Forecasting Performance of Lumber Futures Prices

We test the forecasting power and information content of lumber futures prices traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, from 1995 to 2013, at four forecast horizons. A Mincer-Zarnowitz regression finds evidence of statistically significant forecasting power at all forecast horizons. The results also support the presence of a time-varying risk premium for the shorter forecast horizons. A Granger causality test provides evidence that lumber futures prices lag spot prices in information assimilation over longer forecast horizons, while neither lagging nor leading over shorter forecast horizons.

Cournot and Bertrand Competition in the Software Industry

In a software industry based on a platform firm and two firms producing differentiated applications complementary to the platform, we investigate the effects on profits and welfare of the choice of different contracts (price versus quantity) by the application firms. In contrast to the traditional result, (1) equilibrium profits are higher under Cournot or Bertrand competition depending upon the degree of complementarity between platform and application producers as well as the degree of substitutability between applications; (2) the social welfare may be higher under Cournot when the application products are highly substitutable.

Public Debt and External Reserve: The Nigerian Experience (1981–2013)

Nigeria is confronted with the issue of limited capital and has to resort to foreign debt in order to augment domestic savings, balance of payment deficits, and shortfall in revenue which induce continuous raise in the debt stock at an alarming rate. In the light of this, this study assesses the impact of public debt on external reserve in Nigeria. The objectives of this study include the assessment of the trends and relationship between public debt and external reserve in Nigeria, using the Johansen cointegration and FMOLS technique on the secondary data from 1981 to 2013. The result revealed that public debt has a positive and significant effect on external reserve stock in the long run suggesting that the nation’s debt crisis can be attributed to both exogenous and endogenous factors such as the nature of the economy, economic policies, high dependence on oil, and swindling foreign exchange receipt. This study recommends that the federal government should employ more superior method to negotiate for fixed interest payment and varying amortization schemes, as well as seek multiyear rescheduling rather than year by year basis.

What Causes Stock Market Volatility in Pakistan? Evidence from the Field

We examined the presence of volatility at the Karachi Stock Exchange (recently changed the name to Pakistan Stock Exchange) (KSE) by fitting Exponential Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) model to 25 years’ index data. We found that the ARCH effects are present in the data indicating the stock market cluster volatility during the period under study. We found persistent high volatility in the stock market and presence of negative leverage effect. Moreover, we tried to identify the factors causing stock market volatility by collecting and analyzing the primary data obtained from 246 individual investors of stock market and 28 brokers listed with KSE. Our results show that investors consider political situation as the most important factor causing turbulence in the stock market. Interviews with the brokers also confirmed this. The second most important factor identified by investors is the herd behavior among investors that results in over- and underpricing of stocks and the overall market shows a volatile behavior. Our findings suggest that individual investor’s behavioral dimensions of involvement, risk attitude, and overconfidence are significantly associated with factors causing market volatility.

Economic Assessment of Producing Corn and Cellulosic Ethanol Mandate on Agricultural Producers and Consumers in the United States

Strong support for the biofuels program in the USA is expected to influence dedicated biomass crops production. Their production is expected to compete for resources with traditional crops and in turn influence commodity prices, economic surplus, and trade balance. Implications of dedicated biomass crop as bioenergy feedstock, alternative energy policies, and government initiatives on agricultural producers and consumers are evaluated using a national quantitative model, AGSIM. Economic impacts include effect on cropping patterns, crop prices, fertilizer prices, consumer and producer surplus, and trade balance. Economic analyses based on alternative assumptions related to marginal lands currently in conservation use returning to crop production as well as biomass crop yields are conducted. Results indicate that present biofuel policies are associated with large costs to consumers in terms of increased commodity prices and negative trade balance. Increase in net farm income is offset by decrease in consumer surplus. The results represent a robust set of economic impacts, which suggests policy makers to consider the unexpected economic consequences of bioenergy policy and warrants consideration of multiple alternative energy sources to achieve a sustainable energy goal.

