Power‐Sharing in Monetary Policy Committees: Evidence from the United Kingdom and Sweden

Committees may make better monetary policy decisions than individuals; however, the benefits of group decision making could be lost if committee members cede power to a chairman. We develop an econometric model to describe intracommittee power‐sharing across members. Estimation of the model permits us to classify monetary policy committees into the typology developed by Blinder ( 2004 , 2007 ). We estimate our model for the United Kingdom's Bank of England (BOE) and Sweden's Riksbank. Results for the BOE suggest that the Governor has little influence over other committee members, while those for the Riksbank indicate that the Governor is highly influential.     

旅游者中位年龄的几个市场指示意义

年龄是旅游市场细分理论中一个重要的社会—人口学变量,不同的年龄结构对细分市场的旅游行为有着重要的影响。然而,在刻画旅游者年龄结构时,无论是在业界实践还是学界研究中,被普遍采用但标准各异的旅游者年龄"上中下"分组模式却不可避免地制约了相关研究成果之间纵向或横向的比较与验证,需要发展一条可以沟通联系的纽带。文章试图将中位年龄作为这种可能的纽带引入我国旅游市场研究领域,基于国家旅游局公开发布的旅游者年龄统计数据,提出了旅游市场类型的中位年龄划分标准,并在此基础上进一步探讨了旅游者中位年龄在指示市场结构类型、市场环境波动和市场发展分化方面的后效价值,以期为旅游市场营销与管理提供一定的理论依据。     

Uniformly most accurate equivariant prediction limit

Summary Prediction limits are widely used for reliability problems and other related problems. The determination of prediction limits has been extensively investigated, but few optimal properties of these limits have been explored. This paper introduces a concept of uniform accuracy in order to compare equivariant prediction limits and show that the prediction limits used for the normal distribution and the exponential distribution are uniformly most accurate equivariant.     

A note on finite sample breakdown points of projection based multivariate location and scatter statistics

In this note, general results of finite sample breakdown point are obtained for two classes of projection based location and scatter statistics: the Stahel-Donoho statistics and the Maronna-Yohai statistics. It is shown that these projection based location and scatter statistics can achieve the maximum breakdown point of affine equivariant multivariate location and scatter statistics. General relationships between the finite sample breakdown point of these statistics and the uniform finite sample breakdown point of the sample median and a modified sample median absolute deviation are formally established. Received: May 1999     

Multivariate L1 mean

The center of a univariate data set {x ₁,…,x _n} can be defined as the point μ that minimizes the norm of the vector of distances y′=(|x ₁−μ|,…,|x _n−μ|). As the median and the mean are the minimizers of respectively the L ₁- and the L ₂-norm of y, they are two alternatives to describe the center of a univariate data set. The center μ of a multivariate data set {x ₁,…,x _n} can also be defined as minimizer of the norm of a vector of distances. In multivariate situations however, there are several kinds of distances. In this note, we consider the vector of L ₁-distances y′₁=(∥x ₁- μ∥₁,…,∥x _n- μ∥₁) and the vector of L ₂-distances y′₂=(∥x ₁- μ∥₂,…,∥x _n-μ∥₂). We define the L ₁-median and the L ₁-mean as the minimizers of respectively the L ₁- and the L ₂-norm of y ₁; and then the L ₂-median and the L ₂-mean as the minimizers of respectively the L ₁- and the L ₂-norm of y ₂. In doing so, we obtain four alternatives to describe the center of a multivariate data set. While three of them have been already investigated in the statistical literature, the L ₁-mean appears to be a new concept. Received January 1999     

The break-up of municipalities: Voting behavior in local referenda

This paper examines the economic and political conditions that influence peoples attitudes regarding a municipality break-up. The theoretical model predicts intra-municipal differences in tax bases, political preferences, and population size to affect the expected gain from secession. The predictions of the model are tested using data on local referenda about municipality partitioning in Sweden. The data support one of the three effects; voters in municipality parts that are wealthy compared to other parts of the same municipality are more positive to secession.Received: April 2003, Accepted: September 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: H11, H73Anna Brink: I thank Henry Ohlsson, Lars-Erik Borge, Matz Dahlberg, Katarina Nordblom, Magnus Wikström, seminar participants at Göteborg University and Uppsala University, and two anonymous referees for useful comments. This research was financially supported by the Swedish Research Council and Ejnar Lindhs kommunalvetenskapliga stiftelse.     

OUTSOURCING AND MARKET VALUE OF THE FIRM: TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL

We analyze the effect of buyer, contract, and vendor characteristics on abnormal stock returns among firms that have announced large scale Information Technology (IT) and Business Process outsourcing (BPO) contracts. We draw upon a comprehensive dataset on outsourcing announcements, augmented with data from public sources. Salient buyer factors examined include use of a wide range of organizational controls. On the vendor side, we examine the impact of vendor size, contract size and reputation. Our study shows that use of behavior controls, outcome controls (negative), vendor reputation, and industry of buyer firm affect market value. When limited to buyer related factors, use of behavior and clan controls is positively related to abnormal returns around IT outsourcing announcements. An interesting finding is that IT and BPO success require different sets of controls. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于神经网络的专家预测方法研究

针对复杂预测问题的需求,基于神经网络的思想对专家预测方法进行了探讨。首先,在神经元模型的基础上提出了专家预测模型。然后,根据专家预测模型的需要对专家给出的模糊语言判断信息的合成进行了研究,并给出了具体的量化方法。最后,为提高预测方法的精度,提出了一种专家权值的调整方法;算例表明,该方法具有简单实用的特点。     

对我国当前利率政策的几点思考

本次利率调整并非以宏观调控为目的而进行的主动性调整,更主要的是为适应通货膨胀变化而被动做出的适应性调整。很多经济学界的人士不断强调目前货币政策调控中应当更多采用市场化手段,也就是更多地通过利率的调整来实现对经济的调控,但中国微观主体对利率的敏感性较低,利率做为货币政策中间目标的传导效果并不理想。由于持这种观点的人数很多,因此市场往往会高估利率调整在宏观经济调控中的实际作用。在我国的利率调整政策当中,利率的市场化改革比利用非市场化的利率进行宏观调控更切合实际。当前利率市场化的最大障碍是微观主体对利率的定价能力仍相当弱,微观主体在与央行对利率决定的博弈中处于完全的弱势。非常可喜的是,此轮加息争论热潮之中,管理层除了选择加息和扩大存贷款利率波动范围之外,在培养市场的价格决定能力方面也迈出了重要一步。     

The median of the poisson distribution

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a closed form expression for the median of the Poisson distribution and, second, to improve the known estimates of the difference between the median and the mean of the Poisson distribution. We use elementary techniques based on the monotonicity of certain sequences involving tail probabilities of the Poisson distribution and the Central Limit TheoremReceived November 2002