NEW  RESOURCES                  

   Library Bulletin                   Issue # 3 

                                              April  2006 

A biweekly e-bulletin for the latest print and   electronic  resources  as  they  are added  to the  AUBG  Library collections.

Access is only via university net.

Content:

New Books 

Library databases *

E-books from the World Bank e-Library*

Economic Research Papers* 

E-journals

Selected Online Resources

Encyclopedia Britannica Online - New Features

Britannica Online is adding some new features of the Britannica service which will add content and help faculty and students get to the information they need as quickly as possible.
The biggest change you’ll notice is a new interface. The new content includes: 
- World Data Analyst – a tool for viewing and comparing country data from across the world.
- Gateway to the Classics – Over 220 works by 140 of the western world’s most influential and best known authors. 
- Notable Quotations – View over 4000 quotes that can be browsed by subject or author. 
In addition, Britannica Online now includes a ‘Workspace’ where users can store articles and retrieve them later from any PC using their own username and password. 
- The Advanced Search function has also been improved to allow users greater flexibility and accuracy in their search strategies.
All of this is in addition to the rich content already available with Britannica Online: 
- Encyclopaedic Content – Users gain access to over 73,000 in-depth articles. 
- Images & Multimedia – Users gain access to over 22,000 educational images and short videos. 
- Dictionary and Thesaurus – Users can gain an immediately clarify the spelling or meaning of a word by entering it in the search bar or simply double clicking any piece of text.
- This Day in History – This daily feature provides information regarding notable events that have happened on the day. 
- Spotlights – These mini-websites allow users to analyse almost 20 topical features. 
- World Atlas – Users have access to detailed maps and profiles of all countries of the world. 
- Timelines – Trace selected topics through history with illustrations and key dates. 
- Internet Guide - Web sites reviewed and rated by Britannica editors to expand the users study across the internet. 
AUBG faculty and students can access Britannica Online via university net by clicking on the library web-page. For further information on the new interface, please click on the page section for Research Help. There is a PDF file in Databases Guides http://www.aubg.bg/library/brittannica.pdf

Library databases

Compustat Global

Authoritative U.S. and International Fundamental Financial Data
The Compustat Global database provides authoritative financial and market data on more than 16,000 non-U.S. and non-Canadian companies, in addition to over 5,600 U.S. and Canadian mid- and large-cap companies (active and inactive). The international database covers publicly traded companies in more than 80 countries, representing over 90% of the world’s market capitalization. Compustat Global provides daily and monthly information on over 85 world markets, translated in over 118 different currencies, with companies in all of the major global and local market indices. Patrons can see detailed income statement, balance sheet and cash flow data; Preliminary and interim data; Industrial and financial services company formats; Hundreds of data items, ratios and concepts; Currency files with cross translation tables on 118 currencies; Pricing on more than 90 local market indices; Economic forecasts and data; Company business descriptions; Up to 12 years of annual history ; Monthly price histories and dividends; Footnotes to the accounts and detailed data definition.

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Evaluation of World Bank Assistance to Pacific Member Countries, 1992-2002
The nine Pacific Member Countries (PMCs) of the World Bank Group are Fiji Islands, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga , and Vanuatu. This evaluation covers Bank assistance to the PMCs since 1992.
To view this publication online, please go to http://www.worldbank.catchword.org/rpsv/journal/publication0821362844_home.htm?nv_portal=all

Globalization for Development: Trade, Finance, Aid, Migration, and Policy 
Globalization and its relation to poverty reduction and development is not well understood. The book identifies the ways in which globalization can overcome poverty or make it worse. The book defines the big historical trends, identifies main global flows—trade, finance, aid, migration, and ideas—and examines how each can contribute to undermine economic development. 
By considering what helps and what does not, the book presents policy recommendations to make globalization more effective as a vehicle for shared growth and prosperity. It will be of interest to students, researchers and anyone interested in the effects of globalization in today’s economy and in international development issues.
Click here to read it: http://lysander.worldbank.catchword.org/vl=3486723/cl=25/nw=1/rpsv/journal/publication0821362747_home.htm?nv_portal=all

