introducing incentives in the market for live and cadaveric organ donations we evaluate the introduction of monetary incentives in the market for live and cadaveric organ donations we show that monetary incentives would increase the supply of organs for transplant sufficiently to eliminate the very large queues in organ markets and the suffering and deaths of many of those waiting without increasing the total cost of transplant surgery by more than about 12 percent we build on the value of life literature and other parts of economic analysis to estimate the equilibrium cost of live transplants for kidneys and livers we also show that market price for kidneys will be determined by the cost of live donations even though most organs will come from cadavers

markets hierarchies and information on a paradox in the economics of organization abstract the literature on the economics of organization presents the following paradox on the one hand firms are said to be repositories of superior information about input characteristics on the other hand markets are said to be superior to hierarchies in coordinating resource allocation because hierarchies are forced to aggregate heterogeneous inputs into homogeneous categories this paper suggests reasons for the association of firms with refined input information and argues that it is not their hierarchical features but their provision of an appropriate framework for rent sharing that is responsible for this association

where does price discovery occur for stocks traded in multiple markets evidence from hong kong and london using a sample of hong kong listed stocks that are also traded on the london stock exchange we document the following results first london market makers use hong kong s closing prices as the benchmark for setting the opening prices in london second trading in the london market plays only a limited role in price discovery in the hong kong market third the stock returns from london trading are closely correlated with those of the hong kong market the above findings are consistent with the explanation that london trading is predominantly liquidity driven but not information driven

one security many markets determining the contributions to price discovery when homogeneous or closely linked securities trade in multiple markets it is often of interest to determine where price discovery the incorporation of new information occurs this article suggests an econometric approach based on an implicit unobservable efficient price common to all markets the information share associated with a particular market is defined as the proportional contribution of that market s innovations to the innovation in the common efficient price applied to quotes for the thirty dow stocks the technique suggests that the preponderance of the price discovery takes place at the new york stock exchange nyse a median 92 7 percent information share although most of the classic paradigms in market microstructure concern a security that trades in a single centralized market such situations are becoming increasingly rare in practice fragmentation the dispersal of trading in a security to multiple sites has emerged as a dominant institutional trend this process is of concern to financial economists and regulators because price information and price discovery the impounding of new information into the security price arguably the most important products of a security market have many attributes of public goods as the process of fragmentation accelerates it may be important to determine where the price information and price discovery are being produced 1 this paper suggests a practical econometric approach to this problem the technique is illustrated with an application to u s equity markets many stocks listed on the new york stock exchange nyse trade concurrently on the regional exchanges and the national association of securities dealers national market system nasd nms since a share of ibm stock is the same security whether purchased on the midwest or pacific exchange this is a particularly clear instance of multiple markets nevertheless the expres

information transmission in informationally linked markets evidence from us and chinese commodity futures markets abstract this paper investigates information transmission and price discovery in informationally linked markets within the multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity and information share frameworks based on both synchronous and non synchronous trading information from chinese futures spot markets the new york mercantile exchange nymex chicago board of trade cbot and cme globex futures markets for copper and soybeans we show that there is a bidirectional relationship in terms of price and volatility spillovers between us and chinese markets with a stronger effect from us to chinese markets than the other way around additionally the nymex and cbot play a more important role than the cme globex in the flow of information from us to chinese markets moreover we find that chinese copper market adjusts more quickly than the nymex copper market to correct the disparity between both markets however the converse is true in the case of soybeans finally our results highlight the remarkable role of chinese futures markets in the price formation process though nymex and cbot futures markets are the main driving force in price discovery

does the bund dominate price discovery in euro bond futures examining information shares abstract this paper examines the relative information shares of the bund i e the 10 year euro bond future contract on german sovereign debt versus two futures with shorter maturity we find that the bund is most important but does not dominate price discovery the other contracts also have relevant and at many days even higher information shares in examining determinants of information shares we add order flow measures to market state variables and macroeconomic news more order flow in a contract consistently increases this contract s information share

price movements and price discovery in futures and cash markets r isk transfer and price discovery are two of the major contributions of futures markets to the organization of economic activity working 1962 evans 1978 p 80 and silber 1981 risk transfer refers to hedgers using futures contracts to shift price risk to others price discovery refers to the use of futures prices for pricing cash market transactions working 1948 wiese 1978 p 87 and lake 1978 p 161 the significance of both contributions depends upon a close relationship between the prices of futures contracts and cash commodities this paper examines the characteristics of price movements in cash or spot markets and futures markets for storable commodities section ii presents an analytical model of simultaneous price dynamics which suggests that over short intervals of time the correlation of price changes is a function of the elasticity of arbitrage between the physical commodity and its counterpart futures contract greater elasticity fosters more highly correlated price changes and thereby facilitates the risk transfer function the elasticity of supply of arbitrage services is constrained by among other things storage and transaction costs thus futures contracts will not in general provide perfect risk transfer facilities over short time horizons the essence of the price discovery function of futures markets hinges on whether new information is reflected first in changed futures prices or in changed cash prices hoffman 1932 pp 258259 the model in section ii provides a framework for analyzing whether one market is dominant in terms of information flows and price discovery in section iii we develop a model based on section ii which is appropriate for estimating the lead lag relationship between cash prices and futures prices section iv presents empirical estimates of the parameters of the model for seven different storable commodities wheat corn oats frozen orange juice concentrates copper gold and silver the cost of arbitrage between cash and futures differs across these commodities for this reason we are not surprised to find inter commodity differences in the correlation of short run price changes and in the substitutability of futures contracts for cash market positions with respect to the price discovery function of futures markets we find that while futures markets dominate cash markets cash prices do not merely echo futures prices there are reverse information flows from cash markets to futures markets as well

