a globally flexible almost ideal demand system the almost ideal demand system is combined with the fourier expenditure system subject to the assumption that preferences are of the price independent generalized logarithmic class the resulting demand system has the desirable features of each of its components aggregate demand equations are consistent with preferences of a representative consumer and consistent estimates of elasticities are obtained for all observed prices application of the new demand system to u s consumption of meats and fish reveals that it fits the data well and that the restriction to the usual specification is rejected

central bank intervention and risk in the forward market abstract a two country inter temporal asset pricing model is developed which implies that central bank foreign exchange intervention affects the forward exchange risk premium the model is estimated from daily foreign exchange intervention data for the us german and japanese central banks considerable empirical support is found for the theoretical model with intervention influencing the risk premium in the forward market purchases of dollars by the federal reserve bank are found to be associated with excess denominated returns there is evidence that intervention has increased rather than reduced exchange rate volatility

the monetary approach to exchange rate determination under rational expectations the dollar deutschmark rate abstract this paper reformulates the monetary approach after ascertaining that a money demand function with a partial adjustment mechanism had more empirical support than a money demand function which assumed instantaneous stock adjustment the resulting exchange rate equation is estimated by two rational expectations techniques the parameter estimates are reasonable and are robust to the estimation technique used to different specifications of the driving processes and to changes in the estimation period the structural model outperforms the random walk model and its own unconstrained equivalent a pure time series equation in outof sample forecasts

optimal temporal policies in fluid milk advertising this study develops an approach to obtain optimal temporal advertising strategies when consumers response to advertising is asymmetric using this approach optimal strategies for generic fluid milk advertising in new york city are determined results indicate that pulsed advertising policies are significantly more effective in increasing demand than a uniform advertising policy sensitivity analyses show that the optimal advertising policies are insensitive to reasonable variations in interest rates and the inclusion of milk demand seasonality in the model also less asymmetric responses to advertising are found to result in shorter optimal pulsing cycles and reduced intensity of advertising pulses copyright 2000 oxford university press

generalized models of japanese demand for fish given a relative lack of knowledge about japanese consumer preferences for fish japanese fish demand is modeled using both marshallian ordinary and inverse demand systems each of which nests a number of competing specifications results indicate that the inverse demand systems dominate the ordinary demand systems in forecasting performance and in nonnested tests the inverse system suggests that japanese fish prices are less responsive to changes in consumption than found in previous studies

time varying parameters in the almost ideal demand system and the rotterdam model will the best specification please stand up this article assesses the ability of the rotterdam model rm and of three versions of the almost ideal demand system aids to recover the time varying elasticities of a true demand system and to satisfy theoretical regularity using monte carlo simulations we find that the rm performs better than the linear approximate aids at recovering the signs of all the time varying elasticities more importantly the rm has the ability to track the paths of time varying income elasticities even when the true values are very high the linear approximate aids not only performs poorly at recovering the time varying elasticities but also badly approximates the nonlinear aids

testing the efficiency of the canadian u s exchange market under the assumption of no risk premium the efficiency of the canadian u s exchange market for the current float is examined more extensively than previously semi strong form tests which admit the lagged spot rate as a predictor are considered in addition to the standard weak form test these stronger tests reject the joint null hypothesis of an efficient exchange market and no risk premium for the period ending in october 1976 although not for the entire period for almost every year the current spot rate provided a better forecast of the future spot rate than did the current forward rate there is now an extensive empirical literature on testing the efficiency of various foreign exchange markets see 16 for a survey yet almost all of these tests are weak form tests or tests of the bias of the forward exchange rate as a predictor of the future spot rate such tests in the canadian u s exchange market can be found in the work of porter 20 eastman 5 kaserman 10 kohihagen 11 cornell 3 and levich 14 for the canadian float of the 1950s porter 20 and kaserman 10 found that one could not reject the unbiasedness of the forward rate eastman 5 and kohlhagen 11 rejected the unbiasedness of the forward rate for the floating period although not for the subsequent fixed period but their use of overlapping contracts means that their standard errors are biased cornell 3 and levich 14 found that in terms of the root meansquared error criterion the lagged spot rate and the lagged forward rate predicted the current spot rate equally well for more recent periods this paper examines the efficiency of the canadian u s exchange market for the current float july 1970 to december 1978 in a more extensive way than it has been previously examined from the weak form test the paper proceeds to two semi strong form tests which admit the lagged spot rate as a possible predictor throughout the paper various subperiods are considered in addition to the period as a whole

