PRINCIPAL AND AGENCY TRADES BY STOCKBROKERS ARE COMPLEMENTARY: THE WELFARE EFFECTS OF DEREGULATING AGENCY TRADING AND BANNING PRINCIPAL TRADES

This paper models the demand for stockbrokers' services in Australia, consisting of two related services, agency trades and principal trades. The relationship between agency and principal trades is estimated. The results indicate that the two services are complements rather than substitutes. Using unique accounting information, a model of agency and principal trading activities is estimated to determine the welfare effects of (i) deregulating brokerage commissions and (ii) a ban on principal trading by brokers. The results show a sizeable welfare gain to investors (amounting to about 60% of the gross revenue of brokers) stemming from deregulation of the minimum charge for agency trades. The loss in profitability by brokers due to deregulation is also computed and shown to be negligible. The results also show that due to complementarity, a ban on principal trading, even with deregulation of agency trading, can impose an arbitrarily high cost on investors which could, in principle, offset the gains from agency deregulation.     

African American Women Voters: Review Article

This article reviews a book written by Lisa Nikol Nealy entitled: African American Women Voters: Racializing Religiosity, Political Consciousness and Progressive Political Action in U.S. Presidential Elections from 1964 Through 2008 (2009). I extracted the following themes from the book: (1) the importance and influence of the Black church or religious organizations and their leaders on the level of political participation of African Americans, especially Black women in the United States; (2) that Black and White gentile European Americans are experiencing two racial religiosities, which is reflected in the voting booth during national elections; (3) that relative to their Black male counterparts and members of other racial groups, Black women have made enormous contributions to U.S. politics especially in voting trends from the 1960s to present; and (4) there continues to be a serious division between Black and White American females, a division which is rooted in religious and racial histories of the two groups.     

One-step R-estimation in linear models with stable errors

Classical estimation techniques for linear models either are inconsistent, or perform rather poorly, under α$\alpha$-stable error densities; most of them are not even rate-optimal. In this paper, we propose an original one-step R-estimation method and investigate its asymptotic performances under stable densities. Contrary to traditional least squares, the proposed R-estimators remain root-n$n$ consistent (the optimal rate) under the whole family of stable distributions, irrespective of their asymmetry and tail index. While parametric stable-likelihood estimation, due to the absence of a closed form for stable densities, is quite cumbersome, our method allows us to construct estimators reaching the parametric efficiency bounds associated with any prescribed values (_α0,_b0)$({\alpha }_0,b_0)$ of the tail index α$\alpha$ and skewness parameter b$b$, while preserving root-n$n$ consistency under any (α,b)$(\alpha ,b)$ as well as under usual light-tailed densities. The method furthermore avoids all forms of multidimensional argmin computation. Simulations confirm its excellent finite-sample performances.     

How industrial salespeople gain customer trust

This study investigated how industrial salespeople gain the trust of their customers. Results show that trust increases as the customer gains the impression that the salesperson is dependable, honest, competent, customer oriented, and likeable. Based on the results, a general model of trust building is suggested.