target zones and exchange rate dynamics this paper develops a simple model of exchange rate behavior under a target zone regime it shows that the expectation that monetary policy will be adjusted to limit exchange rate variation affects exchange rate behavior even when the exchange rate lies inside the zone and is thus not being defended actively somewhat surprisingly the analysis of target zones turns out to have a strong formal similarity to problems in option pricing and investment under uncertainty

the roles of the state and the market in establishing property rights it is an old saw of the economics profession that markets require a clear assignment of initial entitlements to most resources and well enforced rules of contract governments intent on fostering a market economy should thus make sure to put an effective legal system in place one in which property rights are unambiguous secure and freely alienable even if the state gets some of the initial entitlements wrong it is often added the coase theorem instructs us that the parties if free to contract will correct this by appropriate private agreements the experience of postcommunist countries in eastern europe is a good reminder that economists tend to assume a can opener when one is needed indeed the statement that property and contract rights must be put in place assumes away one of the most interesting and intricate questions concerning economic development the creation of a system of enforceable entitlements to the diverse and complex forms of wealth characteristic of a modern society is itself a process subject to economic laws as i shall argue here it is in fact largely a product of market forces rather than governmental fiat

how smooth is price discovery evidence from cross listed stock trading abstract the adjustment to parity can be nonlinear for a cross listed pair convergence may be quicker when the price deviation is sufficiently profitable we propose a threshold error correction model ecm to gauge the market respective information shares of canadian listings traded on the toronto stock exchange tsx and the new york stock exchange nyse since dynamics may alternatively be gradual we further generalize the threshold framework to a smooth transition ecm the empirical implications are as follows first the tsx and the nyse appear to have integrated over time second parity convergence accelerates upon discounts on the cross listings on the nyse third we find a larger feedback from the nyse if the price gap exceeds the threshold required arbitrage return fourth informed traders tend to cluster on the nyse upon discounts on the cross listings fifth information share and threshold are affected by the relative degree of private information market friction and liquidity measures firm level characteristics and aggregate risks

a political economy approach to the neoclassical gradualist model of transition a political economy approach to the neoclassical gradualist model of transition requires the exposition of what i define the primary elements of the model which are economic analysis definition of a good society speed political structure ideological structure and whether the initial conditions were incorporated in the model after the identification of the primary elements of the neoclassical gradualist model the next step is to identify secondary elements the desired changes with respect to price liberalization stabilization privatization institutional structure monetary policy and the financial system fiscal policy international trade and foreign aid and social policy the analytical framework developed makes possible to understand the neoclassical gradualist model from a new and more enlightening perspective we are better able to comprehend the complexities involved and the disagreements about the reform process the adoption of a gradual process of transition did not only involve specifying the required policies of a successful transition but also entailed a process a sequence by which the reforms should be introduced as such a process of transition consistent with the policies recommended by the neoclassical gradualists economists is developed the conclusion reveals the inconsistencies in the model copyright blackwell publishers ltd 2005

how industrial reform worked in china the role of innovation competition and property rights in china early attempts at partial reform unleashed forces that fifteen years later have brought china s economy to the brink of a market system the participation of tens of thousands of enterprises and millions of administrators managers and workers over the duration of the reform eventually built a constituency for market directed change that was far stronger than any official announcement could have produced gradual and partial reform shifted the economy toward a market system under a regime of growth improved productivity accelerated technical change and rising exports reactions of firms and governments focused incresingly on innovation cost reduction and further deregulation deepening the cumulative impact of reform rather than on rent seeking and subsidies this process of reform is very different from the top down centrally planned approach to reform that is widely advocated by international organizations and economic researchers but it has produced a durable reform constituency that easily rebuffed high level efforts to roll back reform in the wake of the inflation scare and political repression of 1989

the transition according to cambridge mass this paper reviews the nber s the transition in eastern europe this book s 18 essays examine privatization stabilization fiscal policies the nascent private sector bankruptcy foreign trade and investment etc individual country performance occupies six studies these essays which are of high quality provide a cross section of the literature on transition however the book s stronger conclusions are not supported by strong evidence two conclusions unemphasized by contributors emerge expectations which reflect the theories used to design standard reforms are often unfulfilled during reforms a plausible explanation for the misplaced expectations is the ahistorical approach of those theories

large firms and industrial reform in former planned economies the case of china in china s industrial reform alongside the much studied dynamism of small industries there has been a simultaneous powerful growth of large scale state industry state planning has played an important role in this process through heavy protection from international competition and support for selected enterprises which it was hoped would benefit from economies of scale and scope these enterprises have undergone gradual institutional change with growing foreign investment and slow movement towards multiplant operation this process is one in which there are emerging institutions resembling the modern business corporation albeit with specific chinese features c 1996 academic press limited copyright 1996 by oxford university press