Do Scarce Precious Metals Equate to Safe Harbor Investments? The Case of Platinum and Palladium

This research establishes the predictability and safe harbor properties of two scarce precious metals, namely, platinum and palladium. Utilizing their spot prices, the study concludes intermediate memory in the return structures of both precious metals, which implies the instability of platinum and palladium returns’ persistency in the long run. However, both the ARFIMA-FIGARCH and the ARFIMA-FIAPARCH models confirm long-memory properties in the volatility of the two spot prices. The leverage effects phenomenon is not also present based on the ARFIMA-APARCH and ARFIMA-FIAPARCH models, which may possibly conclude the resilience of both precious metals against increased volatility. However, further tests proved that only platinum has a symmetric volatility response to shocks with the presence of negative gamma parameter, which proves that only platinum can be considered a safe harbor investment, because negative and positive shocks have equal effects on their returns and volatilities. Comparing the four models utilized in this study, the combined ARFIMA-FIAPARCH models are the best fitting model to characterize both precious metals’ spot prices.

Assessing Swaziland’s Fiscal Sustainability and Policy Options

In 2011, Swaziland’s fiscal policy was extensively scrutinized following its worst fiscal crisis in decades. The impacts of fiscal adjustment on Swaziland’s growth, inflation, and sectoral allocations of resources were some of the issues analyzed. The fall in the Southern African Customs Union revenue receipts to levels below the trend line, for two consecutive years, and the fiscal challenges that followed were the main motivation behind this interest. This paper attempts to establish whether fiscal sustainability was threatened, and if so what were the policy options? Based on the results from econometric estimations, using a sample for the 1986 to 2012 period, I show that the country’s fiscal sustainability was not threatened. However, calculations of the tax gap and the primary gap covering the period 2000 to 2016 reveal that fiscal sustainability was threatened. Subject to the major drivers of government expenditure and revenue handles, it is concluded that, in the short run, the two needed to be realigned while also allocating more resources to support growth.

Partial Cross-Ownership, Cost Asymmetries, and Welfare

The present study analyses the effects on social welfare of the existence of cross-participation at ownership level in a Cournot duopoly. We show that cross-participation, although it lowers the degree of competition by reducing total output and consumer surplus, may increase social welfare, provided that (i) the firm owned by a single shareholder is less efficient than the other (cross-participated) firm and (ii) the size of the market is not too large. Therefore, the policy implication is that larger cross-participations at ownership level should be favoured, despite their anticompetitive nature, when the cross-participated firm is relatively more efficient and the extent of the market is not too large.

On the Strategic Choice of Union-Oligopoly Bargaining Agenda: Further Results

This paper revisits the strategic selection of the bargaining agenda in a unionized industry with potential entry and decentralized negotiations for different competition modes. The incumbent chooses Right-to-Manage (RTM) or Efficient Bargaining (EB) considering two scenarios: (1) the agenda is imposed to the (potential) entrant (committed bargaining) and (2) the entrant can flexibly choose the agenda (flexible bargaining). In the mixed duopoly, the timing of the game is as follows: at stage 1, the EB firm bargains over wage and employment with its union, while the RTM firm bargains over the wage; at stage 2, the RTM firm chooses employment. This paper shows that the strategic selection of the agenda strongly depends on the interaction between the degree of market competition, the union’s power, and the convergence or divergence between parties on the agenda’s choice. This complex interaction leads to a very rich set of equilibrium outcomes, including multiple and even (as regards the union’s preferences on the agenda) asymmetric equilibria. Compared with alternative timings in the literature, this specification leads to substantial differences with flexible bargaining: EB emerges as equilibrium in Nash strategies for a noticeably increased set of cases.

Econometric Modelling of the Variations of Norway’s Export Trade across Continents and over Time: The Two-Stage Non-Full Rank Hierarchical Linear Econometric Model Approach

This paper applies the two-stage hierarchical non-full rank linear econometric model to make a deep analysis based on revenue generated from key Norwegian export items over the world’s continents. The model’s ability to analyse the variation of Norway’s export trade gives us the following interesting details: (1) for each continent intra- and intervariation of export items, (2) access to deep knowledge about the characteristics of the Norway’s export items revenue, (3) quantifying the economic importance and sustainability of export items within continents; and finally (4) comparing a given export item economic importance across continents. The results suggest the following important policy implications for Norway. First, Europe is the most important trade partner for Norway. In fact, 81.5% of Norwegian export items are transported to Europe. Second, there is a structural shift in Norwegian exports from North and Central America to Asia and Oceania. Third, the new importance of Asia and Oceania is also emphasized by the 85% increase in export revenues over the period 1988–2012. The trade pattern has changed and trade policy must change accordingly. The analysis has shown that in 2012 there are two important export continents for Norway: Europe and Asia and Oceania.