Co-movement in Stock Prices in Emerging Economies: The Case of the Caricom Region

The Grand Anse Declaration of 1989 recognised the need for financial integration within the emerging economies that comprise the CARICOM region, as a way of furthering the wider process of economic integration and, indeed, economic development in that region. Using co-movement as a measure of financial integration, this paper investigates the co-movement in stock prices among the Barbados, the Jamaica and the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchanges, the three major exchanges within the CARICOM region. It also examines how integrated these exchanges are with the New York Stock Exchange. The GARCH-Copula methodology and, to a lesser extent, estimated correlation coefficients, are used to attain this objective. There appears to be co-movement in stock prices and returns within the CARICOM stock markets and significant dependence structures between the returns of the three CARICOM stock markets. However, there is considerably less evidence of integration between the CARICOM markets and the New York Stock Exchange.     

Debating Free International Trade

This article begins with a definition of free international trade and a brief history of the evolution of free trade as an ideology and economic policy. It next considers the case for free trade as first articulated by classical economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo and then examines free trade critiques proffered by Friedrich List and Marxist scholars who claim that free trade can never be just nor fair so long as relational and structural power inequalities exist between corporations and workers. This article concludes with a summary of the current free trade debate, highlighting, in particular, how radical critics of free trade have begun to embrace a more distinctly Marxian view of the dynamics of globalized capital accumulation. This new perspective acknowledges the progressive transformations that globalized trade has brought to developing countries while also highlighting the ways global free trade relies upon and sustains an exploitative class dynamic.     

Competition under revenue-cap regulation with efficiency benchmarking: tariff related incentives for gas transmission system operators in merged markets

Journal of Regulatory Economics - In Europe, gas market mergers aim at reducing restrictions on gas wholesale markets. Market mergers also allow network users to book transport capacity at...     

Towards a fairer manager performance measure: a DEA application in the retail industry

Abstract

Retailers need to determine the performance of their individual stores and, beyond the stores, the managers in charge of running them. The aim of this paper is to develop performance standards that can be applied to fairly distribute rewards to managers regarding their performances by taking into account store neighbourhood characteristics. In order to propose a fairer measure of store performance, the authors introduce and explore the concepts of organizational justice and store efficiency. They use real data from a French supermarket chain and a geomarketing approach. The two-step Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model results are compared with a retailer’s ranking. The retailer tends to favour points of sale having a more important sales area, with more employees and operating in a more densely populated area with a higher buying power. The ranking stemming from the DEA model links store performance to other geo-demographic variables.     

Life Expectancy in 2040: What Do Clinical Experts Expect?

We use expert clinical and public health opinion to estimate likely changes in the prevention and treatment of important disease conditions and how they will affect future life expectancy. Focus groups were held including clinical and public health faculty with expertise in the six leading causes of death in the United States. Mortality rates and life tables for 2040 were derived by sex and age. Life expectancy at age 20 and 65 was compared to figures published by the Social Security Administration and to estimates from the Lee-Carter method. There was agreement among all three approaches that life expectancy at age 20 will increase by approximately one year per decade for females and males between now and 2040. According to the clinical experts, 70% of the improvement in life expectancy will occur in cardiovascular disease and cancer, while in the last 30 years most of the improvement has occurred in cardiovascular disease. Expert opinion suggests that most of the increase in life expectancy will be attributable to the already achieved reduction in smoking rates, especially for women.