The focus of this paper i s on the escape clause petitions filed under the Trade Act of 1974 (Section 201). First, the capital marketevent study method is used to analyze the effects of protection decisions. Then, cross-section regressions are performed to examine the influence of key variables on the observed market reaction. The authors conc lude that while protection is beneficial to beleaguered industries, the extent o f such benefits is quite narrowly circumscribed and is conditional on internal v ariables for each firm. Protection is thus not the panacea that its advocates cl aim. Copyright 1986 by MIT Press.

[We consider an economy in which agents may or may not communicate with each other. Coalitions can form only between linked agents. We consider two cases: agents must communicate directly to be in the same coalition or in the second case indirectly. We consider the communication to be random. The economy may then be represented by a stochastic graph; the admissible coalitions are then stochastic and thus so is the core of an economy. We demonstrate that if the probability that agents are linked with each other does not tend to zero too fast as this number increases, then the probability that a coalition will form and block any non-Walrasian allocation tends to one, as the number of agents goes to infinity.]

The hypothesis that crop production is more variable under socialism than under capitalism because of systemic differences between incentives and the structure of property rights in private and socialized farms is tested in two ways. The first test compares the variability of output for seven crops in five eastern European countries for a period when agriculture was private with a period when it was socialized. The second test compares the variability of output in state, collective, and private farms within each country. These tests confirm that socialization of agriculture increases the variability of crop output and that the source of this increased variability is not greater fluctuations in yields but rather in the acreage devoted to individual crops.

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the tax‐loss selling hypothesis as an explanation of the January seasonal in stock returns and argues that rational tax‐loss selling implies little relation between the January seasonal and the long‐term loss. Empirical results show that the January seasonal is as strongly related to the long‐term loss as it is to the short‐term loss. The evidence is inconsistent with a model that explains the January seasonal by optimal tax trading.

[The axiomatic derivation of mobility indices for first-order Markov chain models in discrete time is extended to continuous-time models. Many of the logical inconsistencies among axioms noted in the literature for the discrete time models do not arise for continuous time models. It is shown how mobility indices in continuous time Markov chains may be estimated from observations at two points in time. Specific attention is given to the case in which the states are fractiles, and an empirical example is presented.]

Now available directly from: IIE11 Dupont Circle, NWWashington, DC 20036Tel: (202) 328-9000This book traces the origins of international debt and recent trends that burden it, including the effect of oil price shocks, high interest rates, and world recession. It examines the extent of the financial system's vulnerability, and the adequacy of bank regulation and of central bank coverage for emergency lending to international banks.Recent international rescue measures mounted for the major developing countries are discussed, and the prospects for orderly servicing of the debt during the next three years are reviewed under alternative assumptions about world economic conditions to determine whether the problem is one of short-term illiquidity or longer-term insolvency. The book also notes the implications of reduced bank lending for growth in developing countries and, by induced effects on trade, in industrial countries. It considers mainstream policy measures, especially increasing the resources of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, as well as more radical proposals, such as mandatory stretch-outs and write-downs of bank loans.