Agricultural Commodity Price Shocks and Their Effect on Growth in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Commodity price shocks are an important type of external shock and are often cited as a problem for economic growth in Sub‐Saharan Africa. We choose nine Sub‐Saharan African countries that are heavily dependent on a single agricultural commodity for a significant portion of their income. This paper quantifies the impact of agricultural commodity price shocks using a structural non‐linear dynamic model. The novel aspect of this study is that we determine whether the response of per capita GDP for the selected Sub‐Saharan African countries is different to unexpected increases in agricultural commodity prices as opposed to decreases in prices. We conclude that there is very little evidence that an unanticipated price increase (decrease) will lead to a significantly different response in per capita incomes.     

Some comments on the Sraffian Supermultiplier approach to growth and distribution

Abstract

The article discusses the Sraffian Supermultiplier (SSM) approach to growth and distribution. It makes 5 points. First, in the short run, the role of autonomous expenditure can be appreciated within a standard post Keynesian framework (Kaleckian, Kaldorian, Robinsonian, etc.). Second, and related to the first, the SSM model is a model of the long run and has to be evaluated as such. Third, in the long run, one way that capacity adjusts to demand is through an endogenous adjustment of the rate of utilization. Fourth, the SSM model is a peculiar way to reach what Garegnani called the “second Keynesian position.” Although, it respects the letter of the “Keynesian hypothesis,” it makes investment quasi-endogenous and subjects it to the growth of autonomous expenditure. Fifth, in the long run it is unlikely that “autonomous expenditure” is really autonomous. From a stock-flow consistent point of view this implies unrealistic adjustments after periods of changes in stock-flow ratios. Moreover, if we were to take this kind of adjustment at face value, there would be no space for Minskyan financial cycles. This also creates serious problems for the empirical validation of the model.     

Innovation and upheaval: early growth in Greek capital market listings and IPOs from 1880 to the Second World War in the Athens Stock Exchange†

The establishment and growth of the Greek stock market were coincident with development episodes, financial upheavals, and geographic expansions of the country's economy over the period 1880–1940. This article explores the growth of the Athens Stock Exchange through new listings and initial public offerings (IPOs) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We examine changes in exchange governance and listing requirements. On a theme not addressed before , we find that simple listings were far more numerous than actual IPOs. IPOs in Greece remained unregulated throughout the period. Their under‐pricing became pronounced in the later parts of the period, especially the 1920s. The study presents data on ‘quasi‐IPOs’ (that is, capital increases shortly after listing) and shows that they offer a more accurate assessment of the demand for the financing of listing firms in an emerging market. Robust evidence is presented to show that as the Exchange developed it also underwent a change in character, becoming more oriented to the domestic market and catering to smaller firms in domestic manufacturing in the post‐First World War era that marked the end of early globalization.     

Cross-Sectional Evolution of the U.S. City Size Distribution

We report nonparametrically estimated stochastic transition kernels for the evolution of the distribution of U.S. metropolitan area populations, for the period 1900 to 1990. These suggest a fair amount of uniformity in the patterns of mobility during the study period. The distribution of city size is predominantly characterised by persistence. Additional kernel estimates do not reveal any stark differences in intra-region mobility patterns. We characterise the nature of intra-size distribution dynamics by means of measures that do not require discretisation of the city size distribution. We employ these measures to study the degree of mobility within the U.S. city size distribution and, separately, within regional and urban subsystems. We find that different regions show different degrees of intra-distribution mobility. Second-tier cities show more mobility than top-tier cities.     

Brands on the Brain: Neuro-Images of Advertising

Neuroscience is opening a new chapter of understanding in many fields. One such is how advertising works. For the first time we can directly 'see' some effects of advertisements on the brain's activity. This article reports two small-scale experiments into the differential effects of advertising's rational and emotional components. Advertising has long been seen as providing reasons to buy, however subtle. In academic research at least, the importance of emotion has often been downplayed. The preliminary experiment reported here shows how emotional ads are more likely to be remembered. The second experiment uses brain imaging to investigate the part of the brain which responds to emotionally-engaging ('affective') and reason-engaging ('cognitive') advertising stimuli. These are very early days in using brain-imaging techniques and these experiments are very exploratory. However, as the three Commentaries by Simon Broadbent, Thomas O'Guinn and Larry Percy suggest, along with other work, they may point towards a revolution in advertising research.     

Estimating the conditional mode of a stationary stochastic process from noisy observations

Let {(X _i, Y _i,)}, i≥1, be a strictly stationary process from noisy observations. We examine the effect of the noise in the response Y and the covariates X on the nonparametric estimation of the conditional mode function. To estimate this function we are using deconvoluting kernel estimators. The asymptotic behavior of these estimators depends on the smoothness of the noise distribution, which is classified as either ordinary smooth or super smooth. Uniform convergence with almost sure convergence rates is established for strongly mixing stochastic processes, when the noise distribution is ordinary smooth. Received: April 1998     

Segmenting East Asian Tourists to Greece by Travel Motivation

This study compares the push and pull motivations of East Asian (Japanese, Chinese and Korean) tourists who visit Greece and also proposes market segmentation based on travel motivations that transcend the national boundaries of those countries. Four main push factors were identified: “Knowledge”, “Ego-enhancement”, “Escape & Relaxation” and “Novelty”. Similarly, four pull factors were also identified: “Leisure, shopping and safety”, “Variety and cost”, “Culture & heritage” and “Travel arrangements and facilities”. Cross-cultural differences were found regarding the importance of travel motivations. Chinese tourists scored higher than other nationalities for almost all motivation categories. Although the cross-cultural differences are important, this study proposes another way to tackle the market segmentation by conducting an international segmentation based on inherent similarities across different nationalities of travelers. Three segments emerged from that analysis with the “Novelty Seekers” to be the largest followed by the “Want-it-All” and the “Lowly Motivated”.