Options,premium contracts,and the EOE

Summary The article examines the development of options trading in Amsterdam from the seventeenth century to the present time. It shows how the market for traditional options, or premium contracts, was restricted by a number of limitations and how a new form of option — the exchange traded option, and a new options market — the European Options Exchange (E.O.E.), were introduced to overcome these limitations. It examines the first two years of operation of the E.O.E., analyzes some of the problems faced by the E.O.E., and looks at the future development of this new market.     

The management of cross-disciplinary research

This paper is based on a critical review of the proceedings of the Second International Conference on Interdisciplinary Research held in 1981 in Manchester, England. Two sets of issues important for the management of collaborative research are identified. One is the need to remove ambiguities from the meanings of commonly used terminology, for which more precise definitions are proposed. Cross-disciplinary is used to describe only the nature of the task; multi- and inter-disciplinary are seen as describing alternative organizational ways of executing it. Which way should be used depends objectively on the circumstances.
The other set of issues is concerned with the effect institutional setting could have on the possibility of carrying out effective cross-disciplinary activity. Six different settings are identified and broad concepts of group dynamics are used to identify theoretical and practical problems and their possible solutions. The paper concludes with a survey of the practical implications for those managing cross-disciplinary research.     

Data requirements and use in nutrition planning in Costa Rica

In designing data systems for food and nutrition planning, little attention has been given to the type of data which may be needed at different stages of the planning process, ie political motivation and definition of policies, selection of programmes, geographical distribution of resources within a programme, delivery of services at the local level and monitoring of changes. The authors examine some experiences in terms of how decisions are made, available data and its use in national programmes, and the consequences relevant to the nutritional status of the Costa Rican population.     

Money growth and interest rate volatility and the demand for money

In this paper the author empirically examines the effects of both money growth and interest rate volatility measures upon the demand for real balances. The findings of this study suggest that both money growth and interest rate volatility measures are statistically insignificant. However, evidence suggests a structural shift in the demand for money in the post-1979 period. Moreover, there is a noticeable change in the speed of adjustment moving from actual to desired real balances with the adjustment coefficient in the post-1979 period increasing roughly in magnitude nine and half, times the adjustment coefficient in the pre-1979 period.     

The Role of Life Experiences on Perceptions of Leisure During Adulthood: A Longitudinal Analysis

This study examined the life experiences of adults and their effect on perceptions of leisure. Data for this study came from A Study of Leisure during Adulthood (ASOLDA), a 10-year study of the values, attitudes, and perceived freedom in leisure of 84 adults. Individual growth curve modeling was used to explore patterns and change within leisure domains for the sample. Life structure predicted adults’ perceived freedom in leisure while life events were predictive of adults’ leisure attitudes. Data from interviews were used to supplement the survey data to provide a better understanding of the predictors of leisure perceptions in this study.     

Calibrating an algorithm for estimating transactions from FXFX exchange rate quotes

In this paper we investigate the efficiency of a class of transaction-generating algorithms, originally suggested in Bollerslev and Domowitz (1993). Our comparison utilizes real transaction data recorded over Reuters D2000-2 electronic broking system for 7 h in June 1993 and transaction data generated from FXFX quotations over an identical period. Results suggest that, at this high-frequency data sampling, the performance of these transaction-generating algorithms is poor, with the most likely explanation of this outcome due to the high-frequency characteristics of FXFX spreads and quotation intensity.     

Measuring the Effect of Federal Research Funding on Private Donations at Research Universities: Is Federal Research Funding More than a Substitute for Private Donations?

The nature of federal research funding has changed in the United States over the last 30 years. In part, federal research funding has changed in the distribution of funding across disciplines and across universities. Federal funding to universities with historically low levels of funding has also experienced greater growth than those universities with historically high levels of funding. In addition, universities have become more involved in the political process with respect to the allocation of funding for higher education. As the nature of government funding changes, this paper questions its effect on private donations to research and non-research universities. The general presumption of much of the existing theoretical work is that government and private funding for charitable goods are substitutes. Limited evidence exists to suggest, in some circumstances, there may be a positive correlation between these two sources of funding. Potentially, because the government undertakes the expense to gather information about the research universities, and engages in such activities as peer-review of research proposals, the government through its grant awards may provide a signal of quality of research or other information to donors that is less noisy than that available to private donors. Similarly, there may be other types of spillover effects from research funding to private donations. In this case, a change in government grants has both a positive and negative effect on private donations, suggesting a positive correlation between private and public donations if the effect from the dissemination of information is greater than the substitution effect of government grants. I examine data for private and public universities in the United States to measure the relationship between private and public donations under a fixed-effects OLS regression. I explore issues of bias from endogeneity or omitted variables and report the results from a two stage least squares regression in which I use a set of measures that affect federal research funding but not private donations. Regardless of the specification, the results suggest private and public donations are positively correlated for research universities and negatively correlated for non-research institutions. On average, increasing federal research funding by one dollar increases private donations by 65 cents at research universities, decreases private donations by 9 cents at universities whose highest degree granted is a masters, and decreases private donations by 45 cents at liberal arts colleges.