A Perfect Impasse? Cuba's Move Towards the Market and the United States' Move Towards Cuba

This article first analyses the internal economic trajectory of the Cuban economic reforms and evaluates their effectiveness in delivering the extensive and intensive development needed to correct Cuba's structural and economic imbalances. It concludes that without the lifting of the US economic sanctions success will at best be only partial, with serious implications for long‐term stability. The article then evaluates the reasons for the US economic sanctions against Cuba and argues that while the embargo policy might have failed to topple the Cuban communist regime, it has served other, largely unacknowledged, purposes that are important in explaining why the policy has persisted. The article concludes by suggesting that the US is not likely to jettison the sanctions regime while Cuba's single‐party, state‐led economic system remains. At the same time, Cuba is not likely to jettison its single‐party system while the sanctions remain.     

Differential Tariffs and Income Inequality in the United States: Some Evidence from the States

Open Economies Review - This paper explores the macroeconomic and distributional consequences of consumption tariffs and materials tariffs. It highlights the contrasting effects of consumption and...     

The Moral Disillusionment Model of Organizational Transgressions: Ethical Transgressions Trigger More Negative Reactions from Consumers When Committed by Nonprofits

Journal of Business Ethics - We tested whether the impact of an organizational transgression on consumer sentiment differs depending on whether the organization is a nonprofit. Competing hypotheses...     

The Effect of Changes in Monetary Policy on Consumer and Business Confidence

This article examines the response of consumer and business confidence to five measures of change in Australian monetary policy. Actual, expected and surprise increases in the official cash rate target and related interest rates are shown to negatively impact consumer sentiment. Business confidence is less affected by increases in the cash rate target, but is negatively affected by an increase in the 90-day bank accepted bill rate. Tests for model stability and asymmetries in the response of sentiment to increases and decreases in interest rates otherwise find only limited evidence for monetary policy having a perverse signalling effect on sentiment.     

Unrelated question model with two decks of cards

In this paper, we propose a new unrelated question model for estimating the prevalence of a sensitive characteristic within a population by utilizing two decks of cards. The resultant estimator is then compared to its competitors as to efficiency and as to protection of respondents. A real data application analyzing e-cigarette use among college students is considered.     

Is real per capita state personal income stationary? New nonlinear,asymmetric panel-data evidence

This paper re-examines the stochastic properties of U.S. state real per capita personal income, using new panel unit-root procedures. The new developments incorporate non-linearity, asymmetry, and cross-sectional correlation within panel-data estimation. Including nonlinearity and asymmetry finds that 43 states exhibit stationary real per capita personal income whereas including only nonlinearity produces 42 states that exhibit stationarity. Stated differently, we find that two states exhibit nonstationary real per capita personal income when considering nonlinearity, asymmetry, and cross-sectional dependence.     

A Different Perspective on the Evolution of UK Income Inequality

This paper scrutinizes the conventional wisdom about trends in UK income inequality and also places contemporary inequality in a much longer historical perspective. We combine household survey and income tax data to provide better coverage of all income ranges from the bottom to the very top (and make our estimates available to other researchers). We make a case for studying distributions of income between tax units (i.e. not assuming the full income sharing that goes with the use of the household as the unit of analysis) for reasons of principle as well as data harmonization. We present evidence that income inequality in the UK is as least as high today as it was just before the start of World War 2.     

Digital gaming culture in Vietnam: an exploratory study

ABSTRACT

New information and communication technologies continue to spread rapidly into the Asian marketplace, which has led to new patterns of leisure consumption, one of the most popular being digital gaming. However, in Vietnam there is limited research on gaming as a leisure activity. The purpose of this study is to explore the phenomenon of digital gaming in Vietnam to better understand how it is practiced in this culture. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-five gaming industry figures and gamers. Thematic analysis was used to guide data collection and analysis. The findings indicate that glocalisation, socialised gaming practices and competitiveness characterise the Vietnamese gaming experience. The distinct culture of Vietnam combined with globalised gaming consumption habits has created new modes of play culture, and hence leisure experiences that are growing in pervasive and influential ways.