An empirical note about estimation and forecasting Latin American Forex returns volatility: the role of long memory and random level shifts components

Portuguese Economic Journal - A set of RLS-type models with ARMA and ARFIMA dynamics is estimated and compared in a forecasting exercise with ARFIMA, GARCH and FIGARCH models. It is an extension of...     

War and Tourism: The Banal Geographies of Security in Colombia's “Retaking”

This paper explores the discourses and practices of state securitisation that Colombia underwent during the last decade. By focusing on the imaginative geographies of security resulting from the unexpected couplings of war and tourism in the country, it delves into the everyday and highly uneven spaces of (in)security forged by the Democratic Security regime. It shows how a feminist take on the geopolitics of war and peace offers a better understanding of the making and unmaking of banal spaces of security and their role in the production of hegemonic state formations in Colombia.     

Asset Price Bubbles: Existence,Persistence and Migration

Econometric tests are performed for the detection and migration of asset‐price bubbles in the housing, currency and stock markets of seven countries. This set of countries includes both developed and emerging economies that have good historical data on housing prices. Our empirical results suggest that this type of exuberant behaviour in prices occurs more frequently in the housing market than in the currency and stock markets. Additionally, we find significant evidence of bubble migration across markets within some of the studied countries.     

Personality similarities and differences between Mexican and American business leaders

A study was conducted to investigate personality similarities and differences for a group of 200 business leaders, 100 each from Southern Mexico and the United States. Mexican and American leaders were administered the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) in their native language (Spanish or English). A demographic questionnaire solicited information about age, education, and gender. These variables were used as covariates in some analyses. After controlling for the effects of age, gender, and education level, the authors found that Mexican leaders scored higher than their American counterparts on the warmth, emotional stability, social boldness, and openness to change scales. American leaders scored higher on the abstractedness and self‐reliance scales. On scales related to leadership there were between‐nationality differences on emotional stability, social boldness, abstractedness, and self‐reliance. Additional studies are suggested to illuminate cross‐nationality similarities and differences.     

An application of a random level shifts model to the volatility of Peruvian stock and exchange rate returns

The literature has shown that the volatility of stock and forex rate market returns shows the characteristic of long memory. Another fact that is shown in the literature is that this feature may be spurious and volatility actually consists of a short memory process contaminated with random level shifts (RLS). In this paper, we follow recent econometric approaches estimating an RLS model to the logarithm of the absolute value of stock and forex returns. The model consists of the sum of a short-term memory component and a component of level shifts. The second component is specified as the cumulative sum of a process that is zero with probability ‘1-alpha’ and is a random variable with probability ‘alpha’. The results show that there are level shifts that are rare, but once they are taken into account, the characteristic or property of long memory disappears. Also, the presence of General Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GARCH) effects is eliminated when included or deducted level shifts. An exercise of out-of-sample forecasting shows that the RLS model has better performance than traditional models for modelling long memory such as the models ARFIMA (p,d,q).     

THE SIZE OF FISCAL MULTIPLIERS AND THE STANCE OF MONETARY POLICY IN DEVELOPING ECONOMIES

Implementing fiscal programs during monetary policy expansions seems to improve significantly their economic stimulus. We find this result by estimating the effect of government consumption shocks on gross domestic product (GDP) using a panel of 23 developing economies. Our goal is to better understand the reasons for the low fiscal multipliers found in the literature by performing estimations for alternative exchange rate regimes, business‐cycle phases, and monetary policy stances. In addition, we perform counterfactual simulations to analyze the possible gains from fiscal‐monetary policy coordination. Our results also show lower multipliers in developing economies with flexible regimes, especially during economic slowdowns. (JEL E62, E63, F32)     

Nonparametric correlation integral–based tests for linear and nonlinear stochastic processes

The BDS test is the best-known correlation integral–based test, and it is now an important part of most standard econometric data analysis software packages. This test depends on the proximity ( $\varepsilon )$ and the embedding dimension ( $m)$ parameters both of which are chosen by the researcher. Although different studies (e.g., Kanzler in Very fast and correctly sized estimation of the BDS statistic. Department of Economics, Oxford University, Oxford, 1999) have been carried out to provide an adequate selection of the proximity parameter, no relevant research has yet been done on $m$ . In practice, researchers usually compute the BDS statistic for different values of $m$ , but sometimes these results are contradictory because some of them accept the null and others reject it. This paper aims to fill this gap. To that end, we propose a new simple, yet powerful, aggregate test for independence, based on BDS outputs from a given data set, that allows the consideration of all of the information contained in several embedding dimensions without the ambiguity of the well-known BDS tests.     

Consumer Protection Law in Cuba

Journal of Consumer Policy - The authors address the origins and evolution of consumer law in Cuba and the influence of European Union consumer law on development in Cuba. The transition from the...     

Economic valuation of environmental services sustained by water flows in the Yaqui River Delta

We attempted to estimate the economic value of environmental services provided by restored instream flows in the water-scarce Yaqui River Delta in Mexico. The Yaqui River begins near the U.S.-Mexico border and continues for 400 km before reaching the Oviachic dam, but has not reached the nearby Gulf of California for decades due to diversions for irrigation. These diversions have degraded the riparian ecosystem, coastal wetlands, and estuaries. Environmental services provided by restored flows in the Yaqui River would include healthy riverside vegetation, wetlands and estuaries, fish and wildlife habitats, non-use values, and recreation. A contingent valuation survey in 40 neighborhoods in the most populated Delta city, Ciudad Obregon, was administered to estimate non-market values of instream uses. Respondents were given a current and hypothetical Delta scenario (the latter assumed restored water flows in the River) and asked a willingness-to-pay (WTP) question regarding purchasing water for environmental flows through higher water bills. Results from 148 in-person interviews indicated that households would pay an average of 73 pesos monthly. WTP was found related to key variables suggested by economic theory and contingent valuation studies elsewhere: income, educational level, number of children in the household, and initial bid amount. These results will allow decision makers to compare the benefits generated by different water uses, including environmental services, and to manage scarce water resources under a long-term sustainable approach.     

Estudio de la relación entre satisfacción laboral y el desempeño de los trabajadores de las ferias libres

This study analyzes and discloses the relationship between Job Satisfaction and Performance variables of a total population of 264 workers in Chilean Free Fairs. Out of the total population to which this research applies (264 individuals), the sample taken corresponds to 60% of each Fair, which is equivalent to 158 individuals. In order to obtain the objectives we applied a 54-item instrument. The first part collects general information about respondent; the second part collects average information of sales and salary to measure the workers’ productivity and the third part studies job satisfaction. Once performed the analysis of data collected, the results show that the dimensions of job satisfaction, boss relationship satisfaction and recognition satisfaction have a statistically significant relationship with productivity: daily sales/daily working hours. Good management of these can positively contribute to an increased competitiveness of Free Fairs. Another outstanding aspect included in this study is satisfaction with the physical environment, which has a statistically significant relationship between daily and monthly salary, which significantly contributes to the hours spent at work by individuals as well as the wage they perceive.