conditional and unconditional food demand elasticities in a dynamic multistage demand system this paper estimates conditional and unconditional demand elasticities in a three stage analysis of consumer demand for food and non food items in greece a dynamic version of the aids model is specified and estimated and full system misspecification tests applied correction formulas for price and expenditure elasticities are used to calculate unconditional elasticities from conditional demand sub systems all food items rank as price inelastic deviations between the calculated conditional and unconditional price and expenditure elasticities are found to be significant demonstrating the importance of correcting conditional elasticities before they can be used for policy purposes or welfare analyses

target zones and exchange rate dynamics this paper develops a simple model of exchange rate behavior under a target zone regime it shows that the expectation that monetary policy will be adjusted to limit exchange rate variation affects exchange rate behavior even when the exchange rate lies inside the zone and is thus not being defended actively somewhat surprisingly the analysis of target zones turns out to have a strong formal similarity to problems in option pricing and investment under uncertainty

relationships among exchange rates intervention and interest rates an empirical investigation abstract this study uses herefore unavailable daily data on official intervention to test the joint hypotheses of perfect asset substitutability and exchange market efficiency this joint hypothesis is generally soundly rejected for six exchange rates over various sample periods in contrast to evidence elsewhere from weekly or monthly data lagged intervention is a significant determinant of realized profits in about half the cases this evidence is consistent with existence of a portfolio balance channel at least in the short run other evidence indicates that coordinated intervention sometimes may have an impact significantly different from intervention by one central bank alone

the collapse of purchasing power parities during the 1970 s one of the striking facts concerning the relationship beiveen prices and exchange rates during the 1970 s has been the dismal performance of the predictions of the simple versions of the purchasing power parity doctrine ppp that doctrine in its absolute version states that the equilibrium exchange rate between domestic and foreign currencies equals the ratio of domestic to foreign price levels the relative version of the doctrine relates equilibrium changes in exchange rates to changes in the ratio of domestic to foreign prices during the 1970 s short run changes in exchange rates bore little relationship to short run differentials in national inflation rates and frequently divergences from purchasing power parities have been cumulative this paper reviews and analyzes the empirical record of exchange rates and prices during the 1970 s and the analysis is based on the experience of the dollar pound the dollar frecch franc and the dollar dm exchange rates section 2 presents the evidence on ppp during the 1970 s and contrasts it with the evidence from the 1920 s a period during which the doctrine held up reasonably well this analysis is relevant for assessing whether the flexible exchange rate system was successful in providing national economies with an added degree of insulation from foreign shocks and whether it provided policymakers with an added instrument for the conduct of macroeconomic policy the evidence regarding devia tions from purchasing power parities is also relevant for determining whether there is a case for managed float section 3 attempts to explain what went wrong with

evaluating prior beliefs in a demand system the case of meat demand in canada an almost ideal demand system for meats is estimated using canadian data a bayesian approach is used to impose inequality restrictions on substitution elasticities via monte carlo integration and importance sampling in order to conform with prior beliefs about curvature and monotonicity restrictions and substitution relationships results are more consistent with the concavity and monotonicity restrictions from demand theory than with the added restriction that all meats are substitutes

in search of the exchange risk premium a six currency test assuming mean variance optimization abstract a number of authors examining deviations of actual rates of currency depreciation from forward discounts have claimed to find evidence of risk premiums if these deviations are indeed partly due to risk premiums rather than being entirely due to expectational errors then they should be systematically related to those variables on which risk premiums are thought to depend finance theory tells us that if investors optimize with respect to mean and variance the risk premium depends in a specific way on 1 the supplies of assets denominated in the various currencies 2 the variance covariance matrix of the rates of return and 3 the coefficient of risk aversion the null hypothesis of this paper is that the coefficient of risk aversion is zero countries assets are perfect substitutes and risk premiums are nonexistent the alternative hypothesis is that rates of return are systematically related to asset supplies by a macroeconomic portfolio balance function the maximum likelihood technique used dominates previous attempts to find such a relationship in that the parameters of the portfolio balance function are constrained to depend on the variance covariance matrix as the finance theory says they should on the other hand the technique also dominates previous applications of the finance theory in that the expected returns are allowed to vary over time as the macroeconomic portfolio balance theory says they should the paper s finding is a statistical inability to reject the null hypothesis for a portfolio of six currencies although this could be due to low power in the test

