are overconfident ceos born or made evidence of self attribution bias from frequent acquirers we explore the history of mergers and acquisitions made by individual ceos our study has three main findings 1 ceos first deals exhibit zero announcement effects while their subsequent deals exhibit negative announcement effects 2 while acquisition likelihood increases in the performance associated with previous acquisitions previous positive performance does not curb the negative wealth effects associated with subsequent deals and 3 ceos net purchase of stock is greater preceding subsequent deals than it is for first deals we interpret these results as consistent with self attribution bias leading to overconfidence we also find evidence that the market anticipates future deals based on the ceo s acquisition history and impounds such anticipation into stock prices

distortionary taxes and the provision of public goods economists have long been concerned with finding an efficient level of public expenditure the classic statement of the problem was given by paul samuelson 1954 an optimal level of expenditure is where the sum of the marginal rates of substitution between the public good and a reference good equals the marginal rate of transformation between the public good and the reference good mrs mrt however samuelson s formula assumes that all of the revenue needed to finance public goods can be raised with lump sum taxes since this is not generally possible the formula must be modified to account for the distortionary effects of the tax system an appropriate modification is to multiply the cost side of the equation by a term that is commonly called the marginal cost of public funds mcf in the case of samuelson s formula where government is entirely financed with lump sum taxes the mcf would be exactly 1 0 in the traditional view of economists distortionary taxes cause the mcf to be greater than one thus raising the cost of providing public goods in this paper we discuss some cases where the mcf may be less than one we will illustrate this possibility using numerical examples for labor taxes

the impact of sunday shopping on employment and hours of work in the retail industry evidence from canada abstract between 1980 and 1998 every canadian province passed legislation that in some way relaxed restrictions on sunday shopping this study exploits the variation in deregulation dates between provinces to identify how retail employers adjust employment and hours of work when deciding to open on sundays a major complication of this analysis is to first determine for which provinces the deregulation dates are useful indicators of increases in sunday store openings this paper uses a unique trading day regression approach to identify these provinces and then uses aggregate data from the selected provinces to estimate a simple dynamic labour demand model that allows employment and hours to be imperfect substitutes in production the results suggest that retailers needs for sunday labour were disproportionately satisfied through increases in employment levels comparison of the estimates at three levels of the retail industry suggests that the employment and hours gains were larger among general merchandise stores than among more specialized retail establishments and relatively modest at the aggregate retail industry level in addition despite evidence of an immediate shortfall in the employment level below the long run optimal level the results suggest that firms were unable to compensate by temporarily increasing the hours of their existing employees

upgrading in global value chains lessons from latin american clusters it has been shown that clustering helps local enterprises in industrial districts overcome growth constraints and compete in distant markets in advanced and less developed countries nevertheless recent contributions have stressed that more attention needs to be paid to external linkages and to the role played by global buyers to foster upgrading at cluster levels in this study we contribute to this debate focusing on the analysis of the relationships existing between clustering global value chains upgrading and sectoral patterns of innovation in latin america we find that sectoral specificities matter and influence the mode and the extent of upgrading in clusters integrated in global value chains

information aggregation with costly information and random ordering experimental evidence the cost of information is an often ignored factor in economic situations although the information acquisition behavior of the decision makers has a crucial influence on the outcome in this experiment we study an information aggregation process in which participants decide in a random sequence participants observe predecessors decisions and can acquire additional private information at a fixed price we analyze participants information acquisition behavior and updating procedures about one half of the individuals act rationally whereas the other participants systematically overestimate the private signal value this leads to excessive signal acquisitions and reduced conformity

market impacts of technological change for sorghum in indian near subsistence agriculture evaluating market impacts of technological change for near subsistence crops like sorghum in semiarid tropical india is complicated because of diversified agricuiture geographically isolated markets and therefore feedbacks through prices and producer demander income links for such products dynamic simulations with a multicommodity market model suggest that increased sorghum productivity would have spillover effects on other markets increase the welfare of sorghum consumers and probably lower the sorghum price contrary to speculations of some experts the output gain probably would be greater than the pure productivity effect despite the price decline because of induced input allocations favoring sorghum production

the private sector in agricultural research systems will it fill the gap abstract this article examines whether the private sector can fill the gap of declining public research in developing countries economic theory suggests private for profit research will focus on areas where returns to research are appropriable and reasonable profits are generated actual private for profit research activities concentrate on countries and industries with large markets appropriable returns strong science infrastructure and favorable government policies governments and donors can promote private research by easing constraints to private entry and operations but if governments stop funding research on public goods and technologies with limited market potential the private sector is unlikely to fill the gap completely

