do national soccer results really impact on the stock market this study is a response to klein et al 2008 which was highly critical of earlier work by ashton et al 2003 this work considering the link between international soccer results and stock market returns was challenged by klein et al 2008 who reject the presence and importance of this link in response this work provides a reassessment of the link between international soccer results and stock market returns within ashton et al 2003 this new analysis extends the original work by using a larger dataset employing an extended range of tests and allowing for outliers it is reported that contrary to the findings of klein et al 2008 the link between international soccer results and stock market prices does indeed exist particularly within the sample period 1984 2002 used by ashton et al 2003 after extending the dataset to include observations from 2002 until 2009 it is reported that the effect on stock market returns has declined in importance over this period particularly the impact

inefficient credit booms this paper studies the welfare properties of competitive equilibria in an economy with financial frictions hit by aggregate shocks in particular it shows that competitive financial contracts can result in excessive borrowing ex ante and excessive volatility ex post even though from a first best perspective the equilibrium always displays under borrowing from a second best point of view excessive borrowing can arise the inefficiency is due to the combination of limited commitment in financial contracts and the fact that asset prices are determined in a spot market this generates a pecuniary externality that is not internalized in private contracts the model provides a framework to evaluate preventive policies which can be used during a credit boom to reduce the expected costs of a financial crisis copyright 2008 wiley blackwell

patent validation at the country level the role of fees and translation costs one feature of the european patent system that is heavily criticized nowadays is related to its complex fragmentation and the induced cost burden for applicants once a patent is granted by the epo the assignee must validate and often translate it and pay the renewal fees to keep it in force in each country in which the applicant seeks protection the objective of this paper is to assess to what extent validation and renewal fees as well as translation costs affect the validation behavior of applicants we rely on a gravity model that aims at explaining patent flows between inventor and target countries within the european patent system the results show that the size of countries their wealth and the distance between their capital cities are significant determinants of patent flows validation fees and renewal fees further affect the validation behavior of applicants translation costs seem to have an impact as well the important role played by fees suggests that the implementation of cost reducing policy interventions like the london protocol would induce a significant increase in the number of patents validated in each european country

reconsidering the impact of national soccer results on the ftse 100 in past decades many empirical studies revealed return anomalies in many different asset classes and markets very recent publications have however even found evidence that stock markets react to the results of soccer matches in this article we argue that such empirical studies should be analysed carefully we thus endorse the use of replication studies to verify results consequently by rebuilding the study of ashton et al 2003 we are able to detect mistakes in the empirical set up based on these findings we demonstrate how even minor flaws can have a crucial influence on the results of such studies and point out pitfalls that are frequently encountered we furthermore emphasize the importance of robustness checks to validate the results of empirical studies

sports sentiment and stock returns this paper investigates the stock market reaction to sudden changes in investor mood motivated by psychological evidence of a strong link between soccer outcomes and mood we use international soccer results as our primary mood variable we find a significant market decline after soccer losses for example a loss in the world cup elimination stage leads to a next day abnormal stock return of 49 basis points this loss effect is stronger in small stocks and in more important games and is robust to methodological changes we also document a loss effect after international cricket rugby and basketball games this paper employs a novel mood variable international soccer results to investigate the effect of investor sentiment on asset prices using a cross section of 39 countries we find that losses in soccer matches have an economically and statistically significant negative effect on the losing country s stock market for example elimination from a major international soccer tournament is associated with a next day return on the national stock market index that is 38 basis points lower than average we also document a loss effect after international cricket rugby and basketball games on average the effect is smaller in magnitude for these other sports than for soccer but is still economically and statistically significant we find no evidence of a corresponding effect after wins for any of the sports that we study controlling for the pre game expected outcome we are able to reject the hypothesis that the loss effect after soccer games is driven by economic factors such as reduced productivity or lost revenues we

both institutions and policies matter but differently for different income groups of countries determinants of long run economic growth revisited summary this paper revisits the recent debate on the determinants of long run economic growth with the simple idea that different factors matter at different country groups classified by income levels this paper improves on the methodology by conducting not only cross section estimations but also fixed effects panel and system gmm estimations the results suggest that new policy variables such as technology and tertiary education as well as institutions matter as the determinants of long run economic growth in addition this paper finds that while secondary education and institution turn out to be important for lower income countries an emphasis on technology and higher education appears to be effective in generating growth for the upper middle and high income countries but not for the lower middle and low income countries

technological capabilities and industrialization abstract this paper reviews the implications for industrial strategy of recent research on technological capabilities at the firm and national levels after exploring the nature and determinants of microlevel technological development a simple framework for explaining the growth of national capabilities is set out based on the interplay of incentives capabilities and institutions each may suffer market failure and so require corrective intervention the experience of some industrializing countries is described to assess the validity of this framework it is concluded that interventions carefully and selectively applied are necessary for industrial success

