a reexamination of the conglomerate merger wave in the 1960s an internal capital markets view one possible explanation for bidding firms earning positive abnormal returns in diversifying acquisitions in the 1960s is that internal capital markets were expected to overcome the information deficiencies of the less developed capital markets examining 392 bidder firms during the 1960s we find the highest bidder returns when financially unconstrained buyers acquire constrained targets this result holds while controlling for merger terms and for different proxies used to classify firms facing costly external financing we also find that bidders generally retain target management suggesting that management may have provided companyspecific operational information while the bidder provided capital budgeting expertise

the effect of changes in reserve requirements on bank stock prices abstract the present study re examines the tax burden effects of reserve requirements on bank profitability it differs from previous work in two ways 1 changes in stock prices rather than accounting data are used to measure profitability effects and 2 emphasis is placed on changes in reserve requirements as opposed to their level regarding the latter distinction two kinds of changes are considered 1 temporary changes in reserve requirements for the purpose of discretionary monetary policy and 2 more permanent changes in reserve requirement levels based on the event study methodology temporary changes were found to have little effect on security prices whereas more permanent changes had a stronger influence on bank stock prices reflecting a tax burden effect

effects of announcements of reorganization outcome less is known about whether the market perceives the final resolution of post reorganization filing to be idiosyncratic or to carry endemic implications for the corresponding industries this study observes the presence of intra industry information transfers the magnitude and direction of the reactions in response to three separate resolution outcome differs in a systematic way across industry portfolios specifically portfolio rivals that are affected by competitive realignments in the industry experience stock price reactions in the opposite manner to those of the distressed firms thus suggesting dominant competitive effects in addition this study reveals that the discriminatory power and forecast performance of three hybrid neuro fuzzy models are stable and unimpaired across time and are generally superior in classifying rival cumulative prediction error rcpe candidates

measuring and assessing capacity utilization in the manufacturing sectors of nine oecd countries following a tradition established by cassels klein and hickman we employ the economic theory of cost and production and define economic capacity output as that output at which short and long run average total cost curves are tangent to one another capacity utilization cu rates are then computed as the ratio of actual to capacity output we implement this framework empirically by specifying and estimating a translog variable cost function for the manufacturing sectors of nine oecd countries we find that by the end of the historical sample the early 1980s pervasive and chronic excess capacity exists while the average cost consequence of excess capacity was relatively modest in the 1960s the burden increased considerably after opec i and after opec ii the premium was as large as 15 of average total costs we also find that electricity and fuel price increases had small impacts on capacity output relative to that from labor or capital finally we adjust conventional measures of multifactor productivity growth for changes in cu and find that the adjusted growth is larger after 1973 than that based on traditional procedures

uk directors trading the impact of dealings in smaller firms this paper reasesses the u k results of significant abnormal returns from directors trading for a new sample of directors trades 1984 86 and finds that abnormal returns tend to be concentrated in smaller firms when an appropriate benchmark portfolio is used it is found that the significance of the abnormal returns is substantially reduced with the implication that directors trading does not yield particularly high profits to either the directors themselves or to an outside investor mimicking those trades coauthors are john matatko ian tonks and richard purkis copyright 1994 by royal economic society

performance changes around bank mergers revenue enhancements versus cost reductions this paper examines operating performance around commercial bank mergers we find that industry adjusted operating performance of merged banks increases significantly after the merger large bank mergers produce greater performance gains than small bank mergers activity focusing mergers produce greater performance gains than activity diversifying mergers geographically focusing mergers produce greater performance gains than geographically diversifying mergers and performance gains are larger after the implementation of nationwide banking in 1997 further we find improved performance is the result of both revenue enhancements and cost reduction activities however revenue enhancements are most significant in those mergers that also experience reduced costs

a first empirical comparison of energy footprints embodied in trade mrio versus plum abstract the ecological footprint as an indicator that accounts for human demand on global bioproductivity sets out to quantify the impacts associated with consumption in a given country including the impacts associated with trade the national footprint accounts nfa by global footprint network gfn calculate trade embodied footprints by multiplying yield and embodied energy factors with mass volumes of traded goods in a product land use matrix plum this article compares energy footprints embodied in trade from and to the united kingdom in 2002 as calculated by the nfa plum with the results from a recently developed multi region input output model mrio for the uk although totals for imports and exports are comparable breaking down the results by economic sectors reveals large differences and hardly any correlation between the two methods the omission of trade in services especially transport services and upstream impacts of energy goods fossil fuels and the use of inappropriate embodied energy factors in the nfa plum method are identified as the main reasons for these differences in the light of the results it seems that a comprehensive footprint account of trade can better be achieved with an input output based approach i conclude that mrio models once fully developed will be particularly suitable in the future to estimate the ecological footprints of imports and exports of nations with the possibility to track their origin via inter industry linkages international supply chains and multi national trade flows

international trade in biofuels an introduction to the special issue abstract currently many countries are establishing goals for substituting biofuels for fossil fuels these goals usually foresee 5 10 substitution while today s production in most countries is far below 2 evidently many countries will seek to meet their ambitious biofuel targets through imports this global trade in biofuels which is to some extent already taking place will have a major impact not only on other commodity markets like vegetable oils or animal fodder but also on the global land use change and on environmental impacts this special issue focuses on the relation between trading policy making and sustainability impacts of biofuels it demonstrates the strong but complex link between biofuels production and the global food market it unveils policy measures as the main drivers for production and use of biofuels and it analyzes various sustainability indicators and certification schemes for biofuels with respect to minimizing the adverse effects of biofuels while maximizing the benefits of the future use of biofuels

corporate governance through the proxy contest evidence and implications the current literature concerning proxy contests provides little evidence that shareholders suffer materially from sub par performance prior to a contest furthermore no study has thoroughly examined the long term performance of targeted firms subsequent to a proxy contest using a sample of ninety seven election contests during the period 1968 87 the authors find negative abnormal returns and deteriorating operating performance prior to the announcement of a contest following the contest negative abnormal returns are observed these negative returns are driven by cases in which dissident shareholders successfully acquire board seats the results for accounting based operating performance measures confirm these findings copyright 1993 by university of chicago press

competitiveness through management of diversity effects on stock price valuation this study s premise is that firms that can lower their costs and enhance their differentiation through the effective management of their human resources have a competitive advantage using data fr

issuing costs to existing shareholders in competitive and negotiated underwritten public utility equity offerings abstract this paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of whether there is any difference in the cost incurred by public utilities if they issue new equity through a negotiated or competitive underwriting we conclude that the expected cost of a competitive offer is less than the expected cost of a negotiated offer but that the variance of the cost is substantially greater with a competitive offer these results are interesting because most public utilities use negotiated underwriting unless forced by regulation to use competitive offers this paper is also an addition to the growing agency theory literature