common stochastic trends in international stock markets abstract this paper presents evidence concerning the number of common stochastic trends in the equity markets of the u s japan england germany and canada monthly and quarterly data from january 1974 through august 1990 on morgan stanley s capital international indices are used to compute johansen 1990 tests for common trends the results indicate the presence of a single common trend driving these countries stock markets estimates of the factor loadings suggest that this trend is most important in the japanese market and least important in the canadian market to interpret this evidence the paper demonstrates that under weak conditions the unit root and cointegration structure of stock prices should mirror the unit root and cointegration structure of their dividend payments the paper tests this prediction by constructing national dividend series from capital international s dividend yield data as well as by using gnp data as with stock prices the evidence points to a single common trend although the stochastic properties and relative importance of this trend differs somewhat from the trend in stock prices

chinese institutional innovation and privatization from below one of the most distinctive features of china s transition to a market economy has been the role played by rural township and village enterprises tve s in the face of sustained rapid growth of tve s the share of total industrial output produced by state owned enterprises soe s has fallen below half despite steady state sector growth and the absence of significant privatization yet most tve s are collectives a form of publicly owned enterprise this feature seems to make them unique in no other transitional economy has public ownership played such a dynamic role china presents the unusual picture of an economy that has made a transition to a primarily market economy but in which publicly owned enterprises still produce the bulk of manufacturing output surprisingly also the collective ownership form does not have a precise legal definition in china leading to some uncertainty about ultimate property rights martin weitzman and chenggang xu 1993 point out that public ownership with vaguely defined ownership ought to represent a recipe for economic disaster to them tve success suggests instead advantages to the internal institutional form of tve s which are seen to facilitate cooperation through implicit contracts among community members locked into an ongoing relationship victor nee 1992 advances a similar interpretation arguing that long time community residents create forms of income sharing that may be optimal in the absence of an independent legal system an alternative perhaps complementary view is presented here the success of tve s i argue is due largely to a set of external conditions to which tve s are an effective adaptation tve s are responses to one of the most distinctive characteristics of the chinese transition as a whole the early creation of product markets which exist for a prolonged period without well developed markets for factors of production or assets tve s are a flexible and effective but basically ordinary adaptation to this environment

new institutional economics in the post socialist transformation debate the paper suggests that there is a tension between the basic tenant of new institutional economics nie and the manner in which it has been applied in the debate on post socialist transformation this tension is explored in the context of four main perspectives on nie i property rights ii transaction costs economics iii new economic history and iv evolutionary economics there are two main arguments the first is that the transformation phase should be seen as open ended rather than a closed process where the pure market is the inevitable end result the second is that although the nie literature touches on most of the issues which are relevant to post socialist transformation the insights that it offers are still too general for policy guidance

news announcements and price discovery in foreign exchange spot and futures markets abstract this paper studies competition in price discovery between spot and futures rates for the eur usd and jpy usd markets around scheduled macroeconomic announcements using both the information shares approach and the common factor component weight approach for futures prices from the chicago mercantile exchange cme as well as deal prices from spot trading on the electronic broking services ebs we gauge how foreign exchange spot and futures markets respond to news surprises the results show that the spot rates provide more price discovery than do the cme futures rates overall however the contribution of the futures rates to price discovery increases in the time surrounding macroeconomic announcement releases

establishing property rights establishing secure property rights in transition economies amounts to solving two problems inefficiency structures of control rights over assets and poor contract enforcement politicians and bureaucrats still wield excessive control over assets which results in inefficient underinvestment by entrepreneurs corruption is one way of getting around political control but the drawbacks are considerable particularly the limited enforceability of corruption contracts more workable strategies for establishing property rights in transition economies are giving equity to the bureaucrats and other parties that have control reforming the civil service and removing bureaucratic control rights through privatization russia s experience shows how privatization combined with equity incentives for enterprise insiders transfers control rights from the bureaucrats and stimulates political and economic pressures to protect private property rights

princes and merchants european city growth before the industrial revolution as measured by the pace of city growth in western europe from 1000 to 1800 absolutist monarchs stunted the growth of commerce and industry a region ruled by an absolutist prince saw its total urban population shrink by one hundred thousand people per century relative to a region without absolutist government this might be explained by higher rates of taxation under revenue maximizing absolutist governments than under nonabsolutist governments which care more about general economic prosperity and less about state revenue

markets as institutions versus organizations as markets disentangling some fundamental concepts abstract this paper argues that ambiguities in concepts as important as institutions markets and organizations undermine progress of research programs intending to take these components seriously into account after a short review of some current confusions section i section ii discusses recent literature to arrive at definitions that encapsulate fundamental characteristics into pure categories in section iii exceptions and qualifications are introduced so as to operationalize the concepts in the real world 1 i organizations and markets are embedded in an institutional framework and 2 ii they overlap giving birth to hybrid forms however the conclusion contends that it is essential to maintain distinct concepts in order to understand these complex arrangements

