the financial characteristics of firms and theories of merger activity there are a number of important reasons why economists have shown great interest in the analysis of merger activity in all advanced industrial societies the first is that merger activity has been a major cause of rising concentration in the case of the u k a comparison of five estimates made by different researchers led the authors of a 1978 government green paper 4 to the view that since the late 1950s mergers accounted for half of the growth in concentration the rise in concentration in turn creates concern because of the possible misallocation of resources the possible abuse of market power and the political and social impact of concentrated economic strengh in giant firms a second reason is that because mergers have been major instruments of growth by firms and often involve large scale financial outlays there is interest in the extent to which mergers have brought gains or losses to the firms involved including their shareholders there is a third reason which is connected more narrowly with the development of theories of the firm the unending debate between theories based on various kinds of maximising behaviour profit maximising growth maximising etc and as between maximising under constraints and forms of satisficing has led to attempts to formulate stable hypotheses drawn from such theories such hypotheses often involve the role of mergers in for example managerial utility functions principally directed at growth the role of the stock market as a market in control which can discipline firms to conform to profit maximising norms etc these three reasons for interest in merger analysis are clearly inter related and all create interest in the determinants of merger activity in looking at such determinants it is useful for analytical purposes to make some distinction between those approaches which focus on the relation between firms and their macro environment and those which concern themselves primarily with the characteristics of firms such as the degree of managerial shareholder control with assumptions as to the different expected behaviour or on such features as the presence of excess liquidity or high

robustness of equilibria in anonymous local games this paper studies the robustness of symmetric equilibria in anonymous local games to perturbations of prior beliefs two priors are strategically close on a class of games if players receive similar expected payoffs in equilibrium under the priors for any game in that class i show that if the structure of payoff interdependencies is sparse in a well defined sense the conditions for strategic proximity in anonymous local games are strictly weaker than the conditions for general bayesian games of kajii and morris 1998 11 when attention is restricted to symmetric equilibria hence by exploiting the properties of anonymous local games it is possible to obtain stronger robustness results for this class

a theory of participation in elections we analyze a model of participation in elections in which voting is costly and no vote is pivotal ethical agents are motivated to participate when they determine that agents of their type are obligated to do so unlike previous duty based models of participation in our model an ethical agent s obligation to vote is determined endogenously as a function of the behavior of other agents our model predicts high turnout and comparative statics that are consistent with strategic behavior jel d72

does trade liberalization lead to environmental burden shifting in the global economy abstract does trade liberalization lead to the outsourcing of pollution from industrialized countries to developing countries according to the pollution haven hypothesis international trade is a key channel through which richer countries can geographically dissociate consumption from production of goods we examine whether and how trade liberalization via preferential trade agreements ptas facilitates the shifting of consumption based environmental burdens from developed countries via imports to poorer countries via exports based on panel data analysis of 183 countries from 1987 to 2013 we find partial evidence for trade induced environmental burden shifting while we observe an increase in footprint exports from low income countries when these countries liberalize trade this is not matched by an increase in footprint imports of high income countries our results also show that environmental clauses in ptas and participation in international environmental agreements do not influence the relationship between trade liberalization and ecological footprint movements however domestic institutions have a significant effect on the trade induced distribution of environmental burdens these findings suggest that ptas as a policy tool for trade liberalization are per se unlikely to induce exploitation of low income countries natural capital by wealthier nations however they suggest that political incentives inherent to democratic institutions encourage environmental burden shifting

can mergers ensure the survival of credit unions in the third millennium abstract the survival of small financial institutions in the third millennium depends on their competitiveness against large bank rivals accordingly credit unions in australia and the united states have attempted to increase efficiency through mergers our paper uses the data envelopment analysis methodology to evaluate the post merger gains in technical and scale efficiency achieved by 31 australian credit union mergers in 1993 1994 and 1994 1995 relative to non merging credit unions when compared with the only us study of credit union mergers journal of banking finance 23 1999 367 386 our findings suggests that mergers are not associated with improvements in efficiency superior to those achieved by internal growth