optimal taxation economic growth and income inequality that there is a trade off between equityand efficiency economic growth is wellknown two models have been developed thatlink government spending and taxation toeconomic growth this paper uses thesemodels to provide estimates of thegrowth maximizing tax rate then a twoequation structural model is developed andestimated that is used to find thetrade off rate between economic growth andincome inequality and the growth maximizinglevel of income inequality for the unitedstates over the period 1960 1990

sustainable design of renewable energy supply chains integrated with district heating systems a fuzzy optimization approach abstract this study aims to develop a comprehensive decision model for sustainable design of biomass based renewable energy supply chains and district heating systems dhs with thermal energy storages the model integrates the strategic decisions such as location and capacity selection for energy plants dhs thermal storages and biomass storages with tactical decisions related to biomass production supply and transportation planning inventory management and energy production the main purpose is to find the optimum configuration of the supply chain and dhs to meet the heat demand of a particular locality the model combines cost and service level objectives and accounts for biomass supply material flow capacity demand and technical constraints the problem is formulated as a fuzzy mixed integer linear programming milp model that comprises multiple biomass types and system uncertainties to explore the viability of the proposed model computational experiments are performed on a real world case sensitivity analyses are conducted to examine the impacts of cost and capacity limit of thermal energy storage as well as heat demand on the objective functions and thermal storage capacity the results reveal that the proposed model can effectively be used in practice to assist the decision makers in planning energy production systems in a sustainable and effective manner

automobile prices and quality did the gasoline price increases change consumer tastes in the u s a hedonic model of automobile prices that takes gasoline costs into account is developed and used to examine whether gasoline price increases especially those related to the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks changed consumer evaluations of the relative qualities of used cars in the u s during 1970 1981 we test the null hypothesis that the characteristics coefficients remained constant over time it is rejected if gasoline costs are excluded from the model but not if they are included alternative approaches are developed to show that the gasoline price increases alone can explain much of the observed changes in the coefficients

decomposition of the effect of government size on growth empirical results through a fixed effects regression model show that government size has a negative effect on growth mainly through hampering capital accumulation when a sample is divided into oecd and non oecd countries the negative effect of government size on capital accumulation persists for non oecd countries but not for oecd countries

energy crises and change of technology a production model is formulated for the finnish metal product and machinery industry for studying energy crises related structural changes two models are estimated a partial static equilibrium model where capital is treated as a fixed input in the short run and a dynamic model where adjustment costs of the capital input are taken into account alternative hypotheses of structural change are formulated as gradual parameter shifts the results show that some of the energy related parameters have changed over time also the contributions of parameter changes and variations in the average values of the variables on the changes in the energy demand elasticities are studied the most important effect is the strengthening of the energy saving bias in technical change

fuzzy input output model for optimizing eco industrial supply chains under water footprint constraints global water stress is expected to increase due to population growth economic development and climate change because of this trend there is an increased interest in the water intensity of industrial activities conducted via the product supply chain or within specified geographical boundaries or regions both at the enterprise or regulatory level the total water footprint of economic activities should be evaluated in consideration of local water resource consumption virtual water trade and resource availability as individual entities seek to protect their respective interests the challenge is to optimize inter regional trade of goods with the consideration of the interests of participants in the network this work presents a fuzzy inputeoutput model for optimizing supply chains under water footprint constraints two case studies involving tile manufacturing and biofuel production are considered to demonstrate the use of the model

fiscal decentralization and government size numerous studies have attempted to model the possible factors contributing to universal growth in public sectors this paper analyzes one device that appears capable of controlling some of that growth fiscal decentralization the results reported here also support the use of monopoly government assumptions in models of public policy

a review of recent multi region input output models used for consumption based emission and resource accounting abstract the interest in consumption based emission and resource accounting has grown significantly many studies juxtapose consumer emissions carbon footprint and producer territorial emissions of greenhouse gases in order to demonstrate the effects of trade on the national emission budget to this end a respectable number of studies have been undertaken worldwide in order to estimate emissions embedded in international trade of numerous countries and world regions input output approaches and increasingly multi region input output mrio models are commonly chosen as they provide an appropriate methodological framework for complete carbon footprint estimates at the national and supra national level with increasing processing capabilities of computers and a wider availability of economic accounts environmental accounts and trade data such models are now being implemented on a wide scale after a brief overview of salient single region input output studies i provide an in depth review of the most recent multi region input output models used for the purpose of consumption based environmental accounting the main methodological features and important results are described for around twenty studies covering the years 2007 to 2009 this is followed by a detailed review of studies dealing with uncertainty in mrio analysis an area which has not received a lot of attention so far i conclude that further research is mainly needed in two areas a improvements in data availability and quality and b improvements in the accuracy of mrio modelling

the recent slowdown of productivity growth the slowdown of productivity growth in the developed countries during the seventies will in this paper be viewed as a combined effect of three closely interacting forces i a long term deterioration in the efficiency and flexibility of some basic mechanisms of the economic and political systems of these countries ii the fading away of a number of uniquely favourable circumstances for productivity growth during the fifties and sixties and iii the exposure of these economies to unusually severe macroeconomic disturbances in the seventies careful inspection of time series with attempted modifications for cyclical factors suggests that there was hardly any general slowdown of productivity growth among developed countries before approximately i972 4 1 as we know the situation is radically different since then labour productivity growth per year for the entire national economy gdp per man hour seems to have fallen between the periods i960 73 and i973 9 by about i 2 percentage points in the united states 45 by about 24 percentage points in western europe2 45 and by about 5 9 percentage points in japan 6o table i see also fig i the slowdown was of about the same size in the business and manufacturing sectors see table i to calculate the extent of the slowdown of total factor productivity growth is of course a much more hazardous matter to which i will return later if just the various system changes and the fading away of the uniquely favourable factors had been the dominating forces behind the productivity growth slowdown we would expect the slowdown to have been gradual rather than abrupt as it turned out to be this abruptness as well as its timing makes the dramatic macroeconomic disturbances around i972 4 a prime suspect when looking for the villain behind the productivity growth slowdown indeed it is a basic hypothesis of the paper that these macroeconomic disturbances were not only by themselves strongly unfavourable for productivity growth but that they also revealed and accentuated the gradual deterioration of the

output effects of government purchases the theoretical analysis focuses on the distinction between temporary and permanent movements in government purchases under plausible conditions the temporary case involves an output response that is positive less than one to one with the change in government purchases and larger than that generated by an equal sized but permanent shift in purchase the equilibrium real rate of return rise in the temporary case but changes little in the permanent one defense purchases are divided empirically into permanent and temporary components by considering the role of temporary wars no temporary shifts in nondefense purchases were isolated empirical results verify an expansionary output effect for temporary purchases that exceeds that of permanent purchases the results for some other expectational hypotheses are found to be generally supportive of the theory

