Capital Flows to Latin America (2003–17): A Critical Survey from Prebisch’s Business Cycle Theory

ABSTRACT

The economic literature on capital flows to developing countries has shared two important commonalities since the 1990s. Published works (whether they focus on the external situation or stress the domestic determinants of capital flows) tend to assume a beneficial effect of capital inflows, which leads to an improvement of peripheral institutions, whose deficiencies are ostensibly the main cause of economic turmoil and/or failure in attracting capital flows, in continuity with New Institutional Economics. In doing so, mainstream economists deliberately overlook the asymmetric characteristics of the international monetary system and the persisting hegemony of dollar. Raul Prebisch’s pioneering work on business cycles in Latin America provide an alternative view, one capable of amending the existing mainstream literature. On the one hand, Prebisch stressed the destabilizing role of capital inflows on Latin American economies, particularly short-term speculative capital. On the other hand, Prebisch designed a set of counter cyclical monetary policies in order to contrast capital volatility, particularly during downturns. An analysis of stylized facts shows that, when correctly updated, Prebisch’s theory has remarkable explanatory potential when applied to Latin America’s current economic and financial situation.     

中国城市科技人才集聚促进了全要素生产率增长吗——来自285个地级市的经验研究

基于2005—2018年中国内地285个地级市数据，对城市科技人才集聚与全要素生产率（简称“TFP”）进行测度分析，实证考察科技人才集聚对TFP的影响。结果表明：①城市科技人才集聚与TFP空间分异特征显著，但二者具有较强的时空一致性，即科技人才集聚特征显著的城市，其TFP也相对稳定；②城市科技人才集聚对TFP的影响呈倒U型，但研究期内大多数城市仍处于集聚效应占主导阶段,科技人才集聚通过提升城市技术进步水平促进TFP增长，而科技人才集聚对技术效率的影响呈倒U型；③不同类型城市科技人才集聚对其TFP影响的异质性显著，且适宜集聚区间也存在差异。省会城市及一、二线城市等优势特征显著的城市所能承受的科技人才集聚规模上限更高，有利于通过释放集聚红利促进TFP增长，而非省会城市、三线及以下城市等则拐点值较低。     

I Feel Your Pain: The Effect of Regulator as a Minority Shareholder on Merger and Acquisition Performance

We examine the effect of a regulator-led advocate for minority shareholders on merger and acquisition (M&A) performance in China. In recent years, the China Securities Regulatory Commission established the China Securities Investor Services Center (CSISC), which began its ownership of 100 shares of public firms in 2016. The CSISC advocates for the interests of minority shareholders proactively. Focusing on abnormal stock returns in M&A announcements, we find that acquirers that have the CSISC as a shareholder (CSISC acquirers) exhibit higher positive abnormal stock returns than non-CSISC acquirers. Cross-sectional analysis suggests that the core results are mainly driven by firms with severe agency problems and weak external/internal monitoring, and those not controlled by the state. In addition, we find that CSISC acquirers have better long-term performance and encounter more M&A failures than non-CSISC acquirers. Our findings indicate that although the CSISC only holds 100 shares of listed companies, it plays an effective role in monitoring and driving firms to make appropriate M&A decisions.     

Legally astute managers as a source of value in organizations

The legal and compliance departments in organizations have more influence than ever before. Why then are companies so vulnerable to legal liability? The problem may not be with talented legal professionals, but with the lack of legal knowledge held by MBAs and other business school graduates that make day-to-day decisions in modern organizations. Firms can close this knowledge gap and minimize legal liability by training their managers in legal astuteness—the ability of a manager to address legal issues successfully—by instilling four essential traits: respecting the rule of law, recognizing legal issues, resolving problems proactively, and reporting complex legal issues to experts. Job candidates should also be screened for traits of legal astuteness. A legally astute candidate, especially a graduate of a business school that requires legal education for all its students, can be a cultural ambassador for legal astuteness and a valuable liaison between legal and compliance departments and the candidate’s functional area. A legally ignorant candidate will require significant training and a frank assessment of the legal risk they bring to the organization. Modern firms in today’s legal environment face two choices: hire a legally astute manager now or deal with a compliance headache later.     