a biological basis for expected and non expected utility abstract a biological model is developed here to determine the fittest attitude to risk with a fixed environment the type maximizing expected offspring is selected this yields the expected utility theorem when translated into a criterion for evaluating gambles over commodities with a random environment however the type selected is strictly less averse to idiosyncratic risk than to risk which is correlated across all individuals the implied criterion for choice over gambles does not satisfy the expected utility theorem and may induce choice of a gamble which is first order stochastically dominated journal of economic literature classification number d81

a fairness justification of utilitarianism differences in preferences are important to explain variation in individuals behavior there is however no consensus on how to take these differences into account when evaluating policies while prominent in the economic literature the standard utilitarian criterion is controversial according to some interpersonal comparability of utilities involves value judgments with little objective basis others argue that social justice is primarily about the distribution of commodities assigned to individuals rather than their subjective satisfaction or happiness in this paper we propose and axiomatically characterize a criterion named opportunity equivalent utilitarian that addresses these claims first our criterion ranks social alternatives on the basis of individuals ordinal preferences second it compares individuals based on the fairness of their assignments opportunity equivalent utilitarianism requires society to maximize the sum of specific indices of well being that are cardinal interpersonally comparable and represent each individual s preferences

generalized utilitarianism and harsanyi s impartial observer theorem harsanyi s impartial observer must consider two types of lotteries imaginary identity lotteries accidents of birth that she faces as herself and the real outcome lotteries life chances to be faced by the individuals she imagines becoming if we maintain a distinction between identity and outcome lotteries then harsanyi like axioms yield generalized utilitarianism and allow us to accommodate concerns about different individuals risk attitudes and concerns about fairness requiring an impartial observer to be indifferent as to which individual should face similar risks restricts her social welfare function but still allows her to accommodate fairness requiring an impartial observer to be indifferent between identity and outcome lotteries however forces her to ignore both fairness and different risk attitudes and yields a new axiomatization of harsanyi s utilitarianism

market reaction to public information the atypical case of the boston celtics abstract the publicly traded boston celtics limited partnership shares provide a unique means of studying the impact of information on equity prices the results of the celtics basketball games significantly affect partnership share returns trading volume and volatility controlling for the expectedvalue of the signal using betting market point spreads has little effect on these relations investors respond asymmetrically to wins and losses and playoff games have a larger impact on returns than regular season games opening prices do not fully reflect game results consistent with previous findings that significant volatility is caused by traders acting on private information

pre holiday effects international evidence on the decline and reversal of a stock market anomaly abstract the pre holiday effect is one of the best known of the calendar effect anomalies this paper extends prior work by examining whether the effect has declined for the u s u k and hong kong markets for all three markets the effect is shown to have declined but only significantly in the u s the result is not surprising given the relative sophistication of the market what is surprising however is the reversal of the pre holiday effect during the period 1991 1997 with the mean return on pre holiday days becoming negative and the subsequent elimination of this effect during 1997 2003

do stock markets react to soccer games a meta regression analysis this study applies meta regression analysis to aggregate a sample of 1126 empirical estimates of the stock market reaction to soccer matches collected from 37 primary studies our results indicate

equally distributed equivalent utility ex post egalitarianism and utilitarianism we provide an axiomatization of expected equally distributed equivalent utility social welfare functions in the context of harsanyi s impartial observer theorem for this family of social welfare functions we show what additional axiom is necessary and sufficient for the observer to exhibit aversion to ex post inequality we also relate this axiomatization to our axiomatization in a companion paper of generalized utilitarian social welfare functions given certain richness assumptions the only social welfare functions that belong to both families are the utilitarian

aggregate risk and the pareto principle abstract in the evaluation of public policies a crucial distinction is between plans that involve purely idiosyncratic risk and those that generate correlated or aggregate risk while natural this distinction is not captured by standard utilitarian aggregators in this paper we revisit harsanyi s 1955 celebrated theory of preferences aggregation and develop a parsimonious generalization of utilitarianism the theory we propose captures sensitivity to aggregate risk in large populations and can be characterized by two simple axioms of preferences aggregation

industrial policy changes and firm level technological capability development evidence from northern brazil summary much has been written about the impacts of the policy changes of the 1990s on industrial performance particularly in latin america most of the studies are based on aggregated analyses that argue for or against such reforms in the policy regime this study offers an alternative view to this debate based on a longitudinal empirical scrutiny of technological capability development in 46 local and foreign firms from three sectors in northern brazil there were inter sector and inter firm variations in terms of the manner and rate of capability development for specific technical functions overall the patterns of firm level capability development exhibited a positive response to the structural reforms but such responses were not a mere consequence of trade openness a combination of government policy foreign competition and intra firm capability building efforts proved essential for speeding up capability development in some of the sampled firms thus policies for accelerating industrial technological capability development in a developing area such as the one examined here would involve not only macro level incentives and competition but very importantly measures that facilitate intra firm capability building efforts