World Bank e-publication

Cities in a Globalizing World: Governance, Performance, and Sustainability 
"In a world moving very rapidly on both urbanization and globalization, cities in the developing world face both serious challenges and attractive opportunities. They can reap the benefits of economic growth by creating an enabling investment climate: well-functioning markets, institutions that support sound governance and regulatory regimes, and public infrastructure and social services. At the same time they can create an environment where their citizens are both included and empowered. And because cities do not exist in isolation, urban policies and programs must also be coordinated with national initiatives. Cities in a Globalizing World not only raises our awareness of issues that can only become still more pressing and still more critical to growth and equity in this century; it also provides important and valuable analyses of options for public action."  Sir Nicholas Stern, Head of Government Economic Service, UK 
Click here to read it: http://lysander.worldbank.catchword.org/vl=3486723/cl=25/nw=1/rpsv/journal/publication0821365533_home.htm

Economic Papers from the CEPR Discussion Papers

DP5578 Prediction Markets in Theory and Practice 

URL: http://www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?dpno=5578.asp

Authors: Justin Wolfers, Eric Zitzewitz 
Date of Publication: March 2006 
Abstract: Prediction Markets, sometimes referred to as 'information markets', 'idea futures' or 'event futures', are markets where participants trade contracts whose payoffs are tied to a future event, thereby yielding prices that can be interpreted as market-aggregated forecasts. This article summarizes the recent literature on prediction markets, highlighting both theoretical contributions that emphasize the possibility that these markets efficiently aggregate disperse information, and the lessons from empirical applications which show that market-generated forecasts typically outperform most moderately sophisticated benchmarks. Along the way, we highlight areas ripe for future research. 
This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF) format.

Economic Papers  from the CEPR Discussion Papers

DP5579 Penalty Shoot-Outs: Before or After Extra Time? 
URL: http://www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?dpno=5579.asp

Author: Juan D Carrillo 
Date of Publication: March 2006 
Abstract: This paper proposes a rule to determine the winner of a soccer match which is different from the traditional penalty shoot-outs at the end of extra time. We show that games can be more attractive if penalties are shot before extra time and the outcome counts only if the tie is preserved during extra time. In general, this rule will promote offense by the team that loses the penalty shoot-outs and it will promote defense by the team that wins the penalty shoot-outs. We provide conditions on the marginal effect of offensive play in the probabilities of scoring and conceding a goal such that the proposed rule dominates the current one. Last, we determine a class of functions that satisfies these conditions. More generally, the paper shows how the ordering of tasks may affect the incentives to exert and allocate effort. 
This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF) format. 

DP5589 Trade, FDI and the Organization of Firms 
URL: http://www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?dpno=5589.asp

Author: Elhanan Helpman 
Date of Publication: March 2006 
Abstract: New developments in the world economy have triggered research designed to better understand the changes in trade and investment patterns, and the reorganization of production across national borders. Although traditional trade theory has much to offer in explaining parts of this puzzle, other parts required new approaches. Particularly acute has been the need to model alternative forms of involvement of business firms in foreign activities, because organizational change has been central in the transformation of the world economy. This paper reviews the literature that has emerged from these efforts. The theoretical refinements have focused on the individual firm, studying its choices in response to its own characteristics, the nature of the industry in which it operates, and the opportunities afforded by foreign trade and investment. Important among these choices are organizational features, such as sourcing strategies. But the theory has gone beyond the individual firm, studying the implications of firm behavior for the structure of industries. It provides new explanations for trade structure and patterns of FDI, both within and across industries, and has identified new sources of comparative advantage. 
This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF) format. 

