forecasting quarterly brazilian gdp growth rate with linear and non linear diffusion inex models this paper uses linear and non linear diffusion index models and combination of them to produce one step ahead forecast of quarterly brazilian gdp growth rate the non linear diffusion index models are not only parsimonious ones but they also purport to describe economic cycles through a threshold diffusion index model and a markov switching diffusion index model

in praise of frank ramsey s contribution to the theory of taxation frank ramsey s brilliant 1927 paper modestly entitled a contribution to the theory of taxation is a landmark in the economics of public finance nearly a half century later through the work of diamond and mirrlees 1971 and mirrlees 1971 his paper can be thought of as launching the field of optimal taxation and revolutionising public finance ramsey f p 1927 a contribution to the theory of taxation economic journal vol 37 145 pp 47 61

measuring returns to scale in dea models when the firm is regulated in the standard framework of data envelopment analysis dea models the returns to scale are fully characterized using the multiplier on the convexity constraint of inefficient decision making units dmu using the projection of the input output vector on the frontier in this note we investigate how the returns to scale measurements in dea models are affected by the presence of regulatory constraints these additional constraints change the role played by the convexity constraint in order to avoid biased estimation of the returns to scale we show that the interaction between the regulatory and the convexity constraints has to be taken into account

hedging sudden stops and precautionary contractions abstract even well managed emerging market economies are exposed to significant external risk the bulk of which is financial at a moment s notice these economies may be required to reverse the capital inflows that have supported the preceding boom while capital flows crises are sudden nonlinear events sudden stops their likelihood fluctuates over time the question we address in the paper is how should a country react to these fluctuations depending on the hedging possibilities the country faces the options range from pure self insurance to hedging the sudden stop jump itself in between there is the more likely possibility to hedge the smoother fluctuations in the likelihood of sudden stops the main contribution of the paper is to provide an analytically and empirically tractable model that allows us to characterize and quantify optimal contingent liability management in a variety of scenarios we show with a concrete example that the gains from contingent liability management can easily exceed the equivalent of cutting a country s external liabilities by 10 of gdp

dynamic forecasts of qualitative variables a qual var model of u s recessions this article presents a new qual var model for incorporating information from qualitative and or discrete variables in vector autoregressions with a qual var it is possible to create dynamic forecasts of the qualitative variable using standard var projections previous forecasting methods for qualitative variables in contrast produce only static forecasts i apply the qual var to forecasting the 2001 business recession out of sample and to analyzing the romer and romer narrative measure of monetary policy contractions as an endogenous variable in a var out of sample the model predicts the timing of the 2001 recession quite well relative to the recession probabilities put forth at the time by professional forecasters qual vars which include information about the qualitative variable can also enhance the quality of density forecasts of the other variables in the system

opec and the international oil market can a cartel fuel the engine of economic development abstract the opec cartel was formed to promote two economic goals one microeconomic low oil market volatility the other macroeconomic promotes economic development of its members these goals create a tension since the cartel s single tool is output quotas using this dual micro macro perspective we analyze oil exporting countries behavior we find that the effects of the cartel s choices will be reflected in oil market stability long term macroeconomic development and international oil market structure if an oil producing country cares about both oil industry profits and macroeconomic stability the goal of output stability may be inconsistent with cartel membership

entry exit and performance in airline markets abstract data from the airline industry indicate that 1 entry generally is not induced by price levels substantially above the norm 2 entry reduces fares and increases output and exit increases fares and reduces output and 3 incumbents cut price and maintain output in response to entry and survivors increase both price and output in response to exit these findings cast doubt on the ability of entry to prevent or reverse price increases from anticompetitive mergers

time deposits dimensions and fraud we stipulate arguendo that fractional reserve demand deposit banking is per se fraudulent we ask whether or not time deposit banking can also be illicit and answer in the positive if there is a mismatch between the time dimensions of deposits and loans to wit if an intermediary borrows short and lends long

sunk costs financial markets and contestability abstract this paper analyzes the proposition that the theory or contestable markets will yield good predictions for markets in which sunk costs although present are unimportant two results are of interest 1 if costs are at all sunk incumbent firms will be able to engage in strategic behavior with respect to entrants 2 if no costs are sunk but firms finance investment by borrowing incumbent firms will be able to engage in strategic behavior with respect to entrants in these cases one must analyze strategic behavior of incumbent firms to analyze market performance

regime switching in the reactions of stock markets in saudi arabia to oil price variations the study revisits the stock oil nexus by examining the reactions of equity markets to oil price shocks at national and sectoral levels for saudi arabia in a time varying framework by employing the markov switching egarch model developed by henry 2009 journal of banking and finance 33 405 based on weekly data the findings reveal that the behaviour of all stock markets switches between an expansion regime and a recession regime with more persistence for the expansion state additionally influential international events associated with stock market drops are clearly identified in the recession regime furthermore there is evidence of asymmetric reactions of the equity index returns and the probabilities of transition from one state to another to oil price variations with heterogeneous impacts across sectors and regimes the stock markets are more sensitive to oil price decreases than to oil price increases although the evidence of relatively slight differences in some findings across weekdays the study allows investors and policymakers to understand well the interactions of stock sector markets vis a vis the world oil market in a regime switching framework in order to make the right decision as regards portfolio diversification and regulation of the stock markets