a portfolio balance rational expectations model of the dollar mark exchange rate abstract a model is developed in which current account imbalances can be financed through transfers of bonds denominated in either currency the reduced form links the current spot rate to the expected future spot rate via a risk premium which depends on the global currency mix of outside assets that governments impose on private portfolios through budget deficits and interventions and on the global distribution of private wealth among regions with different portfolio preferences an iterative procedure generates rational expectations forecasts of the dollar mark rate which perform somewhat better than forward rates in predicting monthly changes in the spot rate

revisiting aggregate u s meat demand with a bayesian averaging of classical estimates approach do we need a more general theory although meat demand is one of the most studied issues in agricultural economics our understanding of this phenomenon has been hampered by valid concerns about model specification uncertainty this article revisits the need for more general theories of aggregate u s meat demand using a bayesian averaging of classical estimates approach we draw comprehensive inferences over 1 048 576 demand systems we find very little evidence supporting the need for more general theories that include demand determinants beyond prices and expenditures we find strong evidence in support of symmetry and negativity but strong evidence against homogeneity which is consistent with other research copyright 2008 oxford university press

identifying the efficacy of central bank interventions evidence from australia and japan abstract using a model incorporating the endogenous relationship between exchange rates and intervention we show how a change in central bank policy can be used as an identification assumption estimating this model with simulated gmm for daily data from australia and japan we find that a us 100 million purchase appreciates the australian dollar by 1 3 1 8 but the yen by just 0 2 almost all of the impact of an intervention occurs during the day it is conducted and we confirm that central banks typically lean against the wind

a varying coefficient approach to global flexibility in demand analysis a semiparametric approximation to reduce dimensionality issues this article derives a globally flexible demand system that can be estimated non parametrically with a specially devised temporal kernel statistical and economic results from a meat demand application underscores the usefulness of a temporal kernel in globally approximating an integrable demand system

on the flexibility of the rotterdam model abstract the rotterdam model is a discrete approximation to a continuous time model and the approximation errors are known to be small unlike other approximations with fixed parameters at the point of approximation the rotterdam model s coefficients differ at each observation but are treated as constants during estimation this procedure introduces relatively large approximation errors which are a potential source of bias in this paper the performance of the rotterdam model in reproducing the characteristics of four integrable demand systems is assessed as anticipated the model s performance is directly related to the variability of the underlying coefficients and the bias in the parameter estimates is minimal if the coefficients are relatively constant the model can also discriminate well against an invalid alternative hypothesis however in the absence of a computationally feasible varying parameter methodology the conclusion has to be that tests of parameter stability are essential when using the rotterdam model

the time variation of risk and return in the foreign exchange and stock markets this paper attempts to determine whether the fluctuations of conditional first and second moments which are observed for many assets are consistent with the sharpelintner mossin capital asset pricing model we test the mean variance model under several different assumptions about the time variation of conditional second moments of returns using weekly data from july 1974 to december 1986 that include returns on a portfolio composed of dollar deutsche mark sterling and swiss franc assets together with the u s stock market the results indicate that estimated conditional variances cannot explain the observed time variation of risk premia rates of return on international financial assets are characterized by statistical properties that are quite common to all financial markets they are highly volatile and largely unpredictable these properties make it very difficult to extract statistically reliable estimates of systematic exchange rate and assetprice movements and are at the root of the generally poor empirical performance of international asset pricing models nevertheless two important results have been uncovered by empirical researchers and can be considered a fair characterization of the data a expected returns on foreign assets vary over time cumby and obstfeld 1981 and the numerous articles that followed recently surveyed by frankel and meese 1987 b the volatility of returns of foreign assets also changes over time cumby and obstfeld 1984 hodrick and srivastava 1984 and hsieh 1988 among others as giovannini and jorion 1987 suggest the

