Daniel Goyeau

Competitive balance versus competitive intensity before a match: is one of these two concepts more relevant in explaining attendance? The case of the French football Ligue 1 over the period 2008--2011

The aim of this article is to investigate the determinants of attendance at French football Ligue 1 matches over the period 2008–2011 with an emphasis on examining the effects of both competitive balance and intensity before a match. Competitive balance is measured by the point difference between the two teams concerned by a match in the championship. Competitive intensity is measured by the point difference for the home team in relation to ranks with sporting stakes. Results show that competitive balance has an insignificant impact whereas competitive intensity has a significantly positive impact. Implications are drawn.

The Growth of Public Expenditure in France

Publisher Summary In France, as in most other industrialized countries, the growth of the public sector has become a strategic issue in the economic and political debate alongside traditional variables such as inflation and unemployment. This results from an almost continuous rise in the tax burden and the public sector share in the national product. This chapter provides an overview of the trends in public expenditure in France during the period 1961–1983. It discusses the changes in the following main characteristic ratios that highlights the behavior of the public sector in France since 1961: (1) the general government expenditure (GG) as a percentage of GDP ( Y ), and (2) the composition of general government spending by types of expenditure, consumption (GC), investment (GI), and transfers (GTR), and by sectors, central government (CG), local government (LG), and social security funds (SG). It also discusses the theoretical foundations of the estimated equations. These policy functions are based upon an extension of the median voter model. The functions try to go beyond the traditional approach proposed by Borcherding and try to explore the Borcherdings residual. The chapter presents the empirical analysis. It presents a justification of the choice of the dependent variables, rates of growth of nominal public expenditure, disaggregated by sectors and types, and the results. It also presents an analysis of the results, and reviews their significance and their explanatory power.

Contagion and Dynamic Correlation of the Main European Stock Index Futures Markets: A Time-frequency Approach☆

In this paper, we examine the financial contagion and dynamic correlation between three European stock index futures, namely FTSE 100, DAX 30 and CAC 40. For this purpose we resort to a continuous wavelet transform framework and we cover the aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis period. More precisely, we analyze the power spectrum of the series, the wavelet coherency and the average dynamic correlation before and after turbulence episodes occurred after the outburst of the sovereign debt crisis. Our results show that the stock index futures are highly correlated and this correlation increases around financial distress episodes. The contagion phenomenon, associated with a high-frequency correlation, manifested especially after the additional rescue package awarded to Greece. All in all, the dynamic correlation is influenced by the frequency decomposition level and fluctuates considerably in the very long-run.

Stock prices, inflation and inflation uncertainty in the U.S.: testing the long-run relationship considering Dow Jones sector indexes

ABSTRACT We test for the long-run relationship between stock prices, inflation and its uncertainty for different U.S. sector stock indexes, over the period 2002M7–2015M10. For this purpose we use a cointegration analysis with one structural break to capture the crisis effect, and we assess the inflation uncertainty based on a time-varying unobserved component model. In line with recent empirical studies we discover that in the long run, the inflation and its uncertainty negatively impact the stock prices, opposed to the well-known Fisher effect. In addition we show that for several sector stock indexes the negative effect of inflation and its uncertainty vanishes after the crisis outburst. However, in the short run the results provide evidence in favour of a negative impact of uncertainty, while the inflation has no significant influence on stock prices, except for the consumption indexes. The consideration of business cycle effects confirms our findings, which proves that the results are robust, both for long- and short-run relationships.

The profitability of anticipated inflation in banking

Abstract The once-popular proposition that anticipated inflation helps banks receives strong support in a test of bank data covering 17 OECD countries.

Impact of official forecasts on private expectations: The paradox of manipulation (The French Case: 1965–1982)

Abstract Official forecasts may be considered as an attempt to condition the state of opinion. Still the credibility of economic policy is a sine qua non condition for a successful annoncement effect. A quantitative analysis of government manipulation on price expectations outlines a paradox. A government with high political support can manipulate the private expectations but it usually doesnt need to, since its high popularity is a result of a satisfactory state of economy. Manipulation interests a government with low popularity but it is not efficient since individuals prefer private forecasts or an naive extrapolative process to form their price expectations.

Do all sporting prizes have a significant positive impact on attendance in a European national football league? Competitive intensity in the French Ligue 1

Research question: This article investigates the determinants of attendance at French football Ligue 1 matches over the 2008-2011 period, with a focus on the effect of competitive intensity. This is measured by dummies that are functions of the point difference for the home team in relation to the different sporting prizes: title, qualification in UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) club competitions, relegation. The objective is to answer the following question: do all sporting prizes have a significant positive impact on attendance? Research methods: We specified and estimated a standard attendance equation including 35 explanatory variables of which 9 are related to sporting prizes. The estimations are based on a Tobit model with individual cut-off points to allow for truncation of attendance at the upper bound given by stadia capacity (i.e. sold-out games). 1135 observations are included. Results and findings: Our results show that all sporting prizes have a significant positive impact on attendance. In particular, there is a significant impact of prizes for potential qualification in the UEFA Europa League which are dependent on the outcome of domestic cups (known only in the last part of season). Implications: This research contributes to the optimisation of competition format and knowledge on competitive intensity and determinants of attendance. It provides an argument in favour of current sporting prizes for managers in the main European national football leagues.

Currency Regimes and Process of Regional Financial Integration of the Emerging Countries

The topology of emerging financial markets can be established either according to the usual criterion of geographical proximity, or according to a criterion of proximity of currency regimes. By explicitely considering the differences in currency regimes, and more specifically the differences in exchange rate regimes, the aim of this chapter is to analyse, firstly in analytical terms, the influence of proximity of currency regimes relative to that of geographical proximity in the process of integration which are operational on emerging markets. As for empirical evidence, we endeavour to identify these relations, like their evolutions since the beginning of the 1990s, and this for a sample of 22 countries distributed out of four emerging geographical regions (Asia, Latin America, CEECs, the Middle East). We show there is no particular evolution of the rate of integration, in terms of monetary proximity as well as in terms of geographical proximity. In addition, we show that the monetary influence dominates very largely the geographical one in the determination of the return for risk granted by the various national markets.

Risque et marges d'interet optimales des banques commerciales d'Europe centrale et orientale

Cet article analyse le comportement des banques des PECO en matiere de determination de leur marge dinteret. Une modelisation dans un cadre de concurxadrence imparfaite en avenir incertain a tout dabord permis de souligner le role que pouvaient jouer les risques de credit et de transformation mais aussi les autres facteurs tels que les opportunites darbitrage offertes par le marche des titres, les couts administratifs ou les contraintes de capitalisation. Une analyse empirique sur un echantillon representatif de banques commerciales de neuf PECO met ensuite en evidence, a des degres divers, dans certains pays (la Pologne, la Tchequie, la Hongrie, et la Slovaquie) trois principaux facteurs (le risque de credit, les opportunites darbitrage et les contraintes de capitalisation) qui expliquent les conditions offertes sur le marche des credits.