On farmland prices and rents in Japan

Historically, the Japanese farmland market has been strongly regulated, although fundamental changes in policy were introduced in 1967 and 1980. This article examines the relationship between farmland prices and rents in Japan for 1955–2000 using the cointegration procedure of Johansen et al. (2000) , which admits structural breaks. Results show the presence of a cointegrating relationship with a significant break in 1980. There is Granger‐causality from prices to rents, which suggests that rents are determined within an institutional setting according to farmland prices. The rent–price elasticity is unity, which supports the notion of efficiency in the farmland market.     

Redundancies in Chinese State Enterprises: A Research Report

This article examines how the problem of surplus labor isbeing dealt with in some of China's state-owned enterprises. Primarily using interview data from the period 1995-1997, as well as published sources, the article looks at the main methods employed by large state-owned enterprises to reduce the level of surplus labor in their workforce. It also considers how smaller state-owned enterprises are coping in an era where mergers, closures, and bankruptcies are becoming much more common as a means of dealing with loss-making firms, resulting in widespread redundancies in the state-owned enterpriseworkforce. The article illustrates that the potential political repercussions of job losses, as well as direct intervention by local authorities, continue to hinder the freedom of enterprise management to adjust employment levels in the interests of efficiency and productivity. The article also notes the importance of how decisions about downsizing and redundancy are communicated and justified to employees if resistance and social instability are to be minimized. The employment treatment of production workers will be considered separately from that of cadres, since these two groups are subject to different employment regulations and political constraints.     

Factors of Immobility: Why the Unemployment Rate is Slow to Adjust

During the recent recession and the continuing recovery, the national unemployment rate has maintained a level that has only been observed one other time since the Great Depression. While the initial causes of the increased unemployment rate are documented, the adjustment process and reduction of unemployment rates back toward some natural rate has not been addressed empirically. In this paper, the authors analyze labor supply side factors that may cause unemployment rates to remain high for a longer period than the typical recession. The authors focus on the impact of unemployment insurance extensions, housing market contractions and the general breadth of the economic downturn as factors that slow the labor supply adjustment process and lead to prolonged high rates of unemployment.     

Corporate Social Responsibility and the Operationalization Challenge for Global Tourism Organizations

Tourism businesses have increasingly sought to contribute to society through corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Larger tourism organizations normally seek to institutionalize CSR under their corporate CSR policy and strategy that is common for their whole organization. This presents challenges for organizations with global operations. This article examines the operationalization of CSR policy by hotel properties in coastal destinations in Thailand. The research found that stakeholders other than the hotels played pivotal roles in the implementation of CSR programs and that there was a preference for involvement by hotels in local projects, over those situated elsewhere in the country or internationally. These hotels tended to partner with other non-hotel stakeholders to execute their external CSR programs and for these to be directed at social issues rather than environmental issues. Overall it was concluded that there are limits to the extent that corporate headquarters may direct the implementation of CSR.     

Survivor Swaps

A survivor swap (SS) is an agreement to exchange cash flows in the future based on the outcome of at least one survivor index. This article discusses the possible uses of SSs as instruments for managing, hedging, and trading mortality‐dependent risks. SSs are especially useful for insurance companies, but also offer other interested parties low beta avenues into the acquisition of mortality risk exposure. The article also investigates vanilla SSs in some detail, and suggests how their premiums and values might be determined in an incomplete market setting.     

Interdependencies between agricultural commodity futures prices on the LIFFE

Interdependencies between commodity prices can arise from the impact of changing macroeconomic variables, from complementarities or substitutabilities between commodities, or from common responses by speculators. Malliaris and Urrutia (1996) found significant linkages between rollover prices of six related agricultural commodities on the Chicago Board of Trade. This article examines interdependencies between futures prices for soft commodities traded on the London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE), calculated using Clark indices. Results show that there are no interdependencies between any two prices; price discovery of one contract provides no information about others. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 22: 269–280, 2002     

Trend breaks and non-stationarity in the Yugoslav black market for dollars, 1974–1987

We estimate a model of the black market premium for dollars in Yugoslavia from 1974 to 1987. Unlike previous applications of the model, our analysis addresses non-stationarity in the underlying data by allowing for trend breaks. Endogenous structural break tests indicate the presence of breaks closely associated with the death of Tito and changes in laws affecting the operation of the black market. After accounting for these breaks, we find strong support for the underlying model. In addition, we find evidence consistent with the era of increased government involvement in the black market leading to greater volatility of the premium following regime change.