an investigation into the demand for alcoholic beverages in canada a choice between the almost ideal and the rotterdam models in this article i investigate the historical pattern of interactions in the demand for three categories of alcoholic beverages in canada using both the differential almost ideal and the differential rotterdam demand systems i evaluate these models based on several decision criteria including model encompassment based on the j test structural stability conformity with demand theory and the credibility of the estimated price and income responses in an attempt to determine which of these models is better suited for explaining the demand for alcoholic beverages the results reveal that both models satisfy the restrictions of demand theory and of structural stability but the rotterdam model is preferable on grounds of the remaining two criteria

two targets two instruments monetary and exchange rate policies in emerging market economies abstract this paper examines the case for using two instruments the policy interest rate and sterilized foreign exchange market intervention in emerging market countries seeking to stabilize inflation and output while attenuating disequilibrium currency movements we estimate policy reaction functions for central banks documenting that indeed both instruments tend to be deployed we show that whether discretionary monetary policy or inflation targeting is preferable depends on the volatility of shocks relative to the central bank s time inconsistency problem the use of fx intervention as a second instrument improves welfare under both regimes but more so under inflation targeting overall a regime of two way sterilized intervention cum inflation targeting can result in better outcomes in the presence of imperfect capital mobility asset substitutability yielding similar gains to a discretionary policy while still delivering the inflation target

demand for beef and chicken products separability and structural change several studies have indicated that the recent shift from beef to poultry in consumption is not entirely caused by changes in rela tive prices or income braschler chavas dahlgran hudson and vertin moschini and meilke frank thurman most studies of structural change have focused on red meat consumption only thurman has looked closely at the poultry market and no one has considered poultry products yet the mix of chicken products marketed changed dramat ically during the last twenty years and should have influenced aggregate meat demand the share of broiler slaughter marketed as whole birds declined from 74 in 1965 to 28 in 1985 while cut up parts and processed chick en products increased from 26 to 72 whole birds are inferior goods and cut up parts and processed chicken are normal goods haidacher et al the shift in chicken prod uct mix away from whole birds should have increased the preference for total chicken in this article two related questions are ad dressed first do consumers allocate expendi tures among meats by animal origin or by product type second does disaggregation of meat into products in a meat demand model give insight into the causes of structural

a rank ordered logit model with unobserved heterogeneity in ranking capabilities in this paper we consider the situation where one wants to study the preferences of individuals over a discrete choice set through a survey in the classical setup respondents are asked to select their most preferred option out of a selected set of alternatives it is well known that in theory more information can be obtained if respondents are asked to rank the set of alternatives instead in statistical terms the preferences can then be estimated more e ciently however when individuals are unable to perform part of this ranking task using the complete ranking may lead to a substantial bias in parameter estimates in practice one usually opts to only use a part of the reported ranking in this paper we introduce a latent class rank ordered logit model in which we use latent segments to endogenously identify the ranking capabilities of individuals each segment corresponds to a difierent assumption on the ranking capability using simulations and an empirical application we show that using this model for parameter estimation results in a clear e ciency gain over a multinomial logit model in case some individuals are able to rank at the same time it does not sufier from biases due to ranking inabilities of some of the respondents

testing for bubbles in exchange markets a case of sparkling rates this paper investigates the possibility that the observed deviations of major bilateral exchange rates from values implied by market fundamentals are a consequence of rational asset market bubbles when a new econometric methodology for detecting asset market bubbles is used the joint hypothesis of no bubbles and stable autoregressive processes for relative money supplies and real incomes is rejected for the dollar deutsche mark and dollar pound ratesusing monthly data over the period 1973 82 additional tests for coefficient stability and for lack of cointegration between exchange rates and market fundamentals suggest that the bubble findings must be interpreted with care

exchange rate dynamics an empirical investigation this paper estimates a reduced form exchange rate equation whose estimates are used to address questions on exchange rate overshooting intermediate run exchange rate dynamics and long run proportionality relationships between relative money supplies and exchange rates based on swiss u s data from the period 1973 79 the major findings are that following a monetary shock there is short run exchange rate overshooting by a factor of about two and that subsequent exchange rate adjustments to a new long run equilibrium take longer than 2 years and exhibit nonmonotonic patterns