Economic Papers from the CEPR Discussion Papers

DP5593 On-The-Job Search, Productivity Shocks and the Individual Earnings Process 
URL: http://www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?dpno=5593.asp

Authors: Fabien Postel-Vinay, Helene Turon 
Date of Publication: March 2006 
Abstract: Individual labour earnings observed in worker panel data have complex, highly persistent dynamics. We investigate the capacity of a structural job search model with i.i.d. productivity shocks to replicate salient properties of these dynamics, such as the covariance structure of earnings, the evolution of individual earnings mean and variance with the duration of uninterrupted employment, or the distribution of year-to-year earnings changes. Specifically, we show within an otherwise standard job search model how the combined assumptions of on-the-job search and wage renegotiation by mutual consent act as a quantitatively plausible 'internal propagation mechanism' of i.i.d. productivity shocks into persistent wage shocks. The model suggests that wage dynamics should be thought of as the outcome of a specific acceptance/rejection scheme of i.i.d. productivity shocks. This offers an alternative to the conventional linear ARMA-type approach to modelling earnings dynamics. Structural estimation of our model on a 12-year panel of highly educated British workers shows that our simple framework produces a dynamic earnings structure which is remarkably consistent with the data. 
This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF) format. 

Economic Papers from the CEPR Discussion Papers

DP5594 The Marginal Cost of Public Funds: Hours of Work versus Labor Force Participation 
URL: http://www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?dpno=5594.asp

Author(s): Henrik Kleven, Claus Thustrup Kreiner 
Date of Publication: March 2006 
Abstract: This paper extends the theory and measurement of the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) to account for labour force participation responses. Our work is motivated by the emerging consensus in the empirical literature that extensive (participation) responses are more important than intensive (hours-of-work) responses. In the modelling of extensive responses, we argue that it is crucial to account for the presence of non-convexities created by fixed costs of work. In a non-convex framework, tax and transfer reforms give rise to discrete participation responses generating first-order effects on government revenue and the marginal cost of funds. Based on analytical expressions accounting for both margins of labour supply response, and allowing for heterogeneity in productivities and preferences, we calculate MCF for 15 European countries using micro data on taxes and benefits for each country. The MCF estimates depend crucially on the country under consideration and on the properties of the tax reform. In general, we find that extensive responses have very important effects on MCF, especially in the Scandinavian and the Central/Northern Continental European countries where participation tax rates are very high at the bottom of the distribution resulting from generous out-of-work benefits along with high tax rates on workers. For these countries, the estimated MCFs centre around 2 in the case of proportional tax changes. 
This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF) format. 

Economic Papers  from the CEPR Discussion Papers

DP5598 Asymmetric Information in the Stock Market: Economic News and Co-movement 
URL: http://www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?dpno=5598.asp

Authors: Rui Albuquerque, Clara Vega 
Date of Publication: March 2006 
Abstract: We analyze the effect that real-time domestic and foreign news about fundamentals have on the correlation of stock returns of a small open economy, Portugal, and a large open economy, the U.S. We 
also study the role of public and private information in the price formation process in the U.S. and Portuguese stock markets. First, and consistent with our theoretical model, we find that U.S. macroeconomic news and Portuguese earnings news do not affect the cross-country stock market correlation, whereas Portuguese macroeconomic news lowers the cross-country stock market correlation. Second, we find that U.S. public information affects Portuguese stock market returns, but this effect is diminished when U.S. stock market returns are included in the regression; we provide evidence in the paper that this effect does not derive from contagion as commonly accepted. Finally, public information news in the U.S. is associated with increased liquidity, while the effect in Portugal depends on the type of news releases. 
This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF) format. 

DP5601 Cross-Border Merger Waves 
URL: http://www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?dpno=5601.asp

Authors: Eileen Fumagalli, Helder Vasconcelos 
Date of Publication: March 2006 
Abstract: This paper proposes a sequential merger formation game with cost synergies to study how trade policy can influence firms' choice between domestic and cross-border mergers in an international Cournot oligopoly. We find that the equilibrium market structure depends heavily on: (i) the level of trade costs; and (ii) whether or not active antitrust authorities are incorporated within the sequential merger game. In addition, it is shown that whenever mergers occur in equilibrium, they occur in waves and the merger wave comprises at least one cross-border merger. We also analyze how the equilibrium market structures are affected by the presence of lobbying efforts. 
This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF) format. 

