the impact of the 1992 cable act on household demand and welfare i measure the benefit to households of the 1992 cable act in light of strategic responses by cable systems to the regulations mandated by the act a discrete choice differentiatedproduct model of household demand for all offered cable television services forms the basis of the analysis aggregation over households and service combinations to the level of the data permits estimation on a cross section of cable markets from before and after the act the results indicate that while the regulations mandated price reductions of 10 17 for cable services observed system responses yielded no change in household welfare post act changes in cable prices are responsible for most of the difference

technological migration the case of thai digital terrestrial television this study analyzes the business strategies of entrepreneurs during a technological transition the particular technological transition is the switch from analogue to digital tv in thailand the estimated net present values of the broadcasting operators net profit over a 15 yearlicense period indicate that a long transition period reduces the benefit from upgradingto a better technology the incumbents would like to join the technological migration fromday one the faster the transition process the higher the new platform is worth in presentvalue the government should terminate the old platform as soon as possible and stimulatea rapid transition keywords technological migration digital television net present value jel classification m21 m38 o33

the transition to digital television digital tv this paper studies the role of economic policy for the transition from analogue to digital television with particular attention to the switch off of the analogue terrestrial signal the analogue signal cannot be credibly switched off until almost all viewers have migrated to digital due to the policy objective of universal access to television but before switch off only part of the population can be reached with the digital signal in addition those who are reached need to spend more to upgrade their reception equipment than after switch off because the capacity to increase the power of the digital signal will be made available only then after reviewing the competitive structure and the role of government intervention in television markets we present the early experience of a number of industrialized countries in the transition to digital television we then formulate a micro econometric model of digital television adoption by individual viewers the model is calibrated to uk data and simulated to predict the impact of government policies on the take up of digital television policy makers can affect the speed of take up of digital television by 1 controlling the quality of the signals and the content of public service broadcasters 2 intervening in the market for digital equipment with subsidies and 3 publicizing the conditions and date of switch off of the analogue signal we find that if the analogue terrestrial signal is switched off only when certain aggregate adoption targets are reached strategic delays may arise and expectations may affect the success of the switch off policy jerome adda and marco ottaviani

concentration and public policies in the broadcasting industry the future of television tv regulation concentration and public policies in the broadcasting industry new technologies are deeply transforming the broadcasting industry what we have seen so far is only the beginning of a long story inevitably industry regulations must adapt which means that a wide ranging rethink of current practices is required in order to assess the likely evolution of the industry this article decomposes it into a number of components from conception of programmes to their broadcasting including distribution storage and licensing contrary to popular expectations the analysis suggests that the current high degree of concentration will if anything increase the policy implication is that regulation so far driven by now obsolete technological constraints should increasingly emphasize promoting competition massimo motta and michele polo

the rise and decline of managerial development alfred d chandler s work highlighted the complicated interplay between markets and firms especially the arrangements created by firms to buffer and manage market forces arguably his most important work examines one aspect of firms organizational structure and how it changed in response to the competitive needs of growing businesses much the same approach can be applied to understanding other aspects of firms such as the structure of the most important jobs in corporations executive positions and how those positions have been filled over time here the interplay includes a different market the labor market the arguments that follow trace the evolution of executive roles from the early days of corporations where executive jobs were largely shaped by the labor market to internalized and bureaucratized arrangements consistent with the idea of an integrated chandlerian firm after the 1950s back to something much closer to the market dominated approach following the 1982 recession in large measure the change seems driven by the different context that business faced and the interplay with labor markets that made internal development more difficult the implications for the future of large scale chandlerian firms may be considerable copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

platform competition in two sided markets many if not most markets with network externalities are two sided to succeed platforms in industries such as software portals and media payment systems and the internet must get both sides of the market on board accordingly platforms devote much attention to their business model that is to how they court each side while making money overall this paper builds a model of platform competition with two sided markets it unveils the determinants of price allocation and end user surplus for different governance structures profit maximizing platforms and not for profit joint undertakings and compares the outcomes with those under an integrated monopolist and a ramsey planner jel l5 l82 l86 l96

