Use of Derivatives and Analysts’ Forecasts: New Evidence from Non‐financial Brazilian Companies

This study investigates whether market analysts’ forecasts are influenced by the presence of derivative financial instruments in listed firms. From a sample of firms comprising 1173 derivative users and 7797 non‐users for the 2006–14 period, the results indicate the existence of less error behaviour (bias) on earnings per share forecasts for derivative user firms compared to non‐user firms. This finding suggests that these instruments may be used to protect businesses and provide greater stability in the results of companies that use them. The presence of derivative financial instruments is increasing among listed firms, and management can use them for hedging or speculation (thus mitigating or increasing risk). The literature contains few studies on this issue, and the general understanding relies on the assumption that derivative financial instruments provide relevant information for decision making.     

Alternative Forms of Mixing Banking with Commerce: Evidence from American History

Much of the discussion about banking and commerce in America has failed to make several crucial distinctions and has not accounted for many arrangements that have promoted the mixing of these activities. We investigate the history of banking and commerce in the United States, looking both at bank control of commercial firms and commercial firms' control of banks. We trace how these controls have changed with shifting definitions of "bank" and changing methods of "control." Despite the regulations prohibiting some arrangements that promote financial control, we find evidence of extensive linkages between banking and commerce in the United States. These linkages usually build on devices that are very close substitutes to the arrangements prohibited by law. Altogether, our findings question the often made claim that traditionally banking in the United States has been separated from commerce. Furthermore, given that research on Japan and Germany has shown that the mixing of banking and commerce matters for a variety of issues, our evidence also raises some questions on similar research in the United States which makes the simplifying assumption that these industries are separated.     

Racial disparity in the atlanta housing market

Atlanta has the reputation of being a city of opportunity for blacks. However, in Atlanta, as well as in other cities across the nation, the nexus of racism and economic discrimination has resulted in disparities between the housing status of blacks and whites. This article examines racial disparities in the Atlanta housing market. It begins by tracing recent trends in the Atlanta-area economy and by providing background information on the local housing market. It then discusses the roles of the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 and Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 in the efforts of local groups to reduce racial disparities in the housing market. The final section discusses recent local developments that might lead to improvements in the housing status of black Atlantans.     

Bank Capital Regulation in Contemporary Banking Theory: A Review of the Literature

This paper reviews the theoretical literature on bank capital regulation and analyzes some of the approaches to redesigning the 1988 Basel Accord on capital standards. The paper starts with a review of the literature on the design of the financial system and the existence of banks. It proceeds with a presentation of the market failures that justify banking regulation and an analysis of the mechanisms that have been suggested to deal with these failures. The paper then reviews the theoretical literature on bank capital regulation. This is followed by a brief history of capital regulation since the 1988 Basel Capital Accord and a presentation of both the alternative approaches that have been put forward on setting capital standards and the Basel Committee's proposal for a new capital adequacy framework.     

On some criteria for the formulation and testing of economic growth models

This paper presents a methodology for the formulation and testing of economic growth models. The model selected includes two production sectors with physical and human capital accumulation. These capital stocks are associated with spillover effects in the production of the physical good and in the accumulation of both factors.     

The dialectics of globalization: what are the effects for management and organization in Germany and Japan

The globalization literature has been limited cumulative. Different disciplines have different accents, use different definitions, rely on divergent theories and focus on different units of analysis. As a corollary, they have come to divergent opinions on the concept of globalization, on its broader consequences as well as on the more specific consequences for organization and management. This article contributes to the literature by proposing a societal theory of institutional change to analyze globalization effects in a more systematical way. It explores the effects of globalization forces on organization and management in Germany and Japan in comparison to the US and the UK, by tracing their impact on the systems of corporate governance, industrial relations and human resources. The article shows that different patterns of change exist at different levels of analysis. These differences help us explain why no generalized pattern of convergence towards the same economic model should be expected.     

A critical overview of privacy-preserving approaches for collaborative forecasting

Cooperation between different data owners may lead to an improvement in forecast quality—for instance, by benefiting from spatiotemporal dependencies in geographically distributed time series. Due to business competitive factors and personal data protection concerns, however, said data owners might be unwilling to share their data. Interest in collaborative privacy-preserving forecasting is thus increasing. This paper analyzes the state-of-the-art and unveils several shortcomings of existing methods in guaranteeing data privacy when employing vector autoregressive models. The methods are divided into three groups: data transformation, secure multi-party computations, and decomposition methods. The analysis shows that state-of-the-art techniques have limitations in preserving data privacy, such as (i) the necessary trade-off between privacy and forecasting accuracy, empirically evaluated through simulations and real-world experiments based on solar data; and (ii) iterative model fitting processes, which reveal data after a number of iterations.     

Financialization of Housing in Brazil: New Frontiers

The financialization of housing has been increasingly identified as an important driver of social and economic change in contemporary capitalism. Focusing on the Brazilian context, this article considers the extent to which recent changes in housing regulations, policies and markets confirm or challenge narratives about the financialization of housing in the international academic debate. I argue that while many of the trends stressed in the literature are apparent, more extreme processes of financialization within the Brazilian housing sector remain limited––not only because of institutional and regulatory constraints, path dependence or political resistance, but also because of fundamental structural conditions of Brazil's position as a peripheral economy. Three different but mutually reinforcing processes are scrutinized in order to evaluate the financialization of housing and its limits in Brazil: the re‐regulation of the real estate financial sector initiated in the 1990s; the changing funding patterns among real estate companies since the mid‐2000s; and the increasing commodification of housing induced by a large‐scale and heavily subsidized housing program launched in 2009.