Does justice affect brand advocacy? Online brand advocacy behaviors as a response to hotel customers’ justice perceptions

This study focuses on customers' information-sharing behavior in the context of online brand advocacy behavior regarding hotel brands. We aim to explain hotel customers' online brand advocacy behavior through three-sided justice evaluations (i.e., justice for employees, justice for the self, and global belief in a just world), and their hotel satisfaction. Hypotheses are tested by using survey data acquired from 688 individuals on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings show that customers' perceptions of justice for the self positively affect their hotel satisfaction, perceptions of justice for employees and the global belief in a just world positively affect online brand advocacy behavior, and hotel satisfaction also positively affects online brand advocacy behavior. We expand current research efforts on online brand advocacy research and provide theoretical and managerial implications for the development of marketing and management research and practice.     

2019—2020年长沙市生产安全事故统计分析

为探究生产安全事故的演化规律，基于长沙市2019—2020年生产安全事故的数据，从事故发生时间、发生区域、行业和领域分布、事故等级等方面进行分析。研究表明：2019—2020年事故数量和死亡人数呈下降趋势，1月、8月、10月事故数量和死亡人数较多，2月事故数量和死亡人数少；非主城区的事故数量和死亡人数高于主城区，事故数量和死亡人数在空间上的分布比较均衡；道路运输和工矿商贸行业在全市生产安全事故中占绝大多数；工矿商贸行业中，建筑施工行业的事故数量和死亡人数最多；一般事故所产生的事故数量和死亡人数最多，重大事故的事故死亡率最高。     

Is online-to-offline customer care support essential for consumer service?

Customer satisfaction is the main pillar for convenient and profitable retailing. The retail sector continuously tried to develop new strategies to improve consumer satisfaction. It is impossible to provide each service directly to the consumer by the retailer. In this direction, the retailer establishes customer care to provide the best service to consumers. Consumer care can provide promotional or prevention services, increasing the consumer's satisfaction level. This study is developed to show the impact of retailers' customer care service for an offline-to-online retailing strategy. The demand is consumer support, advertisement, and selling price dependent. For maintaining consumer service, some free home delivery policies are offered, when consumers ordered more than a certain percentage of the amount. Finally, the total profit of this O2O retailing system is calculated by the classical optimization technique. Some special cases are discussed in the numerical section to prove the impact of customer care services. Numerical results prove that customer care support enhances the profit by 48.20%, whereas investment in the advertisement and home delivery strategy helps the retail industry to earn 44.80% and 16.74% more profit, respectively. Finally, from this study, it is clear that customer care activities are essential to increase the profit of the retailing sector.     

游客感知视角下乡村旅游质效提升维度研究——以西双版纳傣族园为例

发展乡村旅游是实施乡村振兴战略的重要途径，对促进乡村经济发展具有重要作用。以西双版纳傣族园为案例研究地，通过SPSS和AMOS实证探究游客感知视角下乡村旅游质效提升的维度。结果表明：游客感知视角下的乡村旅游质效提升包含旅游地感知、地方认同感、主观幸福感、环境责任行为4个维度；地方认同感和旅游地感知对乡村旅游质效提升的影响力较强，其次是主观幸福感和环境责任行为。     

Financial returns to collecting rare political economy books

Rare books of political economy are eminently collectable. Using historical prices, I employ hedonic regressions to estimate financial returns to collecting the works of ten eminent political economists and develop a price index for this corpus of collectables. For the observation period 1975–2019, I find that in those 45 years investing in rare political economy books yielded an average annual real rate of return of 2.8%, which is well in line with the returns to collecting rare books of classical literature. Compared with other collectibles such as fine art, investing in rare books turns out to be financially more profitable.