Gold price dynamics and the role of uncertainty

This study focuses on the dynamics of the gold price against bonds, stocks and exchange rates based on a disaggregation of the underlying relationships across different frequencies applying a wavelet decomposition. To analyze joint extreme movements (i.e. tail dependence), we adopt a copula approach, which helps us to assess the dependence between the returns of gold and other assets in calm and turmoil market times and therefore the hedge and safe haven functions of gold. We also examine whether gold prices are directly affected by changes in macroeconomic uncertainty, economic policy uncertainty and/or CPI forecasters disagreement. Analyzing data for nine economies for a sample period starting in 1985, we find that the role of gold changes significantly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Gold is unable to serve as a hedge or safe haven in the classical sense while the findings for the period prior to 2008 mostly suggest that gold is able to shield investors. Uncertainty measures display a surprising and time-varying relationship with the path of the gold price. While economic policy uncertainty is positively correlated with gold price changes, macroeconomic uncertainty and inflation uncertainty among forecasters are both negatively related to gold price changes.     

Are Social Costs the Outcome of Struggles over Truth?

Abstract:

This article critically examines the institutional economics theory of social costs by way of reviewing The Dark Places of Business Enterprise: Reinstating Social Costs in Institutional-Economics (2019). In particular, the article assesses the proposal to re-root institutional economics in the theoretical synthesis of “Veblen-Kapp-Mirowski” to better understand the social costs of neoliberalism. One of the findings is that while such a synthesis seems justified on the grounds of significant commonalities and the merits of deeper insights, it nevertheless runs into difficulties due to divergent philosophical foundations. One of the conclusions is that further philosophic clarification is needed on how an alternative economy would understand the relationship between “social costs” and Truth.     

Deregulation and institutional conversion in the Greek hotel industry: an employment relations model in transition

Before the debt crisis of 2010 forced Greece into almost permanent austerity, its hotel workers enjoyed wages and conditions (through a sector collective agreement) similar to those in other economic sectors. This was against the international trend where low wages and poor conditions were standard. Sweeping deregulation by Greek governments has brought much of the hotel industry into line with other countries. The sector agreement, now covering a much smaller proportion of the workforce, survived but has experienced ‘institutional conversion’, delivering a much poorer outcome. Despite buoyant tourism, institutional deregulation and derogation have delivered the employers' major objective of matching the workforce to the fluctuating demand for labour.     

Entrepreneurial ecosystems and the lifecycle of university business incubators: An integrative case study

University business incubators (UBIs) are an important part of the ecosystem that supports entrepreneurial activities and economic development. Extant research has focused on examining UBI activities at a single point in time, but there is a paucity of theoretical and empirical work aimed at understanding the forces that explain why and how UBIs change over time. This is an important gap because establishing a university business incubator does not assure its development and growth. We address this issue by drawing upon the Fisher et al. Academy of Management Review, 41(3), 383-409 (2016) Identity-Legitimacy-Life Cycle model to explain how the pursuit of resources and organizational legitimacy shapes the development of UBIs along key strategic and operational dimensions, which has implications for performance evaluation over time. We illustrate with a case study about the creation and evolution of the DMZ, a leading UBI at Ryerson University in Canada. This case provides new insights about the dynamics of UBIs and their relationships with the entrepreneurial ecosystems in which they are embedded. Implications for future research, management practice, and public policy are discussed.

     

Evolution of the Infant Health Production Function

Michael Grossman's seminal publication on the demand for health and health production (Grossman 1972) has spawned a substantial body of research focusing on the production of infant health. This article provides a systematic review of the published literature to date on infant health production and how it has evolved over the past 3–4 decades as data have become more available, computing has improved, and econometric methods have become more sophisticated. While empirical research in most fields has expanded in corresponding ways, the infant health production research has become an important part of the broader and inherently multidisciplinary literature on intergenerational health. The strongest and most robust findings are that policies matter for infant health, particularly those affecting access to health care, and that prenatal smoking and other chemical exposures substantially compromise infant health. Promising directions for future research include elucidating relevant pathways, reconciling the largely inconsistent estimated effects of nutrition and education, and exploring the roles of preconceptional and lifetime health care, paternal factors, social support, housing, complementarity and substitutability of inputs, factors that modify effects of inputs, and evolving medical technologies.     