the search for a new paradigm for the development of national agricultural research systems this paper first reviews trends in the recent evolution of investment in national agricultural research systems it then synthesizes the major elements of an emerging paradigm for viewing the future evolution of research systems this paradigm has arisen in response to the funding crisis in public research organizations in the 1990s and the declining capacity of many of these organizations key elements of this new paradigm are a pluralistic institutional structure a growing role for the private sector new mechanisms for research funding improved efficiency and effectiveness of public research organizations and strengthening of global scientific links

why shops close again an evolutionary perspective on the deregulation of shopping hours this paper introduces a new perspective on the deregulation of shopping hours based on ideas from evolutionary game theory we study a retail economy where shopping hours have been deregulated recently it is argued that first the deregulation leads to a coordination problem between store owners and customers and second the solution to this problem depends on the specific cost structure of stores and the preferences of customers in particular it may happen that even if extended shopping hours are pareto efficient stores and customers do not succeed in coordinating on this equilibrium the analysis explains the observation in germany where shopping hours have been deregulated recently that store owners tend to go back to the former shopping hours again moreover it emphasizes the important role of advertisement campaigns as a signalling device

is the united states really underinvesting in agricultural research that the level of public investment in u s agricultural research is too low is widely accepted this paper argues that there are two important limitations to the evidence assembled in support of the underinvestment hypothesis a many authors have compared the social rate of return to public investments with the private rate of return to private investments b costs of public expenditures on agricultural research have been underestimated by a failure to account for the marginal excess burden of the tax collection system taking these two factors into account evidence in support of the underinvestment hypothesis is weakened considerably

accessing modern science policy and institutional options for agricultural biotechnology in developing countries the paper highlights the complexity of the challenge in developing forms of collaboration between a variety of actors in the biotechnology area in developing countries national research systems with diverse capacities in biotechnology international research centers local private research and development companies and advanced research institutes in both industrialized and developing countries case studies are provided from strong programs such as india china and brazil which will be tool developers as well as users programs that are developing an adaptive capacity in biotech to use tools and methods in a large number of countries whose research systems have virtually no capacity in molecular biology each type program presents challenges and opportunities for accessing new technologies based on facilitation of private investments public private partnerships and local capacity to design proprietary technologies working with the consultative group on international agricultural research centers as intermediaries and partners and with regional consortia policy and institutional issues for accessing modern science are then discussed and many of the challenges involve developing strategies in intellectual property management while pubic research organizations will need to develop innovative means of segmenting markets to complement private sector interests

does past success lead analysts to become overconfident this paper provides evidence that analysts who have predicted earnings more accurately than the median analyst in the previous four quarters tend to be simultaneously less accurate and further from the consensus forecast in their subsequent earnings prediction this phenomenon is economically and statistically meaningful the results are robust to different estimation techniques and different control variables our findings are consistent with an attribution bias that leads analysts who have experienced a short lived success to become overconfident in their ability to forecast future earnings

earnings skewness and analyst forecast bias abstract we argue that if analysts objective is to provide the most accurate forecast by minimizing the mean absolute forecast error then the optimal forecast is the median instead of the mean earnings forecast bias is observed when the median is different from the mean in a skewed earnings distribution thus part of the observed analyst forecast bias could be a result of analysts efforts to improve forecast accuracy when the earnings distribution is skewed we find that earnings skewness is significantly related to analyst forecast bias we also provide evidence that the market adjusts for part of the skewness induced bias

deregulation of shopping hours the impact on independent retailers and chain stores this paper studies shopping hour decisions by retail chains and independent competitors we use a salop type model where retailers compete in prices and shopping hours our results depend significantly on efficiency differences between retail chain and independent retailer if the efficiency difference is small the independent retailer may choose longer shopping hours than the retail chain and may gain from deregulation at the expense of the retail chain the opposite result emerges when the efficiency difference is large then the retail chain may benefit whereas the independent retailer loses from deregulation

