Advertising,Price and Quality in Self–regulating Professions: A Survey

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the relationship between advertising, fees and quality in the self–regulating professions. Much of the literature is derived from the perspective of advertising as an information–enhancing device, helping to reduce the information asymmetry between professional and client. This is consistent with the majority of the empirical studies which suggest that advertising tends to have a downward effect on professional fees, with little if any adverse effect on quality. There are, however, important issues of method and measurement which may lessen the force of this conclusion     

Analysing Materials and Energy Flows in an Industrial District using an Enterprise Input–Output Model

Recent approaches to sustainable development leave much room for policies at a local level. In fact, it is becoming evident that targets such as increasing resource productivity, preserving natural cycles, or extending the present level of welfare, are best pursued within the confines of a local area. In particular, environmental changes are best brought about by considering local systems of firms as cornerstones of cooperative strategies and using data on materials and energy use in physical terms. In this paper, an enterprise input–output model is developed for an industrial district, i.e. a local group of firms specialized in the production of a single final output. The model allows for a detailed quantitative analysis of materials and energy flows and the consequent generation of waste and pollution. As a planning tool, the model may be used to evaluate alternative scenarios, such as the possibility of re- using waste taking account of sustainability requirements. An empirical case study applies the model to an industrial district in Southern Italy producing leather sofas.     

Multilateral Comparison of Cost Structures in the Input–Output Tables of Japan,the US and West Germany

This paper presents a multilateral comparison of relative levels and structures of costs of production in Japan, the US and West Germany. The analysis is carried out by using harmonized input–output tables, which are converted at US prices by using adjusted sectoral purchasing power parities. A new accounting methodology is derived from recent developments of index number theory, whereas the chosen multilateral comparison procedure gives results that are invariant with respect to the order of the pairs of countries examined.     

Component efficient solutions in line-graph games with applications

Recently, applications of cooperative game theory to economic allocation problems have gained popularity. We investigate a class of cooperative games that generalizes some economic applications with a similar structure. These are the so-called line-graph games being cooperative TU-games in which the players are linearly ordered. Examples of situations that can be modeled like this are sequencing situations and water distribution problems. We define four properties with respect to deleting edges that each selects a unique component efficient solution on the class of line-graph games. We interpret these solutions and properties in terms of dividend distributions, and apply them to economic situations. This research has been done while the third author was visiting Tinbergen Institute at the Free University, Amsterdam. The research is part of the Research Programme “Strategic and Cooperative Decision Making” at the Department of Econometrics. Financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) in the framework of the Russian-Dutch programme for scientific cooperation, is gratefully acknowledged. The third author also appreciates partial financial support from the Russian Leading Scientific Schools Fund (grant 80.2003.6) and Russian Humanitarian Scientific Fund (grant 02-02-00189a). We thank three anonymous referees for their valuable comments.     

INTEREG: A Twenty-region Input–Output Model for Italy

Since the regional scale turns out to be the scale at which fiscal devolution is likely to be accomplished in Italy, and that at which trade and growth interdependencies as well as regional convergence can be most conveniently investigated, a new 20-region input–output model for Italy seems to be a useful tool of analysis. Although various regional and interregional models have been constructed since the 1950s, none has been implemented for the whole system of 20 Italian administrative regions considered in their tight mutual dependence; also, the pool approach has not been greatly favoured, even in situations where direct information on regional trade is lacking. The main purpose of this paper is to report on the structure of the model, the rather complex procedure used in the model construction and the adopted solution technique. Some space is devoted to the problems encountered in handling regional trade endogenously in an input–output setting and to a comparison between the pool approach, used in the Italian model, and other current techniques. The paper also reports on some preliminary results regarding the regional impact of fiscal policy.     

