trading volume and information revelation in stock markets i consider a market microstructure model in which the rates of public and private informa tion arrival are probabilistic the latter depends on the availability of private information that is stochastically changing over time in equilibrium traders estimate the availability of private information using past periods trading volume and use this information to adjust their strategies the time series properties include contemporaneous correlation between price variability and volume and autocorrelation in price variability similar to garch the model explains why trading volume contains useful information for predicting volatil ity and provides predictions on the limit and market order placement strategies of traders

truth effort and the legal battle in lawsuits relative success depends upon two main factors the true degree of fault and the efforts invested on eachside a proposed litigation success function displays thisdependence while satisfying other essential properties undertwo different protocols nash cournot and stackelberg solutions are obtained for the litigation efforts proportionate success and values of the lawsuit on each side outcomes are evaluated in terms of two normative criteria i achieving justice interpreted as equality between defendantfault and relative plaintiff success and ii minimizingaggregate litigation cost achievement of these aims isdetermined by the decisiveness of litigation effort relativeto true fault

how to win the political contest a monopolist vs environmentalists this paper sheds light on the political economy of local energypolitics both from a theoretical and an empirical perspective first a case study of a small town in southern germany schonau is presented where environmentalists have won thepolitical contest against the regional energy monopolist and havefounded an energy supply firm themselves the different stagesof the political process are explained and analysed second apolitical economy model is developed where environmentalists anda monopolistic utility firm confront each other both on thepolitical and on the energy market in the lobbying equilibriumthe probability of the environmentalists winning the gamedepends on the monopoly rent and the perceived social costs ofenergy production it is shown that it is optimal for themonopolist to reduce his output below the monopolistic output finally the winning strategy in the schonau case is discussedin the light of the theoretical results of the paper

intraindustry structure and the ease of strategic change there has been considerable recent work in industrial organization emphasizing the importance of group stratification within industries the thrust of this literature is that in empirical work and in particular in investigating public policy problems differences across firms within an industry may be crucial this paper is intended as a contribution to the empirical literature of group structures in this paper i examine patterns of strategic group membership in a number of industries and analyze changes in the strategies used by firms in particular i provide a series of rather simple exploratory tests of the importance of intraindustry strategic differences in a number of industries

organizational transformation as punctuated equilibrium an empirical test the punctuated equilibrium model of organizational transformation has emerged as a prominent theoretical framework for explaining fundamental changes in patterns of organizational activity to date

assessing organizational fitness on a dynamic landscape an empirical test of the relative inertia thesis this paper proposes an empirical framework for evaluating the relative structural inertia hypothesis a central assumption of organizational ecology theories in stark contrast to the tenets of strategic management the relative inertia thesis claims that organizations are typically unable to match structural changes to their competitive environments in a timely fashion the hypothesis is tested for the hospital industry in california during the 1980 90 time frame strategic movements in a competition landscape are tracked using a variant of the jaccard similarity coefficient which has been applied in numerous studies of biological competition findings indicate that few hospitals are able to overcome inertial forces in adapting their service portfolios furthermore the ability of hospitals to strategically reposition themselves decreases markedly with provider density analyses also investigate the relation between organizational attributes e g age size mission and portfolio scope and adaptability implications for both ecological and strategic theory are pursued 1997 john wiley sons ltd

strategic group formation and performance the case of the u s pharmaceutical industry 1963 1982 the focus of this paper is on three major questions 1 what is the theoretical rationale for the strategic group concept 2 does strategic group membership have performance implications and 3 are strategic groups and membership in strategic groups stable characteristics of industries a statistical procedure is proposed to longitudinally identify strategic groups the empirical setting is the u s pharmaceutical industry over the period 1963 82 while performance differences are found in terms of market share profitability differences between groups are not observed neither are differences found in terms of risk and risk adjusted performance these results are attributed to the existence of performance variation within each strategic group a dynamic model of competitive repositioning is proposed which helps integrate the findings from the study

