Capital flows and growth dynamics in Central and Eastern Europe

This article assesses the importance of capital flows as measured by the current account balance for the growth dynamics of the EU countries from Central and Eastern Europe. Economic growth in these countries was on average relatively high before the global financial crisis but markedly lower after the crisis. Panel data econometrics using annual data for 1997–2015 point to the contemporaneous current account balance having a sizeable negative effect on annual GDP growth. Estimations using many control variables and instrumental variables suggest that the negative effect is mainly demand driven. Counterfactual simulations show that growth rates in all CEE countries would have been lower in the absence of capital flows, and this applies particularly to the countries with the most disadvantageous starting points.     

水源地突发水污染政府应急预留水量需求预测

近年来,随着工业化和产业化的快速发展,水源地突发水污染事件频发。为应对紧急情况下的水资源非常规需求,保障经济社会稳定发展,政府需要安排一部分应急预留水量。如何合理预测政府应急预留水量的规模是一个值得探讨的课题。提出了一种基于案例推理技术的政府应急预留水量需求预测方法,具体思路是:借助于案例库,利用主成分分析法从众多影响水源地突发水污染事件的因素中提取出两两不相关的因子,以此作为案例的特征属性,基于加权曼哈顿距离测算相似度,依此得到匹配案例,进而测算政府应急预留水量。以太湖流域常州地区水源地为例,进行政府预留水量需求量的预测与分析。该方法可以为政府应急预留水量的配置、储备等提供相关理论知识。     

松嫩平原北部黑土区水土资源平衡效应研究

研究目的:分析松嫩平原北部黑土区在土地利用和农业气候资源变化条件下的水土资源平衡效应。研究方法:在傅抱璞假设理论的基础上,通过拟合参数ω回归方程求得实际蒸散量,以此来构建水分盈亏模型,分析水土资源平衡效应。研究结果:(1)1985—2015年,松嫩平原北部土地利用表现为湿地面积大幅度减少,水田和旱地面积不断增加;潜在蒸散量和气温具有较为明显的变化趋势,气温以0.27℃/10 a上升,潜在蒸散量以5.15 mm/a下降;(2)经过拟合参数ω方程求得实际蒸散量可以有效反映土地利用状况、地貌特征和土壤属性;(3)1985—2015年间总体的水分亏缺率均值是0.25、0.2、0.31和0.13,而土地利用的影响使严重缺水面积逐年增加,其增加量是总面积的1.59%,约是原有面积的2倍。研究结论:基于傅抱璞理论改进的参数ω能够提高地区实际蒸散量的估算精度,对区域水土平衡评价具有重要意义,为实现区域资源合理利用提供指导。     

Why We Should Change Our Attitude Towards Distressed Firms

This article surveys ‘creditor‐friendly’ and ‘enterprise‐friendly’ bankruptcy regimes with a focus on the methodology underlying the filter test in distress, as reflected both in its academic treatment and in legal practice. I find that the test exhibits pro‐liquidation bias in designating liquidation of a firm with recovery potential as the Type II error, and in underplaying the benefits of a possible turnaround. Further influences militating against continuation include the power conferred on creditors through the balance sheet criterion and the undervaluation of intangible assets. I make the case for reversing such biases to establish a presumption in favour of continuation.     

Determinants of China's bilateral trade balance in global value chains

This paper identifies the determinants of China's bilateral trade balance using a new measure based on international input–output data, the so-called ‘trade in value-added’ (TiVA), which can prevent double counting in the estimation of bilateral trade balance. Our results show that using a measure based on gross exports, rather than TiVA, causes relatively large overestimation of the impact of the RMB exchange rate on China's bilateral trade balance. This overestimation is mainly because that the increasing production of exports may require increasing intermediate imports as a consequence of international fragmentation of production in global value chains. In addition, our results also show that the impact of FDI inflows on China's bilateral trade balances depends on the position and role of China and its trading partners in GVCs.     

The exchange regime and trade balance in Turkey

Over the last 15 years, high trade deficits have become a source of external vulnerability for the relatively stabilized Turkish economy. This corresponds to the period where authorities have been following a floating exchange rate regime. Thus, this study aims to empirically show whether the adopted exchange rate regime has an impact on the trade balance for the period of 1987 Q1 to 2015 Q2. Estimation results indicate that there is a long-run relationship between the real effective exchange rate and trade balance under both fixed and floating regimes in Turkey, but there is no evidence for the J-curve hypothesis.     

Tweaking public sector reporting with integrated reporting (IR) concepts

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the annual departmental reports prepared by Maltese government departments and highlights the gap between current practices and integrated reporting (IR). The authors suggest that principles and elements of IR could be gradually introduced in an effort to enhance transparency and accountability. The internalization of integrated thinking could also lead to enhanced value creation, and overcome the silo mentality that characterizes the Maltese public sector. Detailed guidelines for preparing ADRs urgently need to be developed in Malta—preparers should not expect to find them in the IIRC Framework, because they are not there.     

Flexibility in the gig economy: managing time on three online piecework platforms

Gig economy platforms seem to provide extreme temporal flexibility to workers, giving them full control over how to spend each hour and minute of the day. What constraints do workers face when attempting to exercise this flexibility? We use 30 worker interviews and other data to compare three online piecework platforms with different histories and worker demographics: Mechanical Turk, MobileWorks, and CloudFactory. We find that structural constraints (availability of work and degree of worker dependence on the work) as well as cultural‐cognitive constraints (procrastination and presenteeism) limit worker control over scheduling in practice. The severity of these constraints varies significantly between platforms, the formally freest platform presenting the greatest structural and cultural‐cognitive constraints. We also find that workers have developed informal practices, tools, and communities to address these constraints. We conclude that focusing on outcomes rather than on worker control is a more fruitful way to assess flexible working arrangements.     

FX Intervention in the New Keynesian Model

We develop an open-economy New Keynesian Model with foreign exchange (FX) intervention in the presence of a financial accelerator and shocks to risk appetite in international capital markets. We obtain closed-form solutions for optimal monetary and FX intervention policies assuming the central bank cannot commit to future policies, and we compare the solution to that under policy commitment. We show how FX intervention can help reduce the volatility of the exchange rate, of inflation, and of the output gap, thus mitigating welfare losses associated with shocks in the international capital markets. We also show that, when the financial accelerator is strong, there is a risk of indeterminacy (self-fulfilling currency and inflation movements) although FX intervention can reduce this risk and thus reinforce the credibility of the inflation targeting regime. Model simulations match well the impact of a VIX shock obtained by local projections on a panel of inflation targeting emerging markets.