On the social optimality of make-or-buy decisions

This article examines the impact of input prices on an entrant’s make-or-buy decision and on the subsequent social welfare level for three alternative models of downstream competition. For each particular model, it derives the range of input prices that induce the entrant to undertake: (a) the productively efficient make-or-buy decision; and (b) the socially optimal make-or-buy decision. The main conclusion of this article is that the entrant’s efficient make-or-buy decision is always socially optimal in the case of the Hotelling model, is socially optimal for the set of input prices that induce the entrant to undertake the efficient decision in the case of Cournot competition and is not necessarily socially optimal in the Bertrand vertical differentiation model. Last, this article examines the conditions under which the efficient and/or socially optimal make-or-buy decision undertaken by an entrant fulfills the regulatory two-fold goal of promoting service-based competition and encouraging facilities-based competition. Therefore, this article also provides the optimal access pricing policy that results in the best feasible outcome in terms of social welfare, productive efficiency, competition level and investment level for a given downstream competition model.     

UK investment trust portfolio strategies before the First World War†

UK investment trust companies were at the forefront of financial innovation during the so-called first globalization era before the First World War. This study examines their portfolio strategies in detail, using a unique dataset of 115 portfolio observations for 30 different investment trust companies, comprising a total of 32,708 portfolio holdings. Our results reveal strong performance and relatively sophisticated asset management, which was based on a mixture of a buy-and-hold investment strategy and active portfolio management. Investment trusts employed global rather than domestic diversification. The early predominant investment in bonds in the 1880s gradually declined in favour of ordinary and preferred shares. North and Latin American markets were the main geographical target of UK investment trusts, with less appetite for domestic investments and negligible interest in continental European financial securities. There is significant cross-sectional variation in asset allocation between investment trusts; they thus avoided herding behaviour in portfolio choice and developed a wide range of different portfolio strategies.     

Spectral density and spectral distribution inference for long memory time series via fixed-b asymptotics

This paper studies taper-based estimates of the spectral density utilizing a fixed bandwidth ratio asymptotic framework, and makes several theoretical contributions: (i) we treat multiple frequencies jointly, (ii) we allow for long-range dependence or anti-persistence at differing frequencies, (iii) we allow for tapers that are only piecewise smooth or discontinuous, including flat-top and truncation tapers, (iv) we study higher-order accuracy through the limit distribution’s Laplace Transform, (v) we develop a taper-based estimation theory for the spectral distribution, and show how confidence bands can be constructed. Simulation results produce quantiles and document the finite-sample size properties of the estimators, and a few empirical applications demonstrate the utility of the new methods.     

Arbitrage, strategic inefficiency and self-regulation

This paper develops a multi-period strategic market game in two different settings, one of a finite-period finance economy, and its extension to infinite periods but with overlapping term of traders. Under these two different contexts, we address the possibility of strategies that Pareto improve the outcome of the game. In this effort, both the introduction of a regulation scheme and the innovative role of provision of traders with incentives to self-police these designated strategies play an important role.     

Challenges and directions in knowledge asset trading

This paper addresses the area that is at the intersection of knowledge management and electronic commerce. This area refers to the exchange and trade of explicit and implicit knowledge at an inter‐organizational level. Electronic knowledge marketplaces are currently emerging to address the opportunities and risks found in the purchase and selling of knowledge in the business‐to‐business (B2B) environment, the need for supporting long‐lasting relationships of knowledge exchange and the requirement for facilitating virtual community contexts where knowledge seekers can find suitable knowledge providers and knowledge providers can advertise and sell their available knowledge. The paper describes the business challenges associated with the design of an Internet‐based knowledge marketplace. INKASS, a European IST project, has stimulated this work and has provided real‐life verification on the arguments raised and on the positions adopted herein. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adoption of agricultural innovations as a two-stage partial observability process

In this paper, we reconsider the appropriateness of certain statistical analyses in innovation adoption studies and suggest that partial observability models may sometimes be more useful. The proposed models allow for a flexible specification of the process of adoption from one stage to two stages, facilitate the modelling of non‐adopters and remedy the violation of the assumption of full information. An application to the adoption of organic cultivation in Greece demonstrates the relative merits of the proposed analysis.     

The Location of Markets,Perceived Entrepreneurial Risk,and Start-up Capital of Micro Rural Firms

It is argued that when founders of SMEs perceive the probability of a successful and lucrative venture to be greater, they are more likely to provide a greater proportion of the start-up capital. This paper provides an empirical examination of two concurrent hypotheses. Firstly, that the size of the debt or equity is affected by factors influencing perceived entrepreneurial risk. Secondly, that the location of the market for the firm’s output is a major factor reducing perceived entrepreneurial risk and increasing equity of the start-up capital. A statistical analysis based on the simultaneous tobit model is used. Results show that significant factors influencing risk perception include the size of the new business and the sector of economic activity, as well as entrepreneurial experience and the location of the markets for the firm’s output. The results highlight implications for the design and implementation of rural development policies and especially for the instruments supporting rural business creation.     

A game theory modeling approach for 3G operators

This paper presents the technoeconomic evaluation of a third generation rollout scenario followed by the identification of the market conditions for two operators in a simple game theory model. The considered scenarios reflect the point of view of both dominant operators and new entrants. Technoeconomic results are presented in terms of net present value (NPV), acting like the pay-off function in the proposed theoretical Game Theory model. The business case presented here was studied by using a tool, developed by European Projects IST-25172 TONIC/ECOSYS, a model developed by the EURESCOM P901 project and the Game Theory Tool named Gambit.     

Net foreign assets,productivity and real exchange rates in constrained economies

Empirical evidence suggests that real exchange rates (RER) behave differently in developed and developing countries. We develop an overlapping generations two-sector exogenous growth model in which RER determination may depend on the country's capacity to borrow from international capital markets. The country faces a constraint on capital inflows. With high domestic savings, the RER only depends on the productivity spread between sectors (Balassa–Samuelson effect). If the constraint is too tight and/or domestic savings too low, the RER depends on both net foreign assets (transfer effect) and productivity. We then analyze the empirical implications of the model and find that, in accordance with the theory, the RER is mainly driven by productivity and net foreign assets in constrained countries and by productivity in unconstrained countries.