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Abstract:
A common feature to most aggregative studies of the labor market is a marginal productivity expression in which the quantity of labor appears on the left hand side of the equation, and the right hand side includes the real wage and output. A number of researchers have cautioned that if the output variable is treated as exogenous, serious econometric difficulties may result. However, the assumption that output is exogenous has not been tested. In this paper, we estimate an equilibrium model of the labor market, and use it to test the assumption of output exogeneity. We find that the assumption that output is exogenous cannot be rejected by the data.

Abstract:
This paper specifies and estimates a four-equation disequilibrium model of the consumption goods market in a centrally planned economy (CPE).The data are from Poland for the period 1955-1980, but the analysis is more general and will be applied to other CPEs as soon as the appropriate data sets are complete.The work reported here is based on previous papers of Portes and Winter and Charernza and Quandt.Portes-Winter applied to eachof four CPEs a discrete-switching disequilibrium model with a household demand equation for consumption goods, a planners`supply equation, and a "min" condition stating that the observed quantity transacted is the lesser of the quantities demanded and supplied.Charemza-Quandt considered how an equation for the adjustment of planned quantitites could be integrated into a CPE model with fixed prices and without the usual price adjustment equation.They made plan formation endogenous and permitted the resulting plan variables to enter the equations determining demand and supply.This paper implements the Charemza-Quandt proposal in the Portes-Winter context.It uses a unique new data set of time series for plans for the major macroeconomic variables in Poland and other CPEs.The overall framework is applicable to any large organisation which plans economic variables.

Abstract:
This paper specifies and estimates a four-equation disequilibrium model of the consumption goods market in a centrally planned economy(CPE).The data are from Poland for the period 1955-1980, but the analysis is more general and will be applied to other CPEs as soon as the appropriate data sets are complete.This work is based on previous papers of Portes and Winter (P-W) and Charemza and Quandt(C-Q).P-W applied to each of four CPEs a discrete-switching disequilibrium model with a household demand equation for consumption goods, a planners` supply equation, and a "min" condition stating that the observed quantity transacted is the lesser of the quantities demanded and supplied.C-Q considered how an equation for the adjustment of planned quantities could be integrated into a CPE model with fixed prices and without the usual price adjustment equation.They made plan formation endogenous and permitted the resulting plan variables to enter the equations determining demand and supply.This paper implements the C-Q proposal in the P-W context.It uses a unique new data set of time series for plans for the major macroeconomic variables in Poland and other CPEs.The overall framework is applicable to any large organization which plans economic variables.

Abstract:
This paper investigates whether predictable patterns that previous empirical work in finance have isolated appear to be persistent and exploitable by portfolio managers. On a sample that is free from survivorship bias we construct a test wherein we simulate the purchases and sales an investor would undertake to exploit the predictable patterns, charging the appropriate transaction costs for buying and selling and using only publicly available information at the time of decisionmaking. We restrict investment to large companies only to assure that the full cost of transactions is properly accounted for. We confirmed on our sample that contrarian strategies yield sizable excess returns after adjusting for risk, as measured by beta. Using analysts' estimates of long term growth we construct a test of the Lakonishok, Shleifer and Vishny (1994) hypothesis. We reach the conclusion that, contrary to Lakonishok et al. (1994), the superior performance of contrarian strategies can not be explained by the superior performance of stocks with low estimated growth rates.