trading halts and market activity an analysis of volume at the open and the close this paper analyzes how the daily opening and closing of financial markets affect trading volume we model the desire to trade at the beginning and end of the day as a function of overnight return volatility nyse data from 1933 88 indicate that closing volume is positively related to expected overnight volatility while volume at the open is positively related to both expected and unexpected volatility from the previous night we interpret the symmetric response of trading at the open and the close to expected volatility as being due to investor heterogeneities in the ability to bear risk when the market is closed this desire of investors to trade prior to market closings indicates a cost of mandating marketwide circuit breakers

informational linkages across trading regions evidence from foreign exchange markets abstract using a new high frequency data set from electronic broking services ebs this paper examines informational linkages in the euro dollar and dollar yen exchange rates across five trading regions asia pacific the asia europe overlap europe the europe america overlap and america information is proxied by exchange rate return direction of return volatility trading activity and order flow we find that informational linkages are statistically significant at both own region and inter region levels but own region spillovers dominate in economic significance especially for volatility and trading activity in addition order flow spillovers from the europe america overlap trading region are the most important source of spillovers to other trading regions for both currency pairs

environmental regulation by private contest abstract it is widely expected that the recent trend in the us eu and elsewhere towards an increased role for private agents and agencies in the formulation and enforcement of environmental regulation will continue if environmental regulation is to be privatised in this way it is natural to ask how far the activities of environmental groups on whose shoulders much of the responsibility for defending the environment is likely to fall should be subsidised or taxed in this paper we identify the trade offs involved and characterise the optimal subsidy tax the analysis is argued to have significant implications for how governments should think about the way in which fiscal law treats environmental ngo s

an empirical evaluation of the overconfidence hypothesis abstract recently several behavioral finance models based on the overconfidence hypothesis have been proposed to explain anomalous findings including a short term continuation momentum and a long term reversal in stock returns we characterize the overconfidence hypothesis by the following four testable implications first if investors are overconfident they overreact to private information and underreact to public information second market gains make overconfident investors trade more aggressively in subsequent periods third excessive trading of overconfident investors in securities markets contributes to the observed excessive volatility fourth overconfident investors underestimate risk and trade more in riskier securities to document the presence of overconfidence in financial markets we empirically evaluate these four hypotheses using aggregate data overall we find empirical evidence in support of the four hypotheses

resource and market based determinants of performance in the u s banking industry this paper explores the implications of studying industry competitive patterns at the level of resource accumulation and the relationship between resource endowments and firm performance outcomes in the u s banking industry it uses the strategic group framework to evaluate two models of rivalry and performance and concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for competitive analysis strategic group theory and the banking industry

setting the stakes in environmental contests abstract firms are frequently in conflict with environmental groups over planning and other decisions standard contest models assume that stakes are exogenously defined which is inappropriate in settings such as application for building permission in which one player also acts as proposer assuming that proposers foresee environmental opposition they will adjust their proposals strategically by introducing an additional stage to the lobbying game the full impact of the dispute process can be reckoned the structure of the game the order in which the players move is shown to have a significant impact on social welfare and may warrant intervention among other things there may be social gains to forcing the developer to move last in planning disputes

entrepreneurial strategy and the presence of small firms a model is presented hypothesizing that the level of small firm presence in any given industry emanates from the exogenous stock of entrepreneurial talent a stochastic element of managerial and entrepreneurial talent entry deterrence and the entrepreneurial strategy deployed by small firms using data newly released by the u s small business administration the hypothesis is tested for a sample of 247 four digit standard industrial classification industries spanning the entire spectrum of firm sizes we find that consistently for all the measures of small firm size and for all of the time periods used the existence of entry deterrence and reliance upon innovative strategy explains a significant proportion of the variation in the presence of small firms

