Optimal Asset Allocation and Risk Shifting in Money Management

This article investigates a fund manager's risk-taking incentivesinduced by an increasing and convex relationship of fund flowsto relative performance. In a dynamic portfolio choice framework,we show that the ensuing convexities in the manager's objectivegive rise to a finite risk-shifting range over which she gamblesto finish ahead of her benchmark. Such gambling entails eitheran increase or a decrease in the volatility of the manager'sportfolio, depending on her risk tolerance. In the latter case,the manager reduces her holdings of the risky asset despiteits positive risk premium. Our empirical analysis lends supportto the novel predictions of the model.     

New forms of employment relations in the public services: the limits of strategic choice

Drawing on a strategic choice model, this article examines the extent to which public service organisations have used their newly established employment relations discretion. Constrained by external pressures and upstream decisions on purpose and structure, the exercise of genuine choice is seen to vary between organisations and according to the nature of the issue.     

Aggregation and the existence of a social utility function

In a well-known paper Gorman (Econometrica21 (1953)) established that the necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of an aggregate, or social, utility function, independent of the distribution of income, is that all individuals' income consumption paths be parallel straight lines. Recently Chipman (J. Econ. Theory8 (1974)), building on the paper of Hurwicz and Uzawa (in “Preference Utility and Demand”) has shown that if the distribution of income is proportional and individual preferences are homothetic, aggregate consumption behavior obeys the necessary integrability conditions. It is shown here that the consistency of aggregate behavior can be derived from more general conditions than the ones used by Chipman and Gorman. Examples of demand systems from which aggregate behavior implies a social utility function are provided. It is then shown that if individual demand functions are linear in income—a form employed by both Gorman and Chipman—it is not necessary that the distribution of income be fixed.     

Evolution of heterogeneous beliefs and asset overvaluation

I analyze a model in which different agents have different non-rational expectations about the future price and cash flows of a risky asset. The beliefs in the society evolve according to a very general class of evolution functions that are monotone; that is if one type has increased its share in the population then all types with higher profit should also have increased their shares. I show that the price of the risky asset converges to the risk-neutral fundamental price even though all agents in the economy are risk-averse. The risky asset thus becomes overvalued as compared to the equilibrium with rational expectations. The overvaluation is a result of the evolution of beliefs and does not rely on such asymmetric assumptions as short-sale constraints or optimistic bias.     

Limited deviation estimators of the Poisson parameter

Estimators for the Poisson parameter are proposed which perform well with respect to both a weighted, i.e. Bayes, and unweighted risk criterion. The estimators follow the Bayes rule (with respect to a conjugate gamma prior) as closely as possible subject to a restraint imposed on the allowable deviation from the minimax estimate. The resulting class of rules maintains good performance with respect to the Bayes criterion while at the same time possessing bounded risk functions. The excess Bayes risk incurred is compared to a lower bound on the optimal restricted Bayes risk.     

Judicial Response to the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines

Review of Industrial Organization - We study how the courts have responded to the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission....     

Ownership structure and innovation: An emerging market perspective

Considerable attention has been focused on the ways in which emerging market firms can obtain and mobilize the knowledge and resources required for innovation. Innovation is a particular challenge in emerging markets because of inadequate external institutions. In this study, we focus on the importance of ownership structure, and in particular on ownership type diversity and ownership concentration. Using transaction cost and agency theories embedded in an emerging market context, we argue that ownership structure provides an important mechanism by which firms can assemble and direct the resources necessary for innovation in the context of inadequate external institutions. Specifically, we hypothesize that ownership type diversity improves innovation performance and that increasing ownership concentration has the same effect, but only up to a point. Using a panel dataset of 487 and 475 Chinese listed companies during 2004–2005 and 2005–2006 respectively, we find supportive empirical evidence for our hypotheses. Our findings also suggest that ownership type diversity is a more important factor in explaining innovation performance than ownership concentration, although most of the extant literature focuses on the latter.