standardization in decentralized economies this paper presents a dynamic model inspired by evolutionary game theory of how standards and norms emerge in decentralized economies it shows that standardization outcomes depend on adopters attitudes to problems caused by incompatibility if individuals display aversion to incompatibility standardization never fails to happen eventually but societies sometimes end up picking inferior standards in this case official action can be useful to quickly achieve sensible standardization on the other hand when individuals display tolerance or neutrality to incompatibility there is neither path dependency nor a lock in problem and regulation seems a poor alternative to laissez faire

ceo pay and appointments a market based explanation for recent trends ceos increased from an average of 700 000 in 1970 in 2002 constant dollars to over 2 2 million in 2000 1 during the same period the ratio of ceo cash compensation to average pay for production workers increased from about 25 in 1970 to nearly 90 in 2000 2 the most prevalent explanation in the popular press for this trend is the fat cat theory a variant of which has been espoused among academics by lucian bebchuk et al 2002 3 accord

efficient relocation of spectrum incumbents changes in technologies and in consumer demands have made prior radio spectrum allocations far from efficient to address this problem the fcc has recently reallocated spectrum for more flexible use in bands that are partially occupied by incumbent license holders often it is necessary for the new license holder to relocate incumbents to make efficient use of the spectrum regulations structuring the negotiation between incumbent and new entrant can promote efficiency in particular giving the new entrant the right to move the incumbent with compensation can reduce negotiation costs and promote efficiency when there is private information about spectrum values but good public information about the cost of relocating the incumbent we examine the experience of broadband pcs entrants in relocating microwave incumbents we conclude with some remarks on how these ideas might be applied to digital television spectrum

trends in job instability and wages for young adult men data and measurement problems have complicated the debate over trends in job instability in the united states we compare two cohorts of young white men from the national longitudinal surveys nls construct a rigorous measure of job change and confirm earlier findings of a significant increase in job instability we then benchmark the nls against other main data sets in the field and conduct a thorough attrition analysis extending the analysis to wages we find that the wage returns to job changing have both declined and become more unequal for young adults mirroring trends in their long term wage growth

compensating balance rationality and optimality the rationality of requiring compensating balances in commercial lending is a long standing controversy this paper demonstrates that compensating balance requirements can be either rational or irrational and derives the conditions under which each may occur the model presented is capable of explaining illustrating and resolving analytically and graphically the apparent inconsistency among conclusions of previous studies in addition the model entertains questions of optimality in borrowing arrangements

day of the week effects in federal funds rates further empirical findings abstract we extend the spindt and hoffmeister 1988 model of the daily operation of an institution s federal reserve account to show strong inter and intra period incentives to borrow and lend in the federal funds market at predictable points in the 10 trading day settlement period using intraday high and low prices we demonstrate changes in the federal funds rate consistent with our model s predictions we provide evidence of predictable changes in the variance of fed funds returns on a daily and intraday basis our analysis confirms that federal reserve requirements result in daily and intraday variances which are not constant

the micromechanics of the federal funds market implications for day of the week effects in funds rate variability the federal funds rate arguably is the most important interest rate in the u s capital market because it plays a central role in monetary policy and the term structure this paper examines the micromechanics of the funds market we show that in a continuous market with asynchronous trading regulatory constraints and accounting conventions that focus agents attention on discrete time instants have important implications for the dynamics of trading activity and realized market prices we also exhibit a model of the market that explains observed regularities in the intertemporal behavior of the funds rate

intraday management of bank reserves the effects of caps and fees on daylight overdrafts the federal reserve system imposes caps and charges fees on the negative intraday balances in banks reserve accounts i e on daylight overdrafts our empirical results suggest that caps alone did little to reduce daylight overdrafts in the aggregate by contrast the 1994 imposition of fees reduced the average daily maximum overdraft on the fedwire system by about 93 billion and the average aggregate overdraft at any time during the day by about 43 billion we also found statistical evidence that higher beginning of day reserve balances lower aggregate dollar values of securities related transfers over fedwire and lower shares of banks assets funded with federal funds and repurchase agreements reduced daylight overdrafts copyright 1996 by ohio state university press

secular changes in the work and retirement patterns of older men this paper examines trends in the work and retirement patterns of males aged 58 to 63 in 1969 and 1989 respectively the labor force attachments of this group have fallen for reasons unrelated to changes in individual characteristics or occupational attainment especially sharp reductions at age 62 hint at an increasingly important role for the early retirement provisions in social security attachments to longest jobs have also declined substantially beginning at age 55 although pension incentives may be significant the observed correlations between pensions and employment status may also reflect the role of confounding factors such as poorly measured nonpension wealth