quantitative implications of a debt deflation theory of sudden stops and asset prices abstract this paper shows that the quantitative predictions of an equilibrium asset pricing model with financial frictions are consistent with key features of the sudden stop phenomenon foreign traders incur costs in trading assets with domestic agents and a collateral constraint limits external debt to a fraction of the market value of domestic equity holdings when this constraint does not bind standard productivity shocks cause typical real business cycle effects when it binds the same shocks cause strikingly different effects depending on the leverage ratio and asset market liquidity with high leverage and a liquid market the shocks force fire sales of assets and fisher s debt deflation mechanism amplifies the responses of asset prices consumption and the current account precautionary saving makes these sudden stops infrequent in the long run

international market correlation and volatility international correlations for stocks and bonds fluctuate widely over time as previous studies have found volatility appears to be contagious across markets in addition international correlation increases in periods of high market volatility although the correlation of individual foreign stock markets with the u s stock market has generally increased slightly over the past 37 years it has not increased during the past 10 years similarly the international correlation of bond markets increased in the early 1980s but it has had no discernible trend in the past 10 years the fairly low levels of international correlation among stocks or bonds suggests that national factors still strongly affect local asset prices the link between correlation and market volatility is bad news for global money managers because when the domestic market is subject to a strong negative shock is when the benefits of international risk diversification are needed most

bureaucratic tenure and economic performance in centrally planned economies murrell and olson 1991 set forth the hypothesis that in centrally planned economies economic interests over time become fragmented as bureaus become more autonomous and form into narrowly based distributional coalitions as a consequence the national leader s encompassing interest in economic growth becomes compromised and growth begins to slow this paper provides the first direct test of the hypothesis that growing bureaucratic autonomy results in declining economic growth in centrally planned economies

the present state of institutional economics after articulating the institutionalist paradigm and its principal facets the article examines the present status converging interests and possible future of institutional economics emphasis is on related schools of thought and especially european and other developments along evolutionary and holistic lines of analysis and on a new generation of u s and especially european authors among more specific themes are the importance of power technology social change social control organizations and institutions in governing economic performance the work of european authors is expected to become increasingly important owing to their concern with subject matter and policy issues rather than sectarian questions c 1995 academic press ltd copyright 1995 by oxford university press

stock index futures and index arbitrage in a rational expectations model this article analyzes the role of stock index futures and index arbitrage in a rational expectations economy with competitive stock and futures markets a simple model is developed with three types of agents who besides having different trading motives have unequal access to markets among these agents only index arbitrageurs can trade on both markets and thus engage in arbitrage the article characterizes the impact of index arbitrage on equilibrium prices volatilities and welfare it is shown that index arbitrage is a risk reallocating and price correcting mechanism its impact on price stability is shown to be dependent on the relative variability of aggregate supply in the respective markets index arbitrage also transmits information across markets copyright 1991 by university of chicago press

price transmission foreign exchange rate risks and global diversification of adrs the purposes of this article are to reinvestigate how returns of major american depository receipts adrs from different countries are related to the underlying stock returns and to identify the determinants of adr risk premiums we use different types of error correcting terms in vector error correction models to examine information flows between adrs and the underlying foreign stocks general method of moments estimation of conditional international asset pricing model of dumas and solnik 1995 is applied to investigate adr return premiums we find that stock returns are more affected by disequilibrium between adr and stock prices in an inefficient way for us investors foreign exchange rate risk premiums and world market risk premium beyond us index are priced in adrs returns ex ante surprisingly it is shown that the exchange rate of new taiwan dollar and the interest rates of brazil and taiwan play important roles in determining adr risk premiums across countries

marketization and democratization the sino soviet divergence the natural starting point should be the definition of the concepts appearing in the title the danger however is that an attempt to provide comprehensive definitions at the outset may not only prove to be excessively lengthy and cumbersome but ultimately also to a large extent futile because of its abstractness that is why i shall reduce the definitionary introduction to a minimum

international transmission of stock market movements this paper investigates the international transmission mechanism of stock market movements by estimating a nine market vector autoregression var system using simulated responses of the estimated var system we i locate all the main channels of interactions among national stock markets and ii trace out the dynamic responses of one market to innovations in another generally speaking a substantial amount of multi lateral interaction is detected among national stock markets innovations in the u s are rapidly transmitted to other markets in a clearly recognizable fashion whereas no single foreign market can significantly explain the u s market movements also the dynamic response pattern is found to be generally consistent with the notion of informationally efficient international stock markets

the institutions and governance of economic development and reform why are the ambitions of economic development practitioners and reformers so often disappointed one answer is that development policymakers and reformers are congenital optimists another answer is that good plans are regularly defeated by those who occupy strategic positions an intermediate answer is that institutions are important yet are persistently neglected in the planning process the article takes a bottom up microanalytical approach to economic development and reform it examines the governance of contract investment and private ordering through the lens of transaction cost economizing and it assesses the efficacy of the de facto as against the de jure institutional environment with respect to credible commitments in effect institutional economists are cast in the role of archaeologists of economic reform and development with the task of unpacking the lessons of the past to inform choices and programs for the future