environmental policy incentives to adopt advanced abatement technology abstract we investigate incentives through environmental policy instruments to adopt advanced abatement technology first we study the case where the regulator makes long term commitments to policy levels and does not anticipate arrival of new technology we show that taxes provide stronger incentives than permits auctioned and free permits offer identical incentives and standards may give stronger incentives than permits second we investigate scenarios where the regulator anticipates new technologies we show that with taxes and permits the regulator can induce first best outcomes if he moves after firms have invested whereas this does not always hold if he moves first

modeling the dynamics of strategic fit a normative approach to strategic change this study develops and tests a dynamic perspective on strategic fit drawing from contingency and resource based arguments in the strategy and organizational theory literatures we propose a distinctive analytical approach to identify environmental and organizational contingencies that should predict changes in a firm s strategy and the performance implications of such changes we test our model using extensive longitudinal data from over 4000 u s savings and loan institutions during a period when many s ls considered changing strategic direction the findings support our model of dynamic strategic fit specifically we find that 1 the timing direction and magnitude of strategic changes can be logically predicted based on differences in specific environmental forces and organizational resources and 2 organizations that deviated from our model s prediction of dynamic strategic fit i e changed more or changed less than our model prescribed experienced negative performance consequences we conclude by discussing the implications of our approach and findings for future research on strategic fit and strategic change copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

does technological innovation really reduce marginal abatement costs some theory algebraic evidence and policy implications the existing literature models innovation in pollution control as a reduction in marginal abatement costs we show that this assumption is inappropriate for production process innovations such as fuel switching algebraically we examine the effects of different innovation types on marginal abatement cost curves showing that some desirable innovations increase marginal abatement costs empirically we estimate marginal abatement costs for sulfur dioxide by measuring the output distance function for electric power in korea regression results confirm that production process innovations did raise marginal abatement costs in this case one policy implication economic instruments do not always provide stronger innovation incentives than command and control policies

incentives to diffuse advanced abatement technology under environmental liability law polluting firms with advanced abatement technology at their disposal have incentives or disincentives to share this technology with other polluting firms the direction and extent of those incentives depends on the liability rule applicable and the way technical change impacts marginal abatement costs we establish that incentives for diffusion are socially optimal under strict liability and socially suboptimal under negligence if technical change lowers marginal abatement costs for all levels of abatement negligence may however induce better diffusion incentives than strict liability if technical change decreases increases marginal abatement costs for low high levels of abatement

market sidedness insights into motives for trade initiation we infer motives for trade initiation from market sidedness we define trading as more two sided one sided if the correlation between the number of buyer and seller initiated trades increases decreases and assess changes in sidedness relative to a control sample around events that identify trade initiators consistent with asymmetric information trading is more one sided before merger news consistent with belief heterogeneity trading is more two sided before earnings and macro announcements with greater dispersion in analyst forecasts and after news with larger announcement surprises we examine the codeterminacy of sidedness bid ask spread volatility number of trades and order imbalance

domestic politics foreign interests and international trade policy reply this paper incorporates the foreign interest in the determination of a country s international trade policy into a model of political competition between candidates contesting elective office we envisage foreign and domestic producer interests as expressing political support for a candidate via campaign contributions and candidates as making trade policy pronouncements to maximize political support from producer interests tariffs are divisive but vers are consistent with conciliatory policy positions yielding mutual gain to foreign and domestic interests no candidate has an interest in formulating a trade policy position using a tariff if a ver is a policy option protection in the developed countries has in recent years often taken the form of bilaterally negotiated voluntary export restraints vers rather than the more traditional unilaterally imposed import restrictions the use of voluntary export restraints has been paralleled by interest in the theoretical literature the effects of vers have been compared with tariffs and quotas and vers have been examined in a political economy framework with a view to identifying the gainers and losers from this form of restric

