---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Walter Schachermayer <wschach(a)fam.tuwien.ac.at> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 14:00:18 +0200 From: Sylvie Hansbauer <sylvie.hansbauer(a)univie.ac.at> Subject: wtfs 7. Okt Wirtschaftstheoretisches Forschungsseminar der Universität Wien gemeinsam mit dem Institut für Höhere Studien und der Nationalökonomischen Gesellschaft 07.10.2004: 16.00 s.t.: Charalambos D. ALIPRANTIS (Purdue University) Some Applications of Riesz Spaces to Economics, Finance and Econometrics 17.30 s.t.: Jim MALLEY (University of Glasgow and CESifo) Electoral Uncertainty, Fiscal Policies and Growth: Theory and Evidence from Germany, the UK and the US Nächster Termin: 21.10.04 mit Vorträgen von Robert Nuscheler (WZ Berlin) und Roland Strausz (FU Berlin) Abstracts (soweit vorhanden) finden Sie im Anschluss/umseitig. Die Papiere zu den Vorträgen liegen auf http://www.univie.ac.at/Wirtschaftswissenschaften/events/WS0304/economicthe… Die Vorträge finden im Institut für Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Hohenstaufengasse 9, A-1010 Wien statt. Das Seminar steht allen Interessierten offen. Insbesondere wird die Teilnahme von fortgeschrittenen Studierenden begrüßt. Prof. Gerhard Orosel Abstracts Charalambos D. ALIPRANTIS (Purdue University) Some Applications of Riesz Spaces to Economics, Finance and Econometrics Investors often wish to insure themselves against the payoff of their portfolios falling below a certain value. One way of doing this is by purchasing an appropriate collection of traded securities. However, when the derivatives market is not complete, an investor who seeks portfolio insurance will also be interested in the cheapest hedge that is marketed. Such insurance will also be interested in the cheapest hedge that is marketed. Such insurance will not exactly replicate the desired insured-payoff, but it is the cheapest that can be achieved using the market. Analytically, the problem of finding a cheapest insuring portfolio is a linear programming problem. The present paper provides an alternative portfolio dominance approach to solving the minimum-premium insurance portfolio problem. This affords remarkably rich and intuitive insights to determining and describing the minimum-premium insurance portfolios. Jim MALLEY (University of Glasgow and CESifo) Electoral Uncertainty, Fiscal Policies and Growth: Theory and Evidence from Germany, the UK and the US In this paper we study the link between elections, fiscal policy and economic growth/fluctuations. The set-up is a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of growth and endogenously chosen fiscal policy, in which two political parties can alternate in power. The party in office chooses jointly how much to tax and how to allocate its total expenditure between public consumption and production services. The main theoretical prediction is that forward-looking incumbents, with uncertain prospects of re-election, find it optimal to follow relatively shortsighted fiscal policies, and that this lowers economic growth. The model is estimated using quarterly data for Germany, the UK and the US from 1960 to 1999. Our econometric results provide clear support for the main theoretical prediction. They also give plausible and significant estimates for the productivity of public production services, the weight which households place on public consumption services relative to private consumption and the time discount rate. Moreover, we find that changes in electoral uncertainty produce the longest lasting fluctuations in the European economies followed by the US.