Fairness in the Mail and Opportunism in the Internet: A Newspaper Experiment on Ultimatum Bargaining

Abstract. On 11 May 2001, readers of the Berliner Zeitung were invited to participate in an ultimatum bargaining experiment played in the strategy vector mode: each participant chooses not only how much (s)he demands of the DM1,000 pie but also which of the nine possible offers of DM100, 200, …, 900 (s)he would accept or reject. In addition, participants were asked to predict the most frequent type of behavior. Three randomly selected proposer–responder pairs were rewarded according to the rules of ultimatum bargaining and three randomly chosen participants of those who predicted the most frequent type of behavior received a prize of DM500. Decisions could be submitted by mail, fax or via the internet. Behavior is described, statistically analyzed and compared to the usual laboratory ultimatum bargaining results.     

IS EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY POLITICALLY FEASIBLE?

We develop a political-economy model where the amount of education subsidies is determined in a majority vote and spending is financed by revenues from taxation. Our analysis demonstrates that limiting the extent of subsidization and thus excluding the poor from gaining enough education can be a political equilibrium. Despite being the main beneficiaries of subsidies, the politically decisive middle class hesitates to extend monetary benefits, since improved access to higher education diminishes the return to education. Moreover, a non-monotone relation between inequality and the extent of redistribution through tax-financed educational subsidies obtains.     

Derivation of the unconditional state-covariance matrix for exact maximum-likelihood estimation of ARMA models

Analytical expressions for the unconditional state-covariance matrix are combined with an efficient scheme for computing theoretical autocovariances, to simplify the exact maximum-likelihood estimation of multivariate ARMA models. Alternative state-space representations for pure AR and pure MA processes, giving rise to straightforward expressions for their unconditional state covariance, are suggested.     

The English Football Industry: profit,performance and industrial structure

The English (Association) Football League is a long established industrial cartel selling a highly popular product with only imperfect substitutes. Despite that, the majority of its member clubs lose money and the industry has faced successive financial crises over the last decade. This paper develops an empirical model of the financial performance of English League clubs using a high quality dataset of 48 clubs over the period 1974–89. The underlying model explains how rents are competed away through the maximising behaviour of club owners subject to production constraints. This model is parameterised by a system of equations which describe the behaviour of a maximising owner subject to demand and production constraints. The model is then used to examine the coordination failure which lies at the heart of the English Football League's decline and to assess the prospects for the Premier League.     

Banana policy: a European perspective

European Union banana policies do not make economic sense, and hence criticism of these policies is justified. Some facts should, though, be remembered. If the EU had chosen free trade in bananas when the Single Market was established, certain producers both inside and outside the EU would have lost income, and it proved politically impossible to choose direct financial compensation. Also, the quantitative implications of the new EU banana regime may be less than sometimes assumed, as trade has not been reduced very much. The WTO's role is not to judge the economic merits of these policies, but their legal justification.     

Bestimmung von Kapitalkosten in diversifizierten Unternehmungen: Verfahrensvergleiche und Anwendungsempfehlungen

Die Notwendigkeit zur wertorientierten Führung und Steuerung von Unternehmungen gewinnt durch die zunehmende Professionalisierung der Kapitalmarktteilnehmer, die Basel-II-Richtlinien für Banken sowie die Neuregelung zum Goodwill Impairment weiter an Dynamik. Innerhalb der Wertkonzepte nehmen Kapitalkosten als zentraler „value driver“ eine herausragende Bedeutung ein. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden die unterschiedlichen Verfahren zur Ermittlung von Kapitalkosten, darunter auch das erst kürzlich vorgestellte Market-derived Capital Pricing Model, diskutiert und mittels eines zu entwickelnden Kriterienrasters systematisch miteinander verglichen. Schlie?lich entwickelt der Beitrag aus den Erkenntnissen des Verfahrensvergleichs sowie einer Expertenbefragung praktische Anwendungsempfehlungen.