forecasting macro variables with a qual var business cycle turning point index one criticism of vector autoregression var forecasting is that macroeconomic variables tend not to behave as linear functions of their own past around business cycle turning points a large amount of literature therefore focuses on nonlinear forecasting models such as markov switching models which only indirectly capture the relation with turning points this article investigates a direct approach to using information on turning points from the national bureau of economic research nber chronology to model and forecast macroeconomic data our qual var model includes a truncated normal latent business cycle index that is negative during nber recessions and positive during expansions we motivate our forecasting exercise by demonstrating that if starting from a linear specification a truncated normal variable is an omitted variable then forecasts of the remaining variables will become nonlinear functions of their own past we apply the qual var model to recursive out of sample forecasting and find th

toward a public choice theory of monopoly regulation its many dimensions from the perspective of market economics this new thrust was consolidated in 1976 by s peltzman who developed a formal market model in which regulations were viewed as commodities brokered via political markets in response to bids and counter bids by those who stood to gain or to lose from specific regulation outcomes the subsequent contribution by becker 1983 added insights and institutional flesh to the stigler peltzman embryo confirming regulation as an integral component of mainstream market economics an important implication of such contributions especially those from the chicago perspective is that regulation for the most part confirms resource efficiency within market process that political markets in the absence of entry barriers are just as effective as are competitive commodity markets in achieving economic efficiency defined within a comparative institutions framework nowhere is this complacency more apparent than in the conclusion drawn by becker 1983 from a detailed formal analysis of competition among pressure groups for political influence

fractional reserve banking client collaboration and fraud this paper traces the recent debate over the legitimacy of maturity mismatching and fractional reserve banking it shows that there is common ground between bagus and howden journal of business ethics 90 3 399 406 2009 106 295 300 2012 on the one hand and evans journal of business ethics 2013 on the other regarding contractual arrangements that lead to fractional reserve banking while both agree that fractional reserve banking that arises out of a bailment or storage contract constitutes fraud block and barnett journal of business ethics 88 4 711 716 2009 100 229 238 2011 stress the illegitimacy of fractional reserve banking for creating more money substitutes than there is actual money while it is true that fractional reserve banks are capable of creating money this activity still cannot be regarded as fraudulent using a common law definition of fraud for it can only take place with requisite client collaboration that makes it impossible to identify a victim

was the recent downturn in us real gdp predictable this article uses a small set of variables real gdp the inflation rate and the short term interest rate and a rich set of models atheoretical time series and theoretical structural linear and nonlinear as well as classical and bayesian models to consider whether we could have predicted the recent downturn of the us real gdp comparing the performance of the models to the benchmark random walk model by root mean square errors the two structural theoretical models especially the nonlinear model perform well on average across all forecast horizons in our ex post out of sample forecasts although at specific forecast horizons certain nonlinear atheoretical models perform the best the nonlinear theoretical model also dominates in our ex ante out of sample forecast of the great recession suggesting that developing forward looking microfounded nonlinear dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models of the economy may prove crucial in forecasting turning points

antitrust and technological innovation in the us ideas institutions decisions and impacts 1890 2000 abstract the history of antitrust policy in the us as it relates to technological innovation exhibits major swings every few decades between favoring concentration and favoring deconcentration this paper sketches for each period the contending ideas that frame antitrust technology policy debates the salience of these ideas in the larger antitrust policy process the institutions for agenda setting and decision making in this area the policy decisions themselves and more speculatively the impacts of these decisions on technological innovation and industrial development the paper concludes with a preliminary attempt to identify the cyclical secular and static processes that have shaped the history of this policy area and to use this analysis to inform future policy makers

source of monetary growth uncertainty and economic activity the time varying parameter model a large body of research suggests that uncertainty is an important factor affecting economic activity most earlier research however fails to consider the possibility that uncertainty may affect the value of new information and economic activity differently depending upon its source the author first examines the importance of these different sources for modeling u s monetary growth uncertainty he then empirically relates different sources of monetary growth uncertainty to economic activity measured by real gnp the results suggest that different sources of uncertainty have different impacts on economic activity the results tend to confirm predictions arising in the literature on irreversible investment and uncertainty copyright 1993 by mit press

do long swings in the business cycle lead to strong persistence in output abstract this paper investigates how the occasional long swing in the business cycle can produce long memory behavior in us output to prove this theoretical relationship we extend the hamilton markov chain regime switching model of real aggregate output to include the occasional long regime we do this by modeling the duration length of the expansion and recession regimes as draws from a fat tailed distribution with realized durations that are high in variability and occasionally extreme in value empirically we find that the tail indices for the length of us economic booms and busts correspond with the long memory parameter estimates of diebold and rudebusch 1989 long memory and persistence in aggregate output journal of monetary economics 24 189 209 and sowell 1992a modeling long run behavior with the fractional arima model journal of monetary economics 29 277 302 for real us output estimates of our extended regime switching model produce better short and long run forecasts of output in comparison to forecasts with a fractionally integrated model furthermore our estimated regime switching model finds us expansions to be fragile during their infancy but become more and more likely to continue after surviving the first seven quarters

extracting nonlinear signals from several economic indicators summary we develop a twofold analysis of how the information provided by several economic indicators can be used in markov switching dynamic factor models to identify the business cycle turning points first we compare the performance of a fully nonlinear multivariate specification one step approach with the shortcut of using a linear factor model to obtain a coincident indicator which is then used to compute the markov switching probabilities two step approach second we examine the role of increasing the number of indicators our results suggest that one step is generally preferred to two steps especially in the vicinity of turning points although its gains diminish as the quality of the indicators increases additionally we also obtain decreasing returns of adding more indicators with similar signal to noise ratios using the four constituent series of the stock watson coincident index we illustrate these results for us data copyright 2014 john wiley sons ltd

