Who trades with whom — the income pattern of international trade

Zusammenfassung Wer treibt mit wem Handel? Das Einkommensmuster im internationalen Handel. — Dieser Aufsatz zeigt für 100 L?nder das Durchschnittseinkommen der Handelspartner, und zwar sowohl für die Importals auch für die Exportseite. Diese Angaben werden mit fiktiven Durchschnittseinkommen verglichen, die sich ergeben würden, wenn die geographische Verteilung des Handels rein zuf?llig w?re. Dabei stellt sich heraus, daΒ die Abweichung der tats?chlichen von den zuf?lligen Handelspartner-Einkommen mit der geographischen Konzentration des Handels, mit dem Anteil des mit den USA geführten Handels am gesamten AuΒenhandel sowie mit dem eigenen Pro-Kopf-Einkommen des jeweils betrachteten Landes zunimmt. Der positive Einkommenseffekt zeigt, daΒ zumindest für die industrialisierten reichen L?nder das Einkommensmuster des internationalen Handels mit Linders Hypothese übereinstimmt. Sein AusmaΒ deutet allerdings darauf hin, daΒ dieser Faktor nur wenig dazu beitragen kann, die Richtung des internationalen Handels zu erkl?ren.

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Résumé Qui fait de commerce avec qui? La structure de revenu dans le commerce international. — Cet article présente des données pour cent pays sur le revenu moyen des partenaires commerciaux de chaque pays, en ce qui concerne les importations aussi bien que les exportations. Ces données sont comparées avec les revenus moyens qui résulteraient d’une structure géographique du commerce par pur hasard. Les auteurs trouvent que la divergence entre le revenu du partenaire commercial actuel et le revenu du partenaire commercial par hasard s’accroit avec la concentration géographique du commerce, avec l’importance du commerce qui est fait avec les E.U. et avec le revenu per capita du pays respectif. L’effet positif de revenu démontre que la structure de revenu en ce qui concerne le commerce des pays riches et industrialisés est conforme avec 1’ hypothése de Linder. Sa dimension, cependant, suggére aussi que ce facteur est peu important d’expliquer la direction du commerce international.

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Resumen Quièn comercia con quièn — el patron de ingresos del comercio international. — Este articulo prèsenta datos de 100 pafses sobre el ingreso promedio de los socios comerciales de un pais, tanto para importaciones como exportaciones. Estas cifras se contrastan con los ingresos promedios que se obtendrian si el patron geográfico del comercio fuera puramente al azar. Se descubrió que la divergencia entre el patron de ingresos de los socios comerciales actual y al azar aumenta con la concentracion geográfica del comercio, con la parte del comercio efectuada con los EEUU y con el ingreso per capita propio del pais. El efecto ingreso positivo muestra que el patron de ingresos del comercio, a cualquier tasa, de pafses industrializados y ricos, están de acuerdo con la hip?tesis de Linder. Su magnitud, sin embargo, sugiere tambièn que este factor es de pequena importancia para explicar la dirección del comercio international.

     

On the Incentive Effects of Sample Size in Monitoring Agents – A Theoretical and Experimental Analysis

When agents compete for a bonus and their productivity in each of several possible occasions depends stochastically on (constant) effort, the number of times this is checked to assign the bonus affects the level of uncertainty in the selection process. Uncertainty, in turn, is expected to increase the effort made by competing agents (Cowen and Glazer, 1996; Dubey and Haimanko, 2003; Dubey and Wu, 2001). Theoretical predictions are derived and experimental evidence is collected for two competing agents, with the bonus awarded to that agent who outperforms the other. Sampling occasions (1 or 3), cost of production (high or low), cost symmetry (asymmetric or symmetric), and piece‐rate reward are manipulated factorially to test the robustness of the effects of uncertainty. For control, a single‐agent case is included. Results indicate that, for tournaments, greater uncertainty does indeed lead to greater than expected effort and lower average variable costs.     