false prophet or genuine savior assessing the effects of economic openness on sustainable development 1980 99 while many herald globalization the increasing interconnectedness of national economies to be associated with rising standards of living across the globe others fear its effects on sustainability antiglobalization forces and environ mentalists view these developments as a threat to the welfare of future generations because of profligate and excessive current consumption this study is the first to estimate the effects of dependence on trade foreign direct investment fdi and an index of economic freedom on the world bank s measure of sustainability the gen uine savings rate which measures the rate at which investment in the total stock of manufactured human and natural capital exceeds its depreciation contrary to pessi mists fears our indicators of economic openness show positive effects on sustain ability results that are robust to sample size testing procedure and several alternative specifications the results support those who suggest that distorted economies tend to be both inefficient and damaging to future generations if increasing trade fdi and economic freedom are hallmarks of globalization then worries about its effects on future well being are misplaced

unique equilibrium in a model of self fulfilling currency attacks even though self fulfilling currency attacks lead to multiple equilibria when fundamentals are common knowledge we demonstrate the uniqueness of equilibrium when speculators face a small amount of noise in their signals about the fundamentals this unique equilibrium depends not only on the fundamentals but also on financial variables such as the quantity of hot money in circulation and the costs of speculative trading in contrast to multiple equilibrium models our model allows analysis of policy proposals directed at curtailing currency attacks

comparing the robustness of trading systems to higher order uncertainty this paper compares the performance of a decentralized market with that of a dealership market when traders have differential information trade occurs as a result of equilibrium actions in a bayesian game where uncertainty is captured by a finite state space and information is represented by partitions on this space in the benchmark case of trade with common knowledge of endowments the two mechanisms deliver virtually identical outcomes however with differential information the dealership market has strictly higher trading volume and yields an efficient posttrade allocation in most states in contrast the decentralized market suffers from suboptimal trading volume the reason for this poor performance is the vulnerability of the decentralized market to higher order uncertainty concerning the fundamentals of the market traders may know that mutually beneficial trade is feasible and perhaps know that they know and yet a failure of common knowledge that this is so precludes efficient trade the dealership market is robust to this type of uncertainty

environmental valuation to use or not to use a comparative study of the united states and europe valuation methods have been used for five main purposes in environmental decision making cost benefit analysis cba of projects cba of new regulations natural resource damage assessment environmental costing and environmental accounting the relatively lower importance attached to economic efficiency in environmental decision making in most european countries compared to the u s a both legally and in practice might account for our general finding that there are very few valuation studies in europe which have served as a decisive basis for environmental policy and regulations however with eu s goal to establish environmentally adjusted national accounts and to apply cba to environmental policy and regulations time seems ripe for an increased use of valuation techniques in europe

economies of scale in building societies this paper presents new measurements of economies of scale in the building society industry by estimating a translog total cost function jointly with the derived input cost share equations it differs from previous building society studies by defining total cost to include the interest cost of borrowed funds as well as the operating costs of employing labour and capital services in addition to the usual elasticity three further scale economy measures are developed and estimated input specific economies of scale augmented economies of scale and augmented input specific economies of scale

uncertainty about uncertainty and delay in bargaining we study a one sided offers bargaining game in which the buyer has private information about the value of the object and the seller has private information about his beliefs about the buyer s valuation we show that this uncertainty about uncertainties dramatically changes the set of outcomes in particular second order beliefs can lead to a delay in reaching agreement even when the seller makes frequent offers we show that not all types of second order beliefs lead to a delay when the buyer assigns positive probability to the seller knowing the buyer s value then delay not only can occur but it must occur for a class of equilibria however in all other cases delay will never occur

the paradox of voter participation a laboratory study it is widely believed that rational choice theory is grossly inconsistent with empirical observations about voter turnout we report the results of an experiment designed to test the voter turnout predictions of the rational choice palfrey rosenthal model of participation with asymmetric information we find that the three main comparative statics predictions are observed in the data the size effect whereby turnout goes down in larger electorates the competition effect whereby turnout is higher in elections that are expected to be close and the underdog effect whereby voters supporting the less popular alternative have higher turnout rates we also compare the quantitative magnitudes of turnout to the predictions of nash equilibrium we find that there is undervoting for small electorates and overvoting for large electorates relative to nash equilibrium these deviations from nash equilibrium are consistent with the logit version of quantal response equilibrium which provides a good fit to the data and can also account for significant voter turnout in very large elections

