Knowledge that Transforms

This paper investigates whether predictable patterns that previous empirical work in finance have isolated appear to be persistent and exploitable by portfolio managers. On a sample that is free from survivorship bias we construct a test wherein we simulate the purchases and sales an investor would undertake to exploit the predictable patterns, charging the appropriate transaction costs for buying and selling and using only publicly available information at the time of decision making. We restrict investment to large companies only to assure that the full cost of transactions is properly accounted for. We confirmed on our sample that contrarian strategies yield sizable excess returns after adjusting for risk, as measured by beta. Using analysts' estimates of long-term growth we construct a test of the Lakonishok, Shleifer, and Vishny (1994) hypothesis. We cannot reject the hypothesis that neither the low-expected-growth portfolio nor the high-expected-growth portfolio yielded any risk-adjusted excess return over the 1980s. Our finding suggests that the superior performance of contrarian strategies cannot adequately be explained by the superior performance of stocks with low expected growth.

This study estimates rates of deterioration and depreciation for a sample of used privately owned single- and twin-engine aircraft over the period 1971–1991. The adoption of a strict liability standard in the 1970s lead to a 775% increase in liability expenses for the manufacturers of private planes between 1977 and 1985, resulting in sharp increases in the prices of new and used planes throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. This period of rapid price inflation coincides with a decrease in the depreciation rates for used single- and twin-engine aircraft after 1975. In addition, our results indicate that the rate of deterioration is positively related to the required cost of engine maintenance. These findings call into question the commonly invoked assumption that depreciation rates may be treated as exogenously determined constants, and lend support to the hypothesis that deterioration and depreciation rates respond systematically to key economic variables.

Alexander's (1994) finding that the National Recovery Administration's Codes of Fair Competition led to a change in the critical concentration level during the 1930s is questioned. No regime switch is detected when a common industry sample is employed. Also, when industries with and without codes are analyzed, codes appear to have no effect on price–cost margins during the period. This absence of effect is postulated to be a result of the unenforceability of trade practice provisions contained in many codes. The empirical results of this paper suggest that the existence of codes was not sufficient to enable industries to overcome cartel formation costs. Only easily enforceable trade practice provisions appear to have affected the structure–performance relation in the period following repeal of the National Industrial Recovery Act.

The Memoranda of Discussion provide detailed records of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting deliberations. Procedures are developed for coding the textual data in the Memoranda and assessing the reliability of those codings. The codings are then used in the estimation of parameters of individual FOMC members' reaction functions. Data from the 1970 to 1976 period are employed in the estimation. In the future, similar methods could be used to analyze newly released transcripts of FOMC meetings held after 1976.

In this paper we estimate oil and nonoil import demand functions for the United States under the assumption that import prices are uncertain. Both import demand functions are formally derived from an expected utility maximization problem, treating imports as inputs to the technology. The model allows us to test for risk aversion and to assess the impact of uncertainty on the volume of imports, gross output, and the distribution of income. We find that uncertainty leads to a reduction in welfare, imports, and gross output. Moreover, it hurts labor relatively much more than capital. The impact of uncertainty, however, is found to be quite small.

There is now a substantial body of evidence that suggests business cycles are asymmetric. However, the evidence has been accumulated using a wide array of statistical techniques and, consequently, is based on various definitions of asymmetry. This paper examines several parametric models that have been used to study asymmetries in real GNP. Although these models capture asymmetries in very different ways, their dynamic properties are remarkably similar.

This paper finds that domestic market concentration in Korea, a small country, systematically affects pass-through of individual industries. The estimates suggest that exchange rates are only partially passed on to import prices in Korea. The evidence implies that imperfect competition is relevant for the exchange rate pass-through, even in a small economy. This finding has important implications for issues such as inflationary effects of depreciation and the effect of trade liberalization.

We examine an econometric model of counts of worker absences due to illness in a sluggishly adjusting hedonic labor market. We compare three estimators that parameterize the conditional variance—least squares, Poisson, and negative binomial pseudo maximum likelihood—to generalized least squares (GLS) using nonparametric estimates of the conditional variance. Our data support the hedonic absenteeism model. Semiparametric GLS coefficients are similar in sign, magnitude, and statistical significance to coefficients where the mean and variance of the errors are specified ex ante. In our data, coefficient estimates are sensitive to a regressor list but not to the econometric technique, including correcting for possible heteroskedasticity of unknown form.

We analyze labor supply behavior and the choice between formal and informal sector work of the two spouses in families in urban areas of a developing country, using cross-section data from Bolivia drawn in 1989. The model generalizes the neoclassical family labor supply model. Nonmonetary returns of formal sector employment capture the fact that the choice between sectors is not exclusively based on wage differentials. Wage equations, nonmonetary returns equations, and labor supply equations are estimated jointly by smooth simulated maximum likelihood. We find substantial cross-wage elasticities of working hours of both partners, and large substitution elasticities between the two sectors.

This paper uses three different approaches to investigate whether the declining provision of public capital is a major cause of declining labor productivity. The juxtaposition of approaches removes the variability in estimates due to dissimilar variable definitions and econometric methodologies. Estimates are based on U.S. time-series data and are evaluated by the implied elasticities of substitution, the prediction of labor productivity trends, and the impact of public capital on productivity. As the three approaches yield very different estimates, it will be hard to ever settle the debate about the effect of public capital on private productivity.