The impact of time duration between trades on the price of treasury note futures contracts

Recent research in finance has indicated that the institutional structure in which financial asset prices are determined can have a nontrivial impact on pricing. This report examines transaction level data for Treasury Note futures contracts traded at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) to identify institutional, or market microstructure, impacts on the pricing of these contracts. Relatively few articles have conducted empirical research on the microstructure of U.S. futures trading due to the limited availability of comprehensive transaction level data from the futures exchanges. This report uses the CBOT's Computerized Trade Reconstruction database, a comprehensive transaction level dataset, to identify the price impact of the time duration between trades in a manner analogous to that of A. Dufour and R. F. Engle (2000). Unique differences from prior research include the application to futures contracts with their relative higher frequency of trading, as well as the investigation of the price impact of the number of active traders present on the trading floor and the trading volume. Subsequent price and sign of trade significantly relate to the time duration between trades, the number of floor brokers, and the trading volume. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl. Fut Mark 24:965–980, 2004     

Remaining life estimation of used components in consumer products: Life cycle data analysis by Weibull and artificial neural networks

Environmental awareness and legislative pressures have made manufacturers responsible for the take-back and end-of-life treatment of their products. To competitively exploit these products, one option is to incorporate used components in “new” or remanufactured products. However, this option is partly limited by a firm's ability to assess the reliability of used components. A comprehensive two-step approach is proposed. The first stage phase statistically analyzes the behavior of components for reuse. A well-known reliability assessment method, the Weibull analysis, is applied to the time-to-failure data to assess the mean life of components. In the second phase, the degradation and condition monitoring data are analyzed by developing an artificial neural network (ANN) model. The advantages of this approach over traditional approaches employing multiple regression analysis are highlighted with empirical data from a consumer product. Finally, the Weibull analysis and the ANN model are then integrated to assess the remaining useful life of components for reuse. This is a critical advance in sustainable management of supply chains since it allows for a better understanding of not only service requirements of product, but the remaining life in a product and hence its suitability for reuse or remanufacture. Future work should assess: (1) reduction in downtime of process equipment through the implementation of this technique as a means to better manage preventative maintenance; (2) reduce field failure of remanufactured product; (3) selling-service strategy through implementation of the proposed methodology.     

Organizational capabilities in e-commerce: An empirical investigation of e-brokerage service providers

E-commerce not only has tremendous potential for growth but also poses unique challenges for both incumbents and new entrants. By examining drivers of firm performance in e-commerce from a capabilities perspective, the authors conceptualize three firm capabilities that are critical for superior firm performance in e-commerce: information technology capability, strategic flexibility, and trust-building capability. The extent and nature of market orientation is conceptualized as a platform for leveraging e-commerce capabilities. The authors test the effects of e-commerce capabilities on performance (e.g., relative profits, sales, return on investment) using data from 122 e-brokerage service providers. The results indicate that information technology capability and strategic flexibility affect performance given the right market orientation. Amit Saini (asaini2@unl.edu) is an assistant professor of marketing at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He conducts research in the area of marketing strategy, technology-marketing interface, e-commerce strategy, and customer relationship management. He has presented papers at major conferences, and his research appears in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science and American Marketing Association—Marketing Educator’s Conference Proceedings. His industry experience includes sales management and quantitative market research. Jean L. Johnson (Johnsonjl@wsu.edu) is a professor of marketing at Washington State University. Her research includes partnering capabilities development in, and management of, interfirm relationships and management of international strategic alliances. Her research appears in journals such as theJournal of Marketing, the Journal of International Business Studies, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and theInternational Journal of Research in Marketing. She serves on the editorial boards of theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Retailing, theJournal of Business and Industrial Marketing, and reviews for others. She spent several years in the advertising industry and has lived, taught, and conducted research in France and Japan. She has been selected to cochair the 2006 winter American Marketing Association (AMA) conference.     

The Exchange Rate and Inflation in the UK

The United Kingdom is a highly open economy, and has a monetary policy strategy of targeting inflation in consumer prices. In this paper, we look at the evidence from the UK on inflation behaviour, and examine the propositions from several theoretical models about inflation dynamics in an open economy, focusing in particular on the hypothesized connections between the exchange rate and consumer price inflation. Theoretical open‐economy macroeconomic models ‘cover the waterfront’ on this issue, ranging from ‘exchange rate disconnect’ to a rigid link between nominal exchange rate changes and inflation. We estimate on UK data the open‐economy Phillips curves implied by the alternative explanations. We argue that, of the alternatives considered, only a model where imports are modelled as an intermediate good, as in McCallum and Nelson (1999) , provides a reasonable match with the data. Unlike the standard model, in which imports are treated as a final consumer good, the intermediate‐goods specification provides support for a policy of CPI inflation targeting.     

