New Economic School

We study financial returns on videogame attributes as digital alternative investments, using CS:GO skins as an example. Using an extensive dataset of monthly returns on 4,565 skins for 2013-2024, we find that these niche investments outperform most traditional and alternative assets with the average return about 40% pa and provide diversification benefits. The time-series analysis indicates independence of their returns from equity market risk factors, as well as other financial markets, however, the returns exhibit strong seasonality patterns with peaks observed in January and April. The cross-sectional analysis reveals that items from direct drops and of better quality sell for higher prices and generate higher returns, whereas the presence of premium features and higher rarity are associated with significantly higher prices, but lower average returns. We observe a strong “penny stock effect” that cheaper items yield higher percentage returns. Lower financial returns on expensive skins are likely compensated by the “emotional dividend” of gamers.

We examine how the information in public signals (e.g., earnings, analysts’ forecasts) affects firms’ voluntary disclosures. We consider levered firms and information structures such that investors update their beliefs about both the mean and variance of the firm’s cash flows. We predict that firms that, conditional on the public signal, have a higher default risk are less likely to disclose. For firms with low ex ante default risk, larger positive surprises following the public signal initially increase the disclosure likelihood because they indicate a higher mean of cash flows. However, too large positive surprises may reduce the disclosure likelihood of these firms, because the larger surprise is also indicative of higher variance and, thus, higher probability of default. Symmetrically, larger negative surprises may increase disclosure for firms with high ex ante default risk, despite the more pessimistic inference about the mean, because the higher variance makes it more likely that these firms avoid default. Extending our analysis to multiple analysts’ forecasts, we predict that not only consensus, but also dispersion affect firms’ disclosure likelihood. Consensus conveys information about the mean and variance of cash flows, whereas dispersion is informative about the precision of analysts’ signals, which in turn affects the information content of forecasts. This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting. Funding: D. Lee-Lo gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Accounting Research Center at Kellogg.

Introduction: Stylistic deviations such as wordiness and redundancy undermine clarity and precision in academic writing. Their frequency and communicative impact, however, are likely to vary across disciplinary traditions. Earlier research has examined these phenomena in education-related corpora and revealed patterned distributions of redundancy in justificatory passages. By contrast, the ways in which such deviations manifest in linguistics research articles remain underexplored. Results: Wordiness predominated across the corpus, accounting for 70.6% of all deviations, while redundancy accounted for 29.4%. Class balance was stable across Moves and Steps, but severity was functionally localized: high-impact deviations clustered in M3_S3, M3_S1, M2_S2, and M1_S3. Almost all high-impact cases were linked to wordiness, with syntactic complexity alone responsible for 54 of 61 instances. Redundancy, although frequent in structural and lexical repetition, rarely reached high severity. Conclusion: These findings show that in linguistics Introductions in English the primary stylistic risk lies not in repetition but in syntactic overload at rhetorically dense points of the text. The results extend previous applications of the taxonomy by demonstrating a discipline-specific pattern of risk concentration. The study highlights the value of combining rhetorical segmentation with fine-grained stylistic annotation and suggests that pedagogical efforts should focus on reducing syntactic complexity in high-pressure rhetorical contexts. Limitations include the modest corpus size and the absence of cross-disciplinary comparison, which future research should address to refine understanding of stylistic risk across fields.

Digital businesses are increasingly adopting data-sharing practices, granting employees broader access to internal datasets to improve operational efficiency. Yet, many organizations may be sharing too much: a recent survey found that 33% of firms give employees access to all company data, and another 35% grant more access than is strictly necessary for their roles. Such overexposure increases cybersecurity risk, particularly when adversaries exploit employee access (e.g., through phishing attacks). Such overexposure exposes firms to cybersecurity risks such as data breaches

The reversal of the trend towards the decline in income inequality in the last four decades in most countries has created favorable grounds for the rise of nationalist and anti-globalization sentiments. Economic failures of countries, groups of people and individuals are among important factors that cause nationalism. The rise of nationalism in many countries in recent decades, as measured by the decline in the “pride in your own country” indicator from the World Values Survey, is statistically significantly related to the change in income inequality (Gini coefficient) within the country. When globalization is properly managed, it is good for growth and income distribution and does not lead to nationalism. But if it is accompanied by the decline in real incomes for large masses of people, nationalist political forces have additional arguments for instigating anti-globalization and isolationist sentiments. The rise in income inequality within major countries since the 1980s poses a threat not only to social stability, but also to globalization.

The tenth anniversary of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), member states of which are Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, is a significant event in the dramatic history of the Soviet heritage. The analysis of the cooperation processes, based on the author’s methods, showed a sufficient progress in the process of economic cooperation. At the same time, some of the declared targets have not been reached. The EAEU is the most successful integration project in the post-Soviet region.

Introduction. The automotive industry is undergoing a transformation driven by technological progress, environmental demands, and shifting economic conditions. These changes have significant macroeconomic implications, affecting employment, inflation, fiscal systems, trade balance, and investment. The purpose of the article is to analyze the influence of automotive market transformation on parameters of macroeconomic stability of national economies, to identify the main challenges and risks associated with changing the technological, fiscal and production structure of the industry, and to summarize the international experience to develop directions of public policy aimed at ensuring macroeconomic stability in the context of structural restructuring of the transport sector. Results. The research shows that the structural shift in the automotive sector requires a rethinking of fiscal, monetary, investment, and social policies. It identifies short-term risks such as inflationary pressure, unemployment, and fiscal losses, alongside long-term opportunities including innovation-driven growth, energy security, and improved environmental outcomes. The experience of leading foreign automotive market leaders illustrates diverse but effective combinations of consumer incentives and long-term reforms. Conclusions. The study concludes that macroeconomic stability amid automotive transformation depends on a balanced short-term of policy responses and long-term development strategies, supported by proactive and adaptive state governance.