Joint oligopsony-oligopoly in the U.S. leaf tobacco market, 1924–39

The leaf tobacco marketplace is highly organized. Prior to 1940, the few large tobacco companies controlled that organization explicitly. The question is whether this organization set oligopsonistic leaf prices or minimized production and transaction costs. A model of joint oligopsonyoligopoly shows that pricing of cigarettes and leaf tobacco was unified: oligopolistic cigarette pricing was sufficient to curtail both cigarette production and leaf purchases. The companies could just bid in the market for the leaf necessary for that cigarette production rate.Prima facie, the organization was not for oligopsony coordination. The implied econometric model of pricing fits observed behavior well.Malcolm Boyd, Dennis Carlton, John Garen, Stephen Karlson, Li Way Lee, An-loh Lin, Robert Miller, Stephen Spurr and the referee have given me thoughtful, perceptive and useful comments. I am pleased to acknowledge their involvement without implicating them in whatever errors remain.     

The relevance of managerial accounting information: A multinational analysis

Multinational enterprises often employ their domestic accounting and control systems in their foreign affiliates. The literature suggests that, due in part to different operating environments around the world, this practice may impair the usefulness of information available to foreign managers, as their information needs differ from those of domestic managers. This study empirically examined information relevance for areas of manager responsibility in different countries and attempted to determine the environmental variables associated with information relevance. The results showed that formal accounting reports are considered more helpful in some countries, while informal discussion as a form of information is considered more helpful in others. However, the relationship between the business environment and information relevance was small, although significant, across many types of information.     

Soft Strategic Information and IPO Underpricing

Using content analysis, we measure the impact of soft information, derived from words in initial public offering (IPO) registration documents, on IPO pricing efficiency. First, using 2,298 U.S. IPOs from 1996–2008, we find that an IPO document's strategic tone correlates positively with the stock's first-day return; more frequent usage of positive and/or less frequent usage of negative strategic words leads to more IPO underpricing. Second, we find that an IPO document's strategic tone is negatively correlated with the stock's long-run return. Together, these findings imply that investors initially misprice soft information in registration statements, which mispricing is eventually corrected. Additionally, we create new content-analysis libraries for strategic words and introduce a survey-based library creation method and word-weighting system.     

Disclosure‐protected Inference Using Generalised Linear Models

Vast amounts of data that could be used in the development and evaluation of policy for the benefit of society are collected by statistical agencies. It is therefore no surprise that there is very strong demand from analysts, within business, government, universities and other organisations, to access such data. When allowing access to micro‐data, a statistical agency is obliged, often legally, to ensure that it is unlikely to result in the disclosure of information about a particular person or organisation. Managing the risk of disclosure is referred to as statistical disclosure control (SDC). This paper describes an approach to SDC for output from analysis using generalised linear models, including estimates of regression parameters and their variances, diagnostic statistics and plots. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has implemented the approach in a remote analysis system, which returns analysis output from remotely submitted queries. A framework for measuring disclosure risk associated with a remote server is proposed. The disclosure risk and utility of approach are measured in two real‐life case studies and in simulation.     

The tortoise and the hare: the impact of employment instability on firm performance

The main objective of this study is to assess the influence of employment instability on firm performance in a sample of publicly traded firms. Competing theoretical arguments are considered with regard to likely outcomes associated with employment instability. A large sample of cross‐sectional time‐series data is then analysed using generalised estimating equations (GEE) regression techniques. Results indicate that employment instability is negatively associated with firm performance, although the relationship is also demonstrated to be quadratic (an inverse U‐shaped relationship). This suggests that the main relationship varies depending upon the level of employment instability. Industry characteristics are also examined as moderators of this main effect. The results suggest a disordinal interaction effect for industry differentiation, where employment instability is negatively associated with firm performance for firms in highly differentiated industries and positively associated in less differentiated industries.     

Key Managerial Accounting Skills for Lodging Industry Managers: The Third Phase of a Repeated Cross-Sectional Study

This study is the third phase of a repeated cross-sectional study that explores the current rankings of important accounting skills to lodging managers and the changes in the importance of accounting skills to lodging managers over time. In this study, as with two prior studies, financial executives were asked to rate the importance of a list of managerial accounting skills used by hotel general managers. The top three managerial accounting skills were the operating budget, the income statement, and analysis of variances. This study can provide a better sense of the perception of importance of accounting skills utilized by lodging managers. It will be useful for hospitality educators in designing the curriculum for managerial accounting courses to meet the expectations of the current hospitality industry.     

Capital Controls,Global Liquidity Traps,and the International Policy Trilemma*

The zero bound on interest rates introduces a new dimension to the trilemma in international policy. The openness of the international financial market might render monetary policy ineffective, even within a system of fully flexible exchange rates, because shocks that lead to a liquidity trap in one country are propagated through financial markets to other countries. However, the effectiveness of monetary policy can be restored by the imposition of capital controls. We derive the optimal response of monetary policy to a global liquidity trap in the presence of capital controls. We show that, even though capital controls might facilitate effective monetary policy, capital controls are not generally desirable in terms of welfare.     

Introduction to internally consistent modeling,aggregation, inference,and policy

This special issue of the Journal of Econometrics honors William A. Barnett’s exceptional contributions to unifying economic theory with rigorous statistical inference to interpret economic data and inform public policy. It is devoted to papers that advance microeconometrics, macroeconometrics, and financial econometrics to build models to interpret evidence.