the reeded edge and the phillips curve money neutrality common knowledge and subjective beliefs abstract i present a simple two person auction model in which a seller and a buyer make bids in terms of money however the value of a unit of money is uncertain i show 1 a monetary revaluation has purely nominal effects if and only if it is common knowledge 2 if seller and buyer have identical beliefs making the value of money common knowledge maximizes total gains from trade 3 if seller and buyer are equally well informed and have identical beliefs then monetary revaluations have no net effect 4 when the seller knows the value of money but the buyer does not the expected utilities of both seller and buyer are proportional to 1 1 2 where is the standard deviation of the value of money expressed as a fraction of the mean and 5 when beliefs are subjective monetary policy can improve total gains from trade as in friedman s explanation of the phillips curve and an optimal level of inflation can be determined journal of economic literature classification numbers c78 e52

deregulation firm capabilities and diversifying entry decisions the case of financial services the resource based view of the firm as a historically determined bundle of specific assets and capabilities predicts that diversification patterns will reflect attempts to utilize these attributes more intensively and so enjoy economies of scope furthermore it suggests that such diversification moves will not be restricted to wholly owned activities but will include joint ventures where contracting costs permit this note uses the opportunity created by structural deregulation in u k financial services to examine entry decisions wholly owned and collaborative across an unusually homogeneous set of firms it is found that diversifying entry broadly follows firm specific and product specific characteristics providing support for the resource based theory in the service sector however as in manufacturing it appears that firm size is important whilst the residual regulatory and ownership arrangements also exercise a significant effect copyright 1995 by mit press

coordination under limited depth of reasoning this paper provides the first unified explanation of behavior in coordinated attack games under both public and private information it demonstrates that the main experimental results such as threshold strategies comparative statics and the differences in behavior under public and private information are robust predictions of limited depth of reasoning models this is in contrast to equilibrium which mispredicts the coordinating roles of public and private information the analysis has implications for understanding macroeconomic phenomena like currency attacks and debt crises which are commonly modeled using incomplete information coordinated attack games

acquisition targets and motives the case of the banking industry findings do not indicate poorly managed firms are more likely to be acquired than well managed firms the analysis uses a sample of 1 046texas banks that existed in 1970 out of which 201 were acqui red during the period 1970 82 a multinomial logit procedure is used to estimate the relationship between the likelihood of acquisition and the characteristics of the target firm and its market additional results suggest that firms with la rge market shares low capital asset ratios and operations in urban areas are r elatively likely to be acquired but not firms with low profits or low growth copyright 1987 by mit press

takeover activity among financial mutuals an analysis of target characteristics abstract this paper presents an empirical investigation of the merger process among mutuals using a large pooled cross section time series sample of uk building societies between 1981 and 1993 the financial services industry is probably unique in having a substantial mutual sector coexisting with and competing against joint stock firms however given the severely attenuated system of ownership claims in the financial mutual it has been widely predicted that this form will exhibit strong behavioural differences from the stock sector it is surprising therefore that despite the important governance role accorded to mergers in the corporate literature the merger process among financial mutuals has been almost totally ignored this paper explores the mutual merger process via an examination of the targets characteristics it finds little support for the natural selection view of mutual acquisitions but it does reveal the importance of the regulatory process above all the results show a surprising similarity to those from studies of the merger process in joint stock firms

human development and economic sustainability abstract this paper attempts to integrate the concern for human development in the present with that in the future in arguing for sustainable human development it appeals to the notion of ethical universalism an elementary demand for impartiality of claims applied within and between generations economic sustainability is often seen as a matter of intergenerational equity but the specification of what is to be sustained is not always straightforward the addendum explores the relationship between distributional equity sustainable development optimal growth and pure time preference

