THE LABOUR FOOTPRINT: A FRAMEWORK TO ASSESS LABOUR IN A COMPLEX ECONOMY

As addressing labour becomes crucial in the move towards sustainability, there is the need for assessment tools suitable for current complex economic systems. This article presents an input–output based framework (‘labour footprint’) for evaluating labour issues behind the production of different economic commodities, including entire supply chains. In line with the guidelines of the International Labour Organization, six labour issues are considered: collective bargaining, forced labour, child labour, gender inequality, hazardous work, and social security. This conceptual article sets to (a) define this footprint's labour dimensions, (b) cite relevant data sources, (c) describe its calculation, (d) illustrate its application through a case study, and (e) discuss this framework's relevance from ‘conscious consumption’, ‘supply chain responsibility’, and regulators' standpoints. Since it advances the evaluation of fundamental labour issues and the scope of multi-criteria analyses, this footprint may be a valuable tool for sustainability assessments.     

A term structure model of interest rates with quadratic volatility

This study proposes a no-arbitrage term structure model that can capture the volatility of interest rates without sacrificing the goodness-of-fit to the cross-section and predictive ability about the level of interest rates. The key feature of the model is the covariance matrix of changes in factors, which is specified as quadratic functions of factors. The quadratic specification can capture intense volatility even with spanned factors, which is not the case for the affine specification. Furthermore, since the quadratic specification guarantees the positive definiteness of the covariance matrix without restricting the sign of factors, it allows for a flexible specification of the physical drift as does the Gaussian term structure model, contributing also to accurate level prediction.     

Quadratic-mean-of-order-r indexes of output,input and productivity

Journal of Productivity Analysis - This paper deals with the quadratic-mean-of-order-r indexes of output, input and productivity. Each index is a family of indexes that unify many of the existing...     

On the accuracy of the local linear approximation for the term structure of interest rates

We examine by numerical experiments the accuracy of an analytical approximation for the nonlinear term structure of interest rates, which is obtained by applying the local linear approximation to a generally specified process of the short rate. Under various short-rate models, we compare discount-bond prices computed by the approximation with those calculated by the Monte Carlo method as the benchmark, which shows that deviations are small. Also in this paper, we show that the approximation originally derived in single-factor framework can be easily extended to a multifactor counterpart. We examine the accuracy using an illustrative two-factor model, which also shows the approximation is accurate.     

Is Nonlinear Drift Implied by the Short End of the Term Structure?

Nonlinear drift models of the short rate are estimated usingdata on the short end of the term structure, where the cross-sectionalrelation is obtained by an analytical approximation. The findingsreveal that (i) nonlinear physical drift is not implied unlessit is strongly affected by cross-sectional dimensions of thedata; (ii) nonlinear risk-neutral drift that allows for fastmean reversion for high rates is desirable to explain and predictobserved patterns of yield spreads; and (iii) for higher frequencydata from which transitory shocks are removed, (ii) still remainsvalid although the nonlinearity is somewhat reduced.