Estimating Key Economic Variables: The Policy Implications

The current monetary policy debate has focused on current estimates and the future path of the natural rate of unemployment and the equilibrium interest rate. Estimates of the natural rate of unemployment should vary over time with changes in demographics and improvements in human capital. However, these changes should be gradual. This paper shows that the estimates of the natural rate of unemployment by Federal Reserve officials and private-sector economists seem to move pro-cyclically, potentially showing too much weight given to short-term fluctuations in economic variables. As with the natural rate, there are good reasons to expect the equilibrium interest rate to change over time. In fact, the level may actually be more responsive to current economic data, reflecting changes in aggregate savings and investment. Yet, we see that equilibrium interest rate estimates by both Federal Reserve officials and private-sector economists have declined quite dramatically over the past five years. A potential concern raised in this paper is that estimates of these critical economic variables for policy determination appear to be overly sensitive to high frequency economic data.     

Preventing Customer Churn in the Mobile Telecommunication Industry: Is Mobile Money Usage the Missing Link?

The paper examines the influence of mobile money usage on customer continuance intention (CCI). The study conveniently sampled 507 mobile money users to test the research model using PLS-SEM. Satisfaction, trust and active usage of mobile money were found to influence CCI. Active usage of mobile money was also confirmed as a mediator in the relationship between satisfaction and trust, on customer continuance. The study thus validated a theoretical model of customer continuance intention as it relates to mobile money usage. It has also provided a new perspective on managing customer churn in an emerging market.     

Can mutual funds time investor sentiment?

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - This paper examines the ability of mutual fund managers to time aggregate investor sentiment. Our results indicate that mutual fund managers alter...     

高管经管教育背景与企业内部薪酬差距

本文考察高管经管教育背景对企业内部薪酬差距的影响,并进一步分析了其内在作用机制.研究发现:经管教育背景显著提高内部薪酬差距.为控制潜在的双向因果关系,本文使用行业内其他高管的平均经管教育背景进行工具变量检验,结论依然成立.进一步的机制研究发现,具有经管教育背景的董事长,以及具有经管专业博士学位的企业高管所发挥的作用更大.且这一影响在非国有企业、资本密集型企业,以及非管制行业及低集中度行业中表现更为突出.本文结论为深入理解企业内部薪酬制度及其影响因素提供了经验证据.     

Lost and found: Individual differences in propensity to process visual elements of persuasion

Visual processing style, defined as the relative propensity to engage in visual processing rather than verbal processing, is an individual difference variable that has been frequently investigated in the consumer psychology literature. Surprisingly, numerous studies have reported no relationship between visual processing style and viewer responses to visual elements of persuasion. We argue that this accumulation of null results is due to untenable historical theoretical assumptions that underlie the construct, along with methodological problems that are inevitably brought about by those theoretical assumptions. We reconceptualize visual processing style and test an alternative empirical operationalization of it. Using both new data and a reanalysis of data published in the Journal of Consumer Research, we find the old approach yields null results, but we find the new approach yields the expected results. The new approach reinstates the utility of incorporating propensity to engage in visual processing as an individual difference variable into consumer psychology models of visual persuasion, and it reinstates a powerful individual difference variable that can help push forward the investigation of the unique aspects of visual persuasion.     

乡村振兴战略下农村产业融合、人力资本与农民增收*——以浙江省为例

［目的］乡村振兴战略是贯彻新发展理念，建设现代化经济强国的重大战略之一。农村产业兴旺，农民生活富裕是乡村振兴战略的重要目标。农村一、二、三产业融合发展是实现乡村产业振兴，农民增收的重要途径。农村人力资本状况关系到农村产业融合的人才建设，关系到农民增收的实现。文章力图探究乡村振兴战略下农村产业融合、人力资本与农民增收间的相互作用关系，以期为乡村振兴战略的实现提供政策建议。［方法］以浙江省为例进行实证分析，通过建立PVAR模型，采用格兰杰因果关系及面板数据模型进行检验。［结果］农村产业融合及人力资本构成农民增收的格兰杰因果关系，两者都对农民增收产生显著影响，且人力资本影响效应更大。农民增收及人力资本对农村产业融合没有起到相应的促进作用。［结论］在实证分析的基础上，从加大人力资本投入、培育农村产业融合复合型人才及加强宣传引导工作等方面提出相应的政策建议促进农村产业融合。     