homo ludens social rationality and political behavior the most straightforward defense of political democracy is grounded in rational choice political democracy gives people power in public life parallel to that afforded by markets in private life the power to turn their preferences into social outcomes however rational choice models of voter behavior dramatically underpredict voter turnout in all but the smallest elections fiorina 1990 has called this the paradox that ate rational choice theory this anomaly is the centerpiece of green and shapiro s 1994 critique of rational choice methodology in political theory this paper proposes a form of social rationality that strengthens the classical rational actor model this concept explains many central statistical regularities concerning voter turnout and the historical regularities concerning collective action

a group rule utilitarian approach to voter turnout theory and evidence this paper explores a group rule utilitarian approach to understanding voter turnout inspired by the theoretical work of john c harsanyi 1980 and timothy j feddersen and alvaro sandroni 2002 it develops a model based on this approach and studies its performance in explaining turnout in texas liquor referenda the results are encouraging the comparative static predictions of the model are broadly consistent with the data and a structurally estimated version of the model yields reasonable coefficient estimates and fits the data well the structurally estimated model also outperforms a simple expressive voting model

a global game with strategic substitutes and complements abstract we study a global game in which actions are strategic complements over some region and strategic substitutes over another region an agent s payoff depends on a market fundamental and the actions of other agents if the degree of congestion is sufficiently large agents strategies are non monotonic in their signal about the market fundamental in this case a signal that makes them believe that the market fundamental is more favorable for an action may make them less likely to take the action because of the risk of overcrowding

the inconsistency of consistent conjectures abstract conjectural variation models have been criticized because firms are right for the wrong reasons and because possible equilibria are abundant lately several papers have attempted to meet these difficulties by some condition of consistency or rationality on the conjectural variation this paper shows that stronger versions of such conditions lead into paradoxes while the weaker forms are of little use in solving the conceived problems the original cournot assumption actually satisfies consistency enterions the problems with consistent conjectures illuminates fundmental problems with too demanding information assumptions like perfect foresight such assumptions may create non trivial structures of self reference

voter participation and strategic uncertainty the paradox of not voting is examined in a model where voters have uncertainty about the preferences and costs of other voters in game theoretic models of voter participation under complete information equilibrium outcomes can have substantial turnout even when voting costs are relatively high in contrast when uncertainty about preferences and costs is present only voters with negligible or negative net voting costs participate when the electorate is large

the end of economic growth a contracting threshold hypothesis this paper argues that gdp growth in both developed and developing countries has associated costs that can outweigh the benefits and thus reduce sustainable well being this conclusion is based upon the findings of empirical applications of the genuine progress indicator gpi to a range of countries in the asia pacific region the studies conducted on seven asia pacific countries indicate that in the case of five of the seven nations more recent gdp growth has reduced the sustainable well being experienced by the average citizen residing within them moreover the threshold point at which the costs of gdp growth outweigh the benefits appears to be contracting i e occurring at a much lower per capita level of gdp this paper therefore introduces a new contracting threshold hypothesis as the economies of the asia pacific region and the world collectively expand in a globalised economic environment there is a contraction over time in the threshold level of per capita gdp as a consequence the threshold point confronting growth late comers i e developing countries occurs at a much lower level of sustainable welfare than what wealthy nations currently enjoy the consequences of this for developing countries are clearly significant and require a new approach to economic development

public information private information and the multiplicity of equilibria in coordination games abstract i study coordination games with incomplete public and private information and relate equilibrium convergence to convergence of higher order beliefs as the players signals become more and more precise the equilibrium manifold converges to the correspondence of common knowledge equilibria whenever the variance of the public signal converges to 0 at a rate faster than one half the rate of convergence of the variance of private signals the same condition also determines the convergence of common p belief to common knowledge which leads to a simple intuition for its origin and an immediate generalization of the former results about equilibrium convergence journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d82