growth efficiency and convergence in china s state and collective industry in china as in the soviet union and eastern europe economic reform initiatives seek to increase productivity by introducing elements of market oriented policies and institutions into an economy formerly dominated by state planning efforts to evaluate the impact of reform of chinese industry have focused on the measurement of productivity change in state enterprises this study expands the prior framework of analysis in several directions our investigation of productivity trends is not limited to state enterprises but includes quantitative comparisons with china s fast growing collective industries which contributed 36 of overall industrial output in 1988 1 unlike previous studies our analysis works with gross rather than net output this permits us to investigate changes in the productivity of intermediate inputs which occupy a large portion of total costs in chinese industry as well as labor and capital to do this we develop a quasi frontier estimation procedure which seems appropriate for comparisons of total factor productivity based on chinese industrial data finally we offer a quantitative perspective on the extent to which reform efforts have moved industrial resource allocation toward patterns expected of a market system the analysis confirms our previous finding based on a restricted framework employing only labor fixed capital and net output that multifactor productivity in state industry has risen substantially during

regime switching analysis of adr home market pass through abstract we model and estimate adrs home market pass through and pricing to market using a regime switching approach which nests the two regimes in a conditional capital asset pricing model and treats any changes in these two regimes probabilistically our results from the 1998 to 2006 data show that the pricing to market regime dominates adrs from china and japan whereas the home market pass through regime dominates adrs from argentina and germany when their respective home markets are volatile

price transmission dynamics between adrs and their underlying foreign securities abstract this paper extends previous research by considering three pricing factors for american depository receipts adrs the price of the underlying shares in the local currency the relevant exchange rate and the us market index using both a vector autoregressive var model with a cointegration constraint and a seemingly unrelated regression sur approach we examine the relative importance of and the speed of adjustment of adr prices to these underlying factors our results show that while the price of the underlying shares is most important the exchange rate and the us market also have an impact on adr prices while the bulk of the shocks to the pricing factors are reflected in the adrs within the same calendar day there are indications that the adjustments are not completed until the following day curiously the adrs appear to initially overreact to the us market index but underreact to changes in underlying share prices and exchange rates

evolution in dynamic linkages across daily national stock indexes abstract this article investigates how dynamic linkages among the daily rates of return of eight national stock indexes have evolved since 1972 a dynamic simultaneous equations model is estimated to describe the contemporaneous and lead lag relationships across national equity markets over three different years 1972 1980 and 1987 results reveal growing market interdependence within the same geographical region over time while there are many significant intermarket relationships within the same 24 hour period there are few significant lagged responses across markets beyond 24 hours this suggests a high degree of international market efficiency furthermore japan s market influence has been growing to rival that of the usa

the effect of cadaveric kidney donations on living kidney donations an instrumental variables approach i introduction as of march 19 2012 there are 113 465 patients awaiting an organ transplant only 28 535 transplants were performed in the previous year 1 the critical shortage of organs is the result of an artificial price ceiling instituted by the national organ transplant act nota of 1984 which legislates financial compensation for organs to be unlawful for this reason the current supply of organs is generated by altruistic cadaveric and living donors lds these donors willfully supply organs without any expectation of compensation but the decision to donate is not the same for both cadaveric and lds unlike cadaveric donors cds where the functional value of the organ to the donor is small lds must consider the potential long term healthcare costs associated with donating an organ these costs include an increase in mortality risk morbidity risk loss in quality of life and lost wages generated by time away from work during recovery potential lds and their recipients must weigh these costs versus alternative sources of organs cadaveric organs and other lds and consider their own future demand for organs when deciding to donate even so the number of lds has increased dramatically from 1 769 in 1988 to 5 955 in 2008 an increase of 237 figure 1 over the same period the percentage of blood related or biological donors has decreased from 93 to 60 of all lds several factors can account for these changes introduction of tax incentives for organ donation compatibility websites relaxing donor match requirements and the implied responsiveness of potential lds to increases in the number of persons on the waiting list for deceased donors an increase from 40 000 to 52 000 from 2000 to 2009 2 figure 1 omitted the topic of organ donation has received considerable attention in both the academic literature and the press but there is limited empirical evidence identifying potential causes for the increase in ld rates the trade offs between living and cadaveric kidney donations and the change in ld composition from primarily blood related donors to an increase in non blood related donors 3 two concurrent studies address the substitutability between living and cadaveric donations howard 2011 utilized geographic variation in waiting times for organ transplants to estimate the substitution effect the author finds that a decrease of five kidneys from cadaveric donations is correlated with one additional living kidney donation sweeney 2010 exploits a discontinuity in panel reactive antibody pra 4 blood levels within a regression discontinuity framework and finds a 10 increase in the likelihood of receiving a cadaveric donation decreases the likelihood of receiving a living kidney donation by 2 3 we find similar results as these studies but we utilize a completely different identification method in this article we propose using variation in traffic safety laws between states as an instrumental variable to identify the substitution patterns between living and cadaveric kidney donations a benefit of our approach is that we can analyze how obesity influences the supply of donations the demand for transplantation and the use of living versus cadaveric donations we also analyze substitutability across classes of lds which helps to establish the plausibility of our results and the mechanisms underlying the substitution effects with respect to motor vehicle safety laws we study how changes in seat belt helmet and speed limit laws indirectly affect the number of living donations by shifting the supply of cadaveric organ donations previous studies have considered how changes in these safety laws would affect motor vehicle fatalities and cadaveric donations according to the organ procurement and transplantation network optn roughly 16 of cadaveric donations are the result of a motor vehicle accident mva

