Knowledge that Transforms

This paper studies the effects of the risk of relative price variability on the optimal structure of a firm's cash flows with an application of portfolio theory. It is suggested that, when relative price risk is greater, it is optimal for the management to diversify, at the margin, and emphasize economies of scale or scope when the risk is smaller. Conglomerate mergers should therefore be positively associated with relative price risk, given the variables affecting mergers as a whole. Empirical evidence is found to lend support to the theory. The inflation rate explains conglomerate mergers even better, which suggests that relative price risk may constitute another real resource cost of inflation.

This paper uses principal-agent theory to examine the optimal mix of monetary- and resource-based penalties in two institutional settings: a market economy and a centrally planned economy. In a centrally planned economy, an agent's wealth depends mostly on real resources and little on monetary resources; therefore, monetary-based penalties have less penalizing power than do resource-based penalties. Based on this premise, theory generates hypotheses regarding differences in the optimal mix of penalty types between the two economic systems. This paper empirically tests these hypotheses using data from the Czech Republic regarding enforcement responses to water-damaging accidents (such as oil spills).

This paper proposes a Bayesian approach for estimating and smoothing the baseline hazard in a discrete time hazard model. The hazard model is specified as a multiperiod probit model and estimated using a Gibbs sampler with data augmentation. The baseline hazard specification is smoothed using the smoothness priors introduced by Shiller (1973). The methods proposed in this paper are then used to study the effect of Canadian Unemployment Insurance eligibility rules on employment durations from New Brunswick, Canada.

We investigate asymmetries in the conditional mean dynamics of U.S. GNP. Because the statistical evidence on nonlinearities in the conditional mean could be influenced by the presence of outliers or by a failure to model conditional heter oske dasticity, we explicitly account for outliers by assuming that the innovations are drawn from the stable family, and model time-varying volatility by a GARCH(1, 1) process. We also allow for the possibility of long memory in the series with fractional differencing. Our results indicate statistically significant nonlinearities in the conditional mean that persist even after accounting for these features in the data.

This paper shows that firm-specific economies of scale—or net overall economies—are correlated with subadditivity. Both economies of scale and subadditivity are a decreasing function of firm size. Most firms are observed to be in the relatively flat portion of the long-run average cost curve, with pronounced economies of scale observable only at the low end of the scale. Economies of scope, as reflected in cost complementarities, do not appear to be a source of subadditivity. The results are estimated using translog total cost functions, and the fact that these cost functions include arguments for the quality of capital and of labor represents an innovation in methodology.

Canada is highly integrated with the U.S. economy. This north-south link, coupled with its east-west dimension, also renders Canadian production dependent on communication infrastructure. We investigate the influence of research and development (R&D) spillovers from U.S. manufacturing and Canadian communication infrastructure on Canadian manufacturing. Canadian production becomes relatively more R&D-intensive from communication spillovers. However, manufacturers substitute knowledge from U.S. spillovers for domestic R&D. U.S. spillovers cause production to become more plant- and equipment-intensive. Spillovers also enhance productivity. Communication infrastructure accounted for 8.5% of the growth, with the major source emanating from U.S. spillovers. They contributed 76% of the gains.

A model of major league baseball is developed which distinguishes between league behavior and individual team behavior. The league is viewed as setting rules that restrict the team's willingness to pay and/or impose costs on the transfer of players between teams. Given these rules, teams then compete for player services. The model is estimated and tested. The evidence suggests that the restrictive effect of league rules on player salaries declined between 1986-1988 and 1989-1991, consistent with anecdotal evidence. Within the rules established by the league, however, teams appear to behave as competitive price-takers through the entire sample period.

Restricted government spending along with universal health insurance has led to longer queues for surgical procedures in Canada versus the United States. Yet it is unclear whether these treatment delays affect health outcomes. This paper tests this hypothesis by comparing the determinants of wait time for hip-fracture surgery and its impact on postsurgery length of stay and inpatient mortality in Canada and the United States. Hazards for surgery/no surgery and discharge alive versus dead are modeled using a competing-risks model. Day of the week of admission is used to help identify the surgery wait-time distribution. We control for unobserved (to the econometrician) health status which may affect wait times and outcomes by assuming a semiparametric distribution for unobserved heterogeneity. We find that predicted hazards for inpatient mortality are virtually identical in Canada and the United States. Yet wait times for surgery are longer in Canada, and surgery delay has a significant impact on postsurgery length of stay in both countries. However, the magnitude of this effect is small relative to other patient and hospital-specific factors. Focusing attention on treatment delays as a weakness in the Canadian health care system may be misleading policymakers from hospital-specific inefficiencies that may have more-important implications for health care costs and patient welfare.

This paper analyzes the properties of a number of estimators that can be used to estimate short-run persistence in mutual fund returns. When data for different funds are pooled, it is advisable to correct for cross-sectional differences in expected returns. However, these adjustments may induce biases in the estimated persistence coefficients and thus lead to spurious persistence. Theoretical derivations, combined with a Monte Carlo study, show that these biases cannot be neglected for the samples that are typically used in applied work. We also estimate the short-run persistence in two samples of U.S. open-end mutual funds using quarterly returns for 1987–1994. An important conclusion is that the results are quite sensitive to the estimation method that is employed.

In this paper, we study the initial-conditions problem, a complication associated with left-censored or interrupted spells in the econometric analysis of labor market transitions. In the presence of unobserved individual-specific heterogeneity, no consistent estimators have been previously constructed. This paper proposes such an estimator using indirect inference (II). The II procedure simulates the structural model and “matches” the simulated data with the actual data via the implementation of an informative auxiliary model. Consistency and asymptotic normality of the II estimator are proved. Monte Carlo experiments as well as a real data set are used to illustrate the small-sample performance of the II estimator. These results show that the II estimator is insensitive to the alternative auxiliary models chosen for the II estimation.