Endogenous Growth in an Open Economy and the Real Exchange Rate

This paper is a step in the direction of a larger research project aimed at determining the long run equilibrium value of the euro/dollar real exchange rate. Given this value, one could then give a precise meaning to the notion of undervaluation or overvaluation of the euro, and calculate its misalignment. The problem however arises of how to assess the reliability of such misalignment calculations. In our opinion, we must have a benchmark (namely a period in which we exactly know from outside sources the misalignment itself), against which we can test the validity of the model underlying our calculations. This of course is not (yet) possible for the euro, so that all the calculations of the misalignment of the euro that have been made can only be compared with one another, without knowing which is the good one. Hence, before building a model to be applied to the euro/dollar, we tested our ideas incorporating them in a basic model to be applied to the lira/dollar in a period in which we do know the actual misalignment of the lira from outside sources.     

人力资源管理浅谈

本文从人力资源的概念与特征,探讨了企业的人力资源管理问题。     

Mergers,takeovers, and a property ethic

The recent takeover and merger trend cries out for ethical evaluation. This essay proposes a model for evaluating them in terms of their impact on a firm's immediate stakeholders: investors, owners, management and employees. Since mergers and takeovers are Transfers of Ownership of Firms (TOFs) they entail a property ethic of ownership, control, securing stakeholder interests, and defining which stakeholders should exercise these rights. I use the model to evaluate two fictional cases, a friendly merger and a hostile takeover. The results show that neither TOF serves all interests equitably. Since the control structure of the private firm is legitimized by its interest structure, I reason that both should be reformed. Both rest on a broader economic rationale; but it is controverted. Accordingly, the economic and ethical evaluation of TOFs, I conclude, both entail the democratic reform of the control structure of the firm.A corporation represents far more than its current stock price; it embodies obligations to employees, customers, suppliers and communities.Robert S. Saul, Peers Merchant BankVincent di Norcia is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sudbury. He is the author of Ethics in Management and Beyond the Red Tory.     

Integrating sustainability and resilience in the supply chain: A systematic literature review and a research agenda

Sustainability has emerged as an important industrial strategic outlook expanding beyond organizational boundaries to include the supply chain. Simultaneously, the industry has also been faced with supply chain resilience concerns. Research on the intersection of supply chain sustainability and resilience is nascent and is a consequence of their observed mutual influences. However, confusion about concepts, implementation methods, and measurements of sustainable and resilient supply chains remains. This study completes a systematic literature review that critically examines several major observations and directions. We find the concept of sustainable supply chains is more established, and general agreement on its theoretical foundations exists. Supply chain resilience is relatively less mature. The nexus and relationships between the two topics are often incoherent: there is confusion on sustainable and resilient supply chains establishment; there is no clarity on what practices could jointly advance both areas. A major conflict exists since sustainability generally focuses on efficiency, while resilience seeks effectiveness. We recommend studies to analyze implementation relationships and impact. We also observe that performance measurement systems should be developed to assess supply chain sustainability and resilience performance taking with explicit consideration time horizons considered in these measures.     

Fiscal Shocks and the Current Account in the Redux Model: Evidence from the Italian Economy

The main goal of this paper is to study the effects of fiscal policy on the current account in the Italian economy through the analysis of one of the most innovative intertemporal models of recent years, the Obstfeld–Rogoff Redux model. The author proposes an innovative econometric approach to the model, based on the estimation of the microeconomic parameters that appear in its fundamental equations. The estimated parameters are used to empirically determine the multipliers that, according to the theory, connect permanent and temporary variations in public expenditure to the current account. Estimation is carried out on a dynamic extension of the original model, which has been developed modifying the first order conditions system of the maximization problem. Finally, the author provides a comparison between the results obtained and the actual dynamics of the Italian current account balance.     

What Contributes to Life Satisfaction in Transitional Romania?

This paper analyzes life satisfaction in Romania in 2001, 12 years after the collapse of communism and the beginning of the transition into a market economy. Using a survey of 1770 individuals, we find that our results are very similar to studies in Western Europe and the USA. Life satisfaction increases with housing standard, health status, economic situation, education, trusting other people, and living in the countryside, and decreases with rising unemployment. However, life satisfaction is lower than in Western countries with about 74% of the people in the sample being not at all satisfied or not quite satisfied with their life in general, and the remaining part being quite satisfied or very satisfied. A policy discussion concludes the paper.     

从国营到国有——国家股转让效果分析

本文系统地研究了从1997年到2000年在上海证券交易所和深圳证券交易所发生的国有资产局将控制权转让给国有独资企业和国有法人企业的案例数据。研究发现国家股控制权转让后公司业绩有了明显的改善,同时证券市场对国家股转让行为做出了积极的反应,产生了明显的超额收益。     

Matching and anonymity

This work introduces a set-theoretic foundation of deterministic bilateral matching processes and studies their properties. In particular, it formalizes a link between matching and informational constraints by developing a notion of anonymity that is based on the agents’ matching histories. It also explains why and how various matching processes generate different degrees of “informational isolation” in the economy. We illustrate the usefulness of our approach to modeling matching frameworks by discussing the classical turnpike model of Townsend.This research is supported in part by the NSF grants EIA-0075506, SES-0128039, DMS-0437210, and ACI-0325846. We thank two anonymous referees for constructive comments that improved the exposition of the paper. We also thank the participants in seminars at the University of Aarhus, Purdue University, University of Texas at Austin, and at the XI Meeting on Real Analysis and Measure Theory in 2004, the spring 2004 Midwest Economic Theory Meeting, the summer 2004 North American and European Econometric Society meetings.     

A theory of natural addiction

Economic theories of rational addiction aim to describe consumer behavior in the presence of habit-forming goods. We provide a biological foundation for this body of work by formally specifying conditions under which it is optimal to form a habit. We demonstrate the empirical validity of our thesis with an in-depth review and synthesis of the biomedical literature concerning the action of opiates in the mammalian brain and their effects on behavior. Our results lend credence to many of the unconventional behavioral assumptions employed by theories of rational addiction, including adjacent complementarity and the importance of cues, attention, and self-control in determining the behavior of addicts. We offer evidence for the special case of the opiates that “harmful” addiction is the manifestation of a mismatch between behavioral algorithms encoded in the human genome and the expanded menu of choices faced by consumers in the modern world.     

Alternatives to blanket guarantees for containing a systemic crisis

This paper seeks to explain how policy actions undertaken at the outset of recent crises—particularly the issuance of extensive liquidity support and government guarantees—absorb off-budget fiscal resources and inappropriately constrain officials’ subsequent options for restructuring their country’s troubled financial and corporate sectors. Empirical evidence supports the commonsense view that the damage a crisis works on a country’s financial sector and on its real economy is lessened by taking market-mimicking actions that promptly estimate and allocate losses during the early stages of a crisis. The most important steps are to plan to call a timeout to separate hopelessly insolvent institutions from potentially viable ones and to provide haircuts, guarantees, and liquidity support in ways that protect taxpayers and avoid subsidizing insolvent institutions’ longshot gambles for resurrection.