analyst forecasting errors additional evidence analyst forecasting errors are approximately as large as dreman and berry 1995 documented and an optimistic bias is evident for all years from 1985 through 1996 in contrast to their findings i show that analyst forecasting errors and bias have decreased over time moreover the optimistic bias in quarterly forecasts was absent for sp 2 firms with comparatively large amounts of market capitalization absolute value of earnings forecast and analyst following and 3 firms in certain industries

duopoly supergames with product differentiation abstract when goods are complements or very close substitutes more tacit collusion is supported by trigger strategies in price setting supergames than in quantity setting supergames for moderate or poor substitutes the situation is reversed this contrasts with the static situation where price setting strategies always lead to higher welfare

hotel room rate pricing strategy for market share in oligopolistic competition eight year longitudinal study of super deluxe hotels in seoul abstract this paper examines pricing strategies and business performances of super deluxe hotels in seoul to achieve this purpose empirical research is conducted on the basis of data from 1989 when the formation of the present product life cycle stage and the market structure began to 1996 through quick cluster and regression analysis a separation of the price competition between groups of hotels is identified by anova pricing strategies and market shares of selected leading hotels are compared as a longitudinal study the same research design is applied based on four two year periods the final part of the paper evaluates the results of the statistical analysis and discusses important findings and implications of the four two year periods respectively

apparent collusion and conjectural variations in differentiated oligopoly abstract the conjectural variations model has become the standard exposition of oligopoly theory although rivals assumed behaviour is not profit maximising one response has been models with consistent conjectures developed from rational expectations concepts this paper adopts another approach based on stigler s famous 1964 paper collusion is enforced by the threat of retaliating to price cuts but is imperfect because of their imperfect knowledge which limits the probability of retaliation or retaliation lags three models of imperfect collusion incorporating these features separately and in combination demonstrate the formal equivalence between the results of imperfectly policed collusion and proportional conjectural variations

price setting supergames with capacity constraints this paper examines the role of industry capacity in enforcing collusion in the context of repeated games for a fixed capacity per firm it is shown that changes in the number of firms have a non monotone effect on the best enforceable cartel price this is due to the fact that while an additional firm lowers the share that each of the other firms enjoys at the collusive price it also increases the losses to each firm should the cartel fail

a positive model of earnings forecasts top down versus bottom up this article analyzes the behavior of two groups of corporate earnings forecasters analysts who follow individual company fortunes and market strategists who predict earnings for various company aggregates using data for two market indices the s p 500 and the dow jones industrial average we document that bottom up forecasts are systematically more optimistic than top down forecasts made by strategists this difference is not driven by the difference in the forecast target this finding may be explained by the incentives that analysts face and or by cognitive bias

a progress report on marxian economic theory on the controversies in exploitation theory since okishio 1963 a progress report on marxian economic theory

analyst forecasting errors and their implications for security analysis a comparison of 66 100 consensus estimates of wall street analysts with reported earnings for a large sample of nyse amex and otc companies demonstrates that their forecasts differ significantly from actual reported earnings a minority of estimates fall within a range around reported earnings considered acceptable to many professional investors the error rates are not meaningfully affected by the business cycle or industry groupings the average error also appears to be increasing over time these findings question the use of finely calibrated earnings forecasts that are integral to the most common valuation models and indirectly question the valuation methods themselves

investment behavior observable expectations and internal funds we use earnings forecasts from securities analysts to construct a new measure of the neoclassical fundamentals that drive investment spending we find that investment responds significantly to our new measure of fundamentals but is insensitive to cash flow even for firms typically thought to be liquidity constrained these results have two key implications first fundamentals may be more important for investment spending than would be suggested by the results to date from investment q models second the positive cash flow effects obtained in such models may reflect a failure to control properly for fundamentals rather than the presence of financial constraints jel d92 e22

markets the u s lodging industry the u s lodging industry appears highly competitive ownership concentration appears to be low fixed costs are high relative to variable costs and unused rooms cannot be stored for future sale so price cutting should be attractive however this paper argues that unexpectedly oligopolistic market structures in many local lodging markets combined with behavioral norms of cooperation sustain profits in what might otherwise be an industry of cutthroat competition i describe the patterns of competition and cooperation in the u s lodging industry summarizing theoretical arguments empirical research descriptive statistics from industry and government sources and anecdotal evidence from the trade press and from interviews conducted with managers of over 200 properties nationwide

on constructing numeraire free measures of price value deviation a note on the steedman tomkins distance this paper argues that there exists an infinite number of numeraire free measures a la steedman tomkins of price value deviation on the empirical side it provides an illustration of those measures using input output data from the swedish economy copyright the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