food consumption in urban china an empirical analysis this paper examines consumption patterns of urban households in china using aggregated household consumption data a demand system comprising six commodities rice pork vegetables fish eggs and fruits is estimated using a two stage budgeting procedure which incorporates an almost ideal deamnd system aids in each stage elasticity estimates from the system are plausible and consistent with other relevant studies results from this study strengthen the evidence of the emergence of a large chinese market for non stable food the study provides rationale and basis for additional research into chinese food consumption especially processed food

modeling the pattern of structural change in u s meat demand the hypothesis of structural change in u s meat demand is tested in a four meat almost ideal demand system with parameters following a gradual switching regression model the results support the notion that structural change partly explains the observed u s meat consumption patterns structural change is biased against beef neutral for pork in favor of chicken and fish and it does not affect estimated elasticities the estimated path of structural change implies a rapid transition to a new regime in the mid 1970s although a smooth path cannot be ruled out

recent instability of the demand for money an international perspective aggregate money demand functions once an apparent bulwark for macroeconomic research have had to be re examined in the light of the events and discoveries of the 1970s following goldfeld s extensive analysis it now is widely recognized that the demand for mi balances in the united states cannot be explained satisfactorily by standard functions apparently because of shifts occurring in the early 1970s similar reservations see below have been expressed with respect to m3 balances in the united kingdom where the demand relationships appear to have been upset by the introduction of regulatory reforms in 1971 in both cases part of the problem can be traced to specific events but the possibility remains that a more general instability may be present the rapid inflation experienced by all major industrial countries after 1973 the concurrent collapse of the bretton woods system of fixed exchange rates and the attempts by most major central banks to control growth in domestic money stocks may all have altered the responses of the demand for money to the standard functional arguments this paper presents a range of stability tests for a set of demand functions estimated for two monetary aggregates in each of six countries in order to determine whether money demand functions more generally have been stable over the recent period and to attempt to identify the nature and causes of any observed instabilities the major conclusions are that none of the other functions examined displays instabilities as severe as those of the mi function for the united states and that the latter may be unstable in a more persistent and fundamental way than has heretofore been recognized the equations estimated for this study are based on a variant of goldfeld s log linear real balances function the deflated value of money balances is related to real income interest rates and inflation with lagged adjustments introduced via a simple koyck transformation this function obviously is in a simplified form especially with respect to the lag struc

information sharing and central bank intervention in the foreign exchange market abstract this paper develops a model of information sharing among heterogeneously informed agents and it uses the model to examine a rationale for intervention in the foreign exchange market the model shows that in a partially revealing rational expectations equilibrium some agents can gain by sharing among themselves private information about transitory exchange rate disturbances in this setting a central bank can affect the exchange rate by aggregating and disseminating agents information the paper also illustrates the usefulness of intervention as a way to transmit that information

inverse demand systems and choice of functional form abstract barten empirical economics 18 1993 129 recently advocated estimation of a synthetic demand system that mechanically nests four other popular differential demand models this paper follows a similar strategy but in the context of four inverse share equation demand systems the inverse translog demand system itlds the inverse almost ideal demand system iaids the inverse lewbel demand system ilds and the inverse non separable linear expenditure system inles each of these specifications is artificially nested in a hybrid inverse demand system hids an empirical application to three categories of quarterly u s meat demand data over the period 1961 1996 indicates the hids is a preferred specification

shopping at the labour market a real tale of fiction abstract this paper presents results from a survey in which employers in the netherlands reveal the way they select applicants the survey uses descriptions of fictitious lower skilled job seekers who do not have a job the data are analyzed by means of logit models the results show a strong preference for young healthy native dutch men employers hardly care about qualities as education and experience or even about the wage rate questions are raised about the cost efficiency of the observed preferences

model choice in consumer analysis taiwan 1970 89 expenditure data were used to study how income and prices influenced consumer demand in taiwan during the last decade alternative differential demand models combining the features of the rotterdam model and the almost ideal demand system aids were tested aids type demand responses describe taiwanese consumer behavior better than do the other specifications