measurement effects and the variance of returns after stock splits and stock dividends this article examines the relation between two factors affecting stock returns the bid ask spread and price discreteness and the increase in return variance after ex dates of stock splits and stock dividends controlling for these effects the variance of daily returns still increases significantly the variance of weekly returns also increases significantly and the variance of returns for a control sample of nonsplitting firms shows no significant increase variance ratio tests show that bid ask errors are small for these stocks and therefore cannot explain the large increase in variance spreads and price discreteness do not explain increased variance after stock distributions article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

stock prices and volume the authors undertake a comprehensive investigation of price and volume co movement using daily new york stock exchange data from 1928 to 1987 they adjust the data to take into account well known calendar effects and long run trends to describe the process they use a seminonparametric estimate of the joint density of current price change and volume conditional on past price changes and volume four empirical regularities are found 1 positive correlation between conditional volatility and volume 2 large price movements are followed by high volume 3 conditioning on lagged volume substantially attenuates the leverage effect and 4 after conditioning on lagged volume there is a positive risk return relation article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

short sales constraints and price discovery evidence from the hong kong market short sales practices in the hong kong stock market are unique in that only stocks on a list of designated securities can be sold short by analyzing the price effects following the addition of individual stocks to the list we find that short sales constraints tend to cause stock overvaluation and that the overvaluation effect is more dramatic for individual stocks for which wider dispersion of investor opinions exists these findings are consistent with miller s 1977 intuition and other optimism models we also document higher volatility and less positive skewness of individual stock returns when short sales are allowed the question of how short sales impact capital markets is highly controversial with short sale regulations varying widely across countries and capital markets 1 although short selling has been carried out for years in major financial markets around the world its effects on market efficiency especially on pricing efficiency remain of interest to financial researchers miller 1977 theorizes that in the presence of short sales constraints security prices tend to reflect a more optimistic valuation than the average opinion of potential investors and thus tend to be upward biased this overvaluation argument is based on two conditions 1 a security s short sales are either prohibited or costly and 2 investors have heterogeneous beliefs or information about the security s value the underlying intuition is quite straightforward pessimistic investors are forced to sit out of the market when short sales are not available and thus some negative information is not reflected in prices enabling enthusiastic buyers to bid prices above the level that average investors perceive as fair this argument has significant implications for market efficiency theories since one of the major functions of capital markets is price discovery indeed an efficient market should be a market in which prices always

strategic trading behavior and price distortion in a manipulated market anatomy of a squeeze abstract this paper investigates an attempted delivery squeeze in a bond futures contract traded in london using cash and futures trades of dealers and customers we analyze their strategic trading behavior price distortion and learning in a market manipulation setting we argue that marked differences in settlement failure penalties in the cash and futures markets create conditions that favor squeezes we recommend that regulators require special flagging of forward term repurchase agreements on the key deliverables that span futures contract maturity dates and that exchanges mark to market their contract specifications more frequently or consider a cash settled contract on a basket of bonds

political competition rent seeking and the choice of environmental policy instruments this paper investigates the impact of political lobbying on the choice of environmental policy instruments it is argued that the prevalence of pollution emission standards over more efficient policy instruments may result from rent seeking behaviour the model further predicts that when an emission standard is used to control pollution rival political parties have an incentive to set the same standard there is therefore a convergence of policies moreover it is shown that emission taxes are more likely to be supported and proposed by political parties which represent environmental interest groups this feature appears to accord with the observed support for environmental taxes by green parties in europe australia new zealand and elsewhere

