Patent pools,litigation, and innovation

This article analyzes patent pools and their effects on litigation incentives, overall royalty rates, and social welfare when patent rights are probabilistic and can be invalidated in court. With probabilistic patents, the license fees reflect the strength of the patents. We show that patent pools of complementary patents can be used to discourage infringement by depriving potential licensees of the ability to selectively challenge patents and making them committed to a proposition of all‐or‐nothing in patent litigation. If patents are sufficiently weak, patent pools with complementary patents reduce social welfare as they charge higher licensing fees and chill subsequent innovation incentives.     

Fairness and the employment contract: North American regions versus Germany

Substantial evidence shows that North Americans are generallymore accepting of the market than Europeans and attribute marketoutcomes to a larger degree to effort or skill. Thus, NorthAmericans might be more accepting of layoffs and pay cuts thanGermans, and Germans might be more sensitive to the proceduresand conditions under which pay cuts and layoffs occur. The empiricalresults from our quasi-experiment are largely in line with thesehypotheses. The results may help to explain and be explainedby the different labour market institutions in the differentregions.     

Firm Size and Wages in Germany – Trends and Impacts of Mobility

The analysis of firm-size wage differentials in Germany, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, firstly corroborates the finding that wages rise with firm-size and shows that the rank order of mean wages between firm-size classes is stable for the period 1984–1993. Secondly, the most important novel results are as follows: (i) wage differentials between firm-size classes increased during the period investigated after controlling for individual attributes and computing with deflated values; (ii) average levels of the qualification of employees have diverged noticeably between small and large firms; (iii) movers from small to larger firms have to accept wages below the average pay of incumbents with comparable attributes in the new firms: (iv) movers to smaller firms, however, retain a portion of their higher wages in larger firms; and (v) wage differentials between smaller and larger firms decline with increasing unemployment.     

Unemployment and inflation in Ireland: 1926–2012

Since the 1970s, the overarching view in the literature has been that a Phillips curve relationship did not exist in Ireland prior to the 1979 exchange rate break with Sterling. It was argued that, as a small open economy, prices were determined externally. To test this relationship, we study the determination of inflation between 1926 and 2012, a longer sample period than any previously used. We find that the difference between unemployment and the NAIRU is a significant determinant of inflation both in the full sample and in the subsamples spanning the periods before and after the Sterling parity link.     

MULTIPLE EVENT INCIDENCE AND DURATION ANALYSIS FOR CREDIT DATA INCORPORATING NON‐STOCHASTIC LOAN MATURITY

Applications of duration analysis in economics and finance exclusively employ methods for events of stochastic duration. In application to credit data, previous research incorrectly treats the time to predetermined maturity events as censored stochastic event times. The medical literature has binary parametric ‘cure rate’ models that deal with populations that never experienced the modelled event. We propose and develop a multinomial parametric incidence and duration model, incorporating such populations. In the class of cure rate models, this is the first fully parametric multinomial model and is the first framework to accommodate an event with predetermined duration. The methodology is applied to unsecured personal loan credit data provided by one of Australia's largest financial services organizations. This framework is shown to be more flexible and predictive through a simulation and empirical study that reveals: simulation results of estimated parameters with a large reduction in bias; superior forecasting of duration; explanatory variables can act in different directions upon incidence and duration; and variables exist that are statistically significant in explaining only incidence or duration. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Money and inflation in the euro area: A case for monetary indicators?

This paper examines inflation indicators for the euro area by studying the relationship between inflation, output, money and interest rates, using data spanning 1980–2001. The central finding is that both the output gap and the real money gap (the difference between the real money stock and the long-run equilibrium real money stock) contain considerable information regarding future inflation. In contrast, the Eurosystem's money-growth indicator (the difference between nominal money growth and a reference value), the prominent “first pillar” in its monetary strategy, contains little information about future inflation, and no information beyond that contained in the output and real money gaps. The predictive performance of the output gap has improved compared to that in a previous version of this paper, most likely because of better estimation methods.     

Modelling exchange-traded barrier options traded in the Australian options market

Barrier options traded in the Australian market vary considerably in terms of the extent to which the barrier is monitored and in terms of the location of the barrier level relative to the exercise price. This paper examines the impact of these differences on prices and also on deltas and gammas. We find that it is not possible to generalize results concerning hedge parameter values to all barrier options. We find that options examined by Easton et al. (2004) do not display discontinuity of deltas at the barrier levels and that their apparent overpricing cannot be attributed to hedging difficulties.     

A DYNAMIC FACTOR MODEL OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY IN HONG KONG

Abstract. This paper applies the single‐index dynamic factor model developed by J. H. Stock and M. W. Watson to construct (almost) real‐time estimates of economic activity in Hong Kong. The Hang Seng index, a residential property price index, retail sales and total exports are used as coincident indicators. Principal component analysis is first used to obtain an impression of the common component of the indicator series. This component and the dynamic factor identified by the Stock–Watson methodology are strongly correlated and seem to capture economic fluctuations in Hong Kong reasonably well.     

External influences in Nordic business cycles, 1870–1988

This paper considers the relationship of the Nordic business cycle to the world business cycle using annual output data spanning 1870–1988. The paper studies the Nordic and a set of non-Nordic countries separately and finds evidence for both a Nordic and a world business cycle. Output movements in the individual Nordic countries are connected through the Nordic business cycle and are less affected by the world business cycle. There is no significant change in the behavior of the business cycle in the Nordic countries between 1873–1913 and 1948–1988.