Categoria: docs

La France devrait instaurer en 2009 un “revenu de solidarité active” (RSA) qui remplacerait plusieurs minima sociaux, allocations ou prestations, en se cumulant avec les revenus du travail suivant un barème dégressif qui évoque les projets d’impôt négatif ou d’allocation universelle.

L’article tente de répondre synthétiquement aux interrogations multiples que soulève cette réforme considérable du système de solidarité national. Après en avoir résumé les antécédents théoriques et la genèse, il développe la triple motivation du RSA – rationalisatrice, incitative et redistributive – et conclut par des propositions concrètes sur ses
modalités de réalisation.

We study utility maximization problem for general utility functions using dynamic programming
approach. We consider an incomplete nancial market model, where the dynamics of asset
prices are described by an Rd-valued continuous semimartingale. Under some regularity assumptions we
derive backward stochastic partial dierential equation (BSPDE) related directly to the primal problem
and show that the strategy is optimal if and only if the corresponding wealth process satises a certain
forward-SDE. As examples the cases of power, exponential and logarithmic utilities are considered.

This paper presents a pattern behavio ral analysis of 100 largest Russian commercial
banks by total assets during an eight- year period: from the first quarter of 1999 to the second
quarter of 2007. Bank performance indicators are analyzed. Structural similarities in the
development of the banks are examined.

A cluster analysis is applied to determine banks with a similar structure of operations. This analysis allows to estimate how the structure of the Russianbanking system has been changing over time. In particular, it allows to identify prevailing patterns in the behavior of Russian commercial banks and to analyze the stability of their
position in a particular pattern.

Many scholars assert that the process of privatizing state-owned firms in Central and
Eastern Europe has been a success because privatized firms are performing better than
they did before. The assertion is an empty piece of poetry. To begin with, privately
owned firms are more efficient than state owned firms.

Hence, the evaluation of the process of privatization in Central and Eastern Europe does not depend on some
measured efficiency of privatized firms. The evaluation of privatization should be based
on the contribution of privatized firms to the attainment of two major initial objectives
of institutional restructuring in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe: the
acceptance of capitalism and the development of free-market, private-property
institutions.

Net Inflows and Time-Varying Alphas: The
Case of Hedge Funds∗
Andrea Beltratti†
and Claudio Morana‡
October 1, 2006

On Menger, Austrian Economics, and the Use of
General Equilibrium.
Kurt R. Leube*
Hoover Institution, Stanford University
ICER, Torino
F.A. von Hayek Institute, Vienna

This paper compares and contrasts the United States federal Empowerment Zone and
European Union Objective 2 programs that geographically target economic
revitalization incentives. Since 1989, both programs have designated predominately
industrial or urban areas as being distressed and worthy of government incentives in
three separate rounds.

The paper uses a probit econometric model to comparatively
evaluate the characteristics of the areas that were targeted.

Abstract: In this paper we suggest the adoption of copula functions in order
to price multivariate contingent claims. Copulas enable us to imbed the
marginal distributions extracted from vertical spreads in the options markets
in a multivariate pricing kernel.

We prove that such kernel is a copula
fucntion, and that its super-replication strategy is represented by the
Fréchet bounds. As applications, we provide prices for binary digital options,
options on the minimum and options to exchange one asset for another.

For each of these products, we provide no-arbitrage pricing bounds,
as well as the values consistent with independence of the underlying assets.
As a …nal reference value, we use a copula function calibrated on historical
data.

The Rule of Law, Freedom, and Prosperity
Todd J. Zywicki*
George Mason University School of Law and ICER

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the North American agricultural frontier moved into semi-arid
regions of the Great Plains where farming was vulnerable to drought. Farmers who migrated to the region
had to adapt their crops, techniques, and farm sizes to better fit the environment. But there was very
incomplete information for making these adjustments, and ultimately they were insufficient: too many small,
dry-land wheat farms were founded, only to be abandoned in the midst of drought. Two episodes of
homestead settlement and collapse in western Kansas in 1893-94 and in eastern Montana in 1917-21 are
examined.

We go beyond the existing literature by explicitly detailing the weather information problem
facing settlers and showing precisely why widespread homestead failure occurred. We present a Bayesian
learning model to indicate how new climate information was incrementally incorporated to revise views of
agricultural prospects. Primary data are used to show the lagged response of homesteaders to new drought
information and to illustrate the differential impact of drought on small farms. Dryfarming doctrine arose as a
solution to the problems faced by farmers in the region. Despite its optimistic claims, it was an imperfect
response to drought.

by
Bob Searle
Secretary
Commonwealth Grants Commission
Canberra, Australia
Visiting Fellow
International Centre for Economic Research
Torino, Italy

Frank Knight was the key person in founding the Chicago school of economics. In this respect he was a seminal figure in the history of twentieth century economics. Yet, few current economists know much about Knight. After his early success in 1921 with Risk, Uncertainty and Profit – Knight’s work best known to current economists — he wrote more in the manner of a moral philosopher than an economic scientist.

This paper examines the thinking of the later Knight, the approach to social analysis that he adopted for most of career and including all of his years in the Chicago economics department. Knight was known for his antagonism to traditional Christian religion. Yet, penetrating only slightly below the surface, his thinking is revealed to follow closely in a Christian mode. Indeed, Knight’s moral philosophy was a secular form of Calvinism.

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, California agriculture underwent a
fundamental transformation as the state’s farmers shifted from the production of wheat to a rich
variety of tree, vine, and row crops.

This transformation required a wholesale shift in the
production processes, with new farming practices, new labor systems, and new marketing
structures. But success also required new legal, scientific, and institutional structures to
overcome the serious threat that diseases and pests posed to the state’s new intensive fruit and
nut culture.

This paper examines a number of case studies, showing how specific pests and
diseases nearly destroyed commercial production of grapes, and several tree crops and how
farmers responded to these threats.

One response was to demand government help to overcome
the free rider problem and other sources of market failure. The result was to strengthen the
scientific infrastructure within the University of California and the USDA and to enact
quarantine legislation to limit the free movement of plants and fruit. We argue that these
instances the private and social returns to collective actions far exceeded the costs.