shopping hours and price levels in the retailing industry a theoretical and empirical analysis i introduction the debate surrounding shopping laws is very much the same regardless of the country in which it occurs the traditional objectives of regulating store opening hours can be divided into four categories i to guarantee access to essential goods and services ii to promote and protect a certain way of life iii to protect small businesses and iv to assure a day of rest for everyone despite these concerns the recent trend in canadian provinces is to extend store opening hours in the retailing industry for instance in july 1990 the quebec government allowed retail stores to stay open on wednesday nights and on sundays the recent deregulation was prompted by changes in lifestyles and increasing constraints on the time people can devote to shopping activities perhaps the most significant are that the number of one parent families is increasing as is the number of couples in which both spouses work there is evidence that changes in opening hours influence the structure of the retailing industry morrison and newman 1983 show that there is a redistribution of sales from small stores to large stores after deregulation an empirical study by moorehouse 1984 shows that in the united states those states that strictly regulate store opening hours do have a smaller proportion of large stores building on their work we examine the short term impact of extended shopping hours on prices at large stores to determine whether consumers have to pay higher prices for greater shopping flexibility to our knowledge this issue has not been addressed in the literature first we develop an extension of morrison and newman s 1983 theoretical model inspired by becker 1965 and location models pioneered by hotelling 1929 chamberlin 1951 1962 lancaster 1966 and salop 1977 we deem the price of a good to have two components the price itself and the time spent by the consumer to purchase the good thus opening hours and store location play a role in the determination of prices we explore the effect of increased opening hours on the demand faced by stores of different sizes and thus on their price levels among other things our model predicts that after deregulation price levels at large stores will increase because of a demand shift in favor of large stores at the expense of small stores we then test this prediction using pooled time series and cross section data prices of five products for thirty one weeks collected before and after the deregulation of store hours in quebec on july 8 1990 the data were collected at three major food stores in the montreal area we obtain estimates of price equations using the pooling method developed by kmenta 1986 the results support our view that prices have increased at large stores since the deregulation the rest of the paper is organized as follows in section ii we develop our analytical framework section iii presents the data and the estimation strategy since a price increase may signal an increase in costs rather than an increase in demand we deal explicitly with this issue in that section of the paper we discuss the empirical results in section iv and we conclude in section v ii the model the following analysis extends that of morrison and newman 1983 a brief initial overview of their work is needed to develop the necessary notation and to set up the problem in their model morrison and newman make two simplifying yet standard assumptions they assume a single perfectly divisible homogeneous commodity and only two types of stores large and small thus consumers choose to shop at small or large stores to minimize the total cost tc of purchasing the commodity on a given shopping trip the total cost includes the cost of the bundle of goods p sub j b where p sub j is the price per unit at store j and b is the bundle size a consumer intends to buy and his own valuation of the time needed to travel to the store a

selected policy issues in international agricultural research on striving for international public goods in an era of donor fatigue abstract international agricultural research is a small but critically important part of the global research system its importance derives from the extent of international spillovers the efficiencies of working across national boundaries for many research products and the productivity boosting collegiality and cost reducing benefits thereof of sharing information and materials while fostering the advance of agricultural science generally financial difficulties pervade the international as well as national elements of the global system so it is an appropriate time to examine some of the threats to effective functioning of an international system that is needed for its key contributions to productivity growth suggestions are made for boosting efficiency of the international agricultural research centers and strengthening their support of national research efforts in the developing world

the bright side of managerial over optimism human estimation and inference are subject to systematic biases such as overconfidence and over optimism in contrast to prior research that has identified multiple negative consequences of these biases we focus on positive effects we empirically examine a setting in which over optimism a is a related but different bias from overconfidence b emerges dynamically in a rational economic framework and c generates higher managerial effort importantly this additional effort improves firm profitability and market value

terrorist attacks analyst sentiment and earnings forecasts we examine whether exogenous and extremely negative events such as terrorist attacks and mass shootings influence the sentiment and forecasts of sell side equity analysts we find that analysts w

encouraging private sector research for tropical agriculture summary agricultural needs in poor tropical countries differ significantly from those in temperate rich countries yet little agricultural research is performed on products for the tropics private research is particularly concentrated in rich countries this is a result of significant failures in the market for research and development r d in particular the difficulty of preventing the resale of seed in developing countries to encourage private r d in tropical agriculture traditional funding of research may be usefully supplemented by a commitment to reward developers of specific new agricultural technologies rewards tied to adoption may be especially useful in increasing up take an illustration of how a commitment to reward developers of new agricultural technologies might work is provided

measuring the impacts of agricultural research on poverty reduction policymakers are increasingly calling upon agricultural research managers to consider poverty reduction objectives when making resource allocations the authors present a simple method to measure the impact of agricultural research on the poor this method has the advantage that it presents the results in a manner consistent with commonly used measures of poverty this consistency and focus should facilitate and enhance dialogue between policymakers and research managers when deciding on resource allocations and assessing impacts on poverty reduction an illustrative application is presented using data from malawi