a bayesian approach to model changes in volatility in the mexican stock exchange index we model the changes in volatility in the mexican stock exchange index using a bayesian approach we study the time series with a wide set of models characterized by a markov switching heterogeneit

reputation and imperfect information abstract a common observation in the informal literature of economics and elsewhere is that is multistage games players may seek early in the game to acquire a reputation for being tough or benevolent or something else but this phenomenon is not observed in some formal game theoretic analyses of finite games such as selten s finitely repeated chain store game or in the finitely repeated prisoners dilemma we reexamine selten s model adding to it a small amount of imperfect or incomplete information about players payoffs and we find that this addition is sufficient to give rise to the reputation effect that one intuitively expects

price changes supply elasticities industry organization and dairy output distribution long run price elasticities of milk supply are decomposed into price elasticities of yield herd size and farm population for northeastern u s dairy farms these elasticities are shown to vary with farm size because of size related differences in capital intensity specialization yield and herd size variability and rates of entry exit into dairy in the short run price responsiveness is shown to decrease with farm size in the long run large farms are shown to be most price responsive results suggest that lower milk prices could make revenue distribution less equal in both the short and long run by altering output and population distributions

industrial organization paradigms empirical evidence and the economic case for competition policy the recent reform of competition policy in canada prompts one to ask whether there remains a tenable economi c case for antitrust policy to answer this question this paper begi ns by sketching competing industrial organization i o paradigms th e empirical evidence bearing on these paradigms particularly the m ainline structure conduct performance paradigm which has provided the main theoretical support for competition policy is examined it is concluded that recent theoretical and empirical work in i o have undermined the traditional economic case for competition policy the last section of the paper attempts a partial reconstruction of the ca se for competition policy along somewhat unorthodox lines

entry in monopoly market this paper develops new empirical models of market concentration from game theoretic models of entry we construct our models from inequality conditions that describe entrants equilibrium strategies in simultaneous move and sequential move games and use them to study the effects of entry in isolated monopoly markets for new automobiles from estimates of the market size necessary to support one and two dealers we conclude that monopoly dealers do not block the entry of a second dealer we also find that entry does not cause price cost margins to fall by much

global prediction of recessions abstract we present evidence that global vectorautoregressive gvar models produce more accurate recession forecasts than country specific time series models in a bayesian framework this result holds for most countries and forecast horizons as well as for several country groups

oil and water do not mix or aliud est credere aliud deponere the financial crisis has led to new interest in the ethics of financial markets in this article we further the debate on the nature of banking contracts by showing that the fundamental subjective purposes of loan and deposit contracts are irreconcilable any resultant mixture of the two contracts is a legal aberration we consider a mutual fund as an important and legitimate alternative to the common demand deposit to provide high liquidity and some yield without offering full availability of a nominal sum besides being a close substitute for how many deposit accounts function today the mutual fund has the additional benefit of satisfying all legal and ethical requirements loan and investment contracts such as money market mutual funds allow for the bank to make use of their clients funds while the intents of money owners are clearly classified without running into legal or ethical problems

clusters entrepreneurial ecosystem co creation and appropriability a conceptual framework extant literature on clusters underplays the role of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial management in creating and co creating organizations markets and supporting ecosystems we employ transaction costs resource knowledge capabilities and power control based theories to provide a comparative static governance based perspective on clusters we embed this into a more general co evolutionary entrepreneurial theory of the emergence evolution and co evolution of markets ecosystems and clusters we suggest that clusters can involve advantages that help engender superior appropriation of co created value as compared to alternatives entrepreneurial managers faced with a degree of choice will help co create clusters and be part of them for as long as they can appropriate more value in this way than through alternatives

rational inattention in uncertain business cycles the paper proposes endogenous information choice as a channel through which uncertainty affects price dynamics i consider a rational inattention model with volatility uncertainty and endogenous information processing capability according to the model firms learning and optimal attention exhibits inertia and asymmetry in response to volatility changes firms choose to process more information when uncertainty rises especially about aggregate conditions and their pricing behavior changes accordingly using a markov switching factor augmented vector autoregression ms favar the paper also documents a significant positive correlation between volatility and firms responsiveness to macro and microlevel shocks consistent with model predictions

nonlinear forecasting analysis using diffusion indexes an application to japan this paper extends the diffusion index di forecast approach of stock and watson 1998 2002 to the case of possibly nonlinear dynamic factor models when the number of series is large a two step procedure based onthe method of principal components is useful since it allows wide variety of nonlinearity in the factors the factors extracted from a large japanese data suggest some evidence of nonlinear structure furthermore both the linear and nonlinear di forecasts in japan outperform traditional time series forecasts while the linear di forecast in most cases performs as well as the nonlinear di forecast

contestability in a resource market with non convex costs consider an intertemporal resource market with n identical firms each managing an exhaustible resource deposit the extraction from which is governed by a u shaped average cost curve eswaran lewis and heaps 1983 elh show that such a market cannot have a competitive equilibrium in their comments on elh kimmel 1984 and mumy 1984 point out however that the elh result is driven by there being a small number of firms which is inconsistent with price taking behavior this provides a motivation for analyzing the situation considered by elh under alternative assumptions of market behavior in general perfect contestability applies to circumstances where perfect competition is impossible because economies of scale are present see baumol et al 1982 since the non convexities in elh are not caused by once and for all setup or shut down costs rather the flow of costs is assumed to be a non convex function of the flow of extraction replacing the assumption of price taking behavior with an assumption of ultra free entry 2 provides a potential means of restoring a market equilibrium in the present case contestability theory holds that the threat of competition by potential entrants can discipline the pricing behavior of the active firms however as pointed out by cairns 1991 footnote 9 a non active firm can be the source of this kind of discipline in an exhaustible resource market only if its remaining reserves are positive caution should therefore be exercised in applying contestability theory to a resource market in this note existence of an equilibrium in such an exhaustible resource market is shown partly by relying on the possibility of ultra free entry we

