Does economic policy uncertainty drive the dynamic spillover among traditional currencies and cryptocurrencies? The role of the COVID-19 pandemic

The paper examines the dynamic spillover among traditional currencies and cryptocurrencies before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and investigates whether economic policy uncertainty (EPU) impacts this spillover. Based on the TVP-VAR approach, we find evidence of spillover effects among currencies, which increased widely during the pandemic. In addition, results suggest that almost all cryptocurrencies remain as “safe-haven” tools against market uncertainty during the COVID-19 period. Moreover, comparative analysis shows that the total connectedness for cryptocurrencies is lower than for traditional currencies during the crisis. Further analysis using quantile regression suggests that EPU exerts an impact on the total and the net spillovers with different degrees across currencies and this impact is affected by the health crisis. Our findings have important policy implications for policymakers, investors, and international traders.     

技术独董、经济政策不确定性与企业创新产出

创新产出是企业创新能力的直观体现,也是企业价值创造的源泉。以2008—2017年披露了专利授权信息的中国A股上市公司为样本,研究了独立董事技术专长对企业创新产出的影响。结果显示：（1）技术独立董事显著地促进了企业创新产出,且这种促进作用受到经济政策不确定性的负向调节;（2）技术独立董事是通过提高企业的创新投入来促进企业的创新产出的;（3）技术独立董事兼职席位与企业创新产出呈倒U型关系。根据上述研究结论,企业应当增加技术独立董事的引入并适当限制技术独立董事在其他企业兼职的行为,以充分发挥技术独立董事的创新驱动效应,提高企业创新产出。     

A graduates ’ satisfaction index for the evaluation of the university overall quality

In the higher educational setting, students provide a relevant contribution to the quality of educational services. In such a context, the measurement of the perceived quality and related satisfaction for the university experience are of primary interest to evaluate the efficiency and efficacy of the learning processes. In this contribution, we aim at assessing the overall quality of the graduates’ university experience in terms of internal and external efficacy by applying the ECSI (European Customer Satisfaction Index) methodology, based on structural equation models and primarily developed in the context of customer satisfaction. For this aim, we propose a modified ECSI model tailored for the higher educational setting, explicitly taking into account the differences among groups of degree program. The study is carried out on data collected by the AlmaLaurea surveys at the University of Florence (Italy) in the period 2014–2017 and concerns a sample of more than 2,000 graduates. We find out eight latent variables that contribute to define the overall quality of university experience. These variables are differently affected by the type of degree program, with the highest levels of external efficacy observed for degree programs belonging to the educational, health, and engineering groups. It also turns out that interventions on the internal efficacy (i.e., quality of hardware and quality of humanware) have a direct positive effect on the university (i.e., loyalty) and an indirect positive effect on the society (i.e., external efficacy).     

Playing the synthesizer with Canadian data: Adding polls to a structural forecasting model

Election forecasting has become a fixture of election campaigns in a number of democracies. Structural modeling, the major approach to forecasting election results, relies on ‘fundamental’ economic and political variables to predict the incumbent’s vote share usually a few months in advance. Some political scientists contend that adding vote intention polls to these models—i.e., synthesizing ‘fundamental’ variables and polling information—can lead to important accuracy gains. In this paper, we look at the efficiency of different model specifications in predicting the Canadian federal elections from 1953 to 2015. We find that vote intention polls only allow modest accuracy gains late in the campaign. With this backdrop in mind, we then use different model specifications to make ex ante forecasts of the 2019 federal election. Our findings have a number of important implications for the forecasting discipline in Canada as they address the benefits of combining polls and ‘fundamental’ variables to predict election results; the efficiency of varying lag structures; and the issue of translating votes into seats.     

环境不确定性与企业党员高管的创新“稳定器”效应

本文选取2010—2019年A股上市公司作为研究样本,研究高管党员身份在企业创新面临环境不确定带来冲击时的“稳定器”效应及其内在机制。研究发现：环境不确定性的提升抑制了企业创新,高管党员身份能通过降低研发支出挤出程度和优化融资环境两个渠道有效缓解环境不确定性的创新抑制效应。党员高管的创新“稳定器”效应更多地体现在环境不确定性增加的阶段,在平稳发展时期,应平衡好党组织参与企业治理与企业创新发展自主权的关系。全面从严治党战略的实施使党员高管决策风格更加稳健、保守,降低了企业风险承担,同时强化了面临环境不确定性时高管党员身份的“创新稳定器”作用。在当前企业创新面临高环境不确定性的大背景下,本文研究一方面丰富了党组织参与创新治理的理论依据,另一方面为高不确定性背景下优化企业创新环境提供了可实践路径。     

Piercing the Veil of Uncertainty in Transboundary Pollution Agreements

This paper addresses the question of how uncertainty in costs and benefits affects the difficulty of reaching a voluntary agreement among sovereign states. A measure of difficulty is constructed related to side-payments necessary to make an agreement a Pareto-improving move. Using a simple model, it is shown that uncertainty actually makes agreement easier.JEL classifications: Q5, H4, D7, D8An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Risk and Uncertainty in Environmental and Resource Economics, Wageningen, The Netherlands, June 2002.     

Testing of unit roots and other fractionally integrated hypotheses in the presence of structural breaks

Tests of unit roots and other nonstationary hypotheses that were proposed by Robinson (1994) are applied in this article to the Nelson and Plosser's (1982) series. The tests can be expressed in a way allowing for structural breaks under both the null and the alternative hypotheses. When applying the tests to the same dataset as in Perron (1989), we observe that our results might be consistent with those in Perron (1989) when testing the nulls of trend-stationarity or a unit-root. However, we also observe that fractionally integrated hypotheses may be plausible alternatives in the context of structural breaks at a known period of time. Final version received: August 2000/Final version accepted: August 2001 RID="*" ID="*"  The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the European TMR grant No. ERBFMRX-CT-98-0213. Comments of two anonymous referees are also acknowledged.     

Central Bank's interventions and the Fisher hypothesis: a threshold cointegration investigation

The long-run relationship between nominal interest rates and inflation is examined, allowing for structural breaks and asymmetric mean reversion. From a Threshold AutoRegressive (TAR) test applied to the residuals of the cointegration relationship (while allowing for both a break in the mean of the long-run equation and a smooth regime-transition), there is strong evidence for non-linear mean reversion properties for the real interest rates of the US Treasury Bill market. This suggests asymmetric changes to inflation shocks in the Central Bank's reaction function. The existence of different regimes is consistent with some interpretations of the monetary policies run by the Fed, such as credibility and opportunism.     

Carbon Trading with Imperfectly Observable Emissions

The Kyoto Protocol foresees emission trading but does not yet specify verification of (uncertain) emissions. This paper analyses a setting in which parties can meet their emission targets by reducing emissions, by investing in monitoring (reducing uncertainty of emissions) or by (bilaterally) trading permits. We derive the optimality conditions and carry out various numerical simulations. Our applications suggest that including uncertainty could increase compliance costs for the USA, Japan and the European Union. Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union might be able to gain from trading due to higher permit prices. Emissions trading could also lower aggregate uncertainty on emissions.     

Free Entry under Uncertainty

When focusing on firm’s risk-aversion in industry equilibrium, the number of firms may be either larger or smaller when comparing market equilibrium with and without price uncertainty. In this paper, we introduce risk-averse firms under cost uncertainty in a model of spatial differentiation and show that the impact of uncertainty will increase the number of firms in an industry. With increased uncertainty, the risk premium of the marginal buyer increases by more than the risk premium of the average buyer, so that the price increases by more than the risk premium. When turning to the free entry game, we find that the market generates too many firms.