energy price shocks and productivity growth in us and uk manufacturing because sustained changes in the trend of productivity growth are so very important for people s long run economic welfare the dramatic productivity growth slowdown of the 1970 s and early 1980 s has been the focus of much analysis and discussion for some observers it was much more than coincidence that the oil price shocks of 1973 74 accompanied the sharp slowdowns in traditionally measured productivity growth not only in the united states and the united kingdom but throughout the industrialised world however establishing quantifying and explaining sig nificant linkages between energy price shocks and productivity growth has proved to be most difficult traditional and time honoured relationships involving productivity growth have all seemed incapable of explaining this slowdown for example edward denison author of several widely cited productivity studies has concluded that energy had essentially no role in explaining the productivity growth slowdown and that moreover what happened is to be blunt a mystery 1979 p 4

proxy contests and the governance of publicly held corporations abstract analysis of 60 proxy contests for seats on the boards of exchange listed firms during 1978 1985 shows that three years after the contest less than one fifth of the sample firms remain independent publicly held corporations run by the same management team proxy contests are typically followed by managerial resignations even when dissidents fail to obtain a majority of board seats and are often followed by sale or liquidation of the firm the average stockholder wealth gains associated with proxy contests are largely attributable to gains by companies in which dissident activity leads to sale or liquidation

security price reactions to initial reviews of common stock by the value line investment survey this study examines daily price reactions to initial reviews of securities by the value line investment survey the reviews are found to convey information to the market as significant abnormal returns are found over a 3 day period around release of the information furthermore there is no statistically significant subsequent price reation after this 3 day period consistent with market efficiency

the assessment productivity and competitiveness in british manufacturing this issue of the oxford review examines productivity and competitiveness in british manufac turing the simplest and most widely used measure of productivity is output per head from this definition sprout at once the horns of a dilemma for an economy facing unemployment on the present scale for a given rate of expansion of output the higher the rate of productivity growth the greater the decline in employment or at least the smaller its growth on the other hand in an economy open to international competition a high rate of productivity growth relative to that of other countries is the long term key to achieving the favourable international competitive po sition necessary to sustain growth and a low level of unemployment

taxes and the capital structure of partnerships reit s and related entities academic finance has explored the effect of taxes on corporate capital structure in great detail by contrast the effect of taxes on the capital structure of partnerships reit s and related entities has received little attention the present paper shows that under general conditions the values of partnerships and reit s are invariant to leverage contradicting the sparse literature in the area a proof similar to that of modigliani miller is employed the effect of real world imperfections is also examined the theoretical relationship between corporate taxes and corporate capital structure has been thoroughly investigated e g miller 1977 and modigliani and miller mm 1958 1963 in contrast the relationship between taxes and the capital structure of partnerships real estate investment trusts reit s and related entities has been largely ignored in the literature perhaps the current thinking on the subject is best summarized in an article entitled capital structure theory and reit offerings by howe and shilling 1988 they state p 983 that theory suggests that the net tax gain to corporate borrowing is unambiguously negative for a reit they expand this viewpoint with non taxpaying firms must compete in the debt markets with firms for which interest expense results in tax savings these firms can afford to pay a higher interest on debt and thus there is a strong tax disadvantage to the use of debt for non taxpaying firms the present paper disputes the above reasoning it is argued that under a quite general model the value of a partnership reit or related entity is invariant to leverage this result is a strong one since it holds regardless of the competition mentioned in howe and shilling 1988 between taxpaying and nontaxpaying firms a model mirroring the essential features of partnerships reit s and related entities is presented in section i our basic invariance result is developed in this section specific complications in the current tax code are considered in section ii conclusions are also presented in this section

searching for the productivity slowdown some surprising findings from west german manufacturing we test the hypothesis of a negative long term trend and or a structural break in total factor productivity tfp after the first oil price shock for west german manufacturing industries within an econometric model based on a flexible cost function with capital as a quasi fixed factor after adjusting tfp growth for scale economies and varying capacity utilization this hypothesis is not supported by our empirical findings for the great majority of industries studied whereas the hypothesis that the log level of tfp follows a random walk with drift is not rejected by various statistical tests authors

communication costs information acquisition and voting decisions in proxy contests this article synthesizes some recent progress in the theories of corporate control and political lobbying to model the proxy campaign as a political campaign the model yields a number of testable implications only some of which have been examined in the literature for example if the loss from voting for a bad dissident exceeds the gain from voting for a good dissident the model predicts that as communication costs fall the number of proxy fights increases announcement day returns decrease and the fraction of dissident wins first increases and then decreases article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

the growth tax in the united states by providing public goods including law and order national defense and income redistribution that expands the gains from exchange the scope and membership of the constitutional agreement government expenditures act as a positive externality on the growth rate beyond that level taxes act as a negative externality in this paper a simple model is formulated and the optimal growth maximizing tax rate found empirical estimation finds it to be in the range of 21 5 22 9 percent the effect of taxation beyond this level is a cumulative loss of about 30 trillion 1972 dollars in gnp over the period 1949 89

short sale restrictions and market reaction to short interest announcements according to the diamond verrecchia hypothesis if increases in short interest are correlated with information that is not yet public they should precipitate a price adjustment stocks with unexpected increases in short interest are found to generate statistically significant but small negative abnormal returns for a short period around the announcement date when the sample is divided into stocks with and without tradable options nonoptioned stocks closely mimic these results but the optioned stocks do not in a cross sectional analysis of individual firms the short term negative abnormal returns are found to be 1 more negative the higher the degree of unexpected short interest and 2 less negative if the firm has tradable options

the timing of option repricing we investigate whether executive stock option repricings are systematically timed to coincide with favorable movements in the company s stock price for a sample of 236 repricing events we observe sharp increases in stock price in the 20 day period following the repricing date in addition repricing dates tend to either precede the release of good news or follow the release of bad news in the quarterly earnings announcements since information about stock option repricing is not generally released to the public around the repricing date these findings suggest that ceos opportunistically manage the timing of the option repricing date

a fuzzy linear programming enterprise input output model for optimal crisis operations in industrial complexes abstract industrial complexes may be subject to significant risk of cascading failure caused by various disruptions and emerging economies are potentially more susceptible to the impacts as less established policies are in place to deal with these issues in particular there is a need to develop adaptation strategies to ensure the resilience of industrial activities to various perturbations that may result from climate change the inherent complexity of such systems makes decision making for risk management a non trivial task that is best facilitated with the aid of mathematical models enterprise input output models have been used extensively to model production systems at different scales in this work a fuzzy linear programming enterprise input output model is developed to determine optimal adjustments in production levels of multi product systems when a crisis is induced by a loss of resource inputs the model allows for adjustments that are equitable for different decision makers that may comprise an industrial complex or a supply chain capabilities of the model are illustrated with a case study on the effect of water shortage on an aluminum production system

