Real Impacts of Intra-European Exchange Rate Variability: A Case for EMU?

Intra-European exchange rate variability has significant economic costs. VAR causality tests show that higher short-run variability of exchange rates against other EU currencies was associated with higher unemployment, less employment, and lower investment for most EU member countries. Robustness tests show that this result holds up in the presence of both policy instruments that might have had an impact on exchange rate variability and cyclical variables that might have influenced labor demand. A model that incorporates the option value of waiting suggests that even short-term spikes in volatility exert a strong impact on investment and labor markets.     

A Note on Licensing and the Market for Real Estate Agents

This study develops and estimates a model of real estate agent demand and supply. The estimates of the model show that the licensing examination pass rate and the educational requirements set by state licensing boards affect the numbers and incomes of real estate agents. The study further shows that the demand for agents is related to economic activity in the housing market and that the supply of agents is very elastic with respect to agent earnings.     

The US Antitrust System and Recent Trends in Antitrust Enforcement

This paper provides a survey of recent research on the US antitrust system. First we provide an overview of the US antitrust system, describing the roles of the US Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission and case law. Second, we provide a new econometric trend analysis on the enforcement of US antitrust law, showing that (1) enforcement demonstrates some trend behavior, as well as comovement with business cycles; (2) the time series of antitrust cases demonstrates two distinct episodes, which we characterize as 'pre-deregulation' and 'post-deregulation;' (3) the time series of government antitrust filings leads the time series of private antitrust filings. Finally, we describe recent economic research relevant to the area of antitrust and the impact of this research on US antitrust policy.     

The Employment Interview: A Review of Recent Research and Recommendations for Future Research

The past decade has seen continued interest in the employment interview, with several changes in research emphasis. The present review is a comprehensive examination of interview research conducted since Harris last reviewed this literature. We begin with a review of the traditional areas of interview research: reliability, validity, structured interviews, interviewer differences, equal employment opportunity issues, impression management, and decision-making processes. Next, we review and discuss more recent developments in interview research such as the use of the interview as a means of assessing person–organization (P–O) fit and applicant reactions to the employment interview. Throughout the review, suggested topics for future research are discussed.     

Shifting Trends in Semiconductor Prices and the Pace of Technological Progress

Business Economics - This paper examines three questions motivated by previous research on semiconductors and productivity growth: Why did semiconductor prices fall so rapidly in the second half of...     

RARE SHOCKS,GREAT RECESSIONS

We estimate a DSGE (dynamic stochastic general equilibrium) model where rare large shocks can occur, by replacing the commonly used Gaussian assumption with a Student's t‐distribution. Results from the Smets and Wouters (American Economic Review 2007; 97 : 586–606) model estimated on the usual set of macroeconomic time series over the 1964–2011 period indicate that (i) the Student's t specification is strongly favored by the data even when we allow for low‐frequency variation in the volatility of the shocks, and (ii)) the estimated degrees of freedom are quite low for several shocks that drive US business cycles, implying an important role for rare large shocks. This result holds even if we exclude the Great Recession period from the sample. We also show that inference about low‐frequency changes in volatility—and, in particular, inference about the magnitude of Great Moderation—is different once we allow for fat tails. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Heritage tourism clusters along the borders of Mexico

This article seeks to find potential heritage tourism clusters in border areas. Literature about tourism destinations is essentially focused on administrative-bound areas, while little attention has been paid to functional regions. The research is based on a methodological exercise to contribute to this debate by analyzing the case of three border regions between Mexico, the USA, Guatemala and Belize, respectively. These borders have never been static but have changed throughout history, to the present day situation. It is argued that these changes have implications for the potential development of heritage tourism. The results identify a number of cross-border clusters and corridors in these areas with different levels of tourism underdevelopment, mainly because of political or legal restrictions. The results of this study contribute to an improved understanding of borderland heritages and cross-border regional clusters in the context of tourism.     

Ambiguity and perceived coordination in a global game

In a global game, larger ambiguity is shown to decrease the amount of coordination each player perceives. Consequently, small uncertainty tends to select the Pareto dominated equilibrium of the game without uncertainty. Implications for models of financial crises are drawn.     

Compassion as a neglected motivator for sustainable tourism

Compassion is defined and identified in this paper as a powerful and universal motivator for actions that could help attain sustainable outcomes and enable aspirational forms of sustainable tourism, including just tourism, hopeful tourism and enlightened mass tourism that have not yet demonstrated real-world traction. Despite its potential, compassion has been neglected in the tourism literature. This paper reviews the 50-year quest for a “better tourism”, and presents a compassion-scape as a comprehensive and systematic framework for facilitating sector engagement with compassion. “Context” factors associated with tourism settings (e.g. level of development, purpose) and agents (e.g. mindset, psychographics, motivations) influence “encounter” elements, such as the relationship, type and distress characteristics. Subsequent “response” factors, such as type, recipient, timeframe and intention, influence the “implications” for sustainable tourism, which in turn affect the types of “intervention” (e.g. mindful interpretation, social marketing, faith injunction) implemented to achieve sustainable outcomes. The many innate methodological challenges for the researcher in measuring compassion are discussed, along with the issues involved in operationalizing the compassion-scape to engage and reform alternative tourism forms, notably volunteer tourism, pro-poor tourism, religious tourism and fair trade tourism as well as conventional mass tourism. A paper for the thinking reader.