MEASURING VALUES FOR IMPROVED AIR QUALITY FROM DISCRETE RESPONSE DATA: TWO EXPERIMENTS

This paper derives and estimates two different measures of the value of an elimination of sulphur emissions in Sweden. One measure is a usual willingness-to-pay measure, while the other measure yields the willingness to offer jobs in the industry in order to secure an improvement in air quality. According to both approaches, the average willingness to pay for an improvement in air quality is surprisingly high: 4 to 5 per cent of disposable income and 3 to 4 per cent of the total number of jobs in Sweden, respectively. These figures suggest that it is socially profitable to undertake further measures to reduce air pollution in Sweden given existing estimates of cleaning costs.     

Intellektuelles Kapital — Konzeptualisierung und Messung von Wissen als Produktionsfaktor

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Exchange market intervention and the US dollar

In the past years central banks of major Western industrialised countries have repeatedly attempted to change the trend of the US-Dollar rate by means of intervention in the foreign exchange markets. Our authors analyse the objectives, effects and chances of success of such exchange market interventions.     

Privatization of public enterprises

In this paper the following results of a transition from public to private ownership are obtained: The manager of a public firm engages in less effort than is efficient; in a privatized firm the manager's effort is chosen efficiently. The reward to the manager of a public firm is more differentiated than efficient. In the case of an unfavourable economic environment the reward is higher than efficient. On the other hand, the manager in a privatized firm is always rewarded efficiently. It is irrelevant whether the public manager is incompletely informed about the particular mix of government's multiple objectives as long as the government chooses the incentive-compatible reward for the manager.

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Zusammenfassung Wird ein Unternehmen vom öffentlichen ins private Eigentum übergeführt, so gilt folgendes: Im öffentlichen Unternehmen sind das Ausmaß der Forschungs- und Entwicklungsinvestitionen sowie der Arbeitseinsatz des Managers niedriger als im Kostenminimum. Im privatisierten Unternehmen werden dagegen der Arbeitseinsatz des Managers und die Forschungs- und Entwicklungsinvestitionen in kostenminimierendem Umfang gewählt. In der öffentlichen Unternehmung führt Informationsasymmetrie zu einer stärkeren Spreizung der Managerentlohnung als im privatisierten Unternehmen. In privatisierten Unternehmen ist die Managerentlohnung so niedrig, daß der Manager nur seinen Reservationsnutzen erhält.

     

Day trading and stock price volatility

When an investor buys and sells the same stock on the same day, he is said to have made a day trade. Using the trading records of Finnish traders, this paper examines whether day trading is related to volatility of stock prices. I find a strong positive time-series relation between the number of day trades by individual investors and intraday volatility among heavily day traded stocks. This effect is robust after controlling for a previously documented volume–volatility relation. The result suggests that the joint hypothesis of price pressure and volatility induced day trading dominates the liquidity effects of day trading.     

De Agrarische Partij in Duitschland

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The Role of the Efficiency Gap for Spillovers from FDI: Evidence from the UK Electronics and Engineering Sectors

This paper focuses on the role of the efficiency gap in determining whether or not domestic firms benefit from productivity spillovers from FDI. We use establishment level data for the period 1980–1992 for the UK. Given that there is substantial heterogeneity of productivity across sectors we focus on two manufacturing sectors in detail, namely, electronics and engineering. We allow for different effects of FDI on establishments located at different quantiles of the productivity distribution by using conditional quantile regression. Overall, while there is some heterogeneity in results across sectors and quantiles, our findings clearly suggest that the efficiency gap matters for productivity spillover benefits. We find evidence for a u-shaped relationship between productivity growth and FDI interacted with the efficiency gap. We also analyse in some detail the impact of changes in relative efficiency on establishments’ ability to benefit from spillovers.