business cycle turning points a new coincident index and tests of duration dependence based on a dynamic factor model with regime switching the synthesis of the dynamic factor model of stock and watson 1989 and the regime switching model of hamilton 1989 proposed by diebold and rudebusch 1996 potentially encompasses both features of the business cycle identified by burns and mitchell 1946 1 comovement among economic variables through the cycle and 2 nonlinearity in its evolution however maximum likelihood estimation has required approximation recent advances in multimove gibbs sampling methodology open the way to approximation free inference in such non gaussian nonlinear models this paper estimates the model for u s data and attempts to address three questions are both features of the business cycle empirically relevant might the implied new index of coincident indicators be a useful one in practice do the resulting estimates of regime switches show evidence of duration dependence the answers to all three would appear to be yes

model averaging in markov switching models predicting national recessions with regional data this paper introduces new weighting schemes for model averaging when one is interested in combining discrete forecasts from competing markov switching models in the empirical application we forecast u s business cycle turning points with state level employment data we find that forecasts obtained with our best combination scheme provide timely updates of u s recessions in that they outperform a notoriously difficult benchmark to beat the anxious index from the survey of professional forecasters for short term forecasts

a new coincident index of business cycles based on monthly and quarterly series maximum likelihood factor analysis of time series is possible even when some series are quarterly and others are monthly treating quarterly series as monthly series with missing observations and replacing them with artificial observations independent of the model parameters one can apply the kalman filter to a state space representation of a factor model and evaluate the likelihood function an application to quarterly real gdp and monthly coincident business cycle indicators gives a new coincident index of business cycles the new index is essentially the smoothed estimate of latent monthly real gdp and should improve upon the stock watson index

us and canadian livestock prices market integration and trade dependence cointegration of canadian and us livestock prices points to the existence of market integration in the period january 1996 to december 2004 trade flows of livestock and beef products were nonexistent between canada and the united states for many months in 2003 and 2004 suggesting market segmentation this lack of trade in beef and livestock was due to livestock beef import bans by both countries due to bovine spongiform encephalopathy it was also determined that canada s trade dependence in livestock and beef is cointegrated with canadian and us livestock prices however as the trade dependence variable is shocked the effects on canadian and us prices are opposite although one would expect that in an integrated market the price responses to an exogenous shock would be similar or statistically identical this result reinforces the case against the use of price cointegration analysis in determining presence or absence of market integration empirical results in this article raise some very difficult q

symmetric or asymmetric price adjustments in the oil market an empirical analysis of the relations between international and domestic prices in the federal republic of germany 1972 89 abstract this paper investigates how german consumer and wholesale prices for gasoline and light heating oil react to changes in the corresponding rotterdam prices monthly data from 1972 to 1989 are employed and the subperiods of the 1970s 1972 to 1979 and 1980s 1980 1989 are distinguished error correction models are estimated to seperate long run equilibrium relations and short run adjustment processes for the 1980s we find rapid symmetric and full adjustment of the german prices to the rotterdam prices whereas during the 1970s we find some asymmetries and at least for gasoline the adjustment processes took considerably more time

sustainable positive profit multiple price strategies in contestable markets abstract one of the most important features of contestable market is the incumbent s inability to react to entry while in the traditional literature this prevents the incumbent from earning positive profits in multiple price setting it allows him to make a binding commitment to maintain his strategy even if entry occurs it is shown that as a result of this pre commitment any natural monopolist can find a multiple price strategy that yields positive profit and prevents entry

the flypaper effect and competition in the local market for public goods in this paper we explore how the ability of bureaucrats to extract resources from their community may be limited by competition in the local market for public goods specifically we examine intergovernmental aid as a resource bureaucrats seek to control intergovernmental aid has been found to be more stimulative of local government expenditures than predicted by neo classical economic theory in this research the flypaper effect is used as an indicator of the ability of bureaucrats to control local resources in excess of local demand and preferences we empirically relate variation in the flypaper effect to the extent of competition in the local market for public goods competition does not consistently limit the flypaper effect the implications of this finding for theories of competition in the local market for public goods are then discussed

the case against fiduciary media ethics is the key salerno http mises org daily 4389 2010a asserts that in the debate between those who favor and oppose fractional reserve banking the important issue is not whether or not this institution is inherently fraudulent but rather does it or does it not cause the business cycle we join this author in thinking both important however we reverse this order

extracting a robust u s business cycle using a time varying multivariate model based bandpass filter we develop a flexible business cycle indicator that accounts for potential time variation in macroeconomic variables the coincident economic indicator is based on a multivariate trend cycle decomposition model and is constructed from a moderate set of us macroeconomic time series in particular we consider an unobserved components time series model with a common cycle that is shared across different time series but adjusted for phase shift and amplitude the extracted cycle can be interpreted as a model based bandpass filter and is designed to emphasize the business cycle frequencies that are of interest to applied researchers and policymakers stochastic volatility processes and mixture distributions for the irregular components and the common cycle disturbances enable us to account for the heteroskedasticity present in the data forecasting results are presented for a set of different specifications point forecasts from the preferred model indicate a future recession with the uncertainty over the business cycle growing quickly as the forecast horizon increases copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