revisiting games of incomplete information with analogy based expectations this paper studies the effects of analogy based expectations in static two player games of incomplete information players are assumed to be boundedly rational in the way they forecast their opponent s state contingent strategy they bundle states into analogy classes and play best responses to their opponent s average strategy in those analogy classes we provide general properties of analogy based expectation equilibria and apply the model to a variety of well known games we characterize conditions on the analogy partitions for successful coordination in coordination games under incomplete information rubinstein a 1989 the electronic mail game strategic behavior under almost common knowledge amer econ rev 79 385 391 we show how analogy grouping of the receiver may facilitate information transmission in crawford and sobel s cheap talk games crawford v p sobel j 1982 strategic information transmission econometrica 50 1431 1451 and we show how analogy grouping may give rise to betting in zero sum betting games such as those studied to illustrate the no trade theorem

strategic voting equilibria under the single nontransferable vote previous investigations of strategic voting equilibria in mass electorates have looked only at single member districts i shall investigate such equilibria in multimember districts operating under the single nontransferable vote system what appear to be the most natural equilibria conform to the m 1 rule according to which strategic voting in m seat districts produces exactly m 1 vote getting candidates in equilibrium any others having their support totally undercut this result provides the beginnings of a formal underpinning for reed s recent extension of duverger s law to the japanese case the model also generates specific and empirically testable hypotheses concerning the exceptions to the m 1 rule that one ought to expect in equilibrium i test these hypotheses with japanese data finally the model also reveals a type of strategic voting that is specific to multimember districts i use japanese data again to explore the empirical importance of this kind of strategic voting

the productivity effects of bank mergers evidence from the uk building societies abstract this paper presents an empirical investigation of the impact of acquisition activity on financial intermediary productivity specifically it uses an augmented production function approach to investigate the impact of acquisition after controls for input changes the model is estimated on an unbalanced panel of 93 uk building societies over the period 1981 1993 using data on their core financial intermediation activities which it is suggested are particularly appropriate for our purposes in contrast to much of the existing merger literature which for the most part uses financial performance data our results do indicate significant and substantial productivity gains following acquisition these are consistent with an acquisitions process in which less efficient firms are acquired and reorganized the post merger gains appear to increase substantially in the post deregulation period when pressures to minimize cost are widely considered to have increased

leadership beliefs and coordination an explorative discussion although recent economics contributions represent important strides forward in the understanding of leadership behavior the cognitive and symbolic dimensions of the phenomenon have attracted virtually no interests from economists and game theorists i argue that an understanding of these dimensions may be founded on coordination games particularly to the extent that these illustrate interactive belief formation in this context leadership is defined as the taking of actions that coordinate the complementary actions of many people through the creation of belief conditions that at least substitute for common knowledge and where these actions characteristically consists of some act of communication directed at those being led the concept of common knowledge or its approximation by means of notions of common belief is argued to be particularly important to understanding leadership thus leaders may establish common knowledge conditions and assist the coordination of strategies in this way or make decisions in situations where coordination problems persist in spite of common knowledge acknowledgments

the electronic mail game strategic behavior under almost common knowledge the paper addresses a paradoxical game theoretic example which is closely related to the coordinated attack problem two players have to play one of two possible coordination games only one of them receives information about the coordination game to be played it is shown that the situation with almost common knowledge is very different from when the coordination game played is common knowledge

contagion and uninvadability in local interaction games the bilingual game and general supermodular games abstract in a setting where an infinite population of players interact locally and repeatedly we study the impacts of payoff structures and network structures on contagion of a convention beyond 2 2 coordination games first we consider the bilingual game where each player chooses one of two conventions or adopts both i e chooses the bilingual option at an additional cost for this game we completely characterize when a convention spreads contagiously from a finite subset of players to the entire population in some network and conversely when a convention is never invaded by the other convention in any network we show that the pareto dominant risk dominant resp convention is contagious if the cost of bilingual option is low high resp furthermore if the cost is in a medium range both conventions are each contagious in respective networks and in particular the pareto dominant convention is contagious only in some non linear networks second we consider general supermodular games and compare networks in terms of their power of inducing contagion we show that if there is a weight preserving node identification from one network to another then the latter is more contagion inducing than the former in all supermodular games