timing constraints and the allocation of time the effects of changing shopping hours regulations in the netherlands abstract a 1996 change in shopping hours regulations in the netherlands provides an opportunity to study the effects of timing constraints on total time spent in shopping working and other activities as well as the timing of these activities we develop a simple structural model to make predictions about the effects of imposition and relaxation of a timing constraint on time use patterns and utilize time diary data from 1995 1997 1999 and 2000 to examine time use patterns by demographic group before and after the change in addition to a change in the timing of shopping we find a non negligible increase in the total time spent shopping

modern varieties productivity and sustainability recent experience and emerging challenges abstract the contribution of modern varieties of cereal crops to increased productivity in the postgreen revolution period is reviewed and the future role of hybrids and biotechnology discussed particular emphasis is given to the ways in which modern varieties may contribute to input efficiency and sustainability finally economic and institutional issues in restructuring plant breeding programs for the most efficient use of resources in both the public and private sectors and at the national and international levels are analyzed

public and private returns from joint venture research an example from agriculture public research institutions are turning increasingly to the private sector for additional financial support such a trend in the short run lessens the need for public research expenditures but may in the long run prove to be very costly to the economy as a whole this is because private funding increases the chance that the direction of research will shift so that private benefits are enhanced such a shift is especially costly if public research funds are then not forthcoming that would have the potential of producing the maximum level of benefits to the economy as a whole a case study of canadian barley research is used to illustrate this problem

shopping hours and price competition abstract this paper develops an argument why retail prices may rise in response to the deregulation of opening hours we make this point in a model of imperfect duopolistic competition in a deregulated market retailers view the choice of opening hours as a means to increase the degree of perceived product differentiation thus relaxing price competition if the consumers preference intensity for time is sufficiently high the equilibrium configuration has asymmetric shopping hours where one retailer stays open for longer than the other both retailers charge higher prices than under regulation and both are strictly better off

mapping technological trajectories of the green revolution and the gene revolution from modernization to globalization abstract the dynamics of technology development along the technological trajectories of the green revolution and the gene revolution could be explicated by the social morphologies of modernization and globalization the green revolution was shaped by the exigencies of modernization while the gene revolution is being shaped by the imperatives of neo liberal economic globalization innovation development and diffusion of technologies followed different trajectories in these two realms because of being part of different innovation systems considerations of private gain and profit in the form of high returns to shareholders of agro biotech corporations of global reach largely determine the dynamics of technological innovation in the gene revolution technology transfer and local adaptive work in the green revolution was carried out in the international public domain with the objective of developing research capacity in post colonial third world agriculture to increase food production to avert hunger led political insurrection during the cold war differentiating these two trajectories is important not only due to the normative implications inherent in comparing the impacts of these two revolutions but also due to the important lessons we learn about how different contexts of innovation in the same technology cluster could evolve into contrasting research policy regimes

compensating variation consumer s surplus and welfare the compensating variation was defined by j r hicks 1942 as the amount one would have to deduct from a person s income to make him just as well off after a change in prices and income as he had been in the initial situation if the compensating variation is positive the individual is better off under the new situation since the compensating variation furnishes a uniquely defined numerical cardinal indicator of welfare improvement it provides an implicit ranking of alternative prospective situations not only relative to the initial situation but also relative to each other in practice this appears to be how this and other tools of cost benefit analysis are actually used one is interested in knowing not only whether a particular bridge or a particular excise tax will lead to an improvement in welfare but which out of a set of alternative bridges or alternative tax systems will improve welfare the most 1 in this paper we analyze conditions under which the compensating variation can be validly used in this generalized sense these turn out to be precisely the same as conditions previously derived see our 1976 paper for the valid use of consumer s surplus as a welfare measure in our final section we analyze the problem of deriving the generalized equivalent and compensating variations either exactly or approximately from observable demand functions by means of generalizations of or alternatives to consumer s surplus

is tullock correct about sunday closing laws the evidence presented in this note suggests that other things equal the imposition of a sunday closing law reduces the number of food stores in a given market this finding directly contradicts tullock s hypothesis about the long run effects of sunday closing laws on investment in food stores by implication the evidence also casts doubt on the appropriateness of using sunday closing laws as an example of a government sanctioned privilege that generates no long run benefits even to those who sought the grant of privilege in the first place but there is little surprise in all this particularly if the real impetus behind blue laws comes not from store keepers seeking higher profit margins but from those of certain religious convictions as the preamble to the arkansas statute says keeping a grocery open on sunday is a temptation to vice p 569 however while tullock s particular illustration may be a poor one his main thesis concerning the transitional gains trap remains a useful insight

