Testing the significance and the non-linearity of the Phillips trade-off in the Euro Area

This paper tests the significance and the non-linearity of the Phillips trade-off in the aggregate Euro Area, in an unobserved components model of stochastic NAIRU and trend output featuring the Phillips equation and the Okun law as main identifying equations, with quarterly data for 1970:I-2002:III. The Phillips curve turns out to be linear and its trade-off statistically significant, while non-linearity shows up in the Okun relation. The results prove to be robust to alternative lag length structures of the model, and to alternative non-linear functional forms. The trend-cycle decompositions estimated with the model capture the main features of the Euro Area’s recent macroeconomic record.First version received: 1 September 2003 / Final version received: June 2004CEMPRE - Centro de Estudos Macroeconómicos e Previsão - is supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal, through the Programa Operacional Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação (POCTI) of the Quadro Comunitário de Apoio III, which is financed by FEDER and Portuguese funds.We thank comments on earlier versions by Fabio Canova, Miguel St Aubyn, Alvaro Almeida, Pete Richardson, Kevin Ross, and two anonymous referees. We acknowledge James D. Hamilton’s help with the confidence bands. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Sources of gains from international portfolio diversification

This paper looks at the determinants of country and industry specific factors in international portfolio returns using a sample of forty eight countries and thirty nine industries over the last three decades. Country factors have remained relatively stable over the sample period while industry factors have significantly increased during the last decade and dropped again since 2000. The importance of industry and country factors is correlated with measures of economic and financial international integration and development. We find that financial market globalization is the main driving force behind the changes in relative magnitude of the different shocks. Country factors are smaller for countries integrated in world financial markets and have declined as the degree of financial integration and the number of countries pursuing financial liberalization has increased. Higher international financial integration within an industry increases the importance of industry factors in explaining returns. Economic integration of production also helps in explaining returns. Countries with a more specialized production activity have higher country shocks.     

Measuring financial risks with copulas

This paper is concerned with the statistical modeling of the dependence structure of multivariate financial data using the concept of copulas. We select some special copulas and identify the type of dependency captured by each one. We fit copulas to daily returns and simulate from the fitted models. We compare the effect of the choice of copula on risk measures and assess the variability of one-step-ahead predictions of portfolio losses. We analyze extreme scenarios and fit extreme value copulas to the block maxima and minima from daily returns. The stress scenarios constructed are compared to those obtained using models from the extreme value theory. We illustrate the usefulness of the copula approach using two stock market indexes.     

Can teaching social dilemmas make people more prosocial? An experiment

Economics and business students regularly behave less prosocially than others. Can ethics training reverse this tendency? Results from a repeated public goods experiment reveal that it can. Students who attend an interactive lecture on social dilemmas show significantly more cooperation than others. However, the lecture does not appear to increase the incidence of reciprocal behavior. As many current social problems qualify as social dilemmas, this result stresses the importance of ethics training for policy makers and curriculum designers alike in overcoming the incentive structure of social dilemmas.     

Workload control under continuous order release

Workload control is a production planning and control concept specifically designed for complex manufacturing environments. Past research on Workload control has been essentially focused on discrete order release. This means that release of orders to the shop floor takes places on a periodic basis. Continuous order release has been somehow neglected, in spite of its apparent potential for improving system performance, including the reduction of order flow times. This paper presents a simulation study of this order release approach. The study contributes for improving the basis for setting workload norms, selecting the workload control strategy and deciding upon routing alternatives under continuous order release.     

Public Sector Organizations and Cocreation With Citizens: A Literature Review on Benefits,Drivers, and Barriers

ABSTRACT

Cocreation has captured the attention of public managers and policymakers and yet the literature focusing in the public sector is still relatively dispersed. In this literature review we present a contextualized analysis of the potential reasons that lead public sector organizations to cocreate with citizens and identify potential barriers that may hamper the adoption of cocreation in public settings. The analysis undertaken allowed us to conclude that the topic is increasingly capturing the interest of researchers, although the state of the literature is characterized by a reduced heterogeneity in research methods. We classified cocreation benefits in the public sector as innovation related, improved decision-making, and symbolic related, and we categorized the drivers for cocreation according to three broad categories: external, relation-specific and internal. Finally, we identified potential barriers of cocreation, including structural, organizational, and behavioral barriers.     

Mix between Satisfaction and Attributes Destination Choice: A Segmentation Criterion to Understand the Ski Resorts Consumers

This study examined the attributes prioritized by tourists when choosing a winter sports destination and their degree of satisfaction with the services provided by Portugal's only ski resort. Two hundred tourists completed a questionnaire with factor analysis then deployed to extract the data that served as the basis for cluster analysis. Our results report discrepancies between the attributes valued by tourists when choosing winter sports destinations and their degree of satisfaction with the ski resort's services. Moreover, the combination between attributes/motivations prevailing in destination selection and the subsequent satisfaction with the services provided may generate information of relevance to evaluating organizational competitiveness. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Counterfactual analysis of bank mergers

We introduce a counterfactual analysis of banks mergers, combining the pre-merger equilibrium setting with post-merger environmental characteristics, while accounting for endogenously propagated changes in market structure. Using this procedure we are able to estimate the effects on loan flows and interest rates that would have been observed if the pre-merger equilibrium was not altered. Results are obtained for firms, households, and banks inside and outside the merging circles separately. We find that mergers increased firms’ access to credit, but had an opposite effect on households and led to a widespread decrease in interest rates.