contrasting rational and psychological analyses of political choice we contrast the rational theory of choice in the form of expected utility theory with descriptive psychological analysis in the form of prospect theory using problems involving the choice between political candidates and public referendum issues the results showed that the assumptions underlying the classical theory of risky choice are systematically violated in the manner predicted by prospect theory in particular our respondents exhibited risk aversion in the domain of gains risk seeking in the domain of losses and a greater sensitivity to losses than to gains this is consistent with the advantage of the incumbent under normal conditions and the potential advantage of the challenger in bad times the results further show how a shift in the reference point could lead to reversals of preferences in the evaluation of political and economic options contrary to the assumption of invariance finally we contrast the normative and descriptive analyses of uncertainty in choice and address the rationality of voting

altruism and voting a large turnout result that does not rely on civic duty or cooperative behavior abstract i propose a game theoretic model of costly voting that predicts significant turnout rates even when the electorate is arbitrarily large the model has two key features that jointly drive the result i some agents are altruistic or ethical ii among the agents who prefer any given candidate the fraction of altruistic agents is uncertain when deciding whether to vote or not an altruistic agent compares her private voting cost with the expected contribution of her vote to the welfare of the society under suitable homogeneity assumptions the asymptotic predictions of my model coincide with those of feddersen and sandroni 12 up to potential differences between the respective parameters that measure the importance of the election i demonstrate with an example that these homogeneity assumptions are not necessary for qualitative predictions of my model i also show that when the fractions of altruistic agents are known turnout rates will typically be close to zero in a large election despite the presence of altruism

unequal participation democracy s unresolved dilemma presidential address american political science association 1996 low voter turnout is a serious democratic problem for five reasons 1 it means unequal turnout that is systematically biased against less well to do citizens 2 unequal turnout spells unequal political influence 3 u s voter turnout is especially low but measured as percent of voting age population it is also relatively low in most other countries 4 turnout in midterm regional local and supranational elections less salient but by no means unimportant elections tends to be especially poor 5 turnout appears to be declining everywhere the problem of inequality can be solved by institutional mechanisms that maximize turnout one option is the combination of voter friendly registration rules proportional representation infrequent elections weekend voting and holding less salient elections concurrently with the most important national elections the other option which can maximize turnout by itself is compulsory voting its advantages far outweigh the normative and practical objections to it

making a difference how environmental economists can influence the policy process a case study of david w pearce can environmental economists influence policy if so how this paper addresses these two questions using the late david pearce s career as a case study influence can be exercised but pearce s career shows that certain conditions must be met the first is desire he wanted to influence policy and directed a high proportion of his efforts to doing so he focused particular attention on the power centres of his time the oecd world bank european commission un uk government his influence was aided by his status and location as a professor in a prestige university ucl in a major global city london his messages were consistent and clear theory is important and can be used to frame most environmental challenges as regards both explanation and solution externalities can be valued assessing benefits and costs of options is important market signals taxes etc and incentives generally are powerful shapers of behaviour stock of capital human built natural is a key measure of sustainability he communicated simply and clearly in words and phrases that ministers for finance and journalists could understand all of the broadsheet newspapers in england financial times guardian independent telegraph times were grist to pearce s mill of advocacy for environmental economics he provided the blueprint books that could be read on a commute and summaries to the media that they could fit into a 1 000 word piece he didn t seek out but neither did he shirk controversy he worked with various interest groups and politicians but never to the point were he was co opted he initiated and directed the msc in environmental and resource economics that created an ever widening and influential pool of advocates for his ideas finally he achieved a prodigious academic output that ensures a sort of immortality and provided the intellectual ballast the enabled his policy influence

follow the leader theory and evidence on political participation using state by state voting data for u s presidential elections the authors observe that voter turnout is a positive function of predicted closeness to explain the strategic component of political participation they develop a follow the leader model political leaders expend effort according to their chance of being pivotal which depends on the expected closeness of the race at both state and national levels and how voters respond to their effort structural estimation supports this model for example a 1 percent increase in the predicted closeness at the state level stimulates leaders efforts which increases turnout by 0 34 percent