competition by choice the effect of consumer search on firm location decisions this paper relates firm location choice and consumer search firms that cluster together attract consumers by facilitating price comparison but clustering increases the intensity of local competition the author constructs a simple model which shows that firms may choose head on competition by locating together under reasonable conditions this is the only equilibrium outcome copyright 1990 by american economic association

quality differentiation and conditional spatial price competition among hotels abstract it is generally accepted that location is the dominant product attribute for hotels accordingly studies on price competition have often utilized fixed geographic boundaries when defining competitive sets when travelers are willing to substitute location and quality however the spatial extent of competition can depend on the hotels quality therefore it can be hypothesized that geographic boundary of price competition among hotels is conditional on quality differentiation through an empirical analysis based on two stage least squares modified to test for spatial price competition the present study finds that hotels compete with more distant neighbors of similar quality than those who are quality differentiated in addition the results also suggest possibility of cooperation among neighboring hotels similar in quality implications and suggestions are presented along with the findings of the study which is expected to contribute to the literature by suggesting a new perspective on the relationship between quality differentiation and price competition among hotels

one million miles to go taking the axiomatic road to defining exploitation this paper analyses the marxian theory of exploitation a general axiomatic approach is developed which is appropriate to study the concept of exploitation what it is and how it should be captured empirically two properties are presented that capture some fundamental marxian insights it is shown that contrary to the received view there exists a nonempty class of definitions of exploitation that preserve the relation between exploitation and profits called profitexploitation correspondence principle in general economies with heterogeneous agents complex class structures and production technologies with heterogeneous labour inputs however among the main approaches only the so called new interpretation satisfies the profitexploitation correspondence principle in general jel b51

insiders vs outsiders in the hotel sector we investigate whether entering an official hotel classification system is as lucrative as suggested in the tourism management literature indeed in countries in which the official hotel classific

ownership form managerial incentives and the intensity of rivalry this study investigates how differences in ownership form between franchised and company owned units affect managerial incentives and competitive pricing in different oligopolistic contexts we arg

product differentiation and price collusion the paper analyzes the implications of price collusion with or without monetary transfers on the degree of horizontal product differentiation we find that the principle of minimum differentiation holds i e firms sell the same product when there is no possibility of monetary transfers on the contrary we find that the presence of monetary transfers may induce some product differentiation the reason is that when monetary transfers are possible it is not essential per se to be well located in terms of relative market shares the outcome is then shown to be driven by only two forces 1 choosing a product closer to the competitor s improves the bargaining power 2 choosing a product closer to the one maximizing the joint profit improves the global firm efficiency

spatial price competition a semiparametric approach we investigate the nature of price competition among firms that produce differentiated products and compete in markets that are limited in extent we propose an instrumental variables series estimator for the matrix of cross price response coefficients demonstrate that our estimator is consistent and derive its asymptotic distribution our semiparametric approach allows us to discriminate among models of global competition in which all products compete with all others and local competition in which products compete only with their neighbors we apply our semiparametric estimator to data from u s wholesale gasoline markets and find that in this market competition is highly localized

being better vs being different differentiation competition and pricing strategies in the spanish hotel industry we study the effects of vertical and horizontal differentiation on pricing policy in a large sample of hotels in spain we show that hotels with more stars i e vertically differentiated offer smaller discounts over listed prices in addition to charging higher prices similarly hotels that belong to a branded chain i e horizontal differentiation also charge higher prices and provide smaller discounts we show how the degree of local competition moderates the effect of differentiation on pricing policy but only for vertical differentiation differentiation indeed protects hotels from the pressure to reduce prices as competition increases but being better seems to be more effective than just being different

a taxonomy and research overview of perishable asset revenue management yield management overbooking and pricing this paper proposes the term perishable asset revenue management to denote the field that combines the areas of yield management overbooking and pricing for perishable assets after summarizing the characteristics common to problems in this field the paper discusses the objectives and constraints faced by decision makers then it offers a comprehensive taxonomy with 14 different elements and reviews the research that has been done related to each element finally it suggests some important areas of future research that can help bridge the gap between theory and application

chronic bias in earnings forecasts whatever the source or explanation of bias in forecasts of company earnings if such bias persists it is potentially discoverable and exploitable by investors this research addresses 1 whether characterizing forecasts as if they were a homogeneous group with respect to bias is accurate or useful and 2 whether a long term record of forecast errors contains information useful in predicting subsequent errors we found that earnings forecasts are heterogeneous with respect to direction and degree of bias we also found evidence of extremes in optimism and pessimism and that extreme errors tend to persist in the same direction which suggests certain potentially profitable trading strategies

