Agricultural policy adjustments in the Korean rice economy

A political preference function is used to endogenize government actions in a simultaneous equation model for South Korean rice policy. The effects of economic changes on rice pricing decisions through estimated political weights are tested to improve our understanding of policy adjustments in that country and open the way for further research in East Asia.     

Should reciprocity be a part of the UNCITRAL Model Cross-Border Insolvency Law?

In 1997, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law adopted a Model Law on Cross Border Insolvency. Since then, many countries have passed it or a revised version of it. In many cases, the adopting country wrestled with the issue of whether to include a reciprocity provision in its version. Some have included such a provision, others have not. The inclusion of a reciprocity provision is not consistent. This article discusses the concept and argues that a reciprocity provision could be detrimental to the operation of the Model Law and prejudicial to the parties; especially those in the country whose legislation includes such a provision. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Asymptotic expansions of the distributions of the estimates of coefficients in a simultaneous equation system

In this paper asymptotic expansions are derived for the density functions of the TSLS and LIML estimates of coefficients in a simultaneous equation system when the sample size increases and the effect of the exogenous variables increases along the sample size. These approximations are used to compare the asymptotic moments of the TSLS and LIML estimates and the concentration of probability around the true value of the estimates.     

Risks and farmers’ investment in productive assets in Nigeria

The majority of farmers in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) lack the means to mitigate the impact of risks associated with rainfall and commodity prices due to capital constraints and the imperfect insurance market in these countries. Because most SSA farmers are risk averse, they may be willing to invest in productive assets that can mitigate the impacts of such risks if their capital constraints are relaxed through external financial assistance. We test this hypothesis by using panel data on investment behavior of Nigerian farmers who received financial assistance on productive assets. The empirical results show that farmers facing higher rainfall risks are more likely to invest in irrigation pumps that can mitigate the impact of rainfall risks, while those facing higher risks of white gari price are more likely to invest in milling machines that enable them to process cassava into flour instead of gari, which supports our hypothesis.     

Pricing Options under Stochastic Interest Rates: A New Approach

We will generalize the Black-Scholes option pricing formula by incorporating stochastic interest rates. Although the existing literature has obtained some formulae for stock options under stochastic interest rates, the closed-form solutions have been known only under the Gaussian (Merton type) interest rate processes. We will show that an explicit solution, which is an extended Black-Scholes formula under stochastic interest rates in certain asymptotic sense, can be obtained by extending the asymptotic expansion approach when the interest rate volatility is small. This method, called the small-disturbance asymptotics for Itô processes, has recently been developed by Kunitomo and Takahashi (1995, 1998) and Takahashi (1997). We found that the extended Black-Scholes formula is decomposed into the original Black-Scholes formula under the deterministic interest rates and the adjustment term driven by the volatility of interest rates. We will illustrate the numerical accuracy of our new formula by using the Cox–Ingersoll–Ross model for the interest rates.     

Guatemalan tourism and the efficacy of wage employment in Panajachel

Although tourism's apparent financial benefit to the Guatemalan economy in terms of earning foreign exchange is well known, there has been little micro-economic research done on how the country's third largest export industry affects individual communities. Therefore, this study compares price and wage data to provide initial leads on how tourism affects the food purchasing power of wage earners in the developing tourist community of Panajachel. Research shows that between 1964 and 1978, tourist-industry demands on local food supplies helped inflate food prices far above wage increases, and contributed to a wage laborer's loss of food-purchasing power. Thus in most cases, wage-labor employment in Panajachel is not efficacious in terms of maintaining or increasing the ability to purchase food.     

Is the Government Failure Theory Still Relevant? A panel analysis using US state level data

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the robustness of the government failure theory. A core feature of the government failure theory is demand heterogeneity. Previous studies have brought into question the robustness of the government failure theory, due to inconsistent results concerning the explanatory power of demand heterogeneity. Therefore, in this paper we revisit this important research agenda using US state level panel data. We find the two‐way fixed effects model a suitable model for testing the government failure theory's robustness and present findings which indicate that observable demand heterogeneity has a positive effect on the size of the nonprofit sector. This paper also empirically examines the relevance of the complementary financing hypothesis in terms of the cooperative nature of the governmental and nonprofit sector relationship; that is where governments delegate the production of quasi‐public goods to the nonprofit sector.     

Employment Systems in Japan's Financial Industry: Globalization,Growing Divergence and Institutional Change

This article examines growing divergence and change in the employment systems of Japan's financial industry from the early 1990s until shortly after the so‐called Lehman Shock. This was a period which saw accelerated deregulation and globalization strongly impact the country's financial markets, leading to intensified competition over human resources. Foreign multinational corporations introduced into Japan's local product and labour markets new global ‘rules of the game’; in response, some native firms were forced to alter core aspects of a traditional employment model. The result was the emergence of diverging patterns of employment. The present study will demonstrate that the interaction of two key factors — national ownership and variation among core products and services offered — is shaping employment diversification, mediated by firms’ individual policies and practices. This research contributes to the debate on the effects of globalization on the divergence and change of employment systems.