a review of progress in empowerment of women in rural water management decision making processes abstract the authors of this paper explore the links between water infrastructure water policies processes and protections along with mechanisms for women s leadership and decision making for contributing to rural well being the broad brush strokes approach is our attempt to reveal the breadth and complexity of the interdisciplinary nature of problems which canonly be solved via interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches poor rural women are disproportionally and adversely impacted by domestic and public gendered roles in relation to water accessibility system design and management as well as by the high costs of water distribution the inadequacy of fair water distribution channels is compounded by the growing influence of water privatization advocates the significant changes in climate and global warming also threaten accessibility to safe water and add levels of competitiveness and vulnerability for people in many regions of the world the recommendations proposed in this paper underscore the need for proper management of water resources to prevent and to reduce water conflicts and to increase all dimensions of well being this paper builds upon literature from four interconnected strategies 1 investing in water infrastructure to increase well being 2 establishing policies and legislation to protect the global commons human rights and enhance economic well being 3 embedding gender equality and women s leadership in water management and 4 developing strategic interventions to reduce and mitigate adverse global affects by educating for sustainable development preventing and planning around climate change and enhancing local water management through resisting global privatization approaches

government size productivity and economic growth the post war experience a substantial portion of the slowdown in productivity and economic growth in the seventies and eighties cannot be ascribed to traditional factors we have found one potential additional source the dramatic growth in the scale of government employing a theoretical model of output growth we derive an equation which controls for cyclical influences and which permits distinguishing the effects of government growth on the economic base from the effects on the economic growth rate we find that increases in the scale of government lead to statistically significant reductions in both the economic base and the economic growth rate in addition we find that most of this government induced retardation of economic activity arises from reductions in productivity rather that reductions in the employment of factors

fuzzy mixed integer non linear programming model for the design of an algae based eco industrial park with prospective selection of support tenants under product price variability abstract eco industrial parks provide a platform for the application of industrial symbiosis where the synergistic network of companies reuse portions of their by products to reduce disposed waste reduce environmental emissions and improve plant efficiency however designing a complex network of material and energy exchanges between companies in an industrial park while satisfying multiple conflicting objectives require a systematic design methodology in addition strategic decision making in an eco industrial park involves the selection of prospective companies i e support tenants which complement the existing companies i e anchor tenants in this study a fuzzy mixed integer non linear programming model is proposed to select prospective support tenants in an eco industrial park while satisfying the product demand minimizing the environmental footprint of the eco industrial park and also maximizing the annualized profit of each company in the eco industrial park a hypothetical but realistic case study involving an algae based eco industrial park is used to demonstrate the application of the model the results demonstrate the selection of the appropriate support tenants for the algae based eco industrial park together with the optimal plant configuration sensitivity analysis is used to assess the performance of the algae based eco industrial park with respect to the changes in prices of the by products the developed model thus aid the planners of an eco industrial park in assessing which among the prospective support tenants would best complements an existing anchor tenant furthermore the model can also identify price negotiation points between tenants for some product streams which may show sensitivity on the plant capacity of each tenant

evidence of public spending crowding out from a panel of oecd countries the empirical relationship between government spending and private investment is examined using a panel of 14 oecd countries the evidence suggests the existence of a significant crowding in effect of private investment by public investment through the positive impact of infrastructure on private investment productivity moreover government consumption appears to crowd out private investment the implications of these results are of foremost importance when it comes to fiscal consolidation deficit reductions engineered through cuts in public investment could severely impinge on private capital accumulation and growth prospects

on corporate governance a study of proxy contests abstract this paper examines a sample of firms experiencing proxy contests for seats on their board of directors dissident shareholders usually fail to obtain a majority of board seats nevertheless they capture some seats via mechanisms such as cumulative voting in over half of the sample contests regardless of proxy contest outcome positive and statistically significant share price performance is associated with the contest that finding is predicted by the standard economic analysis of proxy contests in which the challenges benefit shareholders by improving corporate performance the finding runs counter to the claim of berle 1962 that the economists view of proxy contests is a wholly imaginary picture a portion of the positive share price changes taking place in the early stages of some proxy contests is not permanent however and as suggested by manne 1962 is at least partially attributable to temporary increases in the market value of the vote attached to corporate shares

economic freedom government policy and the trade off between equity and economic growth this study investigates the role that economicfreedom plays in economic growth and in the distribution in marketincome the role of government policy in advancingeconomic progress and in promoting income equality and the effectthat the rate of economic progress has on thedistribution of market income structural and reduced formmodels are estimated that reveal that economic freedompromotes both economic growth and equity and that there is apositive but relatively small trade off between growth andincome inequality

productivity in the united states and its relationship to government activity an analysis of 57 years 1929 1986 under the classical supply side paradigm of productivity grouth raising government economic above rudimentary levels integrates markets and provides useful public goods which enhance growth beyond some point however increasing government activity discourages growth through tax disincentives and by rewarding dependence on government expenditures defining government economic activity to be government expenditures as a percentage of gnp this study looks first at data for the period 1889 1986 and shows that the u s economy has experienced what is predicted by the supply side paradigm in addition the study presents an econometric analysis of government s effects on productivity for the period 1929 1986 using a standard neoclassical growth model this analysis validates the classical supply side paradigm and shows that maximum productivity growth occurs when government expenditures represent about 20 of gnp far less than the 35 which existed in 1986

changes in organizational structure and shareholder wealth the case of limited partnerships this paper analyzes the consequence for shareholders of a change in organizational form the conversion of a corporation or the spin off of a unit into a limited partnership theory suggests that prior to the tax reform act of 1986 the tax benefits of conversion to a limited partnership and the creation of a new entity separate from the parent corporation should have a positive effect on shareholder wealth on the other hand the increase in agency costs of such an organizational change should decrease the wealth of shareholders empirical results lend support to hypotheses that predict an increase in stock price at the announcement of the conversion but cannot identify the source of the gain

managerial ownership of voting rights abstract managers of firms with dual classes of common stock can choose different quantities of votes for a given cash flow interest by choosing different quantities of the two securities we study managerial stock holdings in 45 dual class firms and find that vote ownership per se is an important motivation for these holdings in that corporate officers and their families hold a median 56 9 of the votes and 24 0 of the common stock cash flows we also find significant family involvement in many sample firms and document four case studies in which explicit acquisition premiums were paid for superior voting shares

shareholder wealth effects of directors liability limitation provisions the adoption of liability limitation provisions llps is associated with insignificant stock price reactions for all firms but with positive stock price reactions for poorly performing firms this result is consistent with the hypothesis that the net benefit of llps is larger for financially troubled firms than for other firms because outside directors are valuable to the distressed firm and llps substantially affect experts expected costs of serving as directors