Analyzing the impact of credit migration in a portfolio setting

Credit migration is an essential component of credit portfolio modeling. In this paper, we outline a framework for gauging the effects of credit migration on portfolio risk measurements. For a typical loan portfolio, we find credit migration can explain as much as 51% of volatility and 35% of economic capital. We compare through-the-cycle migration effects, implied by agency rating transitions, with point-in-time migration, implied by EDF? (Expected Default Frequency) transitions, and find that migration of point-in-time credit quality accounts for a greater fraction of total portfolio risk when compared with through-the-cycle dynamics. In a stylized analytic setting, we show that, when controlling for PD term structure effects, higher likelihood of moving away from the current credit state does not necessarily imply greater risk. Finally, we review methods for generating high-frequency transition matrices, needed for analyzing instruments with cash flows or contingencies whose frequencies are asynchronous to an available transition matrix. We further demonstrate that the naïve application of such methods can result in material deviations to portfolio analytics.     

Cultural differences and shareholder value in related mergers: Linking equity and human capital

Merger literature suggests that the relationship between shareholder gains and the relatedness of merging firms is contingent upon the compatibility of the two firms' top management cultures. This hypothesis is tested by surveying the perceptions of cultural differences of top management teams of recently acquired firms, and then relating these perceptions to related stock market gains to the buying firms. The findings suggest a strong inverse relationship between perceptions of cultural differences and shareholder gains, after controlling for perceptions of the buying firm's tolerance for multiculturalism and the relative size of the merging firms.     

Sociocultural Integration in Mergers and Acquisitions: Unresolved Paradoxes and Directions for Future Research

Despite decades of research, the key factors for success in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and the reasons why M&As often fail remain poorly understood. While attempts to explain M&A success and failure have traditionally focused on strategic and financial factors, an emergent field of inquiry has been directed at the sociocultural and human resources issues involved in the integration of acquired or merging firms. This research has sought to explain M&A performance and underperformance in terms of the impact that variables such as cultural fit, management style similarity, the pattern of dominance between merging firms, the acquirer's degree of cultural tolerance, and the social climate surrounding a takeover have on the postmerger integration process. In this article, we attempt to take stock of, and synthesize, the findings from research on sociocultural and human resources integration in M&A, to identify conflicting perspectives and unresolved questions as well as several underresearched areas, and then use our analyses to propose an agenda for the next stage of research in this field. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Critical Success Factors through the Mergers and Acquisitions Process: Revealing Pre‐ and Post‐M&A Connections for Improved Performance

The mergers and acquisitions (M&A) literature is vast, spanning over half a century of research endeavor and drawing upon multiple disciplinary perspectives. Despite this wealth of material, the field suffers from a lack of connectedness. There is limited and compartmentalized understanding of the complexities of the M&A process, as the various streams of M&A research are only marginally informed by one another. As a result, the existing body of knowledge on M&A research remains fragmented. There is a need to establish links between existing approaches to M&A and the critical success factors they each promote. In this article, the need for a pluralistic and holistic explanatory framework that reflects the multidisciplinary nature of M&A is highlighted. The article shows that dynamic relationships between different perspectives on M&A and critical success factors matter. Identifying these relationships may help to further our understanding about M&A performance outcomes. Thus, the paper focuses on both relationships within each stage and between stages of the M&A process. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Some extensions of techniques to handle non-discretionary factors in data envelopment analysis

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) assumes, in most cases, that all inputs and outputs are controlled by the Decision Making Unit (DMU). Inputs and/or outputs that do not conform to this assumption are denoted in DEA asnon-discretionary (ND) factors. Banker and Morey [1986] formulated several variants of DEA models which incorporated ND with ordinary factors. This article extends the Banker and Morey approach for treating nondiscretionary factors in two ways. First, the model is extended to allow for thesimultaneous presence of ND factors in both the input and the output sets. Second, a generalization is offered which, for the first time, enables a quantitative evaluation ofpartially controlled factors. A numerical example is given to illustrate the different models.The editor for this paper was Wade D. Cook.