securities houses and earnings forecasts in japan what makes for an accurate prediction financial analysts earnings forecasts in japan show a steady improvement in accuracy as the year progresses moreover echoing results in the united states sell side forecasts in japan are overly optimistic although no single security house emerges clearly as the most accurate forecaster japanese houses produce more accurate forecasts than western houses operating in japan the improved accuracy appears to result from a better gauge of company information at the end of the fiscal year and is not restricted to japanese houses with investment banking links to the firm being forecast overly bullish forecasts seem to pervade both japanese and western houses but if anything japanese houses are less optimistic than their western counterparts the evidence suggests a blend of informational and incentive effects incentives for sell side analysts may contribute to overly optimistic forecasts and may be most pronounced for a security house that is a firm s main investment bank in searching for accurate for

heterogeneous labour and the fundamental marxian theorem as was pointed out by morishima at the end of his famous book on marx s economics the heterogeneity of labour is a serious dilemma for marx s theory of exploitation especially for the so called fundamental marxian theorem the problem which should be separated from the peculiarities of joint production consists in finding an appropriate reduction of the various types of labour to one common unit recently bowles and gintis have undertaken an interesting reformulation of the marxian theory of value with respect to heterogeneous labour by avoiding any reduction at all bowles and gintis 1977 1978 cf also steedman 1977 holliinder 1978 but for the purpose of the fundamental marxian theorem this only shifts the problem from the heterogeneity of labour to the heterogeneity of the respective rates of exploitation the aim of the present paper is to extend the fundamental marxian theorem without joint production from homogeneous to heterogeneous labour section 3 this extension is based on a new concept called the standard reduction of labour because of its dual relationship to sraffa s standard commodity section 2 for some arguments a certain type of matrices called sraffa matrices is needed which generalize the quasiirreducible matrices as introduced by bowles and gintis appendix standard reduction implies always a uniform rate of exploitation whereas the same is true for the reduction by wage rates only in special cases for example uniform consumption labour inputs only prices proportional to labour values for the first two cases cf morishima 1978 hence in general standard reduction and reduction by wage rates are different

retracted relationship incentives and the optimistic pessimistic pattern in analysts forecasts we examine whether analysts incentives to maintain good relationships with management contribute to the optimistic pessimistic within period time trend in analysts forecasts in our experiments 81 experienced sell side analysts from two brokerage firms predict earnings based on historical information and management guidance analysts forecasts exhibit an optimistic pessimistic pattern across the two timing conditions early and late in the quarter and the effect is significantly stronger when the analysts have a good relationship with management than when their only incentive is to be accurate debriefing results indicate that analysts are aware of this pattern of forecasts and believe that this benefits their future relationships with management and with brokerage clients the analysts most frequently cite favored conference call participation and information access when describing benefits from maintaining good relationships with management our results suggest the following the optimistic pessimistic pattern in forecasts is in part a conscious response to relationship incentives information access is perceived to be a major benefit of management relationships and recent regulatory changes may have lessened but have not eliminated this conflict of interest source

a progress report on marxian economic theory on the controversies in exploitation theory since okishio 1963 this report explores the development of exploitation theory in mathematical marxian economics by reviewing the main controversies surrounding the proper definition of exploitation since the contribution of okishio the report first examines the debates on the fundamental marxian theorem and class exploitation correspondence principle developed mainly in the 1970s and 1980s followed by the property relation theory of exploitation by roemer then the more recent exploitation theory proposed by vrousalis and wright is introduced finally the report introduces and comments on recent axiomatic studies of exploitation by focusing on the work of veneziani and yoshihara

analyst forecasting errors and their implications for security analysis an alternative perspective dreman and berry in the may june 1995 financial analysts journal offered a perspective on analyst earnings forecast errors and their implications for security analysis among other arguments they contended that the errors are too large to be reliably used by investors the forecasts are less accurate than forecasts by time series models the errors are increasing over time the analysts forecasts are too optimistic and the investment community relies too heavily on analyst forecasts this article provides an alternative perspective on these issues the argument is that analysts forecast errors are within 3 percent of an appropriate benchmark namely stock price that their forecasts generally are significantly more accurate than forecasts by naive or sophisticated time series models that analyst forecast errors have not been increasing over time that analysts have been too pessimistic in recent years and that the investment community by placing too much weight on forecasts made by time series