Openness,Regional Trade Agreements and Growth: Evidence from Asia*

This paper assesses the relationship between regional trade agreements, trade integration and economic growth in 21 South and South‐East Asian countries over the period from 1980 to 2004. We aim to answer the following questions. First, how does the trade policy of a given country (and countries within the same region) affect a nation's domestic growth? Second, should developing economies in South and South‐East Asia engage in regional trade agreements (RTA) or move towards broad liberalization? Our results show that openness of either a single country or of its neighbors does not affect a nation's growth and that the impacts of RTA are unclear (if not detrimental to growth in some cases, once endogeneity is accounted for). Panel Granger‐causality tests running from openness to growth yield mixed results and some conclusions depend on the particular subsample under scrutiny.     

Coproducing healthcare: individual-level impacts of engaging citizens to develop recommendations for reducing diagnostic error

ABSTRACT

Coproduction has received considerable attention from scholars and practitioners in recent years. While theory and some research suggest that coproduction can have individual-level effects on participating lay actors, few studies have tested such hypothesized effects. This study seeks to add to the evidence base for collective coproduction. Using data from a randomized and controlled research project, it examines whether collective coproduction affects participants’ issue awareness, perceived empowerment, trust in service professionals, and support for coproduction. The results provide empirical evidence that collective coproduction can significantly increase issue awareness, empowerment, and trust. The results for support of coproduction are mixed.     

Between Rules and Incentives: Uncovering Hayek's Moral Economy

This article uncovers Hayek's moral economy. It focuses on the relation between markets, as well as on the nonmarket institutions on which the former rely, and the motivations that guide individuals' behavior. Despite his epistemological admonitions, Hayek has a rich set of suggestions about the functional importance of particular individuals' motivation and moral makeup for the development of a market society. This contributes to undermine his claims that a market society can be neutral among different values.     

A new approach to bad news effects on volatility: the multiple-sign-volume sensitive regime EGARCH model (MSV-EGARCH)

In this paper, using daily data for six