Participants in prediction markets such as the Iowa Electronic Markets trade all-or-nothing contracts that pay a dollar if and only if specified future events occur. Researchers engaged in empirical study of prediction markets have argued broadly that equilibrium prices of the contracts traded are “market probabilities ” that the specified events will occur. This paper shows that if traders are risk-neutral price takers with heterogenous beliefs, the price of a contract in a prediction market reveals nothing about the dispersion of traders ’ beliefs and partially identifies the central tendency of beliefs. Most persons have beliefs higher than price when price is above 0.5, and most have beliefs lower than price when price is below 0.5. The mean belief of traders lies in an interval whose midpoint is the equilibrium price. These findings persist even if traders use price data to revise their beliefs in plausible ways.

This paper reviews methods for the estimation of dynamic discrete choice structural models and discusses related econometric issues. We consider single agent models, competitive equilibrium models and dynamic games. The methods are illustrated with descriptions of empirical studies which have applied these techniques to problems in different areas of economics. Programming codes for the estimation methods are available in a companion web page.

Abstract This article introduces a new source of survey data, namely the Bank of England Survey of External Forecasters. The survey collects point and density forecasts of inflation and GDP growth, and hence offers the opportunity of constructing direct measures of uncertainty. We present a simple statistical framework in which to define and interrelate measures of uncertainty and disagreement. The resulting measures are compared with other direct measures of uncertainty, nationally and internationally. A significant, sustained reduction in inflation uncertainty followed the 1997 granting of operational independence to the Bank of England to pursue a monetary policy of inflation targeting.

We use an innovative methodology to measure management practices in over 300 manufacturing firms in the UK. We then match this management data to production and energy usage information for establishments owned by these firms. We find that establishments in better managed firms are significantly less energy intensive. They use less energy per unit of output, and also in relation to other factor inputs. This is quantitatively substantial: going from the 25th to the 75th percentile of management practices is associated with a 17.4 % reduction in energy intensity. This negative relationship is robust to a variety of controls for industry, location, technology and other factor inputs. Better managed firms are also significantly more productive. One interpretation of these results is that well managed firms are adopting modern lean manufacturing practices, which allows them to increase productivity by using energy more efficiently. This suggests that improving the management practices of manufacturing firms may help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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The loss function plays a central role in the theory and practice of forecasting. If the loss is quadratic, the mean of the predictive distribution is the unique optimal point predictor. If the loss is linear, any median is an optimal point forecast. The title of the paper refers to the simple, possibly surprising fact that quantiles arise as optimal point predictors under a general class of economically relevant loss functions, to which we refer as generalized piecewise linear (GPL). The level of the quantile depends on a generic asymmetry parameter that reflects the possibly distinct costs of underprediction and overprediction. A loss function for which quantiles are optimal point predictors is necessarily GPL, similarly to the classical fact that a loss function for which the mean is optimal is necessarily of the Bregman type. We prove general versions of these results that apply on any decision-observation domain and rest on weak assumptions. The empirical relevance of the choices in the transition from the predictive distribution to the point forecast is illustrated on the Bank of England’s density forecasts of United Kingdom inflation rates, and probabilistic predictions of wind energy resources in the Pacific Northwest. Key words and phrases: asymmetric loss function; Bayes predictor; density forecast; mean; median; mode; optimal point predictor; quantile; statistical decision theory 1

Many critics of free-market liberalism argue that higher product-market competition and the “Anglo-Saxon ” management practices it stimulates increases productivity only at the expense of employees ’ work-life balance (WLB). The empirical basis of these claims is unclear. To address this issue we use an innovative survey tool to collect the first international data on management practices and work-life balance practices, surveying 732 medium sized manufacturing firms in the US, France, Germany and the UK. We find that WLB outcomes are significantly associated with better management, so that well run firms are both more productive and better for their employees. After controlling for management practices, however, we find no additional relationship between WLB and productivity. WLB practices are also not reduced by tougher competition, suggesting no deleterious effect of competition on employees ’ working environment. Finally, looking at multinationals we find that US subsidiaries in Europe adopt the superior management practices of their US parent firms but the local WLB practices of their European competitors. JEL Code: O32, O33, L31 Keywords: Work-life balance, family-friendly work practices, management practices, productivity, competition.

We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from over 4,000 medium sized manufacturing firms across Asia, Europe and the US. These measures of managerial practice are strongly associated with firm-level performance (e.g. productivity, profitability and stock market value). Private equity firms are significantly better managed than government, family and privately owned firms. Although they are also better managed on average than publicly listed firms with dispersed owners, this difference is not statistically significant. Looking at management practices in detail we find that private equity owned firms have strong people management practices (hiring, firing, pay and promotions) but even stronger operations management practices (lean manufacturing, continuous improvement and monitoring). This suggests that private equity ownership is associated with broad based operational improvement in management rather than just stronger performance incentives. Finally, looking at changes in management practices over time, it appears that PE targets poorly managed firms and these firms improve their management practices at a faster rate than other ownership types.

circulated under the title “Safety nets or social insurance in the presence of poverty traps? Evidence from

We develop a theoretical model to compare forecast uncertainty estimated from time series models to those available from survey density forecasts. The sum of the average variance of individual densities and the disagreement is shown to approximate the predictive uncertainty from well-specified time series models when the variance of the aggregate shocks is relatively small compared to that of the idiosyncratic shocks. Due to grouping error problems and compositional heterogeneity in the panel, individual densities are used to estimate aggregate forecast uncertainty. During periods of regime change and structural break, ARCH estimates tend to diverge from survey measures.