government debt government spending and private sector behavior a current period tax reduction financed by issuing government debt shifts the timing of tax collection from the current period to the future if the future taxes implied by government debt are not fully perceived and discounted by the private sector there will be a net wealth effect that increases private sector consumption thus reducing capital accumulation and growth if on the other hand the implied future taxes are perceived and discounted by the private sector the current period tax reduction will be used to increase private saving to pay for the future taxes and government debt will be absorbed without any real effects on the economy the effects of government spending financed by current period taxation also depend upon private sector perceptions 2 if the benefits of government spending are ignored private sector consumption will decrease in accordance with the reduction in permanent disposable income to the extent that government spending is on consumption type goods that are perceived as substitutes for privately provided consumption goods there will be a relatively greater reduction in private sector consumption to the extent that government spending is on investment type goods yielding future goods and services that are perceived as substitutes for future privately provided consumption goods there will be a relatively smaller reduction in private sector consumption the standard approach to modeling private sector consumption saving behavior involves a rather asymmetric set of assumptions as to how the private sector perceives the various elements of government fiscal policy 3 current period taxes are assumed to be fully perceived but current period government spending is implicitly assumed to be completely ignored by the private sector in considering permanent personal disposable income the private sector is assumed to be forward looking in its assessment of income and taxation the stock of government debt is nevertheless included as part of the stock of private wealth the implicit assumption associate professor of economics graduate school of business university of chicago 1101 east 58th street chicago il 60637 i thank eugene fama levis kochin michael mussa paul evans and an anonymous referee for helpful comments i am particularly grateful to daniel benjamin for contributing many hours of discussion and laura lahaye who was a research assistant and valuable adviser on earlier drafts the theoretical debate on the burden of the debt has been long standing gerald o driscoll 1977 documents ricardo s nineteenth century position robert barro 1974 reopened the debate by introducing the fundamental issue of intergenerational transfers also discussed in merton miller and charles upton 1974 the empirical side of the debate was initiated by levis kochin s 1974 attempt to test for the effects of deficits on consumption and by martin feldstein s 1974 attempt to test for the effects of social security wealth on consumption other empirical contributions include jess yawitz and laurence meyer 1976 myself 1978 and j earnest tanner 1978 1979 with respect to the effects of government deficits and debt and barro 1978 michael darby 1979 and dean leimer and selig lesnoy 1982 with respect to social security wealth see also interesting recent papers by john seater 1982 who generates detailed tests of the effects of deficits and debt on consumption charles plosser 1982 who explores the effects of government spending and debt shocks on interest rates and feldstein 1982 who attempts tests similar to some in this paper see fn 29 2martin bailey s 1962 1971 development of the effects of government spending on private consumption and aggregate economic activity is the seminal contribution paul david and john scadding 1974 extend bailey s ideas and provide some supporting empirical evidence more recently willem buiter 1977 and myself 1978 developed models based on bailey s earlier work barro 1981 has an interesting paper on related issues see also david aschauer 1982 3the standard approach incorporates fiscal policy through the concept of personal disposable income and by including the stock of government debt as part of personal wealth see for example the empirical specification of albert ando and franco modigliani 1963 which has been the basis of most empirical consumption studies since and feldstein 1974 for one of the more influential papers based on the ando modigliani specification

the social construction of market value institutionalization and learning perspectives on stock market reactions this study advances a social constructionist view of financial market behavior the paper suggests that the market s reaction to particular corporate practices such as stock repurchase plans are not as financial economists contend simply a function of the inherent efficiency of such practices rather stock market reactions are also influenced by the prevailing institutional logic and the degree of institutionalization of the practice the theory first predicts that the emergence of the agency perspective on corporate governance in the mid 1980s represented a powerful new institutional logic that would lead the market to reverse its prior aggregate reaction to stock repurchase plans in the united states the paper then considers the potential for institutional decoupling of repurchase plans and develops competing hypotheses about how the market value of these policies might have changed as more firms formally adopted but did not implement the plans over time in contrast to a financial economic pers

government and economic growth a non linear relationship recently various authors have examined the relationship between growth in government size and total economic growth in each case the authors permitted only a monotonic relationship this paper examines the issue of a non linear relationship between growth in government and overall growth in the economy

the outsourcing of r d through acquisitions in the pharmaceutical industry abstract we examine the performance of 160 pharmaceutical acquisitions from 1994 to 2001 and find evidence that on average acquirers realize significant positive returns these returns are positively correlated with prior acquirer access to information about the research and development activities at target firms and a superior negotiating position a unique desperation index is employed to determine the current status of a firm s internal productivity we find that firms experiencing declines in internal productivity or which are more desperate are more likely to engage in an outsourcing type acquisition in an effort to replenish their research pipelines

permanent and transitory components in macroeconomic fluctuations fluctuations in real gnp have traditionally been viewed as transitory deviations from a deterministic time trend the purpose of this paper is to review some of the recent developments that have led to a new view of output fluctuations and then to provide some additional evidence using post war quarterly data it is hard to reject the view that real gnp is as persistent as a random walk with drift we also consider the hypothesis that the recent finding of persistence are due to the failure to distinguish the business cycle from other fluctuations in real gnp we use the measured unemployment rate to decompose output fluctuations we find no evidence for the view that business cycle fluctuations are more quickly trend reverting this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

government size and economic growth a new framework and some evidence from cross section and time series data a study of the impact of government size on economic performance and growth is important theoretically one point of view suggests that a larger government size is likely to be detrimental to efficiency and economic growth because for example i government operations are often conducted inefficiently ii the regulatory process imposes excessive burdens and costs on the economic system and iii many of government s fiscal and monetary policies tend to distort economic incentives and lower the productivity of the system at the other extreme one can identify some points of view that assign to the government a critical role in the process of economic development and could argue that a larger government size is likely to be a more powerful engine of economic development there are several arguments on which the latter point of view is based these include besides others i role of the government in harmonizing conflicts between private and social interests ii prevention of exploitation of the country by foreigners and iii securing an increase in productive investment and providing a socially optimal direction for growth and development

will productivity growth recover has it done so already the author reviews the latest information on productivity and the alternative explanations of the slowdown which he concludes was partially due to a decline in innovation and work effort and mostly due the post 1973 energy price increases identical policy responses to the worldwide inflation were also a reason why so many countries experienced slow growth at the same time as cyclical productivity declines were added to the structural decline there are signs that productivity growth is recovering which gives credence to the view that the temporary shocks of the 1970s were the culprit

p graph approach for gdp optimal allocation of resources commodities and capital in economic systems under climate change induced crisis conditions abstract climate change impacts may manifest via multiple pathways often leading to a shortage of resources reduction in production capacities or reduction in available labor inputs that are vital for economic activities effective climate change adaptation strategies are needed to determine the optimal allocation of scarce resources commodities or capital under crisis conditions to minimize the economic consequences in such cases it is necessary to account for structural properties of economic systems to ensure that rational distribution policies are implemented input output models are used to illustrate interdependencies among economic sectors and to assess both direct and indirect effects of disruptive events alternatively these interdependencies may be exploited for developing effective recovery efforts to minimize the ripple effects of a crisis in this paper a process graph representation of the input output model is developed to generate a rational procedure for the allocation of scarce resources commodities or capital during crisis conditions the process graph model is a graph theoretic approach originally developed for chemical process design applications the analogous problem structure allows it to be used for the input output system the method is demonstrated through several case studies to identify allocation policies geared towards reducing the impact of disruptions attributed to critical resources commodities or capital results show that depending on the economic structure the optimal allocation of scarce resources commodities or capital will satisfy the final demands of some economic sectors and reduce the production capacity of others in order to minimize the reduction of total gross domestic product though similar results can be obtained through traditional mathematical programming models the process graph platform has the advantage to visually present the distribution of scarce resources commodities or capital within the system this work is a first attempt to implement the process graph approach in the fields of economics and climate change adaptation in conclusion the process graph based approach developed in this work can be used to provide policymakers with insights in developing appropriate risk mitigation plans associated with climate change induced crisis conditions potential applications include both the development of disaster preparedness measures for anticipated disruptions as well as the implementation of real time emergency response in the midst of a crisis