The Socio-scientific Construction of Global Climate Crisis

This article adapts and applies a securitisation framework to produce an analytical explanation for the heightened geopolitical status of climate change over the past decade, as demonstrated by the breakthrough Paris Agreement of 2015. Rather than speech acts invoking security, the focus of this analysis is on the socio-scientific discourse of global climate crisis that emerged in the several year period leading to the 2009 COP 15 conference in Copenhagen. Two types of experts—contributory and interactional—are identified as the essential and interdependent actors that engaged in ‘crisification’, a novel crisis-based perspective on political agenda setting, in which climate crisis served as a primary discursive device employed by prominent advocates of urgent action. Contributory experts, that is, authoritative climate scientists and their institutions, together with interactional experts—non-scientist social actors who appropriated and mediated scientific data and knowledge in framing climate change as a global crisis—constituted an extended epistemic community of climate advocates. Through an array of speech acts, this extended community effectively co-constructed a convincing climate crisis discourse that consisted of quantitative data artefacts based on CO₂ concentration and global mean temperature, and qualitative invocations of existential threat to human civilisation, which contributed to the ascent of climate change on the global political agenda. In proposing crisification as a complement to securitisation, the article offers a theoretical innovation that facilitates constructivist analysis of issues framed as crises, including geopolitical problems in certain non-military sectors where crisis is a favoured label for perceived threats to core values.     

Why in rugby union does “Toulouse” mean “to win”? Estimation of a production function of sports results (2011–2016)

The objective of this article is to understand more fully the determinants of sports performance. To do this, we estimate a production function of sports results that explains the results of the Toulouse rugby union team's matches expressed as the gap in points between it and its opponents. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a production function has been estimated in rugby union. In addition, it is one of the few production functions specified at the match level. The study confirms the relevance of some variables already identified in the literature, such as home advantage, ranking, the role of the referee, and in‐match statistics. It also shows the influence of new variables, such as weather conditions and the relative strength of fielded teams measured by comparing the teams selected on match day to the ideal teams defined at the beginning of the season.     

The challenge of Chinese state‐affiliated multinationals in benefiting from foreign subsidiary knowledge transfer: A criticism of light‐touch integration

Acknowledging the sharp growth of Chinese state‐affiliated multinationals and their strategic asset‐seeking investments abroad, this study investigates the effects of headquarters' home‐country political ties on the multinational‐wide benefits gained from subsidiary knowledge transfer in Chinese multinationals. It also looks at how these effects are mediated by organizational distance and social integration between headquarters and subsidiary. Based on a survey of 177 subsidiaries of 99 Chinese multinationals, we find that headquarters' political ties trigger organizational distance and hinder social integration between headquarters and foreign subsidiaries and these, in turn, hamper the potential benefits that Chinese multinationals derive from subsidiary knowledge transfer. This study identifies new challenges related to political ties and light‐touch integration in gaining benefits from subsidiary knowledge transfer.     

Engineering the Financialization of Urban Entrpreneurialism: The JESSICA Urban Development Initiative in the European Union

Urban entrepreneurialism and neoliberal urban governance are assuming new forms under finance‐dominated accumulation. We examine and contribute to theorizing the mechanisms through which urban governance is financialized, taking as a case study JESSICA, one of the European Union's initiatives to implement an ‘urban sensitive’ policy for sustainable and integrated development. Like other initiatives promoting financialization, JESSICA deploys the logic of finance to select and fund urban social initiatives and development projects on the basis of their potential return on investment (ROI). Understanding this process requires placing questions of political economy—how urban governance is shaped by the broader political‐economic context—with questions of governmentality—how stakeholders are enrolled in and come to take for granted new governance initiatives. Following the multi‐scalar institutional infrastructure is crucial to understanding how this works. Taking a relational multi‐scalar approach, we trace how changes at the supranational scale filter down to shape urban policy selection and performance in Sofia, Bulgaria, where we document how ROI calculations conflict with social welfare priorities. Contrasts between the trajectory of financialization of urban governance in the European Union and the United States demonstrate how this is geographically variegated, shaped by the broader context/conjuncture within which such financialization is embedded.