In and out of everyday life through film experiences: an analysis of two social spaces as leisure frames

The new information and communication technologies have made it possible to view films in different spaces. Using the symbolic interactionist framework as a frame of analysis, we interpret the meaning of the two experiences of viewing technology-mediated films in the home and in the cinema. We conducted field research during the first half of 2009, digitally recording 16 interviews with research participants living in Barcelona (Spain). The interviews were transcribed verbatim with the help of voice-recognition software. Reports from our research participants indicate that individuals considered only the cinema experience to be a true leisure activity, while the home experience was interpreted as a routine recreational activity. Therefore, the meanings of the film-viewing activity were associated with the symbolic properties of the frames of interpretation. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for the home as a unified centre where shared meanings are co-produced by family members.     

Do CEOs Matter? Evidence from Hospitalization Events

Using variation in firms’ exposure to their CEOs resulting from hospitalization, we estimate the effect of chief executive officers (CEOs) on firm policies, holding firm-CEO matches constant. We document three main findings. First, CEOs have a significant effect on profitability and investment. Second, CEO effects are larger for younger CEOs, in growing and family-controlled firms, and in human-capital-intensive industries. Third, CEOs are unique: the hospitalization of other senior executives does not have similar effects on the performance. Overall, our findings demonstrate that CEOs are a key driver of firm performance, which suggests that CEO contingency plans are valuable.     

Hedging nontradable risks with transaction costs and price impact

A risk‐averse agent hedges her exposure to a nontradable risk factor U using a correlated traded asset S and accounts for the impact of her trades on both factors. The effect of the agent's trades on U is referred to as cross‐impact. By solving the agent's stochastic control problem, we obtain a closed‐form expression for the optimal strategy when the agent holds a linear position in U. When the exposure to the nontradable risk factor is nonlinear, we provide an approximation to the optimal strategy in closed‐form, and prove that the value function is correctly approximated by this strategy when cross‐impact and risk‐aversion are small. We further prove that when is nonlinear, the approximate optimal strategy can be written in terms of the optimal strategy for a linear exposure with the size of the position changing dynamically according to the exposure's “Delta” under a particular probability measure.     

Private Pension Funds in Oligopolistic Financial Markets: Some qualifications to conventional theory of financial development

The paper inquires into the efficiency of financial development policies in economies where the financial sector is based on oligopolistic commercial banking. In this case, interest rates on deposits may be set below the level required to achieve balance of payments equilibrium, so that banks are able to exact a risk free financial margin in their holdings of government bonds. Under such circumstances, banks lack incentives to place indirect debt in domestic security markets, as a means of providing long-term finance; and private capital market deepening is hindered. Pension fund privatisation, in this institutional environment, does not relieve public finances, because the government must act as issuer of last resort in order to stabilise the currency. This point is illustrated with Mexican data, and some policy measures to deal with this situation in developing economies are proposed.     

Public Debt,Economic Growth and Inflation in African Economies

We analyse the relationship between public debt, economic growth and inflation in a group of 52 African economies between 1950 and 2012. The results indicate that the limits of public debt are negatively related to economic growth and exhibit, from a given level of debt, an inverted U behaviour regarding the relationship between economic growth and public debt. Briefly, the high levels of public debt are coincident with reduced rates of economic growth and rising levels of inflation. Our results for three specific geographical areas resemble those of the overall analysis, despite some differences. In North African countries, the growth rates of the gross domestic product (GDP) and inflation also show an inverted U behaviour as the ratio of public debt/GDP increases. The highest rate of economic growth is recorded when the ratio of public debt/GDP is below 30% of GDP and corresponds to an average inflation rate of 5.33%. An identical behaviour of the GDP growth rates and inflation also appears in Sub‐Saharan countries until the third interval (60–90%). However, the highest growth rate of the GDP and GDP per capita is registered when the public debt/GDP ratio is in the second interval (30–60%). For the countries of the Southern Africa Development Community, the highest average rate of economic growth (6.8%) is similar to North African countries, when the ratio public debt/GDP is below 30% of GDP, with an average inflation rate of 11%. A number of robustness analyses were performed and the great majority of them confirm the general analysis.     

Volatility and covariation of financial assets: A high-frequency analysis

Using high frequency data for the price dynamics of equities we measure the impact that market microstructure noise has on estimates of the: (i) volatility of returns; and (ii) variance–covariance matrix of n assets. We propose a Kalman-filter-based methodology that allows us to deconstruct price series into the true efficient price and the microstructure noise. This approach allows us to employ volatility estimators that achieve very low Root Mean Squared Errors (RMSEs) compared to other estimators that have been proposed to deal with market microstructure noise at high frequencies. Furthermore, this price series decomposition allows us to estimate the variance covariance matrix of n assets in a more efficient way than the methods so far proposed in the literature. We illustrate our results by calculating how microstructure noise affects portfolio decisions and calculations of the equity beta in a CAPM setting.     

The impact of oil price changes on Spanish and euro area consumer price inflation

This paper assesses the impact of oil price changes on Spanish and euro area consumer price inflation. We find that the inflationary effect of oil price changes in both economies is limited, even though crude oil price fluctuations are a major driver of inflation variability. The impact on Spanish inflation is found to be somewhat higher than in the euro area. In both economies, direct effects have increased in the last decade, reflecting the higher expenditure share of households on refined oil products, whereas indirect and second-round effects seem to be losing importance.     

Sustainable Development and the Financial System: Society's Perceptions About Socially Responsible Investing

The debate surrounding the financial needs of investors and the impact on society of investment is considered to be an important research topic due to the growth of socially responsible financial markets. The main objective of this research is to study society's perception about socially responsible investing (SRI) and to identify investor's preferences regarding environmental, social and governance criteria, their real‐life investment needs and the most relevant sustainable financial products. To examine society's perception of SRI, we conducted a field survey among Spanish investors. The results show that SRI is at an early stage and Spanish investors need more exact information regarding social, environmental, and governance criteria in order to invest in socially responsible companies and products. This paper offers some guidelines that could be used by Spanish institutions, managers and investors and by foreign managers when approaching the Spanish market, in order to promote the growth of socially responsible financial products. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Response to ‘Duplications’ by Drelichman and Voth

In this response, we demonstrate that Mauricio Drelichman and Hans‐Joachim Voth, in their 2015 Economic History Review note ‘Duplication without constraints: Álvarez‐Nogal and Chamley's analysis of debt policy under Philip II’, provide a misconceived and inaccurate account of our argument about the finances of Philip II in ‘Debt policy under constraints: Philip II, the Cortes, and Genoese bankers’ (Economic History Review, 2014). Here, we summarize our position in the context of the current literature and provide a few comments on data gathering.