simple optimal policy for cash management the average balance requirement case this paper treats a problem of stochastic cash management under an average compensating balance requirement it develops a dynamic programming formulation of the problem in which the relevant state is a unidimensional quantity equivalent to the forecasted average balance at the end of the averaging period under usably broad conditions it establishes the optimality of a transient policy of simple type similar to the two sided inventory type policy familiar from certain earlier studies of stationary cash balance problems having absolute balance requirements the results apply to cases in which the transactions costs contain both fixed and proportional components the paper discusses also a numerical example drawn from the literature of the cash balance problem and shows by simulation of the optimal and simply modified forms of the optimal policy that good protection is afforded against negative balances even though the model does not explicitly constrain the negative balance probabilities

myopic and stationary solutions for stochastic cash balance problems this paper presents constructive solutions to stochastic cash balance problems the model studied is in a periodic review framework with convex holding and shortage costs levied both in the beginning and at the end of each period transaction costs are linear with the possibility of unequal fixed and proportional parts for orders and disposals optimal myopic solutions are presented for convex and linear costs the application of an integral of the cumulative demand distribution yields simple formulae for solving the exact values of the policy parameters the logistic distribution is used to obtain results readily applicable in day to day decision making approximations of the wilson formula type are developed and compared with earlier contributions conditions for the optimality of myopic policies are also presented stationary solutions are developed and compared with myopic results in order to evaluate the amount of suboptimality the stationary distribution and the optimal policy are given for the bilateral exponential demand distribution case all results have been programmed and tested against the local finance market data

balladurette and juppette a discrete analysis of scrapping subsidies this paper studies the effects of subsidies on durable goods markets in particular we focus on a recent policy in france in which the governments of balladur and juppe subsidized the replacement of old cars with new ones to study this policy we construct a dynamic stochastic discrete choice model of car ownership at the household level the resulting decision rules and equilibrium conditions are used to estimate the underlying parameters of the model using aggregate data these policy functions are used to evaluate the short and long run effects of the french policies we find that these policies do stimulate the automobile sector in the short run but through the induced changes in the cross sectional distribution of car ages create the basis for subsequent low activity further while these policies increase government revenues in the short run revenues in the long run are lower relative to a baseline without intervention

smooth adjustment econometrics and inventory theoretic money management abstract a growing number of empirical papers use miller orr s s money management as economic motivation for application of non linear smooth adjustment models this paper shows such models are not implied by the miller orr economy instead the miller orr economy implies non standard smooth adjustment as derived in the neglected and misinterpreted work of milbourne et al 1983 remarkably this function includes a varying weight on the lagged dependent variable capturing static not dynamic effects interpretations of these apparent dynamics are presented some of which may be useful in non monetary s s contexts results imply a new agenda for applied smooth adjustment modeling of money

who owns the media the authors examine patterns of media ownership in 97 countries around the world they find that almost universally the largest media firms are controlled by the government or by private families government ownership is more pervasive in broadcasting than in the printed media government ownership is generally associated with less press freedom fewer political and economic rights inferior governance and most conspicuously inferior social outcomes in education and health the adverse effects of government ownership on political and economic freedom are stronger for newspapers than for television the adverse effects of government ownership of the media do not appear to be restricted solely to instances of government monopoly the authors present a range of evidence on the adverse consequences of state ownership of the media state ownership of the media is often argued to be justified on behalf of the social needs of the disadvantaged but if their findings are correct increasing private ownership of the media through privatization or by encouraging the entry of privately owned media can advance a variety of political and economic goals especially those of meeting the social needs of the poor

changing consequences of job separation in the united states using the panel study of income dynamics the author examines the consequences of job loss between the periods 1976 81 and 1986 91 he finds stability in the overall incidence of job separation but a statistically significant increase in the incidence of involuntary job loss relative to quits for older workers he also finds that the consequences of involuntary job loss worsened the reemployment rate of workers who experienced involuntary job loss dropped from 67 in 1976 81 to 62 in 1986 91 and among those who found new jobs the odds of receiving a large wage cut rose from 9 in 1976 81 to 17 in 1986 91