markets and firms transaction costs versus strategic innovation abstract this paper takes the view that the firm is a way of organizing learning and a source of capabilities for innovative moves this requires seeing the firm s problem as one not only of forming appropriate internal organizing structures but also of competing in an environment where new problems regularly emerge as a result of strategic outcompeting moves by rivals market and firm are shown to interact rather than being independent alternatives this altered perspective is given sharper definition by comparing and contrasting it with the results of transactions cost analysis the newer capabilities approach to the firm and the game theoretic literature on coordination and cooperation

cross border listings and price discovery evidence from u s listed canadian stocks we examine the contribution of cross listings to price discovery for a sample of canadian stocks listed on both the toronto stock exchange tse and a u s exchange we nd that priceson the tse and u s exchange are cointegrated and mutually adjusting the u s share of price discovery ranges from 0 2 percent to 98 2 percent with an average of 38 1 percent the u s share is directly related to the u s share of trading and to the ratio of proportions of informative tradeson the u s exchange and the tse and inversely related to the ratio of bid ask spreads with the enhanced globalization of nancial markets the number of non u s rms cross listing shares on a u s exchange has substantially increased attracting non u s listings is now a top priority of the u s stock exchanges at the end of 2000 420 non u s rmswere listed on the new york stock exchange nyse the number of foreign rmslisted on nasdaq waseven higher the popularity of international cross listings has prompted many academic studies on the topic 1 most of these studies focus on the bene ts of international cross listings including the reduced cost of capital and the enhanced liquidity of a rm s stock studiessuch asalexander eun and janakiramanan 1987 1988 and foerster and karolyi 1993 suggest that the cost of capital declines because the portion of the risk premium that compensates for cross border investment barriers dissipates miller 1999 and foerster and karolyi 1999 propose increased investor recognition as another possible explanation several studies examine changes in trading volume and costs due to international cross listing foerster and karolyi 1998 nd that the bid ask spreads in canada decrease after the cross listing of canadian stocks in the united states domowitz glen and madhavan 1998 suggest that the impact of cross listing is complex and depends on the degree of quote transparency that is the extent to which price information is observable in the two markets smith and so anos 1997 examine if cross listing is a zerosum game with increased trading in the united states being oiset by reduced

economic performance through time prize lecture to the memory of alfred nobel december 9 1993 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

intraday volatility in the stock index and stock index futures markets we examine the intraday relationship between returns and returns volatility in the stock index and stock index futures markets our results indicate a strong intermarket dependence in the volatility of the cash and futures returns price innovations that originate in either the stock or futures markets can predict the future volatility in the other market we show that this relationship persists even during periods in which the dependence in the returns themselves appears to weaken the findings are robust to controlling for potential market frictions such as asynchronous trading in the stock index our results have implications for understanding the pattern of information flows between the two markets article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

efficiency and the bear short sales and markets around the world we analyze cross sectional and time series information from 46 equity markets around the world to consider whether short sales restrictions affect the efficiency of the market and the distributional characteristics of returns to individual stocks and market indices we find some evidence that prices incorporate negative information faster in countries where short sales are allowed and practiced a common conjecture by regulators is that short sales restrictions can reduce the relative severity of a market panic we find strong evidence that in markets where short selling is either prohibited or not practiced market returns display significantly less negative skewness

the dynamic relationship between the prices of adrs and their underlying stocks evidence from the threshold vector error correction model this paper sets out to estimate the dynamic relationship that exists between the prices of adrs and their underlying stocks in both the short run and the long run using a number of recent developments of the threshold cointegration framework the empirical results support the notion of nonlinear mean reversion of the prices of adrs and their underlying stocks

using mandated speed limits to measure the value of a statistical life in 1987 the federal government permitted states to raise the speed limit on their rural interstate roads but not on their urban interstate roads from 55 mph to 65 mph since the states that adopted the higher speed limit must have valued the travel hours they saved more than the fatalities incurred this institutional change provides an opportunity to estimate an upper bound on the public s willingness to trade off wealth for a change in the probability of death our estimates indicate that the adoption of the 65 mph limit increased speeds by approximately 4 percent or 2 5 mph and fatality rates by roughly 35 percent together the estimates suggest that about 125 000 hours were saved per lost life when the time saved is valued at the average hourly wage the estimates imply that adopting states were willing to accept risks that resulted in a savings of 1 54 million 1997 dollars per fatality with a sampling error roughly one third this value we set out a simple model of states decisions to adop

an empirical test of the efficiency of the adr market abstract this study examines the weak form efficiency of foreign equities american depository receipts traded in the u s the results of serial correlation and runs tests on a sample of listed and nasdaq adrs for the years 1974 1978 were consistent with weak form efficiency

the political economy of growth a critical survey of the recent literature this article reviews the recent literature on the political economy of growth focusing on the research that has developed at the intersection of the endogenous growth literature and the new political economy it explores the relationship among four key variables economic growth and capital accumulation political instability political freedom and democratic institutions and income inequality

