inflation proof currency the feasibility of variable commodity standards under a proposal by robert l greenfield and leland b yeager 1989 the value of currency is tied to the value of a defined basket of goods by indirect convertibility the note issuing bank offers to redeem its currency for sufficient gold to buy the basket in the market the authors find that this arrangement cannot be applied to the currency that is the medium of account for quoting prices of goods and that it would imply unlimited change in the gold price when the price of the basket deviates from unity a feedback rule with slower price adjustment may however be feasible copyright 1993 by ohio state university press

entrepreneurs perceived chances for success abstract entrepreneurs involved in planning or starting firms must engage in a continuing process of appraising prospects for success these assessments presumably bear upon the preparations they make as well as at some later point whether they decide to make major changes or even to discontinue the business in this study data from 2994 entrepreneurs who had recently become business owners were analyzed to determine their perceived changes of success although previous evidence on business survival led to the hypothesis that the entrepreneurs would only be cautiously optimistic this was not the case they perceived their prospects as very favorable with 81 seeing odds of 7 out of 10 or better and a remarkable 33 seeing odds of success of 10 out of 10 in considering the prospects for other businesses like their own they perceived odds which were significantly lower but still moderately favorable based upon previous research on factors associated with new business success it was hypothesized that those who were more likely to succeed based upon their personal backgrounds and the nature of their new firms would be more optimistic however this was not the case those who were poorly prepared were just as optimistic as those who were well prepared at this point shortly after having become business owners the assessment by entrepreneurs of their own likelihood of success was dramatically detached from past macro statistics from perceived prospects for peer businesses and from characteristics typically associated with higher performing new firms the psychological literature on post decisional bolstering suggests that decision makers in many settings tend to bolster or exaggerate the attractiveness of an option after it has been chosen this coupled with the tendency of entrepreneurs to believe that they can control their own destinies implies that the extreme optimism observed here is probably a typical occurrence for entrepreneurs the findings suggest that it is probably natural to experience feelings of entrepreneurial euphoria when first becoming a business owner with the available evidence it is difficult to judge whether this leads to inadequate preparations or an inability to diagnose problems and make adjustments after the business is started this extreme optimism probably does contribute to the heavy personal commitments observed here in which the median entrepreneur devoted more than 60 hours per week to the business the entrepreneur would seem well advised to form relationships with outsiders such as board members and professional advisors who can be objective and detached in diagnosing problems and assessing objectively the prospects for the business in its current form

the impact of global oil price shocks on china s bulk commodity markets and fundamental industries this paper investigated the reaction of aggregate commodity market to oil price shocks and also explored the effects of oil price shocks on china s fundamental industries metals petrochemicals grains and oilfats we separated the volatilities of oil price into expected unexpected and negatively expected categories to identify how oil prices influence bulk commodity markets we contrasted the results between different periods and among classified indices in order to discover the significant changes in recent years and the differences at an industry level our results indicate that the aggregate commodity market was affected by both expected and unexpected oil price volatilities in china the impact of unexpected oil price volatilities became more complex after 2007 the metals and grains indices did not significantly respond to the expected volatility in oil prices in contrast to the petrochemicals and oilfats indices these results not only contribute to advancing the existing literature but also merit particular attention from policy makers and market investors in china

security analysis and trading patterns when some investors receive information before others in existing models of information acquisition all informed investors receive their information at the same time this article analyzes trading behavior and equilibrium information acquisition when some investors receive common private information before others the model implies that under some conditions investors will focus only on a subset of securities herding while neglecting other securities with identical exogenous characteristics in addition the model is consistent with empirical correlations that are suggestive of oft cited trading strategies such as profit taking short term position reversal and following the leader mimicking earlier trades in existing models of information acquisition all informed investors receive their information at the same time while these models provide many important insights in reality some investors either fortuitously or owing to superior skill acquire pertinent information before others by being first an investor can exploit this information to great advantage information that is uncovered only slightly later is less valuable even if it has not yet been publicly revealed we show in this article that the sequential nature of information arrival has a significant effect on both the trading decisions and the types of information collected by investors the model we develop describes the investment choices of a set of competitive risk averse investors who investigate the long term prospects of firms lucky or high ability investors uncover the

do professional traders exhibit myopic loss aversion an experimental analysis two behavioral concepts loss aversion and mental accounting have been combined to provide a theoretical explanation of the equity premium puzzle recent experimental evidence supports the theory as students behavior has been found to be consistent with myopic loss aversion mla yet much like certain anomalies in the realm of riskless decision making these behavioral tendencies may be attenuated among professionals using traders recruited from the cbot we do indeed find behavioral differences between professionals and students but rather than discovering that the anomaly is muted we find that traders exhibit behavior consistent with mla to a greater extent than students