plant variety protection in developing countries a report from the field the establishment of intellectual property rights iprs for plant varieties has caused considerable controversy but there is relatively little empirical evidence on performance and options in developing countries this paper summarizes the results of a recent five country study concentrating on the conduct of plant variety protection pvp regimes it examines pvp in the context of other mechanisms that provide incentives for plant breeding it discusses the principal options available to developing countries and examines the ability of pvp to offer protection from competing firms and from on farm seed saving it also looks at the administrative and management requirements of pvp regimes although the paper does not discuss patent protection for biotechnology it examines the ipr requirements for the introduction of transgenic varieties developing countries need to establish an appropriate pvp system but pvp should be seen as part of a broader strategy for seed system development

private research and public benefit the private seed industry for sorghum and pearl millet in india in contrast to conventional wisdom private firms are spending substantial amounts of money on research to develop new cultivars for small farmer subsistence agriculture indian firms spend almost as much as the government on breeding pearl millet and sorghum the hybrids developed by firms are becoming popular with farmers about 900 000 ha were planted with private pearl millet and sorghum hybrids in 1987 the higher yields of private hybrids increased grain output by at least 200 000 t although prices for seed of private hybrids are higher than seed of cultivars developed by government research most of the benefits from private breeding research accrue to farmers and consumers the research for this paper was primarily financed by usaid new delhi we also received support from icrisat we would like to thank the scientists of the aicsip a1cpmip iari officials of the ministry of agriculture nsc sscs and executives of private seed companies for their cooperation we also appreciate the comments of john witcombe tom walker and wayne freeman on earlier drafts of this paper the opinions expressed in the paper are those of the authors and do not represent the opinions of usaid or icrisat

the private delivery of public crop varieties rice in andhra pradesh although there has been a considerable growth of private seed enterprises in developing countries there are few examples of the private delivery of seed of public crop varieties that are not hybrids this paper discusses the example of rice in andhra pradesh where private enterprise is supplying an increasing proportion of the seed used by farmers the institutional conditions for private expansion into rice seed are examined the paper discusses instances where low transaction costs allow for the emergence of a wide range of seed enterprises but despite the success of private seed delivery inadequate attention has been given to incentives for variety promotion and to the importance of consumer education

endogenous overconfidence in managerial forecasts abstract we examine whether attribution bias leads managers who have experienced short term forecasting success to become overconfident in their ability to forecast future earnings importantly this form of overconfidence is endogenous and dynamic we also examine the effect of this cognitive bias on the managerial credibility consistent with the existence of dynamic overconfidence managers who have predicted earnings accurately in the previous four quarters are less accurate in their subsequent earnings predictions these managers also display greater divergence from the analyst consensus and are more precise lastly investors and analysts react less strongly to forecasts issued by overconfident managers

the political economy of public research investment and commodity policies in agriculture an empirical study the paper tests a political economy theory of simultaneous government decision making on income redistribution through commodity policies and on public research investment in agriculture we use data from 37 countries on agricultural protection and public agricultural research expenditures pari the empirical results are consistent with the political economy hypotheses the analysis suggest that structural changes in the economy have important effects on the political incentives for governments not only to subsidize or tax farmers but also to invest in public agricultural research furthermore the analysis supports the hypotheses that the impact of such structural changes on government decision making on pari is non linear and conditional on other factors regarding the impact of political institutions the results suggest that more democracy neither leads to more distortionary transfers agricultural protection nor to lower investment in public goods pari

institutions and the r d of gm crops abstract this paper analyzes how different institutional structures shape the research and development r d of genetically modified crops gm crops whether this r d is conducted within companies cooperatives or public research organizations both publicly and privately funded r d is expected to influence the type of crops and traits that are developed and therefore the effects on society and ecosystems that potentially could follow from the use of gm crops this issue is analyzed empirically by statistical analysis of 1323 notifications for field trials with gm crops that have been submitted under two eu directives in seven european countries the results show that the type of r d organization influences the traits and crops that are developed companies are more likely to submit notifications that concern gm crops that secure the potential for profit than are other types of r d organizations while r d organizations that are purely publicly funded are more likely to submit notifications that only concern biosafety research than are cooperatives and companies consideration of the environment food safety and food security might justify institutional reforms of r d of gm crops this might include increased public funding combined with changes in intellectual property rights

