Monetary Policy Rules for Managing Aid Surges in Africa

This paper examines the properties of alternative monetary policy rules in response to large aid surges in low-income countries characterized by incomplete capital market integration and currency substitution. Using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, it is shown that simple monetary rules that stabilize the path of expected future seigniorage for a given aid flow have attractive properties relative to a range of conventional alternatives, including those involving heavy reliance on bond sterilization or a commitment to a pure exchange rate float. These simple rules, which are shown to be robust across a range of fiscal responses to aid inflows, appear to be consistent with actual responses to recent aid surges in a range of post-stabilization countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.     

以人为本的创意新思路

广告活动是从研究受众及其行为开始的,而最终广告目的也是确立品牌在受众心目中的特定形象,并诱发受众购买行为。较之以往,营销人员的行为、洞察力、所传达的声音都应该更加人性化。     

PKW-Maut: Für eine verbrauchs-, entfernungs- und zeitabhängige Gebühr

Zur Zeit wird das Stra?ennetz in Deutschland aus den Haushaltsmitteln der ?ffentlichen Kassen finanziert. In den letzten Monaten wurde auf Ministerebene wiederholt die Einführung einer entfernungsunabh?ngigen PKW-Vignette diskutiert. In welcher Form sollten die optimale Bereitstellung und die Finanzierung des Stra?ennetzes aus finanzwissenschaftlicher Perspektive realisiert werden? Dr. Adam Jakubowski, 35, ist Head of Research bei sc-consult GmbH in Münster; Dr. Christian Lorenz, 34, ist Consultant am Centre for International Migration and Development in Frankfurt.     

Practitioners' Corner

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. The article by Christian Gourieroux and Razvan Sufana providesa complete characterization of two-factor affine diffusion termstructure models. The presentation of the article may seem forbiddingto the practitioner audience, so it is perhaps useful that thisinstallment of the column provide some context for the resultsof this article. Prominent among affine diffusion models in the term structureliterature are the Gaussian and square-root diffusion modelsof Vacisek (1977) and Cox, Ingersoll, and Ross (1985). The seminalcontribution of Duffie and Kan (1996) had been to provide anecessary and sufficient condition on the stochastic model toobtain the desirable property of "affine yields," whereby theyield of any zero-coupon bond is seen as a maturity-dependentaffine combination of a selected "basis" set of yields. SubsequentlyDuffie, Pan, and Singleton (2000) proved that the aforementionedcharacterization is even more general, both for the stochasticmodel that may . . . [Full Text of this Article]     

Practitioners' Corner: Introduction to the Special Issue

This issue of the Journal of Financial Econometrics comprisespapers that were presented at the workshop "New Directions inFinancial Risk Management," held under the aegis of the Centerfor Financial Studies in Frankfurt on November 3–4, 2003.The scientific organizers of the conference were Frank     

The Role of Culture and Meaning in Rational Choice

The Wason card selection and the Tversky &; Kahneman frame anomaly are examined in the context of a probabilistic, constructivist biological model of decision-making. Rational choice requires that decision-makers understand the meaning of the choices they confront. In fact, the determination of meaning and the process of rational choice represent two sides the same coin. Further, perception, cognition and action are ill-posed problems. To solve these problems ‘missing data’ must be supplied by the brain. This data is acquired by both ontogenetic and phylogenetic processes. These evolutionary processes facilitate the determination of meaning and as a product of that process also facilitate the construction of rationality. Two interrelated brain systems involved in this construction process are examined: an emotional system that rapidly and non-consciously assigns reward expectancy values to objects in the environment and a sensory-motor system that participates in the discovery of more general information that facilitates environment/body interactions. Jointly, these systems help a naïve agent to find ‘meaning in an unlabeled world’ and to predict the outcomes of future interactions with that world by supplying ‘background’ information, i.e., by supplying the missing data necessary for rational choice. This ‘background’ represents the imprint of the statistical structure of the world on the brain and, as such, embodies the individual’s Bayesian priors. Lack of sufficient background capacities can result in systematic judgment errors and seemingly irrational decisions. Complex culture is a key aspect of the environment that facilitates the construction of rationality, in part, by becoming internalized as background. Culture facilitates the creation of complex social constructs that contribute to cultural evolution, reduce uncertainty, and increase rationality; however, cultural evolution can get ahead of itself—potentially leading to background failure and errors in judgment and choice. Finally, it is not simply complexity or lack of hands-on experience that lead to error: an additional component that might be called semantic opacity is necessary.     

Corporate Governance Reforms in Developing Countries

Corporate governance reforms are occurring in countries around the globe. In developing countries, such reforms occur in a context that is primarily defined by previous attempts at promoting "development" and recent processes of economic globalization. This context has resulted in the adoption of reforms that move developing countries in the direction of an Anglo-American model of governance. The most basic questions that arise with respect to these governance reforms are what prospects they entail for traditional development goals and whether alternatives should be considered. This paper offers a framework for addressing these basic questions by providing an account of: 1) previous development strategies and efforts; 2) the nature and causes of the reform processes; 3) the development potential of the reforms and concerns associated with them; 4) the (potential) responsibilities of corporate governance, including the (possible) responsibilities to promote development, and; 5) different approaches to promoting governance reforms with an eye to promoting development.     

REDISCOVERING HEGEL: THE 'NEW HISTORICISM' IN ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT STUDIES

This paper advances the argument that a particular form of culturally, rather than materialistically, based historicism dominated organization and management studies in the 1980s. the 1970s were dominated by a materialistically based form of historicism in which economic, technological and organizational imperatives were deemed to drive the evolutionary dynamics, trajectories and outcomes of institutional and organizational transformation. In sharp contrast, the 1980s witnessed the rise of culturally or ideationally based forms of historicist thought and analysis in which the explanatory and political significance of factors located in a society's or organization's 'material base' were substantially downgraded in favour of variables embedded in their 'ideological superstructures'. the paper traces the emergence, progress and implications of this cultural historicism in relation to four distinct, but interrelated discourses - enterprise, flexibility, quality and human resource management. It also suggests that this analysis raises a number of fundamental theoretical and methodological issues concerned with three different approaches to the study of the interconnections between intellectual and institutional change in 'late' or 'post'-modern societies - that is, the history of ideas, the sociology of knowledge, and technologies of government. the paper concludes with the argument that each of these broad approaches needs to be brought into clearer theoretical and methodological alignment in order to develop a more subtle and sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of, and elective affinity between, intellectual and institutional change. It also suggests that this need for a clearer theoretical alignment between these three approaches will become particularly pressing in the 1990s as an alternative discourse of citizenship emerges to challenge the ideological hegemony of the discourse of enterprise with its roots in cultural historicism.