Publishers, artists, and copyright enforcement

This paper investigates whether and to what extent there is a conflict of interest between artists and their publishers, regarding to whether and to what degree illegal distributions of their copyrighted recordings should be prevented. This conflict arises because artists also earn their profit from other market activities such as giving live performances, in addition to their share of profits from sales of their copyrighted recordings via the publishers.     

Implementation of college admission rules

Summary We consider both Nash and strong Nash implementation of various matching rules for college admissions problems. We show that all such rules are supersolutions of the stable rule. Among these rules the lower bound stable rule is implementable in both senses. The upper bound Pareto and individually rational rule is strong Nash implementable yet it is not Nash implementable. Two corollaries of interest are the stable rule is the minimal (Nash or strong Nash) implementable solution that is Pareto optimal and individually rational, and the stable rule is the minimal (Nash or strong Nash) implementable extension of any of its subsolutions.We wish to thank Professor William Thomson for his efforts in supervision as well as his useful suggestions. We are grateful to the participants in his reading class, workshops at Bilkent University, University of Rochester, and in particular Jeffrey Banks, Stephen Ching, Bhaskar Dutta, Rangarajan Sundaram and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments.     

How do family ownership,control and management affect firm value?

Using proxy data on all Fortune-500 firms during 1994–2000, we find that family ownership creates value only when the founder serves as CEO of the family firm or as Chairman with a hired CEO. Dual share classes, pyramids, and voting agreements reduce the founder's premium. When descendants serve as CEOs, firm value is destroyed. Our findings suggest that the classic owner-manager conflict in nonfamily firms is more costly than the conflict between family and nonfamily shareholders in founder-CEO firms. However, the conflict between family and nonfamily shareholders in descendant-CEO firms is more costly than the owner-manager conflict in nonfamily firms.     

Taking marketing strategy risks with seemingly no expected gains

This paper investigates the competitive rationale for firms to invest in marketing activities aiming to enhance valuation and achieve differentiation and competitive advantage, while carrying the strategic risks of causing unintended negative consequences. We build a stylized theoretical model where firms offering similar (homogenous) products are competing by determining their marketing strategy and pricing. Each firm must choose between several marketing activities that have different potentials of enhancing consumers’ product valuations while carrying some risk of lowering consumer valuation if unintended negative outcomes occur. The stochastic nature of marketing implies that (1) even when both firms invest the same amount of money aiming to enhance product valuations by the same level, there will be a variety of (posterior) vertical differentiation scenarios where the consumers could value either firm’s product as better as or worse than the rival’s. (2) The firms may employ marketing activities that do not even lead to gains in consumer product valuation in expectation. The duopoly model analysis indicates that associated with strategic pricing, even such stochastic marketing activities may constitute desirable strategies for two a priori symmetric firms in order to avoid a Bertrand type competition as the benefit from differentiation is found to be significant enough to offset the unintended negative outcomes. The oligopoly model analysis indicates that there is an increased incentive to take marketing risk when there is a greater level of competitive intensity in the marketplace. Preliminary experimental evidence is presented to support the main findings from theoretical model analyses. The paper thus provides important managerial implications for firms contemplating investment in seemingly risky marketing activities.

     

Determinants of cross-border merger premia

Firms have a broad range of rationales for engaging in cross-border mergers and other forms of foreign direct investment (FDI); while some companies are in search of the cost advantages provided by foreign resources, other firms are primarily interested in gaining access to new markets. Although a significant amount of research has explored the patterns of FDI, little work has been done to assess what influences the value of cross-border mergers and, in particular, what determines why some cross-border mergers are expected to result in higher synergies when compared to others. This paper explores what characteristics of a merger are expected to increase the synergies that a firm will accrue from a cross-border merger by testing how a variety of factors impact the premia paid to effectuate a cross-border merger. We find that firms are willing to pay a higher premium to obtain greater control over foreign firms, and that this control is even more important in mergers involving firms in emerging markets. We also find that the factors affecting deal premia in cross-border mergers differ based on whether the acquirer has a high or low intangible asset intensity level.