The extent to which unbalanced schedules cause distortions in sports league tables

The Australian Football League (AFL) has operated its fixture on the basis of an unbalanced schedule since the league expanded from 12 to 14 teams in 1987. This system contains a number of factors (some random) determining the set of bilateral combinations of teams that play each other on an extra occasion during the course of the season, not least of all maximising attendances. While the status quo may be unavoidable to some extent (it is also a bone of contention to many fans), its implications for within-season measures of competitive balance are nonetheless obvious. This is because of the potential for biases being created in the end-of-season league table as a result of the unbalanced schedule. This paper uses a modified model to correct for this inherent bias over the seasons 1997–2008, and the results are discussed in detail. The model is also generalisable to many unbalanced schedule designs observed in professional sports leagues worldwide.     

Risk management instruments for debt driven conservation efforts: The case of India's Project Tiger

Project Tiger has been India's premier case of conservation success. Since mid 1990s select Project Tiger Reserves in India were chosen for intensive funding by the Global Environment Facility, the International Development Agency (IDA) and the Government of India under the ‘India Eco-Development Project’. This project marked a modest shift towards debt based funding. The GEF Project has become a benchmark for tiger conservation in India both in terms of management outcomes and scale and scope of funding. However in the absence of large-scale budgetary support or self-generating income flows, it becomes difficult for the GEF type of project to be replicated in other tiger reserves of the country. Debt instruments hold promise as enablers of conservation finance. The paper proposes issue of ‘tiger bonds’ to meet the financial requirements of tiger reserves. Though attractive as a debt instrument, a ‘tiger bond’ could nevertheless entail interest rate and default risks.Bioprospecting activities form good revenue sources for tiger reserves to pay off their debts. However bioprospecting activities do not provide assured returns to tiger reserves. Pharmaceutical companies that prospect for genetic resources and practice ‘real options’ approach to R&D investment planning, adopt multi-phased investment systems and sequential searches that gives them the flexibility to abandon R&D projects. From the point of view of genetic resource providing entities like Project Tiger Reserves, the ‘postponement value’ generated by real options, enables a drug company to tap substitutes for the genetic resources that form the subject matter of bioprospecting contracts. To obviate possible repayment risks by tiger reserves, the paper advocates the institution of ‘put bonds’ as a risk management tool for Project Tiger Reserves in order to hedge themselves against loan defaults arising from possible loss in bioprospecting income. The paper also brings out the mechanics of the issue of tiger bonds in the Indian context. It is argued that a put bond not only hedges default risks but would also aid ‘value discovery’ and payment for ecosystem services as far as the Project Tiger Reserves of India are concerned.     

A spatial analysis of R&D: the role of industry proximity

This paper employs individual firm data in order to check the existence of industry-spatial effects alongside other microeconomic determinants of R&D investment. Spatial proximity is defined by a measure of firms’ industry distance based on trade intensity between sectors. The spatial model specified here refers to the combined spatial-autoregressive model with autoregressive disturbances. In modelling the outcome for each location as dependent on a weighted average of the outcomes of other locations, outcomes are determined simultaneously. The results of the spatial estimation suggest that in their R&D decision firms benefit from spillovers originating from neighbouring industries.     

Nonlinear stochastic effects of substitution — an evolutionary approach

Technological innovations have been investigated by means of substitution and diffusion as well as evolution models, each of them dealing with different aspects of the innovation problem. In this paper we follow the well known research traditions on self-organisation models of complex systems. For the first time in the literature we show the existence of a specific niche effect, which may occur in the first stage of establishment of a new technology. Using a stochastic Master equation approach, we obtain analytical expressions for the survival probabilities of a new technology in smaller or larger ensembles. As a main result we demonstrate how a hyperselection situation might be removed in a stochastic picture and thresholds against the prevailing of a new technology in a step-by-step process can be overcome.     

Modeling Cyclical Asymmetries in European Imports

This paper applies smooth transition models to capture the nonlinear behavior in the imports data of six major European economies and to assess whether such nonlinearities are related to business cycle asymmetries. Two classes of switch between regimes are considered: endogenously determined transition that assumes nonlinearities are generated by idiosyncratic components specific to foreign trade, and exogenous transition based on GDP growth as a more direct indicator of the cyclical state of the economy. The results support the proposition that the dynamics of imports are nonlinear. In Belgium, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom, regimes change over the business cycle, while in Germany and Italy the switch between regimes is endogenous. National characteristics play a role in defining the position of extreme regimes, the smoothness of the transition, and local dynamics within each state.Previous versions of this article have been presented at the 57th International Atlantic Economic Conference (Lisbon, Portugal, March 10–14, 2004) and at the VII Encuentro de Economía Aplicada (Vigo, Spain, June 3–5, 2004). The authors thank the conference participants and an anonymous referee for their comments.     

The effect of nonreciprocal preferential trade agreements on benefactors’ exports

Over the last decades, developed countries have provided developing countries with preferential market access via trade policies in the form of nonreciprocal preferential trade agreements (NRPTAs). Despite the lack of reciprocity of this kind of agreements, certain criteria for designating eligible countries refer to the commercial interests of benefactor countries. This paper examines for the first time the effect of NRPTAs on benefactors’ exports to beneficiary countries. Using recent developments in the econometric analysis of the gravity equation, we find robust evidence that nonreciprocal agreements have had an economically significant effect on exports not only for beneficiary countries but also for benefactor countries.