crafting smallholder driven agricultural research systems in southern africa abstract the national agricultural research systems narss in sub saharan africa have made enormous progress over the past four decades in replacing european with african scientists increasing the number of scientists and shifting priorities from export to food crops nevertheless most narss are having difficulty in producing a steady stream of new technologies for small scale farms and in generating adequate financial support from their government zimbabwe and malawi are among the first countries in africa to mount indigenousled reforms of their narss this paper documents the steps taken by the agricultural research council of zimbabwe to generate a consensus among scientists farmers and policy makers to reform the national agricultural research system by increasing the voice of smallholders and other stakeholders in setting research priorities making scientists more accountable to smallholders and generating new sources of financial support from user fees and taxes on commodities malawi is pursuing a commodity approach to revitalizing its narss the experience of both zimbabwe and malawi has shown that there is no blueprint for reforming narss in africa donors can assist the reform process by supporting local initiatives to craft smallholder driven research systems that are staffed with accountable scientists who are adequately financed from local sources

invisible hands indigenous knowledge and inevitable fads challenges to public sector agricultural research in ghana abstract support for public sector agricultural research in developing countries is declining at the same time many donors feel that alternative institutions will be able to perform the functions traditionally reserved for the public sector these alternatives include private sector initiatives nongovernment organizations and farmer organizations and highly publicized special projects in agricultural development the logic of these alternatives is examined using evidence on maize research in ghana although each of the alternatives offers contributions and public sector research undoubtedly requires an overhaul emphasis is placed on the necessity of continued suport to building strong public sector agricultural research capacity

the politics of technological upgrading international transfer to and adaptation of gm cotton in argentina summary we describe patterns of international transfer to and adaptation of genetically modified gm cotton in argentina and ask whether political bargaining between the technology owner a multinational enterprise mne and host country actors may have influenced upgrading we suggest that the mne was able to use its exclusive capacity to upgrade gm cotton technologies as a negotiation tool to persuade host actors to change the rules that affected its multi lines of business in the country this implies wider policy scope to encourage technology upgrading host actors could negotiate over a wider range of aspects of interest to mnes

biased forecasts or biased earnings the role of reported earnings in explaining apparent bias and over underreaction in analysts earnings forecasts the extensive literature that investigates whether analysts earnings forecasts are biased and or inefficient has produced conflicting evidence and no definitive answers to either question this paper shows how two relatively small but statistically influential asymmetries in the tail and the middle of distributions of analysts forecast errors can exaggerate or obscure evidence consistent with analyst bias and inefficiency leading to inconsistent inferences we identify an empirical link between firms recognition of unexpected accruals and the presence of the two asymmetries in distributions of forecast errors that suggests that firm reporting choices play an important role in determining analysts forecast errors r 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

do sell side stock analysts exhibit escalation of commitment this paper presents evidence that when an analyst makes an out of consensus forecast of a company s quarterly earnings that turns out to be incorrect she escalates her commitment to maintaining an out of consensus view on the company relative to an analyst who was close to the consensus the out of consensus analyst adjusts her forecasts for the current fiscal year s earnings less in the direction of the quarterly earnings surprise on average this type of updating behavior reduces forecasting accuracy so it does not seem to reflect superior private information further empirical results suggest that analysts do not have financial incentives to stand by extreme stock calls in the face of contradictory evidence managerial and financial market implications are discussed

on the adoption of genetically modified seeds in developing countries and the optimal types of government intervention given the proprietary nature of most genetically modified gm seed technologies the question arises as to how farmers in developing countries can gain proper access based on empirical observations a theoretical model is developed focusing on farmers adoption decisions in response to pricing strategies of a foreign monopolist and a domestic supplier of conventional seeds government interventions such as seed subsidies encouragement of r d and intellectual property rights ipr enforcement and their effects on gm coverage and national welfare are analyzed the possibility of the government obtaining a license to distribute gm seeds domestically through a transfer to the monopolist is also considered

the economic efficiency of sunday trading restrictions restriction of shop opening hours is current but controversial pr actice in britain and much of europe the economic case presented for such restrictions is that given the constraint that individual shop s may not vary their price by time of day competitive pressures woul d induce excessive opening at times when high costs would be incurred such as on sundays the authors show that such inefficient equilib ria are a theoretical possibility empirical evidence on retail costs and demand in the united kingdom shows that this case does not arise in practice and that deregulation of opening hours would lead to low er costs and prices copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

do security analysts improve their performance with experience we investigate if sell side security analysts generate more accurate quarterly earnings forecasts and more profitable stock recommendations as their experience following a specific firm increases we measure firmspecific experience as the number of prior quarters for which the analyst has issued an earnings forecast for the firm if analysts improve their forecasting performance with repetition as suggested by the learning by doing lbd model an analyst s earnings forecasts will become more accurate with experience prior empirical work provides mixed evidence on whether analysts exhibit individual forecasting performance differences e g butler and