communication and coordination in social networks i model people in a coordination game who use a communication network to tell each other their willingness to participate the minimal sufficient networks for coordination can be interpreted as placing people into a hierarchy of social roles or stages initial adopters then followers and so on down to late adopters a communication network helps coordination in exactly two ways by informing each stage about earlier stages and by creating common knowledge within each stage we then consider two examples first we show that low dimensional networks can be better for coordination even though they have far fewer links than high dimensional networks second we show that wide dispersion of insurgents people predisposed toward participation can be good for coordination but too much dispersion can be bad although collective action depends on both social structure and individual incentives these integral aspects have been formalized separately in the fields of social network theory and game theory by considering them together this paper engages the classic question of which structures are conducive to coordination and shows that structure and strategy are related in a mutually interesting way here we consider a coordination game in which each person wants to participate only if others participate social structure is thought of as a communication network by which people tell each other their willingness to participate each person knows whether her neighbours in the network are willing but does not know about anyone else our model is thus a game of incomplete information in which each person given his local knowledge decides whether to participate the main result is a characterization of the minimal sufficient networks for coordination in terms of a hierarchy of social roles or stages initial adopters then followers and so on down to late adopters for example a communication network helps coordination in exactly two ways by informing each stage about earlier stages and by creating common knowledge within each stage we also consider two simple examples first we show that low dimension or strong link networks can be better for coordination even though they have far fewer links than high dimension or weak link networks second we show that wide dispersion of insurgents people predisposed toward participation can be good for coordination but too much dispersion can be bad this paper is built on the assumption that the most basic and common mechanism for coordination is the i ll go if you go mechanism individuals first communicate with each other about their preferences and then each individual chooses whether to participate or not hence a person s participation depends on what he knows about his neighbours it does not depend solely on their participation itself either through learning adaptation or social influence the physical analogies of contagion or diffusion are not

modelling cognitively bounded rationality an evaluative taxonomy abstract since its origins in the 1950s the notion of bounded rationality has been incorporated into economic theory using an array of methodological approaches this paper presents a taxonomy by which these approaches can be categorized and understood evaluating each approach against a range of important criteria at a time when the foundations of economic theory are being re examined this paper should be viewed as a first step towards an assessment of the appropriate role that this more realistic view of cognition should take in different areas of economic theory and also of the desirable characteristics of models that incorporate it

institutional investment mergers and the market for corporate control the increasing importance of institutional investors as shareholders in individual companies has led to an important debate on their impact on corporate performance in this paper we focus on their role in the market for corporate control this has so far been the subject of very little systematic investigation despite its theoretical and practical significance we consider the impact of financial institutions using two u k merger samples and employing both univariate and multivariate techniques of analysis in the first sample drawn from the low merger period 1981 1983 pre and post merger differences are found between merging companies with and without a significant institutional presence however in the takeover boom year of 1986 from which the second sample is drawn all such distinctions become blurred

downward nominal and real wage rigidity survey evidence from european firms it has been well established that the wages of individual workers react little especially downwards to shocks that hit their employer this paper presents new evidence from a unique survey of firms across europe on the prevalence of downward wage rigidity in both real and nominal terms the authors analyse which firm level and institutional factors are associated with wage rigidity the results indicate that it is related to workforce composition at the establishment level in a manner that is consistent with related theoretical models e g efficiency wage theory insider outsider theory the analysis also finds that wage rigidity depends on the labour market institutional environment collective bargaining coverage is positively related with downward real wage rigidity measured on the basis of wage indexation downward nominal wage rigidity is positively associated with the extent of permanent contracts and this effect is stronger in countries with stricter employment protection regulations

testing for expense preference behavior mutual versus stock savings and loans this article investigates expense preference behavior in the savings and loan industry previous studies used an intercept test and in general concluded that managers of mutual s ls exhibit expense preference behavior i derive the necessary and sufficient conditions on cost functions for the intercept test to be valid these restrictions are rejected for the savings and loan industry stock and mutual s ls have different cost structures and both have non cobb douglas production technologies i derive a new more general test for expense preference behavior that does not require the restrictive assumptions of the intercept test the results of this test do not support earlier conclusions of managerial expense preferences