Trading and Liquidity on the Tokyo Stock Exchange: A Bird's Eye View

The trading mechanism for equities on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) stands in sharp contrast to the primary mechanisms used to trade stocks in the United States. In the United States, exchange-designated specialists have affirmative obligations to provide continuous liquidity to the market. Specialists offer simultaneous and tight quotes to both buy and sell and supply sufficient liquidity to limit the magnitude of price changes between consecutive transactions. In contradistinction, the TSE has no exchange-designated liquidity suppliers. Instead, liquidity is provided through a public limit order book, and liquidity is organized through restrictions on maximum price changes between trades that serve to slow down trading. In this article, we examine the efficacy of the TSE's trading mechanisms at providing liquidity. Our analysis is based on a complete record of transactions and best-bid and best-offer quotes for most stocks in the First Section of the TSE over a period of 26 months. We study the size of the bid-ask spread and its cross-sectional and intertemporal stability; intertemporal patterns in returns, volatility, volume, trade size, and the frequency of trades; and market depth based on the response of quotes to trades and the frequency of trading halts and warning quotes.     

Orthogonal Frontiers and Alternative Mean-Variance Efficiency Tests

This paper catalogues properties of minimum norm orthogonal portfolios: portfolios which minimize a quadratic objective function and have returns uncorrelated with those of a candidate portfolio that is not mean-variance efficient. The analysis shows that the dollar versions of these portfolios correspond to estimators of zero beta rates based on alternative statistical criteria and grouping procedures while costless orthogonal portfolios represent candidate mean-variance efficiency tests. It also develops inference procedures for zero and unit net investment portfolios of individual securities (instead of grouped portfolios) that have zero expected betas. The resulting mean-variance efficiency tests are reasonably insensitive to the underlying statistical assumptions.     

EXPORT‐LED GROWTH IN CHILE: ASSESSING THE ROLE OF EXPORT COMPOSITION IN PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH

This study examines the export‐led growth hypothesis using annual time‐series data from Chile in a production function framework. It addresses the limitations of the existing literature and focuses on the impact of manufactured and primary exports on productivity growth. In order to investigate if and how manufactured and primary exports affect economic growth via increases in productivity, several single‐equation and system cointegration techniques are applied. The estimation results can be interpreted as evidence of productivity‐enhancing effects of manufactured exports and of productivity‐limiting effects of primary exports.     

Mutual Fund Performance Evaluation: A Comparison of Benchmarks and Benchmark Comparisons

The authors' main goal in this paper is to ascertain whether conventional measures of abnormal mutual fund performance are sensitive to the benchmark chosen to measure normal performance. They employ the standard CAPM benchmarks and a variety of APT benchmarks to investigate this question. They find little similarity between the absolute and relative mutual fund rankings obtained from these alternative benchmarks, which suggests the importance of knowing the appropriate model for risk and return in this context. In addition, the rankings are not insensitive to the method used to construct the APT benchmark. Finally, they find statistically significant measured abnormal performance using all the benchmarks. The economic explanation for this phenomenon appears to be an open question.     

DOES SIZE MATTER? THE IMPACT OF CHANGES IN HOUSEHOLD STRUCTURE ON INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN GERMANY

Income inequality in Germany has been continually increasing during the past 20 years. One cause of this development, among others, could be structural shifts in household formation due to long‐term societal trends. These affect per capita incomes, which has repercussions for the income distribution even if wages remain constant. The aim of this paper is to quantify the proportion of changing household structures in the increase in inequality. We find that the growth of the income gap in Germany (for both East and West from 1991 to 2007) is indeed strongly related to changes in household structure and employment behavior, and a large part of this increase is compensated by the welfare state.     

Do Corporate Governance Analysts Matter? Evidence from the Expansion of Governance Analyst Coverage

T his paper examines the economic consequences of the initiation of governance analyst coverage. Governance analysts process, enhance, and disseminate governance‐related information to capital market participants via, for example, governance reports and ratings. Using an exogenous shock in the United Kingdom, I find that an increase in governance analyst coverage results in increased governance quality, improved liquidity, increased financial analyst following, and improved investor breadth. These findings are consistent with governance analysts creating value for firms via monitoring, information dissemination/production, and investor recognition.     

ON THE CONCEPT OF GREEN NATIONAL INCOME

The present paper generalizes the Weitzman/Hartwick approachto national income accounting. We first establish a close generalrelation between the current value Hamiltonian of an optimalcontrol problem and the optimal value of the objective integralif the time argument does not enter the constraints and entersthe objective function only as a discount factor. This resultis applied to a simple economic model covering most models foundin the literature on national income accounting involving pollutionand non-renewable resources. We critically review the usefulnessof net national product as a welfare indicator and as an indicatorfor sustainability.     

Optimal Redistributive Taxation in a Search Equilibrium Model

This paper characterizes optimal non-linear income taxation in an economy with a continuum of unobservable productivity levels and endogenous involuntary unemployment due to frictions in the labour markets. Redistributive taxation distorts labour demand and wages. Compared to their efficient values, gross wages, unemployment, and participation are lower. Average tax rates are increasing. Marginal tax rates are positive, even at the top. Finally, numerical simulations suggest that redistribution is much more important in our setting than in a comparable Mirrlees-type setting.