supply chain and logistics issues of bio energy production abstract within the concert of renewable energy technologies bio energy can play a decisive role during the next decades when smartly designed and applied under favorable conditions in this respect efficient and effective supply chain and logistics management represent one key parameter this paper presents a literature review of articles published in english speaking peer reviewed journals from 2000 to 2009 which cover the interface of bio energy production and issues of logistics and supply chain management first the articles are assessed according to descriptive criteria such as journal year of publication and research design applied then issues and challenges of designing and operating biomass chains that secure stable and competitively priced feedstock supply for bio energy plants have been classified 1 into the operations harvesting and collection storage transport and pre treatment techniques as well as 2 into overall supply system design although biomass supply chains for energy use are manifold in terms of size design and functioning most relevant issues regarding supply chain management and logistics of bio energy production are identified the findings are discussed against the backdrop of bio energy as sustainable renewable energy option

bilateral fdi flows productivity growth and convergence the north vs the south summary controlling for the aggregation bias in fdi flows and the home and host country heterogeneity within and between northern and southern countries we explore the effects of bilateral fdi flows on host country productivity growth and on the productivity convergence dynamics between the host and the productivity frontier country using bilateral fdi flows data from 108 host and 240 home countries over 1990 2012 and employing a variety of estimation techniques together with a rich battery of robustness tests we find no significant effect of bilateral fdi flows on either host country productivity growth or on the productivity gap between the host and the frontier country we also show that these findings are not sensitive to the direction of fdi flows which are south south south north north south or north north in a decomposition exercise we also fail to find any significant effect of bilateral or aggregate fdi flows on physical capital growth yet we find some evidence of a positive effect of fdi flows on human capital growth but just in one direction south south last but not least we fail to find any productivity growth or convergence effect at the sectoral level including agricultural industry or services sectors

the effect of private antitrust litigation on the stock market valuation of the firm the authors study the implications for shareholder wealth of interfirm antitrust litigation and how the costs of the dispute affect the propensity to settle upon filing defendants experience significant wealth losses that are ten million dollars larger than the wealth gains of plaintiffs financial distress behavioral constraints and follow on suits are sources of wealth leakage and influence settlement behavior since the threat of a monetary transfer has little power to explain either wealth effects or the likelihood of settlement the central concern of defendants may be the potential prohibition of profitable business practices copyright 1995 by american economic association

raw materials profits and the productivity slowdown a factor price frontier framework is used to clarify the analogy of an increase decrease in raw material prices with autonomous technological regress progress factor price profiles are estimated for the manufacturing sector of the united states the united kingdom germany and japan the production model in conjunction with estimates obtained from the factor price frontier attributes much of the slowdown in manufacturing productivity to the rise in relative raw material prices part of the apparent productivity riddle may have to do with the use of double deflated national accounting measures of value added which have an inherent measurement bias

robust strategies for facility location under uncertainty abstract this paper considers a stochastic facility location problem in which multiple capacitated facilities serve customers with a single product and a stockout probabilistic requirement is stated as a chance constraint customer demand is assumed to be uncertain and to follow either a normal or an ambiguous distribution we study robust approximations to the problem in order to incorporate information about the random demand distribution in the best possible computationally tractable way we also discuss how a decision maker s risk preferences can be incorporated in the problem through robust optimization finally we present numerical experiments that illustrate the performance of the different robust formulations robust optimization strategies for facility location appear to have better worst case performance than nonrobust strategies they also outperform nonrobust strategies in terms of realized average total cost when the actual demand distributions have higher expected values than the expected values used as input to the optimization models

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis in recent years there have been a number of attempts to develop a more comprehensive approach to the issue of measuring resource use and or pollution generation embodied in trade flows including contributions that combine input output techniques and ecological footprint analysis in this two part paper we describe how to enumerate the resource and or pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows part 1 and we present a literature review of recent methodological and empirical developments part 2 it is straightforward in principle to extend the basic input output approach to capture international trade flows however in practice problems of data availability and compatibility and of computability of extended input output matrices mean that simplifying assumptions are generally applied but with the implications of these assumptions often not made fully explicit what appears to be absent from previous applications is an account of the analytical method by which ecological footprints should ideally be estimated in an international input output accounting analysis this allows an explicit analysis of the problems that prevent the application of the full method and identification of the most appropriate short cut methods in a transparent way the objective of this paper is to provide such an account

towards an explanation of the productivity slowdown an acceleration deceleration hypothesis after two and a half decades of prosperous post war development western industrialised countries recently experienced a slowdown of economic growth and productivity advance together with an increase in the rates of inflation and unemployment in trying to explain this malaise we are looking at a diagnosis that could help us to identify early indicators of a future turnaround or some policy variables which deserve to be included in a therapeutic programme although we shall focus on what can be measured complying with the standards of the guild we shall not refrain from considering complex relationships which can be grasped only intuitively even if they include phenomena which lie beyond the limits of official statistics 2 the outcome may be soft economics but we find some consolation in the dictum that it is better to be vaguely right than to be precisely wrong

an examination of ex dividend day stock price movements the case of nontaxable master limited partnership distributions this study examines the unit stock price and volume behavior of master limited partnerships mlp around the ex dividend day since the dividends of mlps are not taxable to the unitholder tax based hypotheses predict no abnormal unit movements around the ex day significant positive excess returns and volume are found before the ex dividend day and significant negative excess returns are found on the ex dividend day the findings which are not significantly impacted by the tax reform act of 1986 suggest ex day stock movements are not solely a function of investor marginal tax rates or corporate trading behavior elton and gruber s 1970 findings that in 1966 67 stock prices fell on average by less than the amount of the dividend on the ex dividend date and that the ratio of the price decrease to the dividend was correlated with the dividend yield have led to the development of a tax clientele hypothesis relating to investor behavior one puzzling result from their study was the finding that the price decreases for the highest yielding securities were significantly greater than the dividends which in their analysis implied an investor clientele with negative tax rates while michaely 1989 using 1986 87 data was unable to find support for the tax clientele hypothesis across different yield groups he also documented the large price drop for the highest yielding securities michaely 1989 suggested that his results may demonstrate a preference of corporations for dividend over capital gains because of favorable tax treatment corporations receive on dividend income corporate trader hypothesis shefrin and statman 1984 however suggest that preferences for dividends over capital gains may exist for nontax reasons such as self control or a desire to segregate gains and losses the purpose of this paper is to examine the ex dividend day stock price behavior of master limited partnership mlp units during the 1985 88 period dividends from these high yielding securities are not taxable therefore support for either the tax clientele hypothesis or the corporate trader hypothesis would be found only if the average ex day price change on mlps equalled the dividend this result would also be consistent with barclay s 1987 finding that before the enactment of an income tax in 1913 even high