Future scenarios for the charity sector in 2045

Rapid change is affecting the demography, technology and availability of resources (both financial and volunteer) on which charities draw. This paper presents four different scenarios that could describe the charity sector one generation from now as it responds to a different world. We highlight the dangers if any one scenario becomes dominant. While it is inevitable that change will occur, these drawbacks should be minimized and it is important that public funders and policy makers steer intelligently through this changing world. Also, charity leaders must prepare and plan for inevitable change in the sector.     

Adopting a new technology: potatoes and population growth in the periphery

Sweden's population doubled in size between 1750 and 1850 despite a century of stagnating per capita incomes and real wages, which has led many historians to attribute the population explosion to the introduction of the potato. This article provides the first systematic evidence on the potato's contribution to Swedish living standards and population growth. Potatoes at least doubled output per acre, and welfare ratios that account for potato consumption imply that they raised living standards significantly for labourers. Estimates that exploit regional differences in the suitability of land for cultivating potatoes further show that cities, counties, and rural parishes with more land suitable for potato cultivation experienced a sharp relative acceleration in population growth as the potato spread in the early nineteenth century. An expansion of the population was mainly driven by relative increases in fertility and, consistent with Malthusian predictions, there was no long‐run impact on per capita incomes. According to these estimates, the introduction and spread of the potato can account for one‐tenth of population growth between 1800 and 1850, thus suggesting that it was an important catalyst for the Swedish population explosion.     

How Ethical Leadership Shapes Employees’ Job Performance: The Mediating Roles of Goal Congruence and Psychological Capital

Drawing from research on ethical leadership, psychological capital, and social learning theory, this study investigated the mediating effects of goal congruence and psychological capital in the link between supervisors’ ethical leadership style and followers’ in-role job performance. Data captured from 171 employees and 24 supervisors showed that ethical leadership has a positive effect on followers’ in-role job performance, yet this effect is explained through the role of psychological capital and follower–leader goal congruence, providing evidence of mediation. These findings have significant implications for research and practice.     

Tail dependence between gold and sectorial stocks in China: perspectives for portfolio diversification

This article analyzes the relationship between gold quoted on the Shanghai Gold Exchange and Chinese sectorial stocks from 2009 to 2015. Using different copulas, our results show that there is weak but significant tail dependence between gold and Chinese sectorial stock returns. This means that the dependence between extreme movements of the two assets is not pronounced and confirms the role of gold as a safe haven asset. Based on analyzing the efficient frontier, CCC-GARCH optimal weights, hedge ratios and hedging effectiveness, we further show that adding gold into Chinese stock portfolios can help to reduce their risk. Gold appears to be the most efficient diversifier for stocks of the materials sector and the less efficient for the utilities sector. As a robustness check, we also compare gold to oil and indicate that gold is more efficient than oil in the diversification of Chinese stock portfolios.

     

Anticounterfeiting Strategies and Their Influence on Attitudes of Different Counterfeit Consumer Types

This article reports the findings of two studies that were designed to determine the effectiveness of several anticounterfeiting strategies on the counterfeit purchasing behavior of the participants, through a mixed methods research approach. In Study 1, in‐depth interviews were conducted with 50 consumers of counterfeit brands in order to investigate their attitudes. Drawing on the results, which revealed four different consumer types (struggle, spurious, indifferent, and liberated), Study 2 was undertaken with a further 128 consumers (32 from each type) to further define each group's type and identify the best anticounterfeit strategies suited to each. The findings suggest that counterfeit purchasing may be reduced if a specific strategy is adapted to suit each typology. Overall, positive rather than negative strategies were found to be more effective for the struggle and spurious consumers compared with indifferent and liberated consumers. The findings also reveal that the acquisition of affordable genuine merchandise may be the key to preventing counterfeit purchasing.