Financial Integration, Dis‐integration and Emerging Re‐integration in the Eastern Mediterranean, c.1850 to the Present

The financial integration that concerns us is that of the linking of national banking systems through the opening of branches by banks of one country in another. In the inter‐war period, banks from England and France established branches in the countries of the eastern Mediterranean, as did banks originating in those countries. However, after World War II there came a period of nationalization and nostrification that cut the countries' banks off from each other's markets. If domestic financial systems matter to economic development and growth, and if foreign banks contribute to the development of financial systems, then these policies were a self‐inflicted wound. As barriers to foreign banks have fallen since the mid‐1970s the region has started to integrate again, but in a process that is far from complete.     

Forecasting macroeconomic risks

We construct risks around consensus forecasts of real GDP growth, unemployment, and inflation. We find that risks are time-varying, asymmetric, and partly predictable. Tight financial conditions forecast downside growth risk, upside unemployment risk, and increased uncertainty around the inflation forecast. Growth vulnerability arises as the conditional mean and conditional variance of GDP growth are negatively correlated: downside risks are driven by lower mean and higher variance when financial conditions tighten. Similarly, employment vulnerability arises as the conditional mean and conditional variance of unemployment are positively correlated, with tighter financial conditions corresponding to higher forecasted unemployment and higher variance around the consensus forecast.     

Managing the co-creation of value

Central to service-dominant (S-D) logic is the proposition that the customer becomes a co-creator of value. This emphasizes the development of customer–supplier relationships through interaction and dialog. However, research to date suggests relatively little is known about how customers engage in the co-creation of value. In this article, the authors: explore the nature of value co-creation in the context of S-D logic; develop a conceptual framework for understanding and managing value co-creation; and utilize field-based research to illustrate practical application of the framework. This process-based framework provides a structure for customer involvement that takes account of key foundational propositions of S-D logic and places the customer explicitly at the same level of importance as the company as co-creators of value. Synthesis of diverse concepts from research on services, customer value and relationship marketing into a new process-based framework for co-creation provide new insights into managing the process of value co-creation.     

‘The Rise and Fall of TQM’: the Vision,Meaning and Operation of Change

The vision of TQM promises unity, teamworking, autonomy and empowerment. This article explores how this vision was contradicted by organisational restructuring and the hierarchical imposition of redundancies and contingent employment insecurity in a medium sized bank. As a result it was found that the meaning and legitimacy of TQM for both employees and many managers was called into question.     

Unpleasant middlemen

The question of how certain types of market-intermediating middlemen can be held in low regard is addressed. A model in which pure rent-seeking middlemen emerge endogenously is provided. Individuals differ according to their persuasiveness and according to their productivity. Those who are highly persuasive but relatively unproductive are the people most likely to become middlemen. However, only productivity differentials are shown to be essential for the emergence of middlemen.     

The Effect of Tax Preparation Expenses for Employees: Evidence from Germany

Using a panel of German income tax accounting data from taxpayers with no business income (employees), we find a negative relationship between tax preparation expenses and tax liabilities. However, preparation expenses are shown to exceed estimated tax savings. Specifically, one additional Euro spent on preparation yields an estimated tax savings of 72 cents in an OLS regression and 24 cents in a fixed effects regression. In addition, we observe substantial heterogeneity in tax savings among income groups, but even if we account for long‐term tax savings, tax liability reductions exceed tax preparation expenses only for the highest income quintile. In all other income quintiles, average preparation expenses exceed the estimated tax and time savings. Based on these results, we also examine whether other specific benefits affect an individual's decision to purchase tax preparation services, and the results indicate the importance of the benefits of coping with complexity and reduced uncertainty. Overall, our findings illustrate that the current tax compliance process violates at least two of Adam Smith's principles of taxation, taxes are neither certain nor fair.