Cyclical behavior of crude oil markets and economic recessions in the period 1986–2010

For at least one century, crude oil has been one of the most important commodities for the worldwide economic activity. Important technological innovations, including chemical transformation processes and transportation systems, have been based on the availability or not of crude oil. In this way, a close understanding of the crude oil market dynamics should provide insights in important aspects related to potential directions of technological change for both improving crude oil transformation efficiency and substitution by alternative energy sources. This paper studies the dynamics of the crude oil price for the period from 1986 to 2010. To this end, the entropy time-asymmetry is computed along the price trajectory. Empirical results indicated the presence of a non-regular cyclical behavior with a dominant period of about 4.5 years. Some evidences pointing toward a comovement of entropy time-asymmetry peaks with major US economic recessions are found, suggesting a tight relationship between macroeconomy and crude oil prices. The results are discussed in terms of the major economic events that occurred in the upward and downward cycle periods and potential implications for the design of energy policies.     

Investment barriers and international asset pricing

In this article a multicountry model of international asset pricing is developed. This model incorporates a more general representation of the degree of segmentation in the international capital market. Specifically,N types of investors andN classes of securities are postulated. In general, thenth (n=1, 2, 3, ...N) type of investor has access to all security markets up to and including thenth class. Using the standard mean-variance framework, closed form equilibrium risk return relationships are obtained for all classes of securities. It is also shown that class 1 securities are priced as if markets are integrated, classn (n=2, 3 ...N) securities commandn different risk premia. Finally, the nature of the model specification allows us to investigate the effects of partial integration on investor welfare. It is shown that, in general, all investors prefer full integration to any form of partial integration.     

Efficient price and capacity choices under uncertain demand: An empirical analysis

Traditional economic analyses of the peak-load problem typically assume an unrealistic degree of regularity in demand during well-defined peak and off-peak periods. This issue is addressed through a comprehensive statistical model that separates demand into its systematic and stochastic components. This model is combined with a traditional economic model and applied to local telephone service, leading to substantive conclusions relevant for managerial decisions as well as further research, among them:

? Neglecting the systematicand stochastic structure of demand may lead to inefficient tariffs. Efficient measured service structures typically price individual callsbelow incremental capacity cost.

? Industry wide capacity decision rules that are exclusively driven by blockage probability targets during narrowly defined time periods may be economically inefficient.

? For telephone service, spot pricing, which sets high prices during periods ofactual congestion, has the potential to be considerably more efficient than traditional tariffs that set high prices during periods ofexpected congestion.

     

What UIP tests on extreme samples reveal about the missing variable

In their UIP regressions, Huisman et al. (1998. Extreme support for uncovered interest parity, Journal for International Money and Finance 17, 211–228.) focus on extreme forward premia and find much higher coefficients. We show that, for such results, the expectation signal needs to be thicker-tailed than the missing variable. Transaction costs may produce the right sort of bias. It is (i) bounded (i.e. it has no tails at all), (ii) wide (i.e. it may generate betas below 1/2) and (iii) U-distributed, which makes an “extreme” sample quite effective. We derive theoretical and numerical results in the direction of what Huisman et al. observe. We also tighten Fama's moment conditions.     

Pflegegerecht wohnen

Zusammenfassung  Tipps für Angeh?rige — Pflege zu Hause ist in den meisten F?llen machbar, erfordert jedoch mitunter bauliche Ver?nderungen oder den Einsatz von Hilfsmitteln. Welche M?glichkeiten gibt es? Wer leistet finanzielle Unterstützung? Geben Sie pflegenden Angeh?rigen die richtigen Tipps mit auf den Weg.     

International new ventures: The cross-border nexus of individuals and opportunities

We draw on entrepreneurship research to present a framework for international new ventures as the cross-border nexus of individuals and opportunities. Opportunities may be associated with cross-border combinations of resources and/or markets and therefore vary along these two dimensions. This framework accounts for the emergence of firms whose very existence stems from opportunities to engage in the cross-border combination of resources and/or markets. This perspective has important implications for whether internationalization follows competitive advantage or vice versa and also helps explain how the identification and exploitation of opportunities to create international new ventures may contribute to economic development.     

Agricultural market access: A moving target in the WTO negotiations?

This article analyzes the impact of multilateral market access liberalization of the Doha Round agricultural negotiations. At the center are the effects of variations in the magnitudes of tariff cuts, different tariff cutting formulas, the tariff capping as well as different numbers and width of tariff bands. The simulations are conducted with an extended version of the GTAP model and the GTAP database (6.0) including bound and applied rates and a module to cut tariffs at the 6-digit tariff line level. The results reveal that the heights of the tariff cuts and the kind of tiered formula applied are most important for the outcome of the Doha Round, while the width of tariff bands and the tariff capping only have a moderate influence on the countries’ trade pattern and welfare. In contrast, the number of tariff bands is not important for the results.     

Im Nebenjob: Familie

Gegen den sozialen Rückzug — Pflegekr?fte kennen es: Trotz Wechselschicht gute Beziehungen zum Partner, den Kindern und seinen Freuden zu haben, ist nicht so ganz einfach. Es erfordert Organisation und Disziplin. Doch als Lohn winken Lust und Lebensfreude.     

Innovation and corporate sustainability: An investigation into the process of change in the pharmaceuticals industry

Although there has been considerable research effort directed at refining the content of corporate environmental performance, e.g. corporate environmental reporting and accounting, there has been relatively little empirical investigation to date on the process of corporate eco‐change. This research reports on the quantitative and qualitative results of a survey of German and UK pharmaceuticals firms, which evaluated the significance of the various incentives, both intra‐firm and external to the organization, that have stimulated eco‐change. We find that, although the industry is one that has been characterized by voluntary agreements and proactive behaviour in the past, regulation still remains the main driver for sustainability improvements. New technology is the second most important driver. Stakeholder dialogue and inter‐firm cooperation were both revealed to be relatively weak forces for eco‐change. The study also tested the validity of the conventional neo‐classical economic world‐view of innovation in firms versus a more radical co‐evolutionary one. The former assumes that firms respond only to profit signals and do so efficiently, whereas the latter assumes that change is path dependent; i.e., the firms’ norms and routines and past experiences are influential. We find that, although the neo‐classical perspective stands up to our empirical investigation of eco‐innovation to some degree, the co‐evolutionary approach better captures the complexity of the corporate eco‐change process. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment     

Food Price Pass‐Through and the Role of Domestic Margin Services

The recent volatility in international agricultural markets has drawn attention to the impact of rising international agricultural prices and the induced price‐insulating measures on consumer food prices. Analyses based on simulation models on this topic typically ignore the role of domestic margin services. We extend the standard Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model to allow for variations in the share of domestic margin services in consumed food across countries. This approach enables us to differentiate consumer prices from producer prices. Following the extension, the results show that domestic margin services reduce the consumer food price volatility for all countries, especially in high‐income countries, where the share of domestic margin services in final food consumption is higher. The effect of price‐insulating border policies is also reduced in the extended model. We find that our extension of the GTAP model greatly improves simulations of the 2007 surge in international agricultural prices. We validate our extension of the GTAP model by showing that the econometrically estimated food price pass‐through is decreasing with income and thus, is smaller in high‐income countries.