Cross-Hedging: Basis Risk and Choice of the Optimal Hedging Vehicle

The basis between a futures contract and its underlying instrument is an important measure of the cost of using the futures contract to hedge. In a cross-hedge, the relative size of the basis of alternative hedging vehicles often plays a decisive role in the selection of the optimal hedging vehicle. After adjusting hedge ratios for basis risk, a genuine risk-cost trade-off is seen in hedging 90-day certificates of deposit with either the Treasury bill contract or the Eurodollar contract. The Eurodollar contract was not uniformly superior as generally believed.     

How Distance, Language, and Culture Influence Stockholdings and Trades

This paper documents that investors are more likely to hold, buy, and sell the stocks of Finnish firms that are located close to the investor, that communicate in the investor's native tongue, and that have chief executives of the same cultural background. The influence of distance, language, and culture is less prominent among the most investment-savvy institutions than among both households and less savvy institutions. Regression analysis indicates that the marginal effect of distance is less for firms that are more nationally known, for distances that exceed 100 kilometers, and for investors with more diversified portfolios.     

Factors Affecting Self-Employment among Indian and Black Caribbean Men in Britain

The central issue addressed in this paper is encapsulated in the fact that many Indians, but relatively few black Caribbeans, are self-employed in Britain. This paper suggests two factors: first, black Caribbeans were "ethnically disinclined" to enter business; second, they did not posses the attributes that were positively related to entering business. Using data from the 1991 Census, this paper pinpoints how much of the observed paucity of self-employed black males in Britain was use to ethnic disinclination and how much was due to attribute disadvantage. More generally, it points to the importance of harnessing attitudes to attributes for generating a high rate rate of entry into self-employment. In this context, the acquisition of "social" attributes that relate to family formation, and the welding of the family into a cohesive economic unit, are at least as important as those attributes, like education, which relate purely to the individual.     

Science and politics: The 1981 and 1984 LIHEAP distribution formulas

The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) is a federal block grant program to help low-income households pay their heating and cooling bills. If the regular fiscal year LIHEAP appropriation is less than or equal to $1.975 billion, then a 1981 formula is applied to distribute funding across states, while if appropriations rise above the $1.975 billion threshold, a 1984 formula is applied in conjunction with two hold-harmless provisions. In 18 of the past 20 years, the 1981 formula has served as the default mechanism to distribute LIHEAP funding. The purpose of this paper is to call attention to the inadequacy of the 1981 formula and to explain why the objectives of LIHEAP are not met when this formula is used. We explain why the distribution of LIHEAP funds is not proportionate to the need for assistance and offer some suggestions for improvement. The 1981 formula is shown to be the outcome of a convoluted political process heavily biased in favor of cold-climate states, with cold-climate states receiving on-the-order of at least $150 million a year in allotment dollars beyond their “fair share” of heating requirements. The 1981 and 1984 distribution formulas are derived and a critical examination of each formula is presented. The 1984 formula is shown to be an ideal mechanism to distribute LIHEAP funds, based on a scientific and rational understanding of low-income energy needs, but legislative constraints prevent its application.     

Consumer Choice and the Popular Music Industry: A Test of the Superstar Theory

The superstar model predicts skewness of market outcomes and returns to artist quality. We test and confirm these predictions using a unique data set on popular music.     

Consumer Behavior, Public Policy, and Country-of-Origin Labeling

Recent work by agricultural economists has failed to adequately identify why consumers desire country-of-origin labeling, a key piece of information needed to determine whether a market-failure exists. This paper brings to the attention of agricultural economists a sizable body of literature on country-of-origin effects from the marketing and business disciplines. Based on this literature, we draw a distinction between several consumer motivations for origin labels and we identify which of these is cause for public policy. We propose several research questions that require answers if the consequences of country-of-origin labeling policy are to be fully understood.     

A myopic adjustment process leading to best-reply matching

We analyze a myopic strategy adjustment process in strategic-form games. It is shown that the steady states of the continuous time limit, which is constructed assuming frequent play and slow adjustment of strategies, are exactly the best-reply matching equilibria, as discussed by Droste, Kosfeld, and Voorneveld (2000. Mimeo, Tilburg University). In a best-reply matching equilibrium every player ‘matches’ the probability of playing a pure strategy to the probability that this pure strategy is a best reply to the pure-strategy profile played by his opponents. We derive stability results for the steady states of the continuous time limit in 2×2 bimatrix games and coordination games. Analyzing the asymptotic behavior of the stochastic adjustment process in discrete time shows convergence to minimal curb sets of the game. Moreover, absorbing states of the process correspond to best-reply matching equilibria of the game.     

Income Mobility, Inequality and Social Welfare

It is often argued that an observation of rising annual income inequality need not have negative normative implications. The argument is that if there has been a sufficiently large simultaneous increase in mobility, the inequality of income measured over a longer time period can be lower despite the rise in annual inequality. In this paper, it is shown by example that if normative implications are drawn from a standard social welfare function, the set of circumstances put forward in the above argument are not sufficient to guarantee that social welfare will improve. The reason is that even though rising mobility does reduce longer term inequality, it also increases the variability of income profiles over time and the latter has a detrimental social welfare effect. Hence, there are two types of mobility: one which reduces inequality (regression to the mean), but another that increases inequality (relative movements uncorrelated with incomes). Further, if individuals' aversion to income variabiltiy is sufficiently larger than the social welfare judge's aversion to inequality, then an increase in mobility, no matter how large, cannot offset the negative normative effect of rising annual inequality.     

Non-expected utility and the robustness of the classical insurance paradigm

This paper uses the tools and techniques of generalized expected utility analysis to explore the robustness of some of the classical basic results in insurance theory to departures from the expected utility hypothesis on agents' risk preferences. The areas explored consist of individual demand for coinsurance and deductible insurance, the structure of Pareto-efficient bilateral insurance contracts, the structure of Pareto-efficient multilateral risk-sharing agreements, and self-insurance and self-protection. Most, though not all, of the basic results in this area are found to be quite robust to dropping the expected utility hypothesis.