forecasting us recessions with macro factors dynamic factors estimated from panels of macroeconomic indicators are used to predict future recessions using probit models three factors are considered a bond and exchange rates factor a stock market factor and a real activity factor three results emerge first models that use only financial indicators exhibit a large deterioration in fit after 2005 second models that use factors yield better fit than models that use indicators directly out of sample forecasting exercises confirm these results for 3 6 and 12 month horizons using both ex post revised data and real time data third results show evidence that data revisions affect factors less than individual indicators

entrepreneurial error does not equal market failure barnett and block 2015 claim that bagus and howden 2012b support indirectly the concept of market failure in this paper we show that maturity mismatching in an unhampered market may imply entrepreneurial error but cannot be considered a market failure we demonstrate why fractional reserve banking leads to business cycles even if there is no central bank and why maturity mismatching does not per se lead to clusters of errors in a free market finally in contrast to the examples provided by barnett and block we assure that maturity mismatching does not imply the creation of two incompatible contracts due to the fungible nature of money

long run competition in the u s aluminum industry abstract a methodology for examining dynamic structure performance relationships in a single industry is proposed and illustrated implications of long run competitive behavior for a simple simultaneous equations model of structure and performance are derived and tested using recently developed methods for the interpretation of economic time series it is concluded that the structure and performance in the u s aluminum industry in the postwar period conform well with the hypothesis that the primary aluminum market was competitive in the long run

wavelet decomposition and regime shifts assessing the effects of crude oil shocks on stock market returns while there is a large body of empirical studies on the relationship between crude oil price changes and stock market returns they have failed to achieve a consensus on this subject in this paper we combine wavelet analysis and markov switching vector autoregressive ms var approach to explore the impact of the crude oil co shocks on the stock market returns for uk france and japan over the period from january 1989 to december 2007 our procedure involves the estimation of the extended ms var model in order to investigate the importance of the resultant wavelet filtering series after removing random components in determining the behavior of the stock market volatilities we show that co shocks do not affect the recession stock market phases except for japan however they significantly reduce moderate and or expansion stock market phases temporarily moreover this negative relationship appears to be more pronounced during the pre 1999 period the empirical findings will prove extremely useful to investors who need to understand the exact effect of international oil changes on certain stocks prices as well as for policy managers who need a more thorough evaluation about the efficiency of hedging policies affected by oil price changes

contestable markets an uprising in the theory of industry structure presents a transcript of the presidential address delivered at the 94th meeting of the american economic association on december 29 1981 discussion of developments in the theory of industry structure welfare attributes of contestable markets behavior characteristics of oligopoly equilibrium intertemporal vulnerability to inefficient entry ebsco

predation reputation and entry deterrence abstract economists often argue that predatory practices are irrational since there exist cheaper or more certain means to gain or maintain a monopoly our gametheoretic equilibrium analysis suggests that if a firm is threatened by several potential entrants then predation may be rational against early entrants even if it is costly when viewed in isolation because it yields a reputation which deters other entrants asymmetric information plays a crucial role in our analysis since it provides the rationale for entrants to base their expectations of the firm s future behavior on its past actions the analysis also suggests methods to treat general reputational phenomena

on the necessary and sufficient conditions for legitimate banking contracts what role do demand deposits serve in the financial system the answer to this simple question has great implications in keeping the legal terms of the contract consistent with the demands of the financial system demand deposits are a perfect monetary substitute since money is only held to hedge against perceived uncertainty in both the timing and magnitude of future expenditures demand deposits are demanded for the same reason from this we derive three main conclusions first a financial contract similar to a demand deposit e g very short term bonds money market mutual funds etc cannot substitute for money second full agreement to a financial contract does not create a perfect substitute for money unless it provides money s two key characteristics on demand and par value redemption finally the demand for fractional reserve demand deposits is fostered by an exogenous source deposit insurance and that demand for a good or service is not a sufficient condition to justify its legality or ethicality

unobserved component time series models with markov switching heteroscedasticity changes in regime and the link between inflation rates and inflation uncertainty in this article i first extend the standard unobserved component time series model to include hamilton s markov switching heteroscedasticity this will provide an alternative to the unobserved component model with autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity as developed by harvey ruiz and sentana and by evans and wachtel i then apply a generalized version of the model to investigate the link between inflation and its uncertainty u s data gross national product deflator 1958 1 1990 4 i assume that inflation consists of a stochastic trend random walk component and a stationary autoregressive component following ball and cecchetti and a four state model of u s inflation rate is specified by incorporating regime shifts in both mean and variance structures i analyze the interaction of mean and variance over long and short horizons the empirical results show that inflation is costly because higher inflation is associated with higher long run uncertainty

structure and performance with profit measures based on stock market prices the theory that there is a causal relationship between industry structure conduct and performance is the fundamental premise in the field of industrial organization the most carefully researched component of that general theory is the hypothesis that increasing industrial concentration will give rise to increasing profits this traditional view is important not only because of its prominence in the academic analysis of industrial markets but also because of its implications for government policy especially antitrust policy the traditional view typically has been tested by treating an accounting based measure of industry profit as the dependent variable with concentration and other structural variables as independent variables within a cross section of manufacturing industries at a given point in time numerous papers have found that concentration has a positive impact on profits the methodology adopted in this paper is different the profit measures are based on stock market prices and are adjusted for risk this is an improvement because accounting methods are so poorly adapted to the measurement of economic profit and because risk may vary with concentration 2 39 another methodological innovation is the choice of time series over cross section analysis the question asked is whether the change over time in each industry s level of concentration had an impact on profits this minimizes the problem of omitted or inaccurately measured independent variables since there should be less change in basic structural characteristics over short time periods within an industry than between industries at a single point in time 2 a second important advantage is freedom from a basic assumption of crosssection studies the assumption that the relationship between concentration and profit is homogeneous across industries if the assumption is invalid empirical results are subject to bias two tests 7 26 have firmly rejected the homogeneity assumption 3