does environmental regulation affect energy efficiency in china s thermal power generation empirical evidence from a slacks based dea model abstract data envelopment analysis dea has gained much popularity in performance measurement of power industry this paper presents a slack based measure approach to investigating the relationship between fossil fuel consumption and the environmental regulation of china s thermal power generation we first calculate the total factor energy efficiency without considering environmental constraints an environmental performance indicator is proposed through decomposing the total factor energy efficiency the proposed approach is then employed to examine whether environmental regulation affects the energy efficiency of china s thermal power generation we find that the environmental efficiency plays a significant role in affecting energy performance of china s thermal generation sector decreasing the discharge of major pollutants can improve both energy performance and environmental efficiency besides we also have three main findings 1 the energy efficiency and environmental efficiency were relatively low 2 the energy and environmental efficiency scores show great variations among provinces 3 both energy efficiency and environmental efficiency are of obvious geographical characteristics according to our findings we suggest some policy implications

judgemental overconfidence self monitoring and trading performance in an experimental financial market we measure the degree of overconfidence in judgment in the form of miscalibration i e the tendency to overestimate the precision of one s information and self monitoring a form of attentiveness to social cues of 245 participants and also observe their behaviour in an experimental financial market under asymmetric information miscalibrated traders underestimating the conditional uncertainty about the asset value are expected to be especially vulnerable to the winner s curse high self monitors are expected to behave strategically and achieve superior results our empirical results show that miscalibration reduces and self monitoring enhances trading performance the effect of the psychological variables is strong for men but non existent for women

is indirect convertibility impossible comment norbert schnadt and john whittaker 1993 criticize proposals for defining the dollar by a broad basket of goods but making money redeemable otherwise than directly in this composite medium of account indirect redemption would be more convenient for all parties involved each dollar of face value of banknotes and deposits would be redeemable in whatever changeable quantity of some specified redemption medium had an actual market value equal to the total value of the dollar defining basket this convertibility into a basket s worth of redemption medium would keep a one dollar banknote or deposit always equal in value to the basket itself in challenging this idea sw and schnadt and whittaker we and others devoted a session to it at the january 1992 american economic association meetings this worry turns out to be a red herring in the central meaning of that metaphor following the earlier literature s w suppose that a bank redeems each dollar of notes and deposits in enough gold to be worth at its market price the total market price of the composite medium of account they recognize that if this basket s total price somehow came to exceed 1 gold s hitherto prevailing market price would exceed in the same proportion its price implied by the quantity of gold delivered for each dollar bill at the bank s redemption window gold s market price they ar

rational markets yes or no the affirmative case with the recent flurry of articles declaiming the death of the rational market hypothesis it is well to pause and recall the very sound reasons this hypothesis was once so widely accepted at least in academic circles although academic models often assume that all investors are rational this assumption is clearly an expository device not to be taken seriously what is in contention is whether markets are rational in the sense that prices are set as if all investors are rational even if markets are not rational in this sense abnormal profit opportunities still may not exist in that case markets may be said to be minimally rational i maintain that not only are developed financial markets minimally rational they are with two qualifications rational i contend that realistically market rationality needs to be defined so as to allow investors to be uncertain about the characteristics of other investors in the market i also argue that investor irrationality to the extent that it affects prices is particularly likely to be manifest through overconfidence which in turn is likely to make the market hyper rational to illustrate the article reexamines some of the most serious historical evidence against market rationality

does society benefit from investor overconfidence in the ability of financial market experts abstract this paper develops a securities market model in which participants beliefs diverge and prices are monotonic in beliefs relative to rational expectations i e correct and unanimous beliefs overconfidence among uninformed traders about the precision of experts information leads to pareto superior equilibria efficiency enhancing departures from rational expectations occur over a dense subset of parameter space but only for one configuration of beliefs uninformed traders must be more confident than informed experts overconfidence in the form of excessive trust in the predictive ability of experts sets off a virtuous cycle of increased trading that improves liquidity and reduces transaction costs for everyone

the mechanics of indirect convertibility this paper sets out the mechanics and equilibrating processes of indirectly convertible monetary systems in which currency issuing banks redeem their currency with redemption media of the same value as the commodity or commodity basket that defines the dollar it goes on to investigate the paradox of indirect convertibility and suggests that indirect convertibility is feasible despite the paradox finally it assesses the systems of fisher hall and others that have been suggested as alternatives to indirect convertibility but concludes that these alternative systems are open to serious objections copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

efficiency with costly information a reinterpretation of evidence from managed portfolios we investigate the informational efficiency of mutual fund performance for the period 1965 84 results are shown to be sensitive to the measurement of performance chosen we find that returns on s p stocks returns on non s p stocks and returns on bonds are significant factors in performance assessment once we correct for the impact of non s p assets on mutual fund returns we find that mutual funds do not earn returns that justify their information acquisition costs this is consistent with results for prior periods coauthors are martin j gruber sanjiv das and matthew hlavka article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

a laissez faire approach to monetary stability this paper develops some diverse hints for a new monetary system offered separately by fischer black eugene fama and robert e hall for reasons that will become evident though we should perhaps say payments system instead of monetary system none of the economists mentioned has actually proposed the particular system set forth here nor examined all its properties and we call it the bfh system not to implicate them but only to give credit for some component ideas and to have a convenient label l regardless of who if anyone may actually advocate the system contemplating it is instructive it illuminates by contrast some characteristics of our existing and recent systems

