out to be a linear combination of the conditional logit and Poisson models. Conditional logit and Poisson elasticities mark the polar cases and can therefore serve as boundary values in applied research.     

Blog,collaboration and e-commerce theoretical and applicative research project

This theme continues and completes another interdisciplinary project launched one year ago, and its aim is to realize one or several models about e-business in Romania. As a consequence, we can speak now about an extended project. The elaborated material will be useful for a large number of companies doing business in Romanian online environment. The team wants to elaborate solutions for e-businesses, as well as to create a complex and utile work, a starting point for companies wishing to exist in web lifestyle within a global economy. It will be elaborated a manual of blog and electronic commerce, both with theoretical and applicative aspects. This project will consolidate a research nucleus in blogs, collaboration and electronic businesses at the Business Administration Department, Babes-Bolyai University. The results of this extended project will have impact on several plans on the scientific community.