DP5602 Pricing Risk in Economies with Heterogenous Agents and Incomplete Markets 
URL: http://www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?dpno=5602.asp
Author: Josep Pijoan-Mas 
Date of Publication: March 2006 
Abstract: Habit formation has been proposed as a possible solution to the equity premium puzzle. This paper extends the class of models that support the habits explanation in order to account for heterogeneity in earnings, wealth, habits and consumption. I find that habit formation does indeed increase the equity premium. However, contrary to earlier results, the habit hypothesis does not imply a price for risk as big as the one measured in the data. There are three reasons for this. First, households in a habits economy modify their consumption/savings decision. Second, they modify their portfolio choice. These two changes in behavior diminish the consumption fluctuations faced by households. And third, the composition of the set of agents pricing risk in the economy changes so that relatively better self-insured households end up pricing risk. 
This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF) format. 

DP5603 Persistence of Power, Elites and Institutions 
URL: http://www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?dpno=5603.asp

Authors: Daron Acemoglu, James A Robinson 
Date of Publication: March 200
Abstract: Authors construct a model of simultaneous change and persistence in institutions. The model consists of landowning elites and workers, and the key economic decision concerns the form of economic institutions regulating the transaction of labour (e.g., competitive markets versus labour repression). The main idea is that equilibrium economic institutions are a result of the exercise of de jure and de facto political power. A change in political institutions, for example a move from non-democracy to democracy, alters the distribution of de jure political power, but the elite can intensify their investments in de facto political power, such as lobbying or the use of paramilitary forces, to partially or fully offset their loss of de jure power. In the baseline model, equilibrium changes in political institutions have no effect on the (stochastic) equilibrium distribution of economic institutions, leading to a particular form of persistence in equilibrium institutions, which we refer to as invariance. When the model is enriched to allow for limits on the exercise of de facto power by the elite in democracy or for costs of changing economic institutions, the equilibrium takes the form of a Markov regime-switching process with state dependence. Finally, when we allow for the possibility that changing political institutions is more difficult than altering economic institutions, the model leads to a pattern of captured democracy, whereby a democratic regime may survive, but choose economic institutions favouring the elite. The main ideas featuring in the model are illustrated using historical examples from the US South, Latin America and Liberia. 
This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF) format. 

DP5604 Marketwide Private Information in Stocks: Forecasting Currency Returns 
URL: http://www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?dpno=5604.asp

Authors: Rui Albuquerque, Eva de Francisco, Luis Marques 
Date of Publication: March 2006 
Abstract: We present a model of equity trading with informed and uninformed investors where informed investors act upon firm-specific private information and marketwide private information. The model is used to structurally identify the component of order flow that is due to marketwide private information. Trades driven by marketwide private information display very little or no correlation with the first principal component of order flow. This finding implies that a simple statistical factor is a poor measure of marketwide private information. Moreover, the model suggests that the previously documented comovement in order flow captures mostly common variation in liquidity trades. We find that marketwide private information obtained from equity market data forecasts industry stock returns and foreign exchange returns consistent with Evans and Lyons' (2004a) model of exchange rate determination. 
This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF) format. 

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Sprouts: Working Papers on Information Environments, Systems and Organizations

http://sprouts.case.edu

Sprouts: Working Papers on Information Environments, Systems and Organizations is an Open Access journal that provides a fast-turnaround outlet for authentic and original research and work-in-progress carried out primarily in association with the Weatherhead School of Management. Sprouts is devoted to research about the ways in which information is generated and used in the prevailing complex socio-technical landscape. 
Publisher is Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University.

Start Year: 2001
ISSN: 15356078

Selected Internet Resources 

 Liber8

This site is an economic information portal designed by the librarians at the United States Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis with university and government document librarians, students, and the general public in mind. Much of the information is made available through links to other government Web sites, but Liber8 offers a great starting point for economic research.

Selected Internet Resources 

Outstanding Books for the College Bound and Lifelong Learners http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/booklistsawards/outstandingbooks/outstandingbooks.htm

Recommended nonfiction reading list, sorted into academic disciplines. Revised every five years and intended for students, educators, librarians, and parents.

BG Movies
http://www.bgmovies.info 

New site with over 1400 Bulgarian movies and over 3000 people (script-writers, directors, movies stars etc.). English and Bulgarian versions.

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*Access is only via university net.