business cycle turning points based on dea discriminant analysis abstractrecently the turning points of business cycle are decided with wide viewpoints after passing a couple of years from the points this study tries to develop a model for judging the turning points in real time by using a non parametric approach dea discriminant analysis because we have sometimes faced sudden changes of economy and non parametric approaches are useful for covering these movements the constructed model succeeds to separate periods in japanese economic expanding and recession terms and the model would be helpful for the real time judgments of the turning points of business cycle

business cycle duration dependence reconsidered sichel estimated a weibull hazard model using the national bureau of economic research business cycle chronology and found evidence of duration dependence only for prewar expansions and postwar contractions the article updates the postwar sample through the end of the most recent expansion and uses a generalized weibull model that provides much greater flexibility at the expense of one additional parameter this model finds evidence of duration dependence for all samples and is statistically superior to the conventional weibull model for all samples except postwar contractions

contestability a revisionist view many claims have been made about the significance of the contribution of contestability theory to industrial organizat ion this paper concludes that contestability theory leaves unanswere d questions about the identity of entrants and the source of their re sources a modification to the theory is proposed rather than as a h indrance to potential entry sunk costs are viewed as being of key si gnificance for the disciplining of oligopolists through potential ent ry with the proposed modification the analysis of the costs of mult iproduct firms may be more easily integrated with recent developments in industrial organization copyright 1988 by the london school of economics and political science

is there a causal effect of concentration on persistent profitability differentials this article searches for a causal effect of industry concentration on estimates of persistent profitability differentials i offer solutions to identification problems that plague related analyses by applying an iv and a natural experiment this is the first study that explains estimates of persistent profit differentials using business segments data allowing to match micro and industry level data more consistently testing linear relations critical concentration levels and interactions with mobility barriers i find no evidence that concentration has any positive effect on long run profitability differences results rather tend to point to a statistically and economically significant negative causal effect

credible regulatory threats abstract as competition emerges in parts of utility industries and utility regulation policy is reviewed it is useful to examine alternative forms of regulation that may be implemented when hit and run entry is believed to be a non credible threat potential entry may not constrain incumbent firms pricing and production decisions this paper proposes that the credible threat of intervention by a regulator may impact upon incumbent firms decisions empirical evidence from the english and welsh electricity pool market is investigated to discover whether the threat of regulator intervention may have influenced the pricing strategies of the dominant firms in this market

time series decomposition and measurement of business cycles trends and growth cycles abstract a study of business cycles does not require trend estimation and elimination but a study of growth cycles does major cyclical slowdowns and speedups deserve to be analyzed but the needed time series decomposition presents difficult problems mainly because trends and cycles influence each other we compare cyclical movements in levels deviations from trend and smoothed growth rates for both the quarterly real gdp and the monthly u s coincident index using the phase average trend pat then we compare alternative trend estimates deterministic and stochastic linear and nonlinear and the corresponding series of deviations from these trends we discuss how the resulting estimates differ for u s growth cycles in the post world war ii period the results of pat show great similarity to the results obtained with the hodrick prescott local linear trend band pass filtering methods

business cycle phases in u s states the u s aggregate business cycle is often characterized as a series of distinct recession and expansion phases we apply a regime switching model to state level coincident indices to characterize state business cycles in this way we find that states differ a great deal in the levels of growth that they experience in the two phases recession growth rates are related to industry mix whereas expansion growth rates are related to education and age composition further states differ significantly in the timing of switches between regimes indicating large differences in the extent to which state business cycle phases are in concord with those of the aggregate economy

the economic performance of cities a markov switching approach abstract this paper examines the determinants of employment growth in metro areas to obtain growth rates we use a markov switching model that separates a city s growth path into two distinct phases high and low each with its own growth rate the simple average growth rate over some period is therefore the weighted average of the high phase and low phase growth rates with the weight being the frequency of the two phases we estimate the effects of a variety of factors separately for the high phase and low phase growth rates growth in the high phase is related to both human capital and industry mix while growth in the low phase is related to industry mix only specifically the relative importance of manufacturing overall our results strongly reject the notion that city level characteristics influence employment growth equally across the phases of the business cycle

contestable markets and the theory of industry structure a review article contestable markets and the theory of industry structure is a comprehensive integration expansion and application of the ideas of william j baumol elizabeth e bailey john c panzar robert d willig edward zajac and their associates on contestability theory in 16 chapters baumol panzar and willig 1982a try to make precise especially in a multiproduct context ideas related to the chicago school approach to industrial organization to argue forcefully that potential entry disciplines monopoly and at the same time to offer a product more directly useful to the policymaker than the more abstract mathematical writings on increasing returns there are at least five basic ideas presented here first under certain structural conditions on technology and certain technical requirements on demands frictionless entry and exit together with equal access to technology lead to a type of competitive equilibrium with desirable welfare consequences even though there may be only one active firm in equilibrium a market with the foregoing characteristics of frictionless reversible entry and equal access to technology is called a perfectly contestable market by baumol et al 1982a the market for air travel between two cities serves as a canonical example such a market may support only one airline but the active airline must price at cost to prevent a price cutting rival airline from flying in and skimming off customers the authors conclude that the presence of such shadow entrants will force competition like behavior by the incumbent even though the market may be a natural monopoly second baumol et al 1982a define natural monopoly as a situation where the technology is characterized by a subadditive cost function that is to say c l7 yt l c y for any collection of output

