Economic Calculation: Private Property or Several Control?

Abstract

As the centenary of the 1917 Russian revolution approaches, it is worth reviewing the past 100 years’ discussion amongst economists on the possibility—or otherwise—of economic planning under socialism. The socialist calculation debate is of fundamental importance, not merely as a specialist application of economic ideas, but as an investigation of the foundations of economic activity. Every economic action is premised upon calculation, every choice depends upon an assessment of the costs and benefits of each alternative between which the agent must choose. The view of that choice and its attendant calculation is constitutive of the schools of thought—Marxian, neoclassical and Austrian—which have contributed to the debate. An understanding of the calculation debate is therefore required to understand how these paradigms stand in relation to each other. This article addresses one aspect of that debate—the claim by Austrian economists that socialism is impossible because the absence of private property in the means of production precludes economic calculation. The article suggests that several control rather than private property is required for economic calculation, and that several control is consistent with public ownership of the means of production. The Austrian argument on this point, therefore, is without force.     

Do Alternative Real Estate Investment Vehicles Add Value to REITs? Evidence from German Open-ended Property Funds

Besides the more commonly used REITs, German investors can also invest in a lesser-known real estate vehicle, Open-ended Property Funds. OPFs are considered a compromise between listed and direct real estate investments. OPF fund managers generally provide daily (perfect) liquidity. However, if liquidity falls below 5%, share redemptions in these funds can be temporarily suspended for a period of up to two years. During this time, investors will only be able to sell shares on the secondary market (exchange), and are thus subject to significant liquidity risk. The objective of this paper is to analyze whether OPFs add value to investor portfolios above that provided by REITs. We show that OPFs have a diversification advantage over REITs in low-risk portfolios, despite their larger potential liquidity risk. REIT liquidity is comparable to that of ordinary common stock, but OPFs exhibit an average initial discount to funds’ NAV of about 6% when share redemptions are temporarily suspended. However, in the long-run, this potential redemption suspension does not negatively influence OPF performance (in case OPFs reopen again). This makes OPFs an attractive investment alternative to REITs for investors who have a high level of risk aversion and a long-term investment horizon, such as endowments, insurance companies, and pension funds.     

Multilevel dual approach for pricing American style derivatives

In this article we propose a novel approach to reduce the computational complexity of the dual method for pricing American options. We consider a sequence of martingales that converges to a given target martingale and decompose the original dual representation into a sum of representations that correspond to different levels of approximation to the target martingale. By next replacing in each representation true conditional expectations with their Monte Carlo estimates, we arrive at what one may call a multilevel dual Monte Carlo algorithm. The analysis of this algorithm reveals that the computational complexity of getting the corresponding target upper bound, due to the target martingale, can be significantly reduced. In particular, it turns out that using our new approach, we may construct a multilevel version of the well-known nested Monte Carlo algorithm of Andersen and Broadie (Manag. Sci. 50:1222–1234, 2004) that is, regarding complexity, virtually equivalent to a non-nested algorithm. The performance of this multilevel algorithm is illustrated by a numerical example.     

You’re dead to me,but should you be? Using a retail database to classify American malls by occupancy and sales and an extended analysis of dead and dying malls

ABSTRACT

The study uses a shopping center database to classify malls by occupancy and sales. A factor analysis is conducted and reduces the large number of variables to a smaller number of mall constructs. The constructs are used to predict mall group membership by occupancy and sales. The results indicate that population and income are important variables towards mall occupancy and sales. An analysis of dead malls follows in order to produce more novel information for the growing interest in dead and dying malls. It is found through a second discriminant analysis that the prototypical characteristics of dead malls include; smaller in size, less population and lower income market areas. There were varying effects of renovation dates, competition and market age. Overall, the study benefited from examining dead malls more closely and provides more groundwork for future dead mall studies.     

农村基础设施的经济效应及农民满意度研究——基于山东省44个行政村的实地调查分析

基于对山东省44个行政村的调查分析,本文的主要结论有:环保类基础设施的供给仍十分不足;现有交通基础设施较好地发挥了提高交易效率的作用;进一步开启农村消费市场的目标可以通过降低交通费用来实现;进一步加大对农业生产机械和燃油的价格补贴,可以有效提高农业生产效率;灌溉费用在很大程度上形成农民的负担,过高的通讯费用也抑制了农村通讯业的发展;虽然农民对上级政府的依赖仍然较强,但已具有自愿提供部分基础设施的意愿.     

Buyer investment, export variety, and intrafirm trade

This paper studies a model of buyer investment and its effect on the variety and vertical structure of international trade. A distinction is made between two types of buyer investment: “Flexible” and “specific”, which differ in the ability of a buyer to match with a seller. The interaction of buyer investment with the entry and pricing incentives of suppliers are analyzed. It is shown that (i) there can be multiple equilibria in the variety of products traded, and (ii) less product variety is associated with more intrafirm trade. The possibility of multiple equilibria is consistent with the observation that some similar economies, such as Taiwan and South Korea, differ substantially in their export varieties to the U.S. A cross-country empirical analysis confirms the negative correlation between export variety and intrafirm trade.     

Commodifying the Commodifiers: The Impact of Procurement on Management Knowledge

Current conceptualizations of the commodification of management knowledge prioritize the agency of knowledge producers, such as consultancies, but downplay the role of other actors such as intermediaries. Using a qualitative multi‐method study of the role of procurement in sourcing consultancy knowledge, we demonstrate how intermediaries also commodify management knowledge, thereby limiting the exchange value of that knowledge. Through our analysis we develop a more sophisticated model of the processes and consequences of knowledge commodification. This model clarifies and extends prior research by highlighting the role of commensuration, comparison and valuation, as well as the related tactics that consultants and client managers use to resist procurement's attempts to commodify management knowledge.     

Collaborative Marketing in a Regional Destination: Evidence from Central Florida

This paper aims to explore a collaborative approach to regional destination marketing. Research questions were constructed for empirical data collection via documentary analysis and semistructured interviews with senior executives of destination marketing organizations (DMOs) in the Central Florida region. The research findings suggest that collaboration among DMOs is beneficial in terms of cost reduction and market penetration. Several issues emerge as inhibiting factors to their collaborative destination marketing efforts. Discussions and implications are provided both from a theoretical and practical perspective on the basis of the findings of the study. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基础设施建设、交易成本与经济增长

通过建立内生经济增长模型,讨论了基础设施作用于经济增长的机制：一部分有效降低了生产和消费过程中的交易成本,另一部分则直接提升人们的福利水平。藉由此机制的作用方式,模型得出了最优的基础设施投入量和与之对应的最大化经济增长率。利用模型的逻辑关系和实证分析中的相关数据,文中对我国历年可能的最优经济增长率进行了数值模拟,该模拟的结果显示出近15年来政府的工作效率和执政水平有了快速的提高。