social welfare functions for economic environments with and without the pareto principle it is shown for the case of private goods economies that every social welfare function satisfying a weak nonimposition condition and the independence of irrelevant alternatives axiom is of one of the following forms it is either null or the class of decisive coalitions is an ultrafilter or the class of anti decisive coalitions is an ultrafilter in the case of a private goods economy with finitely many traders the latter conditions imply the existence of either a dictator or anti dictator by requiring the pareto principle as well it is easily seen that the social welfare function must be dictatorial

let s agree that all dictatorships are equally bad this paper shows that a minimal degree of consideration for other people s well being enables society to agree that one social policy is the best i offer axioms that imply that this best policy maximizes a weighted sum of individual utilities the weight of each individual is the inverse of his or her maximal possible utility from social endowments the suggested policy is not sensitive to the choice of the von neumann morgenstern utilities the key axiom is that individuals agree that giving all the endowments always to one person is as bad as giving them to any other person

indicators for national science and technology policy how robust are composite indicators abstract this article addresses a set of issues that were central to keith pavitt s research that is the construction and use of tools to measure national innovative performance and to design national policies relating to innovation it presents an overview of the development of science and technology s t indicators and their use in national policy making and provides evidence of the vulnerability of composite s t indicators to manipulation a brief history of the development of s t indicators begins with the role of the united states followed by their worldwide diffusion with particular emphasis on europe newer developments towards composite indicators benchmarking and scoreboarding are discussed to investigate the robustness of innovation scoreboards empirically a sensitivity analysis of one selected case is presented it is shown that composite scores and country rank positions can vary considerably depending on the selection process thus the use of scoreboards leaves room for manipulation in the policymaking system further research is needed on alternative methods of calculation to prevent their misuse and abuse

the patterns of technological capabilities of countries a dual approach using composite indicators and data envelopment analysis this study explores the patterns of technological capabilities for a sample of 42 countries over the period 1995 2007 introducing a novel methodological approach we exploit duality between data envelopment analysis and composite indicators to address the inconsistency between the two methodologies the empirical findings point to the end of the hegemony of north america western europe and japan showing that a process of convergence in technological capabilities has occurred limited to the 42 countries included in this study based on our methodology a classification is provided highlighting differences in the patterns of technological capabilities of countries

arrovian theorems with private alternatives domains and selfish individuals abstract this paper proves that the impossibility theorems of arrow wilson and mas colell and sonnenschein hold if the individual preferences domains are hypersaturating for hypersaturating domains the set of social states has the structure of a cartesian product of sets of private alternatives individuals are selfish and the domain satisfies some further restrictions consumption sets are examples of hypersaturating domains when the individual preferences are continuous convex and monotonic but many other examples make hypersaturating domains meaningful for the analysis of problems involving private alternatives sets incidentally all the theorems hold for the case of divisible public goods

technology and economic theory technology and technological change play a central role in economics whether in the theory of resource allocation or in the theory of growth and development yet the nature of technology is largely ignored in economic theory it being considered sufficient to treat technology as a constraint on productive opportunities this short essay delves a little deeper into the nature of technology and the material energy and information transformation processes that it represents a deeper understanding of technology leads to a deeper understanding of the main currents of technological advance and to the reasons why the development of technology and its application are so uneven over time and place copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

assessing risky social situations this paper reexamines the welfare economics of risk it singles out a class of criteria the expected equally distributed equivalent as the unique class that avoids serious drawbacks of existing approaches such criteria behave like ex post criteria when the final statistical distribution of well being is known ex ante and like ex ante criteria when risk generates no inequality the paper also provides a new result on the tension between inequality aversion and respect of individual ex ante preferences in the vein of harsanyi s aggregation theorem

catastrophe aversion and risk equity in an interdependent world catastrophe aversion and risk equity are important concepts both in risk management theory and practice keeney keeney rl 1980 equity and public risk oper res 28 3 527 534 was the first to formally define these concepts he demonstrated that the two concepts are always in conflict yet his result is based on the assumption that individual risks are independent it has therefore limited relevance for real world catastrophic events we extend keeney s result to dependent risks and derive the conditions under which more equity and more correlation between two risks imply a more catastrophic situation we then generalize some of the results for multiple correlated risks this paper was accepted by manell baucells decision analysis

technology and growth in oecd countries 1970 1990 this paper investigates the empirical regularities and differences in the relationship between technology and growth across 20 oecd countries from 1970 to 1990 while the broad association between gdp per capita and technology indicators is confirmed the relationships change over time and a variety of national patterns is found most countries have mainly relied upon one on the two engines of growth offered by technology either disembodied innovative activity proxied by r d intensity or technology embodied in investment proxied by capital formation per employee however with decreasing scope for catching up growth appears stronger where it is sustained by a more balanced use of the two engines of growth c 1995 academic press inc copyright 1995 by oxford university press