Precaution and liquidity in the demand for housing

We exploit cross-sectional mortgage data to investigate the importance of liquidity constraints and a precautionary motive in the demand for housing. Households that are not liquidity constrained consume housing services essentially as the life cycle hypothesis suggests but with a significant precautionary component. Households that are liquidity constrained, in terms of not meeting standard loan-to-value or payments-to-income constraints, are similar to unconstrained households in most respects, including the precautionary motive, but they respond somewhat less to fluctuations in their lifetime income - suggesting some influence of bank-induced liquidity constraints. We additionally find, however, that banks enforce liquidity constraints only weakly.     

Stability theorems for maxima of dependent sequences

Three stability theorems due to Gnedenko (1943), Barndorff-Nielsen (1963), and Tomkins (1986) are extended to the sample maxima of identically distributed ?-mixing and m-dependent sequences.     

A review of inflation accounting and its economic implications

The purposes of this paper are firstly to identify the problems which inflation creates in the context of conventional accounting methods, secondly to consider the alternative forms of inflation accounting which have been proposed, thirdly to look in more detail at the particular method which is to be adopted in the UK, and finally to consider the effects which that method will have on company results and on broader economic issues.     

A hierarchical theory of occupational segregation and wage discrimination

Becker's model of discrimination is extended to the case where men exhibit distastes for working under female managers. The distribution of women in the resulting occupational hierarchy depends on the number of women in lower occupations, the wages of male workers in lower occupations, and male distastes for female management. Thus, there exists an occupational sorting function, related to wages, that determines the occupational distribution of women. We integrate this sorting function into a standard wage equation to derive a new decomposition of male-female wage differentials and apply it to a sample of insurance industry workers from the 1988 CPS.     

The teaching of business policy—A fresh approach

The artificiality of the circumstances in which much of management education takes place is exemplified in the teaching of business policy where the missing ingredient of responsibility is most crucial. The use of ready made cases compounds this problem by presenting the student with a partly identified problem and the information he must use in tackling it. A different approach in which students prepare their own studies of named companies and discuss their analysis and proposals with senior executives from those companies reduces to a worthwhile degree the artificiality of much business policy teaching. This paper discusses the problems of teaching in this field and describes an approach using the method described above.     

A Review of the Contemporary Transfer Pricing Literature with Recommendations for Future Research

A transfer price is a value placed on the goods or services which are traded between divisions of an organization. This paper attempts to make the subject of transfer pricing accessible to researchers and others interested in managerial problems so that a very real managerial problem can be studied in a broader managerial context. The not insubstantial literature that has grown up in the transfer pricing area is reviewed and, in particular, a critical evaluation of recent writings in the field is provided. It is shown that little which is unequivocal is known about transfer pricing and that the choices made by managers with regard to transfer pricing are little understood, both with regard to the factors which drive choice and the differences between choice in practice and theoretical interpretations. It is suggested that progress in the area will require a richer understanding of the realities confronting practising managers. Research by means of field studies, particularly case studies, is recommended to provide this. A series of hypotheses and issues, representing the dilemmas facing managers, is provided as a theoretical grounding for such research.