market created risk we develop a multiperiod rational expectations model of securities market equilibrium in which equilibrium prices may move between periods even though it is common knowledge that no new information has arrived about ultimate security payoffs this happens because investors know they have imperfect information about the endowments of other investors and this knowledge affects their probability beliefs about the prices that will prevail at the intermediate trading date these beliefs are reflected in the equilibrium at the initial trading date when investors focus on the probabilities of intermediate capital gains and losses rather than ultimate payoffs virtually all models of the pricing of securities employ some notion of market equilibrium so for prices to fluctuate something in the equilibrium must change since equilibrium in an informationally efficient market implies that market clearing prices reflect all available information about future securities payoffs it seems to be frequently assumed that observed jumps in prices ought under the efficient market hypothesis to reflect the arrival of new information about future cash payoffs to securities the major theme of this paper is to examine a multiperiod model of securities market equilibrium in which equilibrium prices may change sharply between periods even if it is common knowledge that no new information about ultimate payoffs has arrived and all investors are rational and make full use of all available information in our model the new information that leads to a price change is information about how much of the known total supply of risky securities is held by investors of different preferences for this model to produce intertemporal price fluctuation in equilibrium two phenomena must occur firstly the initially unknown composition of the market must not be revealed by equilibrium prices at the initial trading date secondly despite this the true composition of the market must at least partially determine prices at a later trading date they key to both these phenomena lies in the difference in investor behavior when they anticipate revising their current portfolio holdings in response to future price changes as compared to when they choose portfolios on the basis of receiving the ultimate cash payoffs to the securities they buy in practice few investors anticipating holding financial securities to their eventual liquidation by the issuer short term debt or debt close to maturity would be the major exception few equity securities relative to the total supply

are foreign exchange forecasts rational new evidence from survey data abstract tests of rationality in foreign exchange markets have been inconclusive because of disagreement over the relevant asset pricing model this paper uses a newly available set of data on foreign exchange expectations to directly test the rationality of four foreign currency markets overall the results reject the rational expectations hypothesis

climate change environmental and technology policies in a strategic context there are a number of features of climate change which make it one of the most challenging problems confronting policy makers and policy analysts in this paper we consider three such features i climate change is a global pollutant so there are strategic interactions between governments over climate policy ii cutting greenhouse gas emissions can have significant cost effects across a number of sectors of the economy raising concerns about the implications of climate change policy on competitive advantage iii the long time scales on which climate change operates means that an important dimension of climate change policy is policy towards r d to cut the costs of dealing with climate change in ulph and ulph 1996 ulph a ulph d 1996 in carraro c katsoulacos y xepapadeas a eds environmental policy and market structure kluwer dordrecht pp 181 208 we presented a model to analyse these issues but considered only environmental policies in this paper we extend that analysis to allow for both a richer set of policy instruments environmental and technology policies and a richer strategic context

measuring investors opinion divergence numerous proxies for divergence of investors opinions have been suggested in the empirical accounting and finance literatures i offer a new proxy constructed from proprietary limit order and market order data this allows me to capture additional information on investors private valuations proxies from the extant literature based on publicly available data do not contain such information given my new measure i ask which of the extant proxies correlates best with it in my regression analysis unexplained volume is the best proxy for opinion divergence conditioning on various firm specific and order specific characteristics generally does not change this conclusion the main exception is the sample of firms without ibes forecast dispersion data for which bid ask spread is the best proxy for opinion divergence factor analysis also suggests that unexplained volume is the preferred proxy for opinion divergence

the relation between price changes and trading volume a survey this paper reviews previous and current research on the relation between price changes and trading volume in financial markets and makes four contributions first two empiri cal relations are established volume is positively related to the magnitude of the price change and in equity markets to the price change per se second previous theoretical research on the price volume relation is summarized and critiqued and major insights are emphasized third a simple model ofthe price volume relation is proposed that is consis tent with several seemingly unrelated or contradictory observations and fourth several directions for future research are identified

environmental groups in monopolistic markets we examine a market in which a monopolistic firm supplies a good the production of the good causes damage to the environment consumers are heterogeneous with respect to their disutility of the environmental damage an environmental group can enter the market and set up a campaign in order to influence consumers preferences we characterize the equilibrium of the resulting entry deterrence game and investigate its properties it turns out that the aggregated environmental damage is lowest if the firm is able to deter entry of the environmental group and moreover the fixed entry cost of the environmental group is small enough