a test of perfect substitutability in the foreign exchange market i motivations for the test the question of whether or not domestic bonds are perfect substitutes for foreign bonds in investors portfolios implying that the expected rates of returns must be equalized across currencies is an important one for two reasons the question is crucial first for choosing among various asset market models of exchange rate determination and second for evaluating tests of efficiency in the forward exchange market to illuminate the first motivation a brief discussion of models of exchange rate determination is necessary all asset market models share the assumption that there are no significant transactions costs capital controls or other impediments to the international flow of capital thus actual portfolios adjust instantaneously to equal desired portfolios this implies for example covered interest parity the domestic interest rate should differ from the foreign interest rate by an amount exactly equal to the forward discount rate perfect substitutability between domestic and foreign bonds is the stronger assumption that market participants are indifferent as to the currency composition of their portfolio it implies uncovered interest parity the domestic interest rate must differ from the foreign interest rate by an amount exactly equal to the expected rate of depreciation the perfect substitutability assumption is far from standard in fact exchange rate models within the asset market view can be classified into those that belong to the monetary approach defined by the assumption of perfect substitutability and those that belong to the portfolio balance approach defined by the assumption of imperfect substitutability in the portfolio balance approach investors hold well defined proportions of their wealth in the form of each country s assets with the proportions depending on the expected rates of return as in equation 1

meat meets meta a quantitative review of the price elasticity of meat the price elasticity of meat has been estimated in numerous studies that utilize a variety of disparate modeling procedures in light of differences in the literature a meta analysis is performed to assess the sensitivity of the meat price elasticity to a number of characteristics including the type of meat specification of demand nature of data estimation method characteristics of the publication outlet and location of demand the results from estimating linear and box cox meta regressions coupled with different panel data treatments reveal that these characteristics have differing influence on the reported price elasticity

is it risk explaining deviations from uncovered interest parity abstract this paper analyzes ex ante returns to forward speculation and asks if these returns can be explained by models of a foreign exchange risk premium after presenting evidence that both nominal and real expected speculative profits are nonzero the paper examines if real returns to forward speculation are consistent with consumption based models of risk premia estimates of the conditional covariance between real speculative returns and real consumption growth are presented and like ex ante returns to forward speculation they exhibit statistically significant fluctuations over time and often change sign

central bank intervention and exchange rate volatility abstract this paper explores the effects of foreign exchange intervention by central banks on the behavior of exchange rates the g 3 central banks have undertaken an unprecedented number of both coordinated and unilateral intervention operations in the last 10 years existing empirical evidence on the effectiveness of intervention is mixed studies using data from the 1970s suggest that intervention operations that do not affect the monetary base have at most a short lived influence on exchange rates but more recent studies indicate that the intervention operations that followed the plaza agreement influenced both the level and variance of exchange rates this paper examines the effects of us german and japanese monetary and intervention policies on dollar mark and dollar yen exchange rate volatility over the 1977 1994 period the results indicate that intervention operations generally increase exchange rate volatility this is particularly true of secret interventions which are those undertaken by central banks without notification of the public overt interventions in the mid 1980s appear to have reduced exchange rate volatility but in other periods and for the 1977 1994 period as a whole central bank intervention is associated with greater exchange rate volatility

on the effects of sterilized intervention an analysis of weekly data abstract as the recent empirical studies surveyed here illustrate it is very difficult to demonstrate that the exchange rate risk premium depends through a portfolio balance channel on the currency composition of outside assets the existence of a portfolio balance effect is a necessary condition for sterilized intervention to be a genuinely independent tool of monetary policy this paper studies u s canadian data and attempts to improve on earlier studies by using higher frequency weekly data and by implementing an appropriate instrumental variables technique 2s2sls however we still fail to detect evidence of a portfolio balance effect

fed intervention dollar appreciation and systematic risk abstract in a four factor asset pricing model estimated on daily data fed intervention significantly affects betas of surprises in the market return expected inflation rate yield curve and corporate bond risk premium fed foreign currency sales cause economically and statistically significant increases in the systematic risk premium in appreciation and thus in the dollar s expected appreciation rate the direction the fed desires and consistent with the signaling but not the portfolio balance channel intervention s effects on actual appreciation are less reliable they depend on unpredictable risk factor realizations even successful intervention to strengthen the dollar may be costly by increasing the dollar s systematic risk intervention reduces the attractiveness of u s relative to foreign investments further uncertainty about future fed interventions may induce resource misallocation ceteris paribus investors find it harder to estimate risk adjusted discount rates and forecast the home currency value of cash flows

