Euro‐Area Yield Curve Reaction to Monetary News

Abstract. Using intraday data, we assess the impact of monetary news on the full length of the euro‐area yield curve. We find that the publication of monetary data has a significant impact on interest rates with maturities ranging from one to ten years, with the largest effect on the one‐ to five‐year segment. These results suggest that when gauging the policy‐relevant signals, market participants look through short‐term movements of annual M3 growth and focus instead on the trend rate of monetary expansion over the medium term.     

Merging, Reputation, and Repeated Games with Incomplete Information

We relate and unify several results that appeared in the following domains: merging of probabilities, perturbed games and reputation phenomena, and repeated games with incomplete information. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, D83.     

Beyond the Opposition Between Altruism and Self-interest: Reciprocal Giving in Reward-Based Crowdfunding

The present article is a continuation of the debate two sets of authors (Bagus and Howden vs. Barnett and Block) have been engaging in regarding one type of maturity mismatching: borrowing short and lending long (BSLL). All four authors had agreed that this practice can set up the Austrian Business Cycle; the present author denies that BSLL would be a legitimate commercial interaction in the free society; Bagus and Howden continue to maintain that it would be licit. Our main criticism of Bagus and Howden is a reductio ad absurdum: that this opens them up to the charge of embracing the doctrine of market failure; this is something highly problematic for the two of them, since all four contributors to this debate are well-known supporters of laissez faire capitalism.     

Determinants of an Organization’s Website Ease of Use: The Moderating Role of Product Tangibility

The ease of use of an organization’s website is central to determining users’ experiences and behavioral intentions. Understanding how the site-related factors contribute to shaping perceived ease of use is thus critical. Nonetheless, we contend that the relative importance of these factors in shaping ease of use may vary according to the product offered by the organization. This research hypothesizes that the information quality of a website and its interactivity and aesthetics are antecedents to perceived ease of use and that the relative tangibility of the offered products moderates these relationships. The hypotheses are examined by performing a large-scale study in which each participant performs a task on one of 59 organizational websites. The study’s hypotheses were supported, and the results were then replicated using a second study conducted on a French-speaking sample. Site information quality is the strongest predictor of perceived ease of use, followed by the site interactivity and aesthetics. The results, however, underscore the moderating role of product tangibility. While the effects of interactivity and aesthetics are greater for sites offering services (e.g., communication, travel, insurance, and financial services), the effect of information quality is stronger for sites offering tangible products (e.g., electronics, books, and home improvement goods). The findings suggest that organizations offering tangible products should focus on providing their sites’ visitors with quality information, whereas organizations offering services should primarily focus on their sites’ aesthetics, interactive, and personalization features.     

Annual Reporting and Accountability by Municipalities in Canada: An Empirical Investigation*

Prior research regarding reporting and accountability by local governments in several countries has questioned the value of traditional annual reporting and the level of accountability to the public. This article reports on comparable research for local governments throughout Canada. The disclosure index methodology is used to evaluate the quality and quantity of information published in the annual reports and in the financial statements of Canadian local governments in 2003 with a comparison in 2005. Although all municipalities published audited financial statements, less than one‐third of municipalities published a comprehensive annual report in 2003. The results show an overall low disclosure index with significant improvements in 2005 compared to 2003 and significant differences across the country. The results, largely consistent with previously published international studies, raise questions about local government accountability and about the conceptual framework for local government reporting.     

An Assessment of Partial Dairy Trade Liberalization on the U.S., EU–15 and Canada

The next round of multilateral trade negotiations will involve the expansion of tariff rate quotas and the reduction of export subsidies in the dairy industry. A nonspatial multiregion model of the world dairy industry is used to analyze the potential impact of such reforms on the Canadian, the EU–15 and the U.S. dairy industries. The results from selected partial trade liberalization scenarios indicate that there is no scenario that provides benefits to all participants in the dairy industry. The analysis of partial trade liberalization, in terms of its growth effects, varies by country and by sector, making win–win compromises hard to reach among the participants in a country, and even more so across countries. More market-oriented though still protected regions such as the U.S. generally improve their competitive position in the world dairy market as border measures are removed. By contrast, the dairy sectors in regulated milk production markets such Canada and the EU–15 are projected to be better off when the reform package does not compromise current policy settings, while giving some additional market access for surplus dairy production. La prochaine ronde de négotiations commerciales mullilalérales abordera les questions de l'expansions des contingents tarifaires et la réduction des subventions à l'exportation dans le secteur laitier. Utilisant un modèle multirégion non spatial du secteur laitier mondial, nous analysons les répercussions évenluelles de ces réformes sur les secteurs laitiers du Canada, de l'Union Européenne et des États-Unis. Les résultals obtenus pour certains scénarios de libéralisation partielle des échanges font voir qu'aucun scénario ne profite à tous les participants de lafilière. Les effets de cette libéralisation partielle sur la croissance varient d'un pays et d'un segment de la filière à l'autre, rendanl difficile la recherche d'un compromis salisfaisant pour tous entre les participants d'un même pays el plus encore entre différents les pays. Les régions plus axées sur le marché, malgré un niveau relalivemenl élevé de protections, comme les États-Unis, améliorenl en général leur situation concurrentielle sur le marché mondial lorsque les barrières tarifaires sont enlevées. À l'inverse, les pays où la production du lail est réglement4eAe, comme le Canada el l'Europe des 15, le secteur laitier a tout avanlage à ce que le bloc de réformes ne vienne pas menacer le cadre actuel, tout en ouvrant quelque peu le marché aux productions lailières excédenlaires.     

Combining an inter-sectoral carbon tax with sectoral mitigation policies: Impacts on the French forest sector

As France works out its plan to tackle climate change issues, questions are arising in the forest sector as to how sectoral mitigation programs such as those designed to enhance fuelwood consumption or to stimulate in-forest carbon sequestration may coincide with an inter-sectoral program such as an economy-wide carbon tax. This paper provides insights into this question by exploring the impacts of (1) a combination of a carbon tax and a fuelwood policy, and (2) a combination of a carbon tax and a sequestration policy on (i) the economy of the forest sector, and (ii) the dynamics of the forest resource. To do this, we used a modified version of the French Forest Sector Model (FFSM) and carried out simulations on a 2020 time horizon. Basing our analysis on the fuelwood sector, we showed that wood producers always benefit from the combination of a carbon tax with either a fuelwood policy or a sequestration policy at the national level. Conversely, and although it favors wood products instead of non-wood substitutes, a carbon tax always decreases consumer surpluses by increasing wood product prices. As a consequence, the combination of a carbon tax with sectoral policies is likely to raise questions about the political economy of the mitigation program. This is particularly true in the case of a combination of a carbon tax with a sequestration policy, which already decreases consumer surpluses. We eventually showed that by increasing transport costs between domestic regions, the carbon tax reallocates production patterns over French territory which could lead to the necessity of a regional breakdown of policy-mixes in the forest sector.