incentives for advanced pollution abatement technology at the industry level an evaluation of policy alternatives abstract in this research we evaluate the incentive effects of five environmental policy instruments to promote the development and adoption of advanced pollution abatement technology in a heterogenous industry from most to least incentive the policy instruments can be rank ordered as follows i auctioned permits ii emissions taxes and subsidies iii issued marketable permits iv performance standards including performance standards in this list necessitates the assumption that they are differentiated between heterogeneous firms before the technology adoption in a way which replicates the initial emissions control distribution of the efficient incentive based instruments with the starting point normalized in this fashion the instrument rankings are invariant with respect to the size of firms the size of the industry or the industry s abatement cost structure

economic analysis and the quest for competitive advantage curred in the past decade between applied microeconomists and those who study business strategy business strategists have cast up a series of questions for industrial economists who have responded with numerous applications of economic theory and quantitative research methods this interchange has been fruitful and indeed more fruit remains for the picking i shall argue for centering the collaborative effort on what may be called committed competition rivalrous moves among incumbent producers that involve resource commitments that are irrevocable for nontrivial periods of time most concerns of business strategy are with policy choices that

strategic leaders or strategic groups a longitudinal data envelopment analysis of the u s brewing industry abstract this paper builds on strategic group theory which was originally introduced to help explain the observed variation in firm profitability across an industry this paper applies data envelopment analysis dea to identify both strategic leaders the best practice players in the industry and strategic groups to examine which are the source of the most sustained heterogeneity in the performance of u s brewers contrary to the prevalent research approach in strategy and organization research which places a premium on empirical analyses that maximize explanation of average behavior daft and lewin 1990 this paper examines extremal observations as a means of studying or inducing theories about best practice such as best strategies or most effective organization design lewin and minton 1986 the paper argues that significant insights new knowledge and unexpected theories can arise from studying the best or worst of a population the paper applies dea to a longitudinal reanalysis of u s brewing data to demonstrate its usefulness for obtaining new insights from identifying and studying industry outliers the paper raises important questions about the construct of strategic groups and illustrates how competing theories can be deduced and analyzed for explaining performance heterogeneity in the u s brewing industry

the political economy of pollution taxes in a small open economy abstract this paper develops a positive theory explaining pollution tax policy outcomes in a small open economy the equilibrium tax rate depends on lobby group membership the relative importance of lobbying activities and the tax elasticity of pollution the equilibrium properties are investigated the model is extended to incorporate pollution abatement and a pollution abatement subsidy we show that total pollution may be increasing in the pollution abatement subsidy rate this effect arises because the equilibrium pollution tax rate may be decreasing in the subsidy rate due to altered political influence of the lobby groups in the political equilibrium

innovation in pollution control comparisons of the various institutional arrangements for controlling pollutant emissions from individual sources effluent fees effluent control subsidies marketable permits and direct command and control regulation have usually focused on their static efficiency properties and institutional feasibility e g dales 1968 zerbe 1970 baumol and oates 1975 kneese and schultze 1975 marin 1978 mills and white 1978 spence and weitzman 1978 russell 1979 a relatively neglected area has been the study of how each arrangement influences innovation in pollution control a few studies e g kneese and schultze 1975 marin 1978 mills and white 1978 russell 1979 have casually claimed that the control methods that rely on economic incentives provide superior incentives for innovation but there have been few systematic studies of the question this paper provides a simple model of pollution control innovation by a profitmaximizing polluter who is subject to the various control methods the consequences of the methods will be explored in three major contexts first we assume that the polluter and the innovation is a small enough part of the overall pollution problem so that none of the important marginal conditions are changed by the innovation second we assume that the polluter and the innovation are important enough so that marginal conditions are changed by the innovations but that the governmental authority determining pollution control incentives or levels fails to make the appropriate adjustments third we again assume that the innovation causes marginal conditions to change but in this case the governmental authority makes the appropriate adjustments we use the term ratcheting to describe this last phenomenon in all cases we assume that the innovating polluter correctly predicts the reactions of the governmental authority and bases his innovation decisions on that prediction a profit maximizing entrepreneur would normally be expected to adopt any innovation that promised gains present discounted value to him in excess of initial

