Learning and the time interdependence of Costa Rican exports

Exports may enhance learning through production-induced learning by doing, learning to export by doing, and flows of information from customers. We provide evidence on the learning effects of export destination for Costa Rica for 1955 through 1980. We examine Granger-causality results and export trends to determine relationships between exports to the Central American Common Market (CACM), the rest of the South, and the North. Increasing exports to the CACM appear to promote learning in machinery, leather, and intermediate manufactures. We also find that the CACM redirects some exports away from Northern markets, probably with damaging consequences.     

The scope, motivation and dynamic of Guest Engineering

The exchange of technical personnel between organizational actors in a supply network has become known as Guest Engineering (GE). Despite increasing popularity as an inter‐organisational arrangement (especially in the automotive sector) it has generated relatively little academic research and therefore this paper seeks to extend our understanding of GE by exploring how its scope is determined, what motivates the participants and how the relationships evolve. The paper draws on extant GE, supply networks and Resource‐Based View (RBV) literature to derive research propositions that are used to analyse empirical work carried out with four automotive suppliers and four automotive OEMs. A number of preliminary conclusions are drawn. At a micro‐project level, the criticality of the individual 'playing the GE role' is highlighted, as are related concerns that collaborative team structures often fail to address broader social/cultural characteristics. At a macro‐project level, the study argues that difficulties and mistrust will often characterise integrated and competitively successful GE relationships. Finally, at a strategic level, GE needs to be understood as a process of resource transfer and transformation, and therefore the management of interdependency and power asymmetry are core considerations in effective adoption. The paper concludes with recommendations for further critical and practical work.     

Restructuring the State-Owned Banking Sector: A Comparative Assessment of Approaches in Central Europe

MOCT-MOST: Economic Policy in Transitional Economies -     

III. Some causes and consequences of dependence and independence in the stock market

The fact that there are times when market movement is random and times when it is not is interpreted in terms of the hypothesis that the price of a stock is an aggregate opinion — the resultant of the opinions and decisions of a community of investors. Price, like any other opinion, will be most vulnerable to social and other sources of influence during times of uncertainty, an aggregate psychological state which can generate the kind of statistical dependence characteristic of non-random walks. Ramifications of this hypothesis are explored in a variety of stock market behaviors, such as the effect of tips, the impact of runs on trading volume during rising and falling markets, and the like.     

The Consumer’s Micro-Micro Gasoline Buying Decision

A “micro-micro” consumer problem of gasoline purchases is examined using daily price data. Comparing the optimizing consumer with one who buys gasoline at random, the paper finds optimizers save about 4% of their annual gasoline bill. The paper also provides some evidence about the costs of non-optimal gasoline buying strategies.      

The economic performance of cities: A Markov-switching approach

This paper examines the determinants of employment growth in metro areas. To obtain growth rates, we use a Markov-switching model that separates a city's growth path into two distinct phases (high and low), each with its own growth rate. The simple average growth rate over some period is, therefore, the weighted average of the high-phase and low-phase growth rates, with the weight being the frequency of the two phases. We estimate the effects of a variety of factors separately for the high-phase and low-phase growth rates. Growth in the high phase is related to both human capital and industry mix, while growth in the low phase is related to industry mix only, specifically, the relative importance of manufacturing. Overall, our results strongly reject the notion that city-level characteristics influence employment growth equally across the phases of the business cycle.     

Identifying Decision Useful Information with the Matrix Format Income Statement

We conduct an experiment to investigate the potential benefits of an alternative format for the income statement, the matrix format, initially developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and UK Accounting Standards Board in their joint project on performance reporting. Sophisticated financial statement users (financial analysts and professional accountants) and less sophisticated financial statement users (MBA students) were asked to extract information from a set of financial statements that included an income statement either in the IAS 1 format or in the matrix format. We find that the matrix format improves the accuracy with which users extract financial information. This result is driven by greater accuracy, for all user groups, on “below‐the‐line” items. Furthermore, despite lack of familiarity with the matrix format, its use did not appear to affect the time taken, the ease of extracting financial information, or users' task completion confidence; further experience with the matrix format could lead to benefits along these lines as well. Our findings may assist the FASB and IASB in their joint project on financial statement presentation.