Does stock market performance affect the government satisfaction rating in the UK?

In this study, we attempt to answer the question of whether stock market performance affects the government satisfaction rating in the long run in a sample period spanning 1984:Q1 to 2013:Q2 in the UK. We examine both the equilibrium relationship and the causality relationship between stock market performance and government satisfaction rating. The results indicate that the voters are sensitive to the economic shocks and hold responsible for the government. The empirical results confirm the responsibility hypothesis.     

ESTIMATING THE IMPACT OF IMMIGRANTS ON THE HOST COUNTRY SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM WHEN RETURN MIGRATION IS AN ENDOGENOUS CHOICE*

This article estimates immigrants’ fiscal impact on the German pension insurance and unemployment insurance systems when return migration is an endogenous choice. For this purpose, it develops a dynamic stochastic model of joint return migration and saving decisions and estimates it using longitudinal data on immigrants from five countries. The results indicate that exogenous return migration—which has been the practice of the literature so far—underestimates the state coffers’ net gain substantially; e.g., the unemployment insurance system’s net gain from Turks arriving after age 30 falls by an amount that is roughly equal to their annual earnings at arrival.     

GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSING AND THE INTENSITY OF AGGREGATE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

We develop a theoretical model in which the sophistication of technologies improves over time due to research and development (R&D) undertaken by software developers in two sectors. In the commercial sector, R&D intensity is driven by economic incentives, whereas in the sector using the General Public License (GPL), it is driven by the preference-based labor supply of individuals. A higher amount of GPL labor allocation generates equilibrium effects that adversely affect commercial software development. When the degree of imitation in the GPL sector is relatively higher than in the commercial sector, or the commercial sector has increasing returns of a limited degree, the R&D intensity in the commercial sector would decline by more than any increases in R&D intensity in the GPL sector. Thus, aggregate R&D intensity in the long run would be reduced. Numerical simulation indicates that this outcome pertains under realistic parameter ranges.     

Foreign education and international trade: empirical evidence from selected Latin American countries

Social ties among university students – of friendship, mutual trust and attachment to the alma mater – tend to be robust and enduring. Through information-diffusion and behaviour-enforcement mechanisms, they can boost the economic exchanges between countries. This paper tests the influence of Latin American people with a tertiary education in OECD countries on the bilateral trade between the home economy and the country of the alma mater, taking into account potential endogeneity concerns. Results show that Latin American student networks exert strong, positive and significant effects on bilateral imports and exports. A 10% increase in the number of Latin American students in the OECD economy boost bilateral trade by about 3%. At a more disaggregated level, their impact on differentiated goods is significantly higher than on homogenous products. Their incidence is lower in the presence of bilateral trade agreements and economic integration between countries. Results are robust to the deep economic and political transformations of the period considered, and to the use of different regressors and specifications.     

Ranking Committees,Income Streams or Multisets

Multisets are collections of objects which may include several copies of the same object. They may represent bundles of goods, committees formed of members of several political parties, or income streams. In this paper we investigate the ways in which a linear order on a finite set A can be consistently extended to an order on the set of all multisets on A of some given cardinality k and when such an extension arises from a utility function on A. The condition of consistency that we introduce is a close relative of the de Finetti’s condition that defines comparative probability orders. We prove that, when A has three elements, any consistent linear order on multisets on A of cardinality k arises from a utility function and all such orders can be characterised by means of Farey fractions. This is not true when A has cardinality four or greater. It is proved that, unlike linear orders that can be represented by a utility function, any non-representable order on the set of all multisets of cardinality k cannot be extended to a consistent linear order on multisets of cardinality K for sufficiently large K. We also discuss the concept of risk aversion arising in this context.A significant part of this work was written when both authors were visiting professors at Bilkent University, Ankara. Slinko thanks Semih Koray and Mefharet Kocatepe for making this possible and Serguei Stepanov for discussion about Farey fractions. Sertel thanks the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES), Bures-sur-Yvette, France, for a couple of invitations, in 1999 and 2000, during which he had a chance to elaborate on some of the questions addressed in this paper. The authors thank students of The University of Auckland Irene Peng and Mark Lui who participated at an early stage of this project and Marston Conder for checking the result of Theorem 6 with MAGMA and correcting it. Murat Sertel was deceased (1942 – 2003).An erratum to this article is available at .     

Labor market outcomes,savings accumulation,and return migration

In this paper, I examine the determinants of return migration from Germany for immigrants from four different source countries, and test the savings accumulation conjecture that is used to rationalize return migration decisions using both cross-country and time variation in purchasing power parity. The empirical results confirm the savings accumulation conjecture. Therefore, return migration can be seen as part of optimal life-cycle location choices in this context. I also examine how labor market outcomes influence return decisions. A key finding here is that unlike previous studies, which find a positive impact of unemployment on return migration, I find that the direction of the impact of unemployment changes by the spell length.     

THE PROFITABILITY OF COLONIAL INVESTMENT

This paper develops a model for studying colonial investment in which the metropolitan government restricts the amount of investment in the colony in order to maximize the net profits earned in the colony. The model explicitly includes the threat of subversive activity by the indigenous colonial population. The analysis suggests why historically some countries but not others became colonies and why many colonies that were initially profitable subsequently become unprofitable and were abandoned. The model also has implications for the amount of investment in colonies, the allocation of indigenous colonial labor between production and subversive activity, and the distribution of income between colonial firms and the indigenous population.     

Trade,Diaspora and Migration to New Zealand

This paper examines the hypotheses that a greater stock of migrants in New Zealand from a particular country leads to more trade between that country and New Zealand, and a greater stock of New Zealanders living overseas in a particular country leads to more trade between that country and New Zealand. It also examines the relationships between migration, diaspora and tourism exports. The literature suggests that migrants can stimulate trade by lowering transaction costs, and by bringing with them preferences for goods produced in their home country. Our approach is to apply panel data techniques, within the framework of a standard gravity model of trade, to a dataset consisting of information on 233 countries in each of the 26 years between 1981 and 2006. We estimate a random effects panel sample selection model using correlated random effects. Our results indicate that migration does indeed stimulate trade. In our benchmark specification, merchandise exports from and imports to New Zealand both have a statistically significant relationship with numbers of migrants in New Zealand; imports also have a statistically significant relationship with numbers of New Zealanders overseas. Our results also suggest that migration stimulates imports more than exports.     

An empirical investigation on loan applications and fear of rejection of external financing in the foodservice industry

This article examines the loan application decision patterns of small-cap foodservice firms and the causes of these firms’ discouragement (fear of rejection) in relation to their external finance-seeking efforts. We utilize information and data collected by the Survey of Small Business Finances on a variety of aspects related to small-cap foodservice firm owners and firms, including market-lender characteristics, use of financial services, and income and balance sheet information in the United States. Our primary findings reveal that sufficient liquidity and owner net worth reduce external finance seeking. In addition, firm credit quality and owner minority status increase discouragement toward external finance seeking, while education reduces fear of rejection.