Price Stability in Open Economies

This paper studies the theoretical conditions under which price stability is the optimal policy in a two-country open-economy model with imperfect competition and price stickiness. Special conditions on the levels of country-specific distortionary taxation and the intratemporal and intertemporal elasticities of substitution need to be satisfied. These restrictions apply to both cooperative and non-cooperative settings. Importantly, we show that cooperative and non-cooperative solutions do not coincide despite market completeness and producer currency pricing. We study the conditions under which quadratic approximations of single countries' welfare can be correctly evaluated by relying only on log-linear approximations of the equilibrium conditions.     

Pre-adoption market reaction to IFRS 9: A cross-country event-study

We are the first to examine the market reaction to 13 announcement dates related to IFRS 9 for over 5400 European listed firms. We find an overall positive reaction to the introduction of IFRS 9. The regulation is particularly beneficial to shareholders of firms in countries with weaker rule of law and a smaller divergence between local GAAP and IAS 39. Bootstrap simulations rule out the possibility that sampling error or data mining are driving our findings. Our main findings are also robust to confounding events and the extent of the media coverage for each event. These results suggest that investors perceive the new regulation as shareholder-wealth enhancing and support the view that stronger comparability across accounting standards of European firms is beneficial to international investors and outweighs the costs of poorer firm-specific information.     

Conditionally dependent strategies for multiple-step-ahead prediction in local learning

Computational intelligence approaches to multiple-step-ahead forecasting rely on either iterated one-step-ahead predictors or direct predictors. In both cases the predictions are obtained by means of multi-input single-output modeling techniques. This paper discusses the limitations of single-output approaches when the predictor is expected to return a long series of future values, and presents a multi-output approach to long term prediction. The motivation for this work is that, when predicting multiple steps ahead, the forecasted sequence should preserve the stochastic properties of the training series. However, this may not be the case, for instance in direct approaches where predictions for different horizons are produced independently. We discuss here a multi-output extension of conventional local modeling approaches, and present and compare three distinct criteria for performing conditionally dependent model selection. In order to assess the effectiveness of the different selection strategies, we carry out an extensive experimental session based on the 111 series in the NN5 competition.     

Patient and Public Participation in the English NHS: An assessment of experimental implementation processes

This article analyses the impact of the implementation of a set of policies introduced after 1997 in the English National Health Service aimed at increasing patient and public involvement in organizational decision-making processes. Adopting the ambiguity/conflict policy implementation model and based on a year-long research project, it shows that patient and public engagement can be more effectively achieved when there is room for interpretation and discretion in selecting the means for involvement. Local initiatives, based on effective leadership governance mechanisms and organizational learning processes, are more likely to generate inclusiveness, shared ownership, and user-centredness than a top-down framework for involvement.     

Changes over time in the spatial structure of fertility rates as a dynamic indicator of urban transformations

Quality & Quantity - Since fertility varies largely over space responding to socioeconomic transformations, a spatially explicit analysis of birth rates may contribute to a refined...     

Roundtable

Abstract

This paper introduces a selection of papers on contemporary developments in public sector management which come from a research conference held in 2004. This paper starts by introducing the New Public Management (NPM) and governance paradigms as alternative high level approaches. Such approaches are well known in the UK and are also of international interest. It then considers whether there are further possible reform paradigms not captured by these rather State centric models. The paper then briefly introduces each of the papers selected from the Conference proceedings. These papers contribute to the literature on the NPM, on the NPM versus governance debate and also generate and apply novel theoretical perspectives.     

Past,present and future trends of purchasing and supply management: An extensive literature review

This research aims to evaluate the state of the art of Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM). This is carried out through a wide, in-depth, and structured examination of published works. More than one thousand papers (i.e., 1055) published in 20 peer-reviewed journals were collected and analyzed to provide a snapshot of PSM research, including the extent of the overall production, the background theory used, the unit of analysis, the research method, and the main topics investigated. Other literature reviews related to PSM have been conducted in the past but have focused primarily on specific topics and/or considering a narrower set of publications. Furthermore, the authors define a framework useful for analyzing the PSM literature and outline the state of the art of PSM research from a content-specific perspective, including an evaluation of the maturity of PSM research as a discipline.     

Testing for Parameter Stability in Dynamic Models across Frequencies*

This paper contributes to the econometric literature on structural breaks by proposing a test for parameter stability in vector autoregressive (VAR) models at a particular frequency ω, where ω ∈ [0, π]. When a dynamic model is affected by a structural break, the new tests allow for detecting which frequencies of the data are responsible for parameter instability. If the model is locally stable at the frequencies of interest, the whole sample size can then be exploited despite the presence of a break. The methodology is applied to analyse the productivity slowdown in the US, and the outcome is that local stability concerns only the higher frequencies of data on consumption, investment and output.     

Asymmetric Patterns of Demand-Supply Mismatch in Real Estate

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - As expectations change, we may observe asymmetry in responses of economic agents over various phases of the economic cycles. In this paper, we...