characteristics and hedonic pricing of differentiated beef demands we estimate a cbs system model of u s derived demand for meat we use this model 1 to examine relationships between three quality categories of beef and three other meats and 2 to simulate how taste shifts have affected demands for meats over time we extend previous studies by disaggregating wholesale beef production into three quality categories 1 usda choice grade or higher 2 usda select or lower and 3 cow and bull beef innovative features of our empirical model include a breakout of table cuts into choice and select and the use of a hedonic characterization of the two breakouts to value choice ness and beef ness our model demonstrates important shifts in separate demands for choice and select beef we show that separately the demand for choice grade beef declined in the 1980s and 1990s and the demand for select beef increased a departure from the relatively stable demand characterizations of more aggregated measures of combined choice and select beef jel classification q11 q13

character conformity or the bottom line how and why downsizing affected corporate reputation the aim of this study is to illuminate reputational change processes and identify the underlying theoretical mechanisms we draw upon extant literature to develop three distinct explanations for reputational change respectively emphasizing criteria of organizational character symbolic conformity and technical efficacy we evaluate these explanations by examining the reputational consequences of corporate downsizing our results show that downsizing exerted a strong negative effect on reputation consistently with the character explanation however significant moderation of this negative effect by other factors including stock market reaction and downsizing s overall prevalence indicates the need for a multitheoretical approach to reputational change

wages or fringes some evidence on trade offs and sorting the two key predictions of hedonic wage theory are that there is a trade off between wages and nonmonetary rewards and that the latter can be used as a sorting device by firms to attract and retain the kind of employees they desire we use the vignettes method to estimate individuals willingness to pay for fringe benefits and job amenities we find negative wage fringe trade offs considerable heterogeneity in willingness to pay for fringe benefits and signs of sorting

differential demand systems a further look at barten s synthesis barten s synthetic model is attractive to applied researchers since it is useful for testing the adequacy of the competing functional forms of differential demand systems including the popular rotterdam and almost ideal demand systems this article shows that the synthetic model is not a mere artificial composite of the known differential demand systems as it has been considered but rather viewed as a model in its own right it is demonstrated that at the individual consumer level barten s model has the same marginal budget shares as generated by specific forms of engel curves formulated by the box cox transformation

the demand for food and beverages in norway abstract the demand for food and beverages is estimated within a three stage demand model the separability structure of the model is checked by nonparametric tests some generalized axiom of revealed preference garp violations are detected in one of the subsystems however they are removed by small adjustments in the quantities of fish and the violations are interpreted as results of measurement errors the almost ideal demand system is used in the static and a dynamic version the results of various specification and misspecification tests suggest that the static version performs poorly as compared with the dynamic version norwegian demand elasticities for disaggregate food commodities have rarely been estimated within a system framework so the results are of intrinsic interest the elasticities estimated by using the dynamic model are of the expected signs and reasonable magnitudes the values are stable over time for most commodities elasticities estimated within a subsystem are conditional on the goods included in that system and they may differ from the more policy relevant unconditional elasticities estimated within a system including all goods adjustment formulas are used to approximate the unconditional elasticities from the estimated conditional elasticities there are considerable differences between the numerical values of the conditional and unconditional elasticities for several of the foods the unconditional own price elasticities are in the interval 0 20 to 0 89 the own price elasticities for hot drinks and for milk are most inelastic the unconditional expenditure elasticities for food away from home fish soft drinks and alcoholic beverages are above one while the expenditure elasticity for hot drinks is about zero

the silence of the lambdas a test of the almost ideal and rotterdam models during the past decade the linear approximate la almost ideal demand system and the rotterdam model have been adopted by agricultural economists as the demand systems of choice in most applications the apparent explanation is that the two models are both second order locally flexible and compatible with demand theory they have identical data requirements and are equally parsimonious with respect to parameters and both are linear in the parameters while the two models are thus equally attractive in most respects and indeed appear very similar in structure they lead to different results in some applications this article develops a test of each against the other in an illustrative application to u s meat demand the almost ideal model is rejected while the rotterdam model is not

is it signalling exchange intervention and the dollar deutschemark rate abstract the portfolio balance channel for sterilised intervention is tested by examining the effects of changes in relative asset supplies on the dollar deutschemark rate during the 1980s in contrast to previous studies we control for any signalling effects of central bank intervention and find a weak but statistically significant portfolio balance influence on the exchange rate