hours of operation restrictions and competition aming retail firms this study examines the redistributive effects of government regulations concerning the hours in which retail stores may remain open for business throughout canada municipal by laws restrict nighttime shopping hours to a few specified days of the week in analyzing the outcome of these restrictions a model of consumer behaviour is used which emphasizes the consumers s decision concerning the allocation of purchases between small and large retail outlets the empirical results are consistant with the theoretical model indicating that such market intervention redistributes sales from large to small stores

the impact of economic reforms on r d by the indian seed industry abstract declining support for public research and advances in technology and new forms of legal protection have induced more private agricultural research in developing countries this has sparked a debate about appropriate policies regarding private research in this context we examine empirically the consequences of reforms in india s seed policies which loosened various restrictions on the private sector the period since the reforms has shown a remarkable increase in r d effort and an increase in the number of private technology suppliers we argue these changes were largely due to policy reforms

supplying crop biotechnology to the poor opportunities and constraints abstract unlike the public sector research that launched the green revolution private firms based in industrialised countries have done the majority of agricultural biotechnology research and almost all commercialisation of genetically modified gm crops this paper examines consequences of the emergence of a few large companies as leaders in the commercialisation of biotechnology by addressing issues of access to technology costs of conducting research and distribution of economic benefits to provide context we first review the status of crop biotechnology research globally who is benefiting from the technology we then analyse the role of intellectual property rights market access and industry concentration public sector research and gm crop biosafety regulations in determining observed r d by firms the paper recommends policy measures that allow transfer of current technology to the poor and generate more biotechnology research focused on problems of the poor

a new theory of retailing costs in cross section studies of shops of the same type we find that costs in general and labour in particular depend on the sales size per shop according to a linear function with a positive intercept this paper provides some empirical evidence and a theoretical explanation based on queuing theory

financing agricultural research international investment patterns and policy perspectives abstract for much of the post wwii period governments in rich and poor countries alike have increased public spending on and performance of agricultural research the public involvement in and policies toward agricultural research and development r d have undergone a sea of change in more recent years in this article we document these changes focusing on the public and rapidly evolving private roles in financing agricultural r d and the international dimensions of these funding and policy issues we restate the principles for government intervention in research and highlight the financing aspects of these interventions before concluding the paper with some reflections on the implications of all these changes for internationally conceived and funded public agricultural r d

ceo hubris and firm risk taking in china the moderating role of managerial discretion this study linked ceo hubris to firm risk taking and examined the moderating role of managerial discretion in this relationship drawing on upper echelons theory and behavioral decision theory we

the incidence of agricultural policies abstract a general equilibrium model is used to analyze agricultural policy incidence in the presence of distortionary income taxation the incidence of lump sum transfers to farmers supply control through input retirement and production subsidies are considered partial equilibrium incidence calculations are shown to systematically overstate the benefits farmers receive from farm programs kaldor s compensation test is used to judge the relative efficiency inefficiency of alternative farm programs at the margin supply control through input retirement may dominate decoupled lump sum transfers if the tax system is very inefficient and subsidy payments are high

security analysts career concerns and herding of earnings forecasts several theories of reputation and herding see e g scharfstein and stein 1990 suggest that herding among agents should vary with career concerns our goal in this paper is to document whether such a link exists in the labor market for security analysts specifically we look at the relationship between an analyst s job tenure a proxy for career concerns and various measures of stock earnings forecast performance we establish the following key results 1 older analysts are more likely to produce earnings forecasts of firms before younger ones 2 their forecasts also deviate more from the consensus forecast than their younger counterparts we argue that these results are consistent with some reputational models of herding we also establish a number of auxiliary findings regarding the relationship between forecast accuracy and frequency of forecast revisions with job tenure

information cascades replication and an extension to majority rule and conformity rewarding institutions in a randomly determined order each agent was given an independent private signal about which of two states was selected by a random draw after receiving the private signal each agent made a publicly announced decision about the state thus at the time of personal decision each agent had a private signal and also knew the decisions of all preceding agents the experiments focused on three different types of organization 1 agents were rewarded according to whether their announced decision was right or wrong this individualistic institution is the one studied by anderson and holt aer 1997 their discovery of information cascades is replicated 2 agents were rewarded according to whether a majority of announced decisions were right or wrong under this majority rule institution the instance of information cascades is sharply reduced 3 agents are rewarded more according to whether their personal announced decision was the same as the majority decision than they were rewarded if their decision was correct this conformity rewarding institution is motivated by proceedings in which there is incentive to produce reports that conform to the reports of others substantial information cascades are observed

