Financing minority economic development

Conclusions A close analysis of the capital-asset pricing model’s assumptions and implications for efficient allocation of resources to investment in capital assets can form the basis for changes in the way capital markets are regulated by the federal government and in taxing policy of the government. In particular, our analysis indicates that the value of currently marketed assets can be increased by the inclusion in portfolios of currently nonmarketed assets.Moreover, the value of nonmarketed assets emerges as a significant instrumental variable for policy makers.The government can increase the value of all currently marketed assets by increasing positive changes in the value of nonmarketed assets.This might be accomplished by requiring by legislation or rule, for example, that a certain proportion of the listed securities on any exchange be comprised of the securities of black firms and other firms whose securities are not now marketed.The government might want, by tax incentive, to promote investment in firms with nonmarketed assets.It might want to increase the funding level of institutions such as MESBIC’S supplying equality finance to small black firms.     

Review of Categorical Models for Classification Issues in Accounting and Finance

Recent studies have extensively used the logit or probit models for classification problems in accounting and finance. More than 289 articles in prestigious journals have used these or similar methods from 1989 through 1996. This paper reviews several categorical techniques and compares the performance of logit or probit with alternative procedures. Intuitive and mathematical explanations of how the models examined differ in terms of underlying assumptions and other attributes are provided. The alternative techniques are applied to two substantive research questions: predicting bankruptcy and auditors' consistency judgements. Four empirical criteria provide some evidence that the exponential generalized beta of the second kind (EGB2), lomit, and burrit (all new to the accounting and finance literature) improve the log-likelihood functions, and the explanatory power, compared with logit and other models. EGB2, lomit and burrit also provide significantly better classifications and predictions than logit and other techniques.     

Goal programming: Planning process of tourism organizations

The complex rapidly changing environment faced by tourism organization officials makes tourism planning extremely difficult. Goal programming can aid the tourism planner in appraising the goal attainment potential associated with proposed tourism marketing program alternatives. By changing priorities of goals, budgetary limitations, and organizational constraints, the policy maker can test the effect of changes before they are implemented. By utilizing goal programming, a tourism organization can more systematically evaluate the nature and relative importance of organizational goals, critical constraints affecting the organization and marketing program alternatives.     

The Simple Welfare Economics of Network Externalities and the Uneasy Case for Subscribership Subsidies

The goal of universal service has dominated the telecommunications policy landscape for at least the past half century. This policy objective has been promoted with cross subsidies from long-distance telecommunications services to subscribers to local telecommunications service. The economic rationale for these cross subsidies is network externalities. In this paper, we show that: (1) the presence of network externalities, even if substantial in overall magnitude, does not generally justify a subscribership subsidy, even a well-designed one; and (2) the empirical realities of telecommunications markets make it unlikely that subscribership subsidies of any kind will increase social welfare.     

Taxation for the 21st century: the automated payment transaction (APT) tax

This paper examines the desirability and feasibility of replacing the present system of personal and corporate income, sales, excise, capital gains, import and export duties, gift and estate taxes with a single comprehensive revenue neutral Automated Payment Transaction (APT) tax. In its simplest form, the APT tax consists of a flat tax levied on all transactions. The tax is automatically assessed and collected when transactions are settled through the electronic technology of the banking/payments system. The APT tax introduces progressivity through the tax base since the volume of final payments includes exchanges of titles to property and is therefore more highly skewed than the conventional income or consumption tax base. The wealthy carry out a disproportionate share of total transactions and therefore bear a disproportionate burden of the tax despite its flat rate structure. The automated recording of all APT tax payments by firms and individuals eliminates the need to file tax and information returns and creates a degree of transparency and perceived fairness that induces greater tax compliance. Also, the tax has lower administrative and compliance cost. Like all taxes, the APT tax creates new distortions whose costs must be weighted against the benefits obtained by replacing the current tax system.     

Raising rivals' costs: The entry of an upstream monopolist into downstream markets

A regulated upstream monopolist provides an input to firms in a downstream market. If the monopolist enters the downstream market, a natural concern is that it will act so as to raise its downstream rivals' costs. An offsetting incentive is that a higher downstream price will reduce demand for the input, which reduces the monopolist's profit. Conditions under which one incentive dominates the other are derived. The monopolist may desire to lower its downstream rivals' costs rather than raise them. These findings suggest that regulatory policy towards such downstream entry should not focus exclusively on the ability to discriminate.     

An Iterative Process for International Negotiations on Acid Rain in Northern Europe Using a General Convex Formulation

This paper proposes a game theoretical approach of internationalnegotiations on transboundary pollution. This approach is distinguished bya discrete time formulation and by a suitable formulation of the localinformation assumption on cost and damage functions: at each stage of thenegotiation, the parties assign the best possible cooperative state, giventhe available information, as an objective for the next stage. It is shownthat the resulting sequences of states converges from a non-cooperativesituation to an international optimum in a finite number of stages.Furthermore, a financial transfer structure is also presented that makesthe desired sequence of states individually rational and stategically stable.The concepts are applied in a numerical simulation of the SO₂transboundary pollution problem related to acid rain in Northern Europe.