energy tax changes and competitiveness the role of adaptive capacity this paper estimates the effect of energy tax and price changes on total factor productivity tfp and net trade at the industry level using a panel of industries from european countries covering the period 1990 2003 we investigate the hypothesis that industries with high adaptive capacity measured by their relative level of labor compensation are able to mitigate the adverse effects of energy tax rises better than others we identify the pro adaptation effect by interacting wage levels a proxy for human capital with energy taxes we find that the negative marginal effect of higher energy taxes on tfp and net trade is significantly reduced for industries with stronger human capital and even turns to an overall positive effect in at least two cases up to three low wage sectors display an overall negative effect this suggests that human capital is key to adaptation to higher energy costs and climate policy in some cases making it a win win

the competitive impact of air crashes stock market evidence abstract we examine stock market reactions to commercial air crashes to test the hypothesis that consumers respond by switching to rival airlines and or flying less we focus on the stock price reactions of airlines not involved in the crash if switching occurs noncrash airlines should benefit to the extent that they are direct competitors of the crash airline we develop a measure of market overlap and regress individual non crash airline abnormal returns on this measure allowing the constant term to capture any negative spillovers the evidence supports both a switching effect and a spillover

why regulate insider trading evidence from the first great merger wave 1897 1903 we use event time methodology to study legal insider trading associated with mergers circa 1900 for mergers with prospective disclosures similar to today s we find substantial value gains at announcement implying participation by outside shareholders despite the absence of insider constraints furthermore preannouncement stock price runups relative to total value gain are no more than those observed for modern mergers insider regulation apparently has produced little benefit for outsiders with the inside information pricing function and related gains shifting to external information specialists other results suggest market penalties for nondisclosure i e insider trading is less successful in a restricted information environment

the uk capital stock new estimates of premature scrapping in recent years there has been a considerable degree of interest in the measurement of the capital stock with special reference to the degree of premature scrapping of capital equipment that might have occurred it has been argued that this might be one reason for the observed slowdown in productivity growth see e g muellbauer 1984 or baily 1981 others have alleged that there has been a large decrease in manufacturing capacity in the uk since 1980 and that therefore we should not reflate the economy see e g ball 1985 for we run the risk of re igniting inflation the latter view is commonly expressed in the press both by financial commentators and politi cians it is therefore of some importance to assess the extent to which the official stock meas ures are misleading

empirical evidence on on vertical foreclosure i introduction prior to the 1980s the united states department of justice and the federal trade commission actively challenged vertical mergers on the theory that such mergers foreclosed unintegrated rivals in the downstream market from access to inputs supplied by the merged firm this policy changed when critics of the foreclosure theory claimed that vertically integrated firms have no incentive to transfer products between the upstream and downstream markets at a price other than the market price and therefore vertical mergers have no effect on the price charged to consumers 1 the arguments against attacking vertical mergers were also supported by research that demonstrated that vertical integration can enhance efficiency 2 as a result vertical mergers currently receive very little if any attention from the enforcement agencies recent contributions by ordover saloner and salop 1990 krattenmaker and salop 1986 and salinger 1988 1989 have reopened the debate about the competitive effects of vertical mergers they each use theoretical models to show that vertical foreclosures can raise costs to unintegrated rivals and lead to higher prices for consumers although these models demonstrate that foreclosure can be a profitable strategy that injures competition to date these theories have not been tested empirically if vertical foreclosure rarely occurs or if it occurs only in a narrow set of circumstances changes in current policy on vertical mergers may not be justified a necessary but not sufficient condition for anticompetitive foreclosure is that the vertical merger cause the unintegrated rivals to be less profitable this result from previous theoretical work is tested here on a sample selected from all vertical merger cases challenged by the justice department and the federal trade commission during the period 1963 to 1982 we find no evidence of anticompetitive market foreclosure for the sample of cases challenged by the antitrust agencies one possible explanation for our results is that the tests over the entire sample are significantly affected by a few weak cases brought by the government during a period of aggressive antitrust enforcement we test this by examining variables that have been identified by krattenmaker and salop 1986 and the department of justice merger guidelines as being conducive to foreclosure such as barriers to entry and industry concentration even the cases with high industry concentration and barriers to entry which potentially should exhibit substantial market power provide no evidence of foreclosure while this does not preclude anticompetitive foreclosure as a possibility it does call into question the cases brought by the antitrust agencies during the 1960s and the 1970s until the proponents of the more rigorous economic version of the foreclosure theory provide clearer guidelines about the conditions under which vertical mergers are likely to injure competition continuation of the current policy of not contesting these mergers seems justified ii theory of anticompetitive foreclosure the foreclosure arguments used to challenge vertical mergers during the 1950s and 1960s were easily discredited because no formal theory was used to support them more recent attempts to reconstruct the foreclosure theory have used economic models to demonstrate that vertical foreclosure can reduce competition the key to each of these models is that foreclosure raises the costs to the unintegrated rivals of the merged firm and this under certain conditions raises the price of the final product to the consumer the legal definition of foreclosure focuses on the ability of unintegrated firms to buy from or sell to integrated rivals while the economic definition of anticompetitive foreclosure focuses on whether prices to consumers increase salinger 1988 has provided a model that demonstrates the conditions under which anticompetitive foreclosure will occur

raw materials profits and the productivity slowdown some doubts bruno 1984 argues that a fall in material input for given levels of capital and labor input can explain a measured fall in productivity growth which in most oecd countries first appeared after 1973 this comment asks the following 1 do the available output statistics show a fall in gross output as the materials hypothesis explanation of the productivity slowdown requires or do they show a fall in real value added defined as gross output less material input which indicates a fall in technical progress i conclude that the materials hypothesis cannot explain falls in productivity growth measured using gdp data but could explain partperhaps 0 5 percent per annumof the fall measured using the index of manufacturing production 2 what materials price and quantity movements have occurred to isolate the component of material prices that is exogenous common to all oecd countries and excludes energy costs i look at the u n price index for basic commodities imported by developed countries the rise in real raw material prices was much smaller in terms of its cost to importing countries than the oil price rise and by the late 1970s real industrial materials prices had fallen back to the levels of the 1960s while a general index of material input quantities is not available data for metals one major component of materials suggest that this input has fallen by about 2 percent per annum since the early 1970s relative to output and to earlier trends so statistics which directly evaluate measurement biases and material input prices and quantities suggest that substitution away from material inputs cannot explain much of the fall in productivity growth

reason and rationality during energy crises this paper develops a technique for extracting the expectations embedded in the current prices of energy using durable goods and applies it to used car markets during the two energy crises of the 1970s the resulting estimates indicate that consumers took the energy crises seriously and formed expectations about future gasoline prices that appear rational when compared with the historical gasoline price series with the forecasts of specialists and experts or with the actual postsample behavior of gasoline prices the evidence therefore supports the view that consumers are able to make rather complex choices with a great deal of rationality and casts doubt on the wisdom of policies based on assumptions to the contrary