contestability vs competition analyzes the ultra free entry as normative contribution to industrial organization ultra free entry in context of the evolving field of industrial organization assessment of the conceptual validity of william baumol elizabeth bailey john panzar and robert willig s analysis in representing the nature of competition empirical issues in measuring and testing ultra free entry ebsco

does trade globalization induce or inhibit corporate transparency unbundling the growth potential and product market competition channels abstract trade globalization may affect corporate transparency via multiple channels with potentially opposite signs we aim to empirically disentangle these channels by tracking evolution of corporate transparency for 4061 listed firms in tradable sectors in 49 countries during 1992 2005 by using detailed tariff schedules we measure changes in growth opportunities and product market competition enabled by foreign and domestic trade liberalizations respectively on the one hand higher growth opportunities engendered by foreign trade reforms are disproportionately associated with better corporate transparency in industries that depend more heavily on external financing on the other hand greater product market competition engendered by domestic tariff reductions has no significant impact on corporate transparency

an econometric characterization of business cycle dynamics with factor structure and regime switching a dynamic factor model with regime switching is proposed as an empirical characterization of business cycles the approach integrates the idea of comovements among macroeconomic variables and asymmetries of business cycle expansions and contractions the first is captured with an unobservable dynamic factor and the second by allowing the factor to switch regimes the model is estimated by maximizing its likelihood function and the empirical results indicate that the combination of these two features leads to a successful representation of the data relative to extant literature this holds for within and out of sample and for both revised and real time data copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

regime switching model of us crude oil and stock market prices 1859 to 2013 this paper examines the relationship between us crude oil and stock market prices using a markov switching vector error correction model and a monthly data set from 1859 to 2013 the sample covers the entire modern era of the petroleum industry which typically begins with the first drilled oil well in titusville pennsylvania in 1858 we estimate a two regime model that divides the sample into high and low volatility regimes based on the variance covariance matrix of the oil and stock prices we find that the high volatility regime more frequently exists prior to the great depression and after the 1973 oil price shock caused by the organization of petroleum exporting countries the low volatility regime occurs more frequently when the oil markets fell largely under the control of the major international oil companies from the end of the great depression to the first oil price shock in 1973 using the national bureau of economic research business cycle dates we also find that the high volatility regime more likely occurs when the economy experiences a recession

evidence of the duration dependence from the stock markets in the pacific rim economies this article investigates the duration dependent feature of five pacific rim economies the duration dependent markov switching model is employed to achieve this objective the savage dickey density ratio is also computed in support of the duration dependent markov switching model the possible bull and bear market dates for each stock market are also identified by the posterior probability from the empirical model it is unambiguous that japan south korea and hong kong are all characterized by duration dependence in a bear market but no duration dependence in a bull market in the case of taiwan and singapore the duration dependence feature holds for both the bear and bull markets

regime switching and monetary policy measurement this paper applies regime switching methods to the problem of measuring monetary policy policy preferences and structural factors are specified parametrically as independent markov processes interaction between the structural and preference parameters in the policy rule serves to identify the two processes the estimates uncover policy episodes that are initiated by switches to dove regimes shown to granger cause both nber recessions and the romer dates these episodes imply real effects of monetary policy that are smaller than those found in previous studies

the inefficiency of private adaptation to pollution in the presence of endogenous market structure the paper considers an industry where production costs rise due to pollution but where this effect can be partially off set by investing in adaptation as a private good the focus is not on external effects but industries where economies of scale are introduced from adapting to pollution the structure of the resulting oligopolistic market is endogenous since the level of adaptation is chosen by the firms the analysis of externalities usually disregards defensive or adaptation measures with a few exceptions that point to considerable complications the present debate on adaptation to climate change shows the importance of understanding defensive measures i show that the market failure caused by economies of scale leads to production costs above the social optimum i e to under adapation when pollution increases adaptation only increases if demand is price inelastic otherwise welfare loss from market failure decreases with pollution the total welfare loss is only convex if demand is price inelastic and the influence of pollution on production costs is stronger than the influence of adaptation concave welfare loss has crucial implications for abatement policies

contestable markets an uprising in the theory of industry structure comment a situation traditionally identified as conducive to imperfect competition is when average costs decline and the cheapest scale of production is large relative to the size of the market however some of the more recent literature on industrial organization has emphasized a supposed distinction between fixed costs of production and sunk costs of production a point frequently made is that while the possibility of sunk costs can create genuine barriers to entry pure fixed costs per se do not inhibit competitive market performance this approach finds its logical extreme in the norm or abstraction of perfect contestability perfect contestability is essentially a theory of the polar case of frictionless entry and exit as william baumol stated a contestable market is one into which entry is absolutely free and exit is absolutely costless p 3 certainly this is the most reasonable interpretation of a situation where potential entrants feel free to disregard an incumbent s price response suppose every potential and actual producer has access to the same technology in a perfectly contestable market there are no set up or shut down losses the main result is that even with declining average costs of production the incumbent firm does not dare to post a price higher than average cost price above cost invites being undercut by a hit and run shadow entrant capable of producing at the same flow rate and at identical unit cost during just the briefest instant of time i argue that this line of reasoning is misleading perfect contestability gets around the problem of increasing returns only by in effect assuming it away a hit and run technology makes the firm behave as if it is competitive in a market precisely because the convexity preconditions for competition are de facto being met in that market this comment shows that strictly speaking there is no such thing as a pure fixed cost unless there are sunk costs located somewhere in the relevant production technology all costs are variable as a matter of formal theory you cannot have a range of decreasing average cost without sunk costs presumably there is also an approximation theorem which states that when sunk costs are close to being negligible then average production costs are practically nondecreasing perfect contestability holds approximately in a market only to the extent that production costs for the market are approximately nondecreasing my discussion will be restricted to the familiar case of a single well defined homogeneous fully divisible commodity while more general approaches are possible for the sake of simplicity the following definition is used the average cost function a c y t describes say the minimum cost per unit of output produced at a uniform flow rate y throughout the time interval 0 t especially in applications to industrial organization theory it is essential to remember that cost functions are not generally timeless and that writing ac as a function of y alone can be dangerously vague behind the free entry and exit of a hitand run technology in a perfectly contestable market is the abstraction of no sunk costs investments are fully reversible because nothing is lost in setting up or shutting down production

