Bridging The Digital Divide: Financial and Ethical Challenges

The digital divide – the widening gapbetween people who can use computers and theInternet to advance themselves, and those who,because of poverty, education, or otherbarriers, cannot – offers some unique financialand ethical challenges. Fallows (2000), inThe Invisible Poor, reports on the stateof the U.S. economy as it affects the poor. Among other issues, Fallows argues thateconomic growth separates the classes, ratherthan bringing them together. Attali (2000)suggests a possible solution to this economicgap. Attali believes that ...the only concreteway to reduce the poverty gap is within thecontext of free market economy. It can be doneby combining the two success stories of thelast decade: entrepreneurship and technology,more specifically: microfinance and theInternet. This article addresses some issues related tohow technology, particularly in the area offinancial services, has affected the ability ofthe poor to better themselves. Ethicalchallenges that accompany Information Agepoverty are examined in the context of effortsto narrow the digital divide.     

The going public decision and the structure of equity markets

The industries in which listed firms are concentrated in less developed equity markets are not random, nor entirely explained by the underlying composition of production. Listed firms and market capitalization are disproportionately concentrated in industries with low beta (measured with their beta with the market portfolio in the U.S.). We document a strong positive relationship between the industry-weighted country beta and the degree of market development across countries. Recent IPO activity confirms the result since new listings have higher betas than the average firm already in the market.     

Towards a Smart Tourism Business Ecosystem based on Industrial Heritage: research perspectives from the mining region of Rio Tinto,Spain

The implications of the study provide suggestions for future improvements relating to the development of industrial tourism destinations. The possibility of ‘re-using’ the old industrial and mining heritage could favour the development of an economic opportunity to the recession that affected most industrial regions after the 1960s. This paper is focused on the field of industrial heritage tourism management (IHTM) to deepen the knowledge about its business ecosystem. The IHTM is chosen because a number of evidences highlight the interconnections that exist between this field and the business ecosystem concept. To explore these interconnections, the purpose of this article is to define a frame of analysis based also on the emergent initiative of smart tourism and to set up a theoretical framework not only used to the case study of the region of Rio Tinto mine in Spain, but also used as a policy instrument to suggest propositions for recommending new paths for future studies.     

INSTITUTIONS AND PERFORMANCE IN EUROPEAN LABOUR MARKETS: TAKING A FRESH LOOK AT EVIDENCE

Abstract This paper presents a selective survey of the recent literature on labour market institutions and offers new empirical EU‐based evidence on the impact of labour market reforms on employment and labour market adjustment. Although the literature traditionally treats labour market institutions as exogenous, attention shifted recently towards understanding the underlying causes of specific institutional arrangements. As a consequence, the literature highlights the great importance of an efficient policy design exploiting these interactions wisely and identifies general principles for achieving an efficient policy design at both macro and micro levels. Although empirical evidence does not show a major change in terms of intensity of labour market reform after the setting of the Economic and Monetary Union and the creation of the euro, the reforms aiming at strengthening the labour market attachment of vulnerable groups tend to have been successful both in raising their employment and increasing labour market adjustment.     

Endogenous retirement and public pension system reform in Spain

Population aging has spurred developed countries around the world to reform their PAYG pension systems. In particular, delaying legal retirement ages and reducing the generosity of pension benefits have been widely implemented changes. This paper assesses the potential success of these policies in the case of the Spanish economy, and compares them with the results obtained by the (rather modest) reforms already implemented in 1997 and 2001. This evaluation is accomplished in a heterogeneous-agent dynamic general equilibrium model where individuals can adjust their retirement ages in response to changes to the pension rules. We check the ability of the model to reproduce the basic stylized facts of retirement behavior (particularly the pattern of early retirement induced by minimum pensions). The model is then used to explore the impact of pension reforms. We find that already implemented changes actually increase the implicit liabilities of the system. In contrast, delaying the legal retirement age and extending the averaging period in the pension formula to cover most of the individual's life-cycle can reduce the implicit liabilities substantially. These findings reveal the failure of the Spanish political system to distribute the costs of population aging more evenly across the generations.     

Reviews

This study investigated the interaction between proficiency in both mathematics and English on students' performance in the first-year level financial accounting course, The data were gathered on the results of first-year accounting major students at the recently established Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and analysed using regression analysis. The findings showed that a higher degree of proficiency in mathematics was associated with a higher level of performance in the financial accounting course for students who were more competent in English.     

Backtesting extreme value theory models of expected shortfall

We use stock market data to analyze the quality of alternative models and procedures for forecasting expected shortfall (ES) at different significance levels. We compute ES forecasts from conditional models applied to the full distribution of returns as well as from models that focus on tail events using extreme value theory (EVT). We also apply the semiparametric filtered historical simulation (FHS) approach to ES forecasting to obtain 10-day ES forecasts. At the 10-day horizon we combine FHS with EVT. The performance of the different models is assessed using six different ES backtests recently proposed in the literature. Our results suggest that conditional EVT-based models produce more accurate 1-day and 10-day ES forecasts than do non-EVT based models. Under either approach, asymmetric probability distributions for return innovations tend to produce better forecasts. Incorporating EVT in parametric or semiparametric approaches also improves ES forecasting performance. These qualitative results are also valid for the recent crisis period, even though all models then underestimate the level of risk. FHS narrows the range of numerical forecasts obtained from alternative models, thereby reducing model risk. Combining EVT and FHS seems to be best approach for obtaining accurate ES forecasts.     

Delaying the Normal and Early Retirement Ages in Spain: Behavioural and Welfare Consequences for Employed and Unemployed Workers

In this paper, we explore the links between pension reform, early retirement, and the use of unemployment as an alternative pathway to retirement. We use a dynamic rational expectations model to analyze the search and retirement behaviour of employed and unemployed workers aged 50 or over. The model is calibrated to reproduce the main reemployment and retirement patterns observed between 2002 and 2008 in Spain. It is subsequently used to analyze the effects of the 2011 pension reform in Spain, characterized by 2-year delays in both the early and the normal retirement ages. We find that this reform generates large increases in labour supply and sizable cuts in pension costs, but these are achieved at the expense of very large welfare losses, especially among unemployed workers. As an alternative, we propose leaving the early retirement age unchanged, but penalizing the minimum pension (reducing its generosity in parallel to the cuts imposed on individual pension benefits, and making it more actuarially fair with age). This alternative reform strikes a better balance between individual welfare and labour supply stimulus.