transaction costs markets and hierarchies 1 transaction costs markets and hierarchies christos pitelis university of cambridge 2 the nature and role of markets malcolm sawyer university of leeds 3 in the beginning there were markets frederick fourie university of the dfs south africa 4 control markets and firms keith cowling and robert sugden university of birmingham 5 transaction costs and the evolution of the firm geoffrey hodgson newcastle polytechnic 6 the appropriability critique of transaction cost economics gregory dow university of alberta canada 7 power and efficiency in the firm paul marginson university of warwick 8 transaction costs and revenues michael dietrich newcastle polytechnic 9 transaction cost economics and the state william dugger depaul university chicago 10 markets hierarchies and markets again steve thompson and mike wright university of manchester and university of nottingham 11 markets false hierarchies and the role of asset specificity neil kay university of strathclyde 12 on transactions costs and markets and as hierarchies christos pitelis university of cambridge

why economic reforms fail in the soviet system a property rights based approach jan winiecki why do economic reforms fail in soviet type systems despite the obvious interest of ruling groups in improving the performance of their ailing economies the author applies a property rights based analysis stressing modes of rent maximization by ruling groups as a crucial explanatory variable party apparatchiks and economic bureaucrats particularly benefit from persistent interference in the economic sphere and consequently are most interested in maintaining the status quo the author surveys the impact of these motivations on the content of economic reforms outlines the strategies of counterreformers and predicts the future of reforms in soviet type economies 1 introduction in analyzing the disequilibrium characteristics of contemporary western economies mancur olson 1982 1984a 1984b agrees with the neoclassical macroeconomists in finding that given the tendencies of markets to clear and given the rational expectations of economic agents any disequilibrium indicates that all mutually advantageous transactions have not been consummated having made this point however he asks what can make agents ignore the potential gains from unconsummated transactions and turns his attention toward the structure of incentives and thus of institutions and policies olson insists and rightly so that a satisfactory static and dynamic macroeconomic theory has to explain who among key actors has the incentive to generate economic growth and equilibrate the economy and who does not furthermore no government even an authoritarian one has an incentive to generate serious recessions or disequilibria olson 1984a 637 writes that even in dictatorial systems the dictator has an incentive to make the economy of the country he controls work better since this will generate more tax receipts he can use as he pleases and usually also reduce dissent olson s arguments about incentives institutions and disequilibria offer an ideal basis for an inquiry into why reforms fail in soviet type economies stes in olson s theories of incentives the old roman principle of criminal law cui prodest who gained is applied to modem economies and the results suggest that contrary to widespread opinion it is not necessarily the small but powerful group of high and highest leaders that stands to gain most in terms of power and privilege from the preservation of the existing order a powerful political elite could satisfy its desires for both power and privilege through an alternative undemocratic system one which involves authoritarian don ts rather than totalitarian do s in that perspective the inefficient system of economic control typical in stes involving centrally planned production goals and input rationing would not be a condition sine qua non of an authoritarian solution since totalitarian command and control systems persist however one must seek groups other than the powerful and privileged few which have incentives to resist reforms and keep the economy inefficient the following sections identify the membership and motives of groups having strong incentives to keep the stes inefficient and prevent successful i e market oriented reforms we show how those groups operate and analyze their effects on the economic performance of their countries first the incentives for these groups to prevent decentralized management in the state sector are spelled out then their incentives to prevent the expansion of the more efficient private sector are outlined third having identified who benefits from the status quo and why the paper discusses when and how market oriented reforms are aborted limited or reversed by those who stand to gain from the reforms failure the last two sections consider the prospects of current attempts at economic reform in three specific countries poland the ussr and china and the prospects for economic reform in stes more generally

institutions transaction costs and economic growth this essay develops a theoretical framework which explores the historical obstacles to economic growth these obstacles are examined in the context of the political economic institutional framework of economies in history and consequent transaction costs that determine economic performance and growth the essay concludes with specific suggestions for the study of economic growth

subsidizing altruism in living organ donation the current supply of deceased donor organs is insucient to meet the growing demand for transplantable organs the median waiting time for a kidney from a deceased donor is over three years consequently candidates for kidney transplantation are strongly encouraged to nd a living donor however many potential donors have low incomes and donation related costs may discourage them from volunteering to be a donor in 2008 the department of health and human services began to reimburse donor s travel related expenses via the national living donor assistance center nldac using within transplant center variation in their applications for donor assistance we use a dierence in dier ence model to estimate the impact of the nldac on the number of living donor kidney transplants we nd that among participating transplant centers the program increased the number of living donor kidney transplants by approximately 14 the nldac program provides an eective subsidy for donor s altruism

direct tests of index arbitrage models previous tests of stock index arbitrage models have rejected the no arbitrage constraint imposed by these models this paper provides a detailed analysis of actual s p 500 arbitrage trades and directly relates these trades to the predictions of index arbitrage models an analysis of arbitrage trades suggests that i short sale rules are unlikely to affect the cashfutures mispricing ii the opportunity cost of arbitrage funds exceeds the treasury bill rate and iii the average price discrepancy captured by arbitrage trades is small tests of the models provide some support for a version ofthe arbitrage model that incorporates an early liquidation option the ability of these models to explain arbitrage trades however is surprisingly low