contestability vs competition once more baumol willig and other advocates of contestability theory continue to urge the idea not only for its insights but also as a clear basis for many antitrust and regulatory decisions yet the limits of the theory remain the three key assumptions are extremely strict and two of them are in mutual conflict the theory is not robust to imperfections in order to displace effective competition with contestability baumol must adopt a sequence of implausible propositions which unfortunately have little analytical or empirical basis

a nonparametric investigation of duration dependence in the american business cycle does the termination probability of a business expansion or contraction increase with age this question may be formally addressed by analyzing the nature of duration dependence in aggregate economic activity our null hypothesis is that there is no duration dependence which we test via intentionally nonparametric procedures we also argue that common notion of business cycle periodicity can be usefully interpreted in terms of whole cycle duration dependence we find some evidence for duration dependence in whole cycles and in prewar expansions but little evidence elsewhere

asset salvageability and the potential for trade restraint through merger this article evaluates impact of asset salvageability on the profitability of restraint of trade through industrial combination in the case of merger either for monopoly or market dominance a postmerger price equal to the premerger competitive price is proved a reasonable possibility even in a declining industry where noncompetitive pricing is unlikely to attract new firms raising prices after merger may prove suboptimal in cases where a postmerger price increase is optimal asset salvageability is shown to have a restraining effect on the magnitude of the increase

contestability reconsidered the meaning of market exit costs abstract this paper analyses the main result of the contestable market approach namely that potential competition reaches its maximum power if market entry and exit is costless and newcomers can use the hit and run strategy different time lag structures are considered average cost pricing turns out to be no equilibrium if there are no market exit costs furthermore exit costs don t necessarily create a barrier to entry but may even strengthen the discipline arising from the threat of entry

new index of coincident indicators a multivariate markov switching factor model approach abstract this paper extends the univariate markov switching unobserved component model to the multivariate markov switching factor model of coincident economic indicators an approximate ml method is developed to estimate the model the extracted markov switching factor may be interpreted as the coincident index and is comparable to the stock watson index which differs only by the markov switching component using four constituent series of the doc coincident index for the period january 1960 to june 1992 the proposed model generates recessionary and expansionary periods which are remarkably consistent with the nber chronology of the business cycles from the noisy monthly data this paper also finds that duration dependence does matter

the past present and future of macroeconomic forecasting he reports of the death of large scale macroeconomic forecasting models are not exaggerated but many observers interpret the failure of the early models as indicative of a bleak future for macroeconomic forecasting more generally such is not the case although the large scale macroeconomic forecasting models didn t live up to their original promise they nevertheless left a useful legacy of lasting contributions from which macroeconomic forecasting will continue to benefit they spurred the development of powerful identification and estimation theory computational and simulation techniques comprehensive machinereadable macroeconomic databases and much else moreover past failures do not necessarily imply a bleak future we learn from our mistakes just as macroeconomics has benefitted from rethinking since the 1970s so too will macroeconomic forecasting understanding the future of macroeconomic forecasting requires understanding the interplay between measurement and theory and the corresponding evolution of the nonstructural and structural approaches to forecasting nonstructural macroeconomic forecasting methods attempt to exploit the reduced form correlations in observed macroeconomic time series with little reliance on economic theory structural models in contrast view and interpret economic data through the lens of a particular economic theory structural econometric forecasting because it is based on explicit theory rises and falls with theory typically with a lag structural keynesian macroeconomic forecasting based on postulated systems of decision rules enjoyed a golden age in the 1950s and 1960s following the advances in keynesian theory in the 1930s and 1940s

entry and price dynamics in a perfect foresight model abstract this paper studies firms entry and price dynamics in a model that combines the assumptions of free entry and perfect foresight with the hypothesis of consumer s loyalty postulated by phelps and winter the analysis of the transition to long run equilibrium reveals that in such a model the entry of firms is related to the difference between current prices and costs in relation to the growth of the firms output it is shown that the model is consistent with gibrat s law finally it is shown that the size distribution of firms approaches asymptotically a pareto distribution

beyond firm and industry effects on profitability in imperfect markets the federal trade commission s line of business data imply that the effect of an industry s seller concentration on profitability has been misinterpreted because it has not been conditioned on capital intensity conclusions that market share rather than seller concentration is the primary structural determinant of profitability and that mutual dependence recognized among oligopolistic sellers is less important than superiority effects of large share firms appear unwarranted significant firm effects exist and explanatory power for a conventional model of structure and performance is found to be small relative to that of the general linear model within which the conventional model is nested