Private fiat money with many suppliers

A dynamic rational expectations model of money is used to investigate whether a Nash equilibrium of many firms, each supplying its own brand-name currency, will optimally deflate their currencies in Friedman's (1969) sense. The optimal deflation does arise under an open loop dynamic structure, but the equilibrium breaks down under a more realistic feedback control structure.     

Measuring the New Economy: An International Comparative Perspective

The advances made in the production and use of information and communication technology (ICT) during the past decades may have potentially large effects for long term economic growth. Indeed the substantial acceleration in real GDP growth in many OECD countries, but in particular in the United States, during the second half of the 1990s has led to suggestions that a "new economy" has emerged. In this new economy the old economic rules were supposed to have become invalid. For example, traditional concerns about the limits of maximum production capacity might disappear as the marginal costs of producing ICT goods and services are virtually nil. Moreover, the trade-off between inflation and unemployment could be reduced due to a more efficient inventory management.     

Front-running dynamics

We integrate a monopolist dual trader into a dynamic model of speculation. In static settings, [J.-C. Rochet, J.-L. Vila, Insider trading without normality, Rev. Econ. Stud. 61 (1994), 131-152] establish an irrelevance result—expected equilibrium outcomes are the same whether the monopolist speculator sees liquidity trade or not; and Roell [Dual-capacity trading and market quality, J. Finan. Intermediation (1990), 105-124] shows that with multiple speculators, dual trading benefits liquidity traders. In dynamic settings, these results are reversed: a front-running speculator exploits knowledge of future liquidity trade, extracting greater profits by smoothing profit extraction intertemporally. Front running introduces positive serial correlation to order flow. Accordingly, market makers discount past order flow in prices, but prices retain the martingale property.     

ICT,BUSINESS SERVICES AND LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH

This paper focuses on the diffusion of knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) in relation to information and communication technology-based innovations and their effect on productivity growth. Intermediate purchases of KIBS by any other industry determine the extent of KIBS diffusion. This diffusion is seen as part of the broader process of organisational innovations. We find a significant positive relation between this measure of KIBS diffusion and the intensity of information technology (IT). Not only do use of IT and KIBS both contribute positively to labour productivity growth, we also find that the combination of these two inputs adds further to productivity growth for the aggregate economy.     

Site competence dynamics in international manufacturing networks: instrument development and a test in Eastern European factories

The objective of this paper is to introduce an instrument that enables the measurement of dynamics in the roles of factories in international networks. Starting from Ferdows’ framework on strategic factory roles, a clear definition and more precise operationalization of ‘site competence’ is provided. Our proposed instrument is tested in a context, being the Eastern European factories of Dutch multinationals, where it is plausible to expect changes in the strategic factory roles over time. This test comprises four exploratory case studies that provide the basis for future, more extensive empirical work. At the same time, they contribute to the under-researched area of company and industry case studies with respect to the international context of operations management.     

Estimating the validity of administrative variables

Administrative data have become more important for both official statistics and academic research. One possible problem with such data is that they are biased and have a low validity. Although this problem is often mentioned in a qualitative respect, the validity is seldom quantitatively measured. This article presents a method to estimate the validity of administrative variables. By applying the classical test theory, the validity can be determined by using linked survey and administrative data which should measure the same concepts. This idea is elaborated with an empirical example in which the construct validity of age, gender, educational attainment and wages is determined simultaneously. A linear structural equations model with a measurement component is used to compute the construct validity. The analyses reveal that educational attainment and wages show some bias, but not higher than the bias found in the survey.     

Whistle-Blowing Among Young Employees: A Life-Course Perspective

The 2003 National Business Ethics Survey, conducted by the Ethics Resource Center, found that respondents who were both young and had short organizational tenure were substantially less likely than other respondents to report misconduct that they observed in the workplace to an authority. We propose that the life-course model of deviance can help account for this attenuation of acquiescence in misbehavior. As employees learn to perceive informal prosocial control during their socialization into the workforce, we hypothesize that they will become more willing to blow the whistle on misconduct. Analysis of the 2003 NBES (n = 1,417, with a subset of 314 who observed misconduct) reveals that young and short-tenured employees do perceive less informal prosocial control, and that informal prosocial control does boost whistle-blowing; however, tests for mediation of the relationship between youth and short-tenure and whistle-blowing by informal social control were largely negative, suggesting that other explanations are still needed.     

Did accelerated filing requirements and SOX Section?404 affect the timeliness of 10-K filings?

This paper examines the effect of Sarbanes-Oxley provisions on 10-K filing delays. We find that tightened filing deadlines for accelerated and large accelerated filers are not associated with changes in the incidence of late filing. While Section 404 compliance does not affect filing timeliness for firms with effective internal controls, we find that about half the firms disclosing internal control weaknesses are late filers. As a consequence, many Section 404 material weakness firms experience negative abnormal returns around late filing notifications before filing the 10-K. Lastly, we find that market reactions to late filing notifications are more negative when management provides no meaningful explanation for the delay, consistent with managers’ incentives to withhold bad news.