event studies in management research theoretical and empirical issues we examined the use of event studies in management research and found that there was inadequate attention paid to theoretical and research design issues this lack of attention may lead to false in

investment planning and strategic management of sustainable systems for clean power generation an e constraint based multi objective modelling approach biomass based energy production has been considered as a part of the solution to energy crisis which is mainly caused by diminishing fossil fuel resources and environmental pollution from traditional fossil fuel based energy production systems therefore it is important to design sustainable and effective systems for biomass based energy production to provide competitive advantage on fossil fuel resourced systems this study develops a novel optimization model to aid investment planning and strategic management of biomass based clean power generation systems the model integrates the location capacity and technology decisions to find the optimal combination of bioenergy production systems to meet electricity demand of particular regions and accounts for multiple biomass types and power technologies the modelling approach and data analysis are presented to outline the important characteristics of the problem for minimization of the supply chain cost and minimization of the greenhouse gas ghg emissions simultaneously to handle the multi objective problem efficiently an integrated approach based on fuzzy decision making and e constraint method is proposed and used considering both sustainability aspects and uncertainties in the system parameters the viability of the proposed approach is explored on a case study of izmir region in turkey different supply chain configuration alternatives are provided for the case study region considering various weights for objective functions representing relative importance of each objective corresponding supply chain performance measures in terms of total cost and ghg emissions are proposed and discussed for each configuration alternative further enviro economic analyses denote that discounted investment cost and ghg emissions associated with energy production activities receive the biggest shares in the total cost and in the total ghg emissions respectively the government and private investors can employ the model and solution algorithm to design the most cost effective and environment friendly supply chain to monitor the economic and environmental performance of the current biomass based supply chains and identify policies to support a viable profitable and eco friendly energy industry

a hybrid multi stage stochastic programming robust optimization model for maximizing the supply chain of a forest based biomass power plant considering uncertainties electricity generated from forest based biomass is an attractive source of renewable energy however the cost of generating heat and or electricity from it is relatively high due to the low energy density of wood high moisture content and variations in its quality and availability models have been developed to optimize the supply chain and reduce the cost per kilowatt hour generated this paper focuses on incorporating uncertainty in the supply chain of such a model the model considers the tactical supply chain planning of a power plant over a one year time horizon with monthly time steps uncertain parameters which impact the net profit of the power plant include biomass quality namely moisture content and higher heating value and monthly available biomass from different suppliers robust optimization is used to model uncertainty in the quality of biomass then a hybrid multi stage stochastic programming robust optimization model is presented in order to simultaneously include uncertainty in biomass quality and biomass availability it is demonstrated that the hybrid model takes advantage of both modelling approaches to balance the profit estimates and the tractability to various circumstances the model provides solution considering all instances of the uncertain parameters within the defined sets and scenario tree the results revealed a major trade off between profit and range of biomass quality profit decreased by up to 23 when there was 13 variation in moisture content and 5 change in higher heating value the model achieved a biomass purchase cost that was lower than the current commercial costs at the power plant implementing the model could prevent production curtailment and undesirable fluctuation in storage levels which occurred in the past due to variations in biomass availability and quality

the oil price shocks and the unit root hypothesis the uk experience critics of the standard dickey fuller and augmented dickey fuller tests for unit roots argue that when there have been significant structural breaks during the sample period these tests are often biased toward acceptance allowing for a one time change in the slope of the trend function often leads to rejection of the unit root hypothesis which implies that business cycles are temporary fluctuations around a stable but possibly shifting trend path the validity of the unit root hypothesis in connection with the two oil crises in the seventies is re examined using quarterly time series data for a set of uk macroeconomic series the empirical evidence presented supports the view that only those shocks associated with the oil price crises had a persistent effect on the uk economy

the effect of pre emptive right amendments on shareholder wealth abstract pre emptive rights allow existing shareholders to purchase a new offering of shares before the general public this paper investigates the effect on shareholder wealth of removing pre emptive rights from corporate charters two hypotheses are constrasted 1 shareholder wealth maximization suggests that management uses this extra degree of freedom to pick the least cost method for raising new equity hence the amendment increases shareholder wealth 2 management welfare maximization holds that management will use the passage of the amendment to maximize their own welfare sometimes to the detriment of shareholders hence the amendment decreases shareholder wealth the evidence indicates that the amendment decreases shareholder wealth

input output models for the analysis of a local global supply chain abstract a supply chain can be analysed as a network of production processes which can be localised within and outside a given geographic area each process can be defined as a system that produces output flows in consequence of input flows in this paper an input output approach based on production processes is used to develop specific models that investigate flows among production processes either of a whole global supply chain or of a part of the supply chain localised within a given area local by product and waste outputs are also considered the developed models can help improve design and management of supply chains also in terms of sustainable development of a local area in fact this use of the input output analysis entails a deeper understanding of the relationships among the processes and the environment

relationship between energy production and water resource utilization a panel data analysis of 31 provinces in china abstract the systematic study of the relationship between energy production and water resource utilization is crucial for china to relieve the energy water crisis and achieve sustainable use of them this work explores the causal relationship between energy production and water resource utilization in china using panel data of 31 provinces over the period 2000 2014 this study have applied a panel unit root test cointegration test vector error correction model vecm and granger causality approaches to examine the long run and short run relationship between the variables the results show that 1 there is a long run bidirectional granger causality relationship between energy production and water resources utilization but a short run unidirectional relationship between two variables i e the water resource utilization is the short run granger reason for the change in energy production 2 the increases in industrial added value population and ratio of the secondary industry value added to gdp have a positive effect on both energy production and water resource utilization 3 industrial water use will fall by about 0 12 if the rate of industrial waste water reuse increases by 1 which shows that the progress of water saving technology can reduce industrial water usage effectively our findings indicate that government should implement strict water constraint strategies and promote water conservation technology for the sustainable development of energy and water resources in china

taxation and savings a neoclassical perspective this paper discusses recent neoclassical analyses of taxation and savings contrary to the popular view that fiscal policy has highly ambiguous impacts on savings neoclassical models admit a host of policies with clear and potentially quite powerful affects on the accumulation of wealth the paper considers four fundamental types of fiscal policies and compares their quantitative affect on savings the essential elements of these policies involve inter and intragenerational redistribution marginal and intra marginal taxation and the level of government consumption conventional accounting measures of taxes spending and deficits provide at best little guide to changes in underlying fiscal instruments and at worst precisely opposite indicators of the direction of such changes indeed the continued use of and concern with conventional fiscal measures is symptomatic of wide spread fiscal illusion these points are developed within the context of certainty models the paper also considers the role of fiscal policy in both mitigating and exacerbating economic risks facing the private sector since precaution is a major motivation for saving governments can greatly influence wealth accumulation either by using fiscal policy to pool private risks or by making fiscal policy itself highly uncertain this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item