dynamic incentives by environmental policy instruments a survey abstract in this paper i survey and discuss recent developments on the incentives provided by environmental policy instruments for both adoption and development of advanced abatement technology a main conclusion to be drawn from the literature is that under competitive conditions market based instruments usually perform better than command and control moreover taxes may provide stronger long term incentives than tradable permits if the regulator is myopic if the government can anticipate new technology or is able to react on it optimally regulatory policies by virtue of administered prices taxes and policies by setting quantities issuing tradable permits are almost equivalent the literature also shows that under competitive conditions there is no difference between auctioning permits and grandfathering moreover timing and commitment of environmental policy is not crucial for adoption under competitive conditions commitment has positive incentive effects however if an r d sector has market power in the presence of market imperfections the ranking of the different policy instruments is ambiguous

estimating the impact of the r d tax credit on strategic groups in the pharmaceutical industry abstract the economic recovery and tax act of 1981 provided a 25 percent tax credit for increases in research and experimentation expenditures previous studies have shown considerable controversy about the effectiveness of various tax credits this study focuses on the response of the strategic groups in the pharmaceutical industry to the credit four strategic groups were formed using different levels of research intensity research sales and relative cash flow margin cash flow sales the change in research intensity following enactment of the tax credit was estimated the analysis found that the tax credit caused an increase in r d expenditures in addition the r d tax credit appears to have contributed to increased competitive r d spending among the firms in the pharmaceutical industry

timing and commitment of environmental policy adoption of new technology and repercussions on r d we investigate the interplay between environmental policy incentives to adoptnew technology and repercussions on r d we study a model where a monopolistic upstream firm engages in r d and sells advanced abatement technology to polluting downstream firms we consider four different timing and commitment regimes of environmental tax and permit policies ex post taxation or issuing permits interim commitment to a tax rate a quota of permits after observing r d success but before adoption and finally two types of ex antecommitment before r d activity one with a unique tax rate quota of permits the other one with a menu of tax rates permit quotas we study the second best tax and permit policies and rank these with respect to welfare in particular we find that commitment to a menu of tax rate dominates all other policy regimes

when the weak win the role of investment in environmental lobbying abstract old and environmentally damaging industries often lobby effectively for less stringent regulations and are slow to adopt new and cleaner technologies this paper explains the lobbying success of these industries in terms of the strategic role of investment as a credible commitment device it is demonstrated that if governments are predisposed to special interest groups underinvestment in new technology enables firms to lobby more effectively such industries are shown to be better placed to extract policy concessions despite contributing less to the government in political donations the analysis therefore suggests that political considerations may provide a significant incentive for firms to reject environmentally beneficial investments even when these lower production costs

volume volatility and the dispersion of beliefs i examine a two period noisy rational expectations model of a futures market and show that the dispersion of expectations about a weighted average of future prices measures both the additional volatility and the additional expected volume of trade associated with noisy information the role played by dispersion helps clarify several stylized facts concerning volume and price behavior specifically dispersion can be a factor contributing to the positive correlation between volume and absolute price changes and the positive correlation between consecutive absolute price changes article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

strategic group dynamics a longitudinal study was conducted of strategic group dynamics over periods of economic stability growth and decline in international offshore oil drilling some changes in group strategy were ob

the role of investment in environmental lobbying contests this paper establishes that a lobbying stage following investment decisions regarding abatement technology may imply a positive strategic effect of investment pointing to relatively more investment in pollution abatement technologies than without lobbying the intuition is that polluting firms may choose to implement more advanced abatement technology as a credible commitment device in order to lower the investment of environmentalists in the lobbying contest that will ultimately determine whether or not an emissions tax is introduced