grand missions of agricultural innovation abstract this paper discusses three related examples of mission oriented agricultural institutional innovations associated with substantial crop yield increases in the 20th century it begins with the implementation of the united states land grant system and then discusses in turn the planning and implementation of the two grand missions that led successively to the yield increases in wheat and rice that heralded the onset of the green revolution it notes the remarkable role of the rockefeller foundation in identifying these two missions and selecting personnel developed within the land grant system to execute them with remarkable effectiveness

inefficiency in analysts earnings forecasts systematic misreaction or systematic optimism a rational analysis of analyst behavior predicts that analysts immediately and without bias incorporate information into their forecasts several studies document analysts tendency to systematically underreact to information underreaction is inconsistent with rationality other studies indicate that analysts systematically overreact to new information or that they are systematically optimistic this study discriminates between these three hypotheses by examining the interaction between the nature of information and the type of reaction by analysts the evidence indicates that analysts underreact to negative information but overreact to positive information these results are consistent with systematic optimism in response to information the literature on financial analysts defines the phrase forecast inefficiency to mean forecasts that fail to accurately incorporate new information on a timely basis and or that are biased these forecasts have also been described as irrational or suboptimal prior studies report inefficiency in analysts forecasts finding that they are upwardly biased and inaccurately reflect available information some studies conclude from this that analysts underreact to information other studies conclude that analysts overreact if markets treat analysts forecasts as both rational and statistically optimal then inefficient forecasts could have important implications for the efficiency of pricing in securities markets in this paper we reexamine the apparent tendency of analysts to misinterpret earnings information the intent of this study is to discriminate between three hypotheses 1 that analysts systematically underreact to new earnings information 2 that analysts systematically overreact to new earnings information and 3 that analysts are systematically optimistic in their reactions for hypotheses 1 and 2 the direction of the misinterpretation i e underor overreaction is independent of the nature of the information received in contrast hypothesis 3 predicts that analysts are optimistic in interpreting

why research partnerships really matter innovation theory institutional arrangements and implications for developing new technology for the poor abstract this paper explores the conceptual basis for existing and emergent institutional patterns in the context of partnership approaches to technology development drawing examples from recent studies of private enterprise activity in india smallholder horticulture it suggests that agricultural innovation as a process involves a wider range of organizational types than the conventional policy focus on public sector research organizations would tend to suggest it uses the concept of a national innovation system to argue that a partnership approach is adopted as a core methodology for engaging science and technology development with the livelihood demands of the poor

public agricultural r d design and technological spill ins a dynamic model the paper presents a dynamic model for the analysis of the national agricultural research systems narss strategy in a context of increasing globalisation both intersectoral and international technology spill ins may greatly affect the nars design and this paper proposes an analytical framework for its study when major spill ins are present these spill ins are calculated by applying the yale technology concordance ytc methodology a var vec model is then specified to detect empirically given the calculated spill ins what nars design prevails in a dynamic framework the model is estimated for the italian agriculture data and provides evidence of close dependency on external r d sources

recent developments in intellectual property and power in the private sector related to food and agriculture the legal protection of intellectual property ip has allowed private persons and enterprises to assert exclusive rights in relation to certain agricultural innovations whether through the protection of breeding innovations under plant variety rights protection laws or through the patenting of genes and gene fragments the increasing involvement of iprs in agriculture has effected a shift of agricultural research from public to private institutions this article examines the changes in the international ip landscape which has facilitated these developments and looks at the impacts of modern ip developments upon agricultural research and farmers it concludes with a consideration of ip liability issues arising from the development of gm agriculture

an argument for deregulating the transfer of agricultural technologies to developing countries in the past few decades many developing countries have liberalized trade and investment removing barriers to imports and allowing the introduction of new foreign technologies unfortunately agriculture often remains outside this reform process regulatory obstacles continue to restrain the transfer of technologies through private trade in seeds and other inputs industrial countries characteristically allow the transfer of private and public technologies through multiple channels developing countries often force technology transfer through a single channel controlled by government agencies with an emphasis on official performance tests this article analyzes the institutional arrangements governing the international transfer of new agricultural technologies examining the cases of agricultural machinery in bangladesh and seed varieties in turkey the analysis shows that allowing the private transfer of technologies and refocusing input regulations on externalities could lead to significant productivity and income gains in developing countries