Conference Summary: Price Adjustment and Monetary Policy

The 2002 Bank of Canada Conference focused on price adjustment, a critically important issue for monetary policy. Given the acceptance throughout the 1990s and 2000s of the existence of price stickiness in goods or labour markets, or both, and of the important role that monetary policy can play in an economy, the time was right for a conference that would focus on current developments in this area of research, particularly within a Canadian context. Conference papers covering both theoretical and empirical studies explored such themes as sources of the persistence of inflation, forward-looking models of inflation, models of inflation in open economies, the macroeconomic effects of technology shocks, and models of the interaction between wages, prices, and real economic outcomes.

How Do Economists Really Think About the Environment?

On a topic like the environment, communication among scholars from different disciplines in the natural and social sciences is both important and difficult, but such communication has been far from perfect. Economists themselves may have contributed to some rather fundamental misunderstandings about how economists think about the environment, perhaps through our enthusiasm for market solutions, perhaps by neglecting to make explicit all of the necessary qualifications, and perhaps simply by the use of jargon that has specific meaning only to other economists. In this brief essay, we seek to clarify some of these misunderstandings and thus to improve future interdisciplinary communication. We hope that natural scientists and other non-economists will take economic analysis and prescriptions more seriously when they see tempered enthusiasm, explicit qualifications, and better definitions. Our method is to posit a series of prevalent "myths" regarding how economists think about the natural environment. We then explain how each myth might have originated from statements by economists that were meant to summarize a more qualified analysis. In this way, we hope to explain how economists really do think about the natural environment.

Usefulness and reliability of online assessments: a Business Faculty's experience

The usefulness and reliability of online assessment results relate to the clarity, specificity and articulation of assessment purposes, goals and criteria. Cheating and plagiarism are two frequent and controversial issues that arise and there is a view that the online assessments mode inherently lends itself to both these practices. However, reconceptualising practice and redeveloping techniques can pave the way for an authentic assessment approach which minimizes student academic dishonesty. This article describes research which investigated online assessments practice in a business faculty at an Australian university and proposes what might constitute good, sustainable practice and design in university online assessment practices

Modelling the Risk and Return Relation Conditional on Market Volatility and Market Conditions

This paper investigates whether the risk-return relation varies, depending on changing market volatility and up/down market conditions. Three market regimes based on the level of conditional volatility of market returns are specified - 'low', 'neutral' and 'high'. The market model is extended to allow for these three market regimes and a three-beta asset-pricing model is developed. For a set of US industry sector indices using a cross-sectional regression, we find that the beta risk premium in the three market volatility regimes is priced. These significant results are uncovered only in the pricing model that accommodates up/down market conditions.CAPM, conditional market volatility, modelling conditional betas

Is systematic downside beta risk really priced? Evidence in emerging market data

Several studies advocating safety first as a major concern to investors propose downside beta risk as an alternative to the traditional systematic risk-beta. Downside measures are concerned with a subset of the data and therefore the results in the studies that consider the downside beta only may be biased. This study addresses this issue by including downside co-skewness risk in addition to the downside beta risk in the pricing model. In a sample of 27 emerging markets two-stage rolling regression analysis fails to support pricing models with downside risk measures. In a cross-sectional analysis inclusion of downside co-skewness improves model fit. When considered together, downside beta is potential and downside co-skewness is a risk to the rational investor. Even though our results are inconclusive the evidence strongly suggests a need for further investigation of co-skewness risk in pricing models that adopt a downside risk framework.Beta, Downside risk, Emerging markets

OPTIMUM NUMBER AND LOCATION OF MANUFACTURING MILK PLANTS TO MINIMIZE MARKETING COSTS

Marketing,

Dynamic analysis of the large deployable reflector

The Large Deployable Reflector (LDR) is to be an astronomical observatory orbiting above Earth's obscuring atmosphere and operating in the spectral range between 30 microns and 1000 microns wavelength. The LDR will be used to study such astronomical phenomena as stellar and galactic formation, cosmology, and planetary atmospheres. The LDR will be the first observatory to be erected and assembled in space. This distinction brings with it several major technological challenges such as the development of ultra-lightweight deployable mirrors, advanced mirror fabrication techniques, advanced structures, and control of vibrations due to various sources of excitation. The purpose of this analysis is to provide an assessment of the vibrational response due to secondary mirror chopping and LDR slewing. The dynamic response of two 20-m LDR configurations was studied. Two mirror support configurations were investigated for the Ames concept, the first employs a six-strut secondary mirror support structure, while the second uses a triple-bipod support design. All three configurations were modeled using a tetrahedral truss design for the primary mirror support structure. Response resulting from secondary mirror chopping was obtained for the two Ames configurations, and the response of the primary mirror from slewing was obtained for all three configurations