can neoclassical economics underpin the reform of centrally planned economies te here s a curious symmetry between the arguments propounded over the last century in advocacy of socialism and the present popular discussion of the reform of centrally planned economies in those old discussions the vision of socialism was utopian which was contrasted with the dickensian realities of capitalism now the disasters of central planning are contrasted with the benefits flowing from perfectly functioning markets in the conventional wisdom of reform the vision of markets is utopian and that of central planning concentrates on the awful reality what is largely missing in the conventional wisdom is a satisfactory attempt to come to grips with the central question that should be answered in formulating reform plans how does one explain the differences in performance of market capitalist and centrally planned economies of course capitalism has outperformed central planning the developed west is therefore an obvious source of ideas for reforms but the institutions of capitalism come in many varieties and cannot be put in place instantaneously there are many alternative reform paths depending upon the importance attributed to each of these institutions thus there remains the problem of tracing the source of the superiority of capitalist economies to specific characteristics this point was made clear to me on hearing a vietnamese official justify single party rule by noting the economic success of taiwan and singapore reformers need a filter that interprets the experience of capitalist and socialist systems this is exactly where economic theory plays a vital role

spillover effects in the global copper futures markets asymmetric multivariate garch approaches this study investigates changes in return and volatility spillovers between the lme comex and the shfe copper futures markets before and after the global financial crisis and after the introduction

exchange rate expectations and the pricing of chinese cross listed stocks abstract i show that the price discounts of chinese cross listed stocks american depositary receipts adrs and h shares to their underlying a shares indicate the expected yuan us dollar exchange rate the forecasting models reveal that adr and h share discounts predict exchange rate changes more accurately than the random walk and forward exchange rates particularly at long forecast horizons using panel estimations i find that adr and h share investors form their exchange rate expectations according to standard exchange rate theories such as the harrod balassa samuelson effect the risk of competitive devaluations relative purchasing power parity uncovered interest rate parity and the risk of currency crisis

information asymmetry and asset prices evidence from the china foreign share discount we examine the effect of information asymmetry on equity prices in the local a and foreign b share market in china we construct measures of information asymmetry based on market microstructure models and find that they explain a significant portion of cross sectional variation in b share discounts even after controlling for other factors on a univariate basis the price impact measure and the adverse selection component of the bid ask spread in the a and b share markets explains 44 and 46 of the variation in b share discounts on a multivariate basis both measures are far more statistically significant than any of the control variables the extent of information asymmetry in the international equity market has become a very important topic the question of whether domestic investors have better information than foreign investors has also become increasingly controversial for instance a few papers argue that domestic investors have a linguistic and cultural advantage brennan and cao 1997 choe kho and stulz 2001 and hau 2001 others argue that foreign investors have an informational advantage because they possess a significant amount of investment experience and expertise seasholes 2000 grinblatt and keloharju 2000

volatility volume co movements evidence from china metal markets abstractthis article investigates the interactional relationship between price volatility and futures trading activity for three heavily traded metal products on the shanghai metal exchange and the shanghai futures exchange using models based on vector autoregression and generalized method of moments we show in particular that futures trading activity has a strong impact on both spot and futures price volatility in copper and aluminium markets futures trading activity leads spot market volatility in copper and aluminium markets which suggests that futures markets have a destabilizing effect in order to disentangle the effect of different traders types on asset price movements we decompose futures trading into speculators and hedgers trading and investigate their contributions to volatility as a robustness check we investigate the impact of endogenous structural breaks on the interactional relationship between price volatility and futures trading

completing china s move to the market beginning in late 1978 by luck as much as design china arrived at a strategy for market oriented economic reform that combined substantial reform with rapid growth in gdp and exports the sequencing of reform began with the easy to reform sectors agriculture and foreign trade and then took up the more difficult task of reforming the large state owned enterprises with respect to agriculture small scale industry and foreign investment china found ways of introducing meaningful property rights into the increasingly marketized system a partially unreformed financial system and inadequate autonomy of large state enterprises accounts however for the current stop go nature of chinese development

some new filter rule tests methods and results mechanical trading rules seem to have more potential than previous tests found fama and blume 1966 looking at the dow 30 of the late 1950s found no profits for the best vipercent rule after adjusting for transactions costs fifteen of these stocks looked profitable in their sample however for the same rule the surviving fourteen show statistically significant profits for 1970 1982 for transactions costs obtainable by floor traders the test used here assumes constant risk premia or more generally that risk premia are on average approximately the same on days in as for the total period

how to reform a planned economy lessons from china the countries of eastern europe and the former soviet union have been flooded with advice from the west on how to liberalize their planned econo mies this advice is unfortunately offered in an empirical vacuum no one knows how these econo mies will react to the proposed liberalization meas ures there exists however a neglected source of information china offers a long time series of data over a decade s worth on the effects of reforms on a planned economy china s reforms were gradual but their cumulative effect has been large and they have been remarkably successful china s experiments provide some practical les sons on what kinds of reforms can work elsewhere the dominant school of thought among economists favours the big bang policy of reforming quickly and according to a comprehensive plan partial reforms in this view are useless they will be negated by the remnants of the planning system the proponents of big bang reform have been influential with poland czechoslovakia and rus sia announcing plans for a rapid transition to capi talism