个人所得税地区间汇算清缴方法研究

综合与分类相结合的个人所得税制改变了个人所得税按来源地缴纳和分享的模式。个人综合所得的所得税征收时实行预扣预缴和次年汇算清缴制度。当个人综合所得来源于多个地区时,需要在不同预扣预缴地区间进行汇算清缴。如何在不同收入来源地分配税收成为地区间汇算清缴制度设计的重要关键。本文首次从税收创造和税后收益分配角度,建立了两个税收分配的合作博弈模型。比较分析发现,使用解决"破产问题"的方法都是把地区的所得和总税收作为给定的参数,没有考虑地区所得和税收之间的生成关系和累进税率。我们的研究证明夏普利值作为合作博弈的解,具有公平性、效率性和单调性,是个人所得税地区间分配方式的合适选择。     

Expected exponential utility maximization of insurers with a Linear Gaussian stochastic factor model

In this paper, we consider the problem of optimal investment by an insurer. The wealth of the insurer is described by a Cramér–Lundberg process. The insurer invests in a market consisting of a bank account and m risky assets. The mean returns and volatilities of the risky assets depend linearly on economic factors that are formulated as the solutions of linear stochastic differential equations. Moreover, the insurer preferences are exponential. With this setting, a Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation that is derived via a dynamic programming approach has an explicit solution found by solving the matrix Riccati equation. Hence, the optimal strategy can be constructed explicitly. Finally, we present some numerical results related to the value function and the ruin probability using the optimal strategy.     

Ownership concentration and bank risk: international study on acquisitions

This paper explores the effects of different types of bank ownership concentration on changes in bank risk during acquisition years. Using multi-country data from 2000 to 2006, during which market failures caused by various crises and government interventions are less influential to acquisition decisions, we collect 505 banking acquisition deals from 23 countries to examine which type of ownership concentration (such as financial intermediary, capital investor, non-financial, and state ownership) brings larger changes to an acquirer’s risk from pre-acquisition year to post-acquisition year (including non-performing loans, capital adequacy ratio, loan loss reserve, and credit rating). The empirical analyses show that acquirer banks with a concentration of shares owned by financial intermediaries and non-financial firms experience larger risk changes during acquisition years. In contrast, the risk changes of acquirer banks with a concentration of capital investors and state ownership are lower. Robustness checks from the random effect estimation, instrumental variables model, reverse causality, and different subsamples of (non-)U.S. or different levels of regulation enforcement confirm these results.     

Optimal pair-trading strategy over long/short/square positions—empirical study

Suzuki [Automatica, 2016, 67, 33–45] solves the optimal, finitely iterative, three-regime switching problem for investing in a mean-reverting asset that follows an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck price process and find explicit solutions. The remarkable feature of this model is that the investor can explicitly take either a long, short or square position and can switch the position, with transaction costs, during the investment period. We run empirical simulations of such multiple-regime switching models. There are very few such attempts in the existing literature because it is difficult to find, first, an explicit solution to the problem and second, appropriate financial assets that follow the artificial stochastic process required by the mathematical model. According to the Monte Carlo simulations of the optimal pair-trading strategy, the mean daily Sharp ratio is more than 2.3, whereas the mean Sharp ratio for the historical simulation of the ‘stub’ pairs (combinations of parent/subsidiary companies) is 0.6886. We believe that the results obtained from performing the empirical simulations are remarkable and consider that the optimal switching strategy of the rigorous mathematical model is applicable to businesses in the real world. For the reference many pseudo-program codes are added, which can help to replicate the optimal trading strategies.     

Globalization and Outward Foreign Direct Investment

While recent research into foreign direct investment (FDI) has focused on examining the importance of institutions, corruption, money laundering, and tax havens, the role of globalization on FDI has not yet been explored. This research investigates the impacts of globalization on outward FDI. We find that both overall globalization and its economic and social dimensions significantly positively influence outward FDI flows. We also demonstrate that beyond the level of globalization, corruption, money laundering, and the status of a country as a tax haven, cross-country similarity also plays an important role. Accordingly, policies specifically designed to increase the transparency of outward FDI flows should be required to address money laundering and the existence of tax havens.