is there a paradox of indirect convertibility a paradox allegedly plagues systems in which money is only indirectly not directly convertible or redeemable we use the words interchangeably knut wicksell w william woolsey john whittaker and norbert schnadt tyler cowen and randall kroszner and hans michael trautwein have described scenarios in which indirect convertibility would have catastrophic consequences 21 23 17 18 19 3 20 currency deposits and checks are indirectly convertible when they are not redeemed directly in the medium of account the latter term is niehans s it means the commodity or commodity bundle of which some specified quantity defines the unit of account 16 1 money is redeemable instead in some redemption medium some other commodity or even some security in amounts equal in value to the quantity of medium of account defining the unit recent proposals combine indirect convertibility with free banking promising to stabilize the price level and avoid monetary disequilibrium that would disturb income and employment 13 12 25 26 27 28 4 in this bfh system so named perhaps misleadingly to acknowledge ideas borrowed altered and recombined from writings of fischer black eugene fama and robert hall government money is forbidden only competing private banks issue notes coins and checking accounts earlier proposals assumed government issue of currency simon newcomb and aneurin williams advocated money convertible into whatever variable amount of gold as redemption medium had a fixed general purchasing power 15 22 irving fisher citing their proposals argued that the dollar could be stabilized through convertibility into an amount of gold equal in value to a bundle of goods 10 331 2 indirect convertibility is not the same as fisher s betterknown proposal for a compensated dollar 8 337 47 10 494 502 11 95 7 in place of his earlier brief suggestion for indirect convertibility fisher later envisaged periodic discrete adjustments in the gold content of the dollar that is in the official price of gold prompted by deviations

slack adjusted dea for time series analysis performance measurement of japanese electric power generation industry in 1984 1993 abstract using a new slack adjusted data envelopment analysis sa dea model which explicitly incorporates an influence of slacks into its efficiency measurement this study discusses a use of various efficiencies and index measures for dea dynamic analysis an analytical formulation to determine the type of return to scale rts is proposed for the new dea model this paper mathematically discusses when multiple solutions occur on rts and how to deal with such a difficulty as an important case study this paper applies the proposed dea approach to examine the performance of japanese electric power generation companies from 1984 to 1993 two policy implications are suggested for guiding the japanese electric power industry

rational expectations difference of opinions and asset pricing this article applies the concept of relative overconfidence the measure of how heavily investors depend on others information to combine the rational expectations equilibrium ree and differenc

arrogance can be a virtue overconfidence information acquisition and market efficiency abstract in behavioral finance overconfidence has been established as a prevalent psychological bias which can make markets less efficient by creating mispricing in the form of excess volatility and return predictability in this paper we develop a model in which overconfidence causes investors to overinvest in information acquisition when this information could improve market efficiency by driving prices closer to true values we study the impact of overconfidence on mispricing and information acquisition comparing their net effect on prices we derive several novel implications first overconfidence generally improves market pricing provided the level of overconfidence is not too high pricing can also improve even when overconfidence is arbitrarily high depending on the amount of private information acquired relative to publicly available information

the forerunners of new monetary economics proposals to stabilize the unit of account note this paper critically evaluates the monetary policy regimes proposed by arthur kitson 1917 and henry meulen 1934 contrary to the assertion of tyler cowen and randall kroszner 1987 the unit of account envisioned by these earlier theorists was not at all like recent proposals by proponents of the new monetary economics it is also demonstrated that the compensated dollar plans of aneurin williams 1892 and irving fisher 1920 are closer forerunners to the recent new monetary economics proposals copyright 1990 by ohio state university press

dea approach for unified efficiency measurement assessment of japanese fossil fuel power generation this study discusses a new dea data envelopment analysis approach to measure the unified operational and environmental efficiency of energy firms it is widely known that they produce not only desirable good outputs e g electricity but also undesirable bad outputs e g co2 as a result of their plant operations the proposed approach incorporates an output separation desirable and undesirable outputs for the performance evaluation of energy firms in addition to the output separation this study separates inputs into energy and non energy inputs consequently the proposed approach incorporates not only the output separation but also the input separation within a computational framework of dea non radial measurement this study compares the proposed approach with other previous dea approaches used for the performance evaluation of energy firms after the methodological comparison this study applies the proposed approach for measuring the unified efficiency of japanese fossil fuel power generation this empirical study confirms that the implementation of kyoto protocol 2005 has not been effective on the unified efficiency of japanese fossil fuel power generation during the observed period 2004 2008 although the empirical result is inconsistent with the current japanese environmental policy under kyoto protocol it contains policy implications for guiding the future direction of japanese environmental policy on the electric power industry

information aggregation in a noisy rational expectations economy abstract this paper analyzes a general equilibrium model of a competitive security market in which traders possess independent pieces of information about the return of a risky asset each trader conditions his estimate of the return both on his own private source of information and price which in equilibrium serves as a noisy aggregator of the total information observed by all traders a closed form characterization of the rational expectations equilibrium is presented a counter example to the existence of fully revealing equilibrium is developed