Extending working hours: why not work 42 h rather than 38?—a CGE analysis for Germany

Faced with a record level of unemployment, the present debate in Germany is to extend the weekly hours of work. In this paper the employment effects of an economy-wide increase in weekly hours are quantified on the basis of a computable general equilibrium model for different specifications of the wage setting rule and the use of additional policy-induced public income. The simulation results back the argument of the opponents of longer working time that not more jobs will be created. However, when the higher tax revenues from GDP growth are used to reduce social security contributions, then the claim of the proponents that more jobs will be created can be supported.     

完善我国证券市场监管体制研究

如何完善我国的证券市场监管体制是保证我国证券市场能够持续、健康、稳定发展的重要课题.本文首先对市场监管失灵的理论进行了介绍,然后深入分析了我国证券市场监管体制的形成过程及其特点,最后就如何完善我国的证券监管体制提出了建议.     

The Random Walk Hypothesis in the Emerging Indian Stock Market

This paper examines the random walk hypothesis in the emerging Indian stock market using daily data on individual stocks. The statistical evidence in this paper rejects the random walk hypothesis. The results suggest that daily returns earned by individual stocks and by an equally weighted portfolio show significant non–linear dependence and persistent volatility effects. The non–linear dependence takes the form of ARCH–type conditional heteroskedasticity and does not appear to be caused by nonstationarity of underlying economic variables. Though conditional volatility is time varying, it does not explain expected returns.     

Efficient Markets Hypothesis and the Emerging Capital Market in Sri Lanka: Evidence from the Colombo Stock Exchange – A Note

The behaviour of stock prices on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) is examined with a view to determine its consistency with the weak form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH). Runs, Autocorrelation and Cointegration tests are applied to daily, weekly and monthly CSE index data for the period of January 1991–November 1996. Results of Runs, Correlation and Cointegration tests overwhelmingly reject the serial independence hypothesis, leading to the conclusion that the behaviour of stock prices in the Colombo Stock Exchange is not consistent with the weak form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. Tests of the-day-of-the-week-effect, however, show that there is no evidence of such a phenomenon on the Colombo Stock Exchange stock prices. Results of the tests of the-month-of-the-year-effect lead to the conclusion that CSE prices do not display any month-specific behaviour.     

From T-Bills to Stocks: Seasonal Anomalies Revisited

This paper employed eleven data series which consist of stocks, bonds, bills, equity premiums, term premiums, and various default premiums to investigate whether January seasonality reported in existing literature is robust across different states of the economy as this has important trading implications. For the periods 1926–1990, small stocks, small stock premiums, low grade bonds, and default premiums (spread between high grade, low grade and government bonds) reveal January seasonality and that the seasonality is robust across different states of the economy except for low grade bond returns and default premiums. January seasonality for low grade bond returns and low grade bond default premiums are primarily driven by results found during periods of economic expansion. Overall, January seasonality is more evident during the economic expansion periods although the magnitude of default premiums is larger during periods of economic contraction. Furthermore, prior findings of strong summer equity returns are primarily driven by the results found during the periods of economic contraction. It is also found that equity returns are generally higher during periods of economic expansion.     

Quality Competition and Social Welfare in Markets with Partial Coverage: New Results*

We use a vertical product differentiation model under partial market coverage to study the social welfare optimum and duopoly equilibrium when convex costs of quality provision are either fixed or variable in terms of production. We show the following new results. First, under fixed costs, the social planner charges a uniform price for the single variant that just covers costs of quality provision. Like the duopoly equilibrium, this socially optimal pricing entails a partially uncovered market, but a smaller share of the market is served compared with the duopoly equilibrium. Second, for the variable cost case, it is socially optimal to provide both high‐ and low‐quality variants, but market shares need not be equal. This differs from the result in fully covered markets. Third, in the duopoly equilibrium, the quality spread is too wide under variable costs relative to the social optimum. Under fixed costs, the duopoly produces two variants, but quality is too low relative to the social optimum, which has only one variant.     

Futures and forward price differential and the effect of marking‐to‐market: Australian evidence

The objective of this paper is to examine the effects of marking‐to‐market of futures contracts on the price differential between futures and forward contracts based on the predictions of the Cox, Ingersoll and Ross (1981) (CIR) model. Cox et al ., (1981) derive a series of propositions with respect to the relationship between futures and forward prices and a set of testable implications. These are tested empirically in this paper using Australian data from November 1991 to June 1997. The results provide evidence of the presence of significant futures and forward price differences, where the futures price is consistently below the forward price. Only partial support is found for the Cox et al ., (1981) propositions, implying that the effect of marking‐to‐market is not able to fully account for the price differential. Therefore, it is not possible to rule out the influence of other institutional factors on the futures‐forward price difference.     

规范政府采购专家评审机制 完善市场经济体制

本文从政府支出的角度,分析了政府采购制度在健全我国社会主义市场经济体制中的作用,并阐明依法规范政府采购专家评审机制,充分发挥政府采购评审专家作用,是实现我国《政府采购法》的关键。     

Var模型与我国的金融风险管理

Var模型作为金融风险量化管理的有效方法，在国际金融界得到了广泛的认同和应用。本文介绍了Var模型的基本思想及Var值估算的三种具体方法，并对Var模型在中国金融风险管理中的应用前景进行了分析和展望。     

注册会计师的角色认识与监管中的难题思考

从审计市场的供需两方来看,作为以提供审计服务换取收入的注册会计师,不可避免地有着“经济人”的共有特征——追求自身利益最大化,但同时,由于需求方信息使用者的广泛性,注册会计师实际上又肩负着维持市场秩序的社会责任,这正是注册会计师比其他提供劳务的行业受到更多限制的原因所在。从中关独立审计的发展轨迹可见,为了使注册会计师担当好其应有的社会角色,单靠市场或政府都是不可行的,作为公众利益的代言人——政府,如何合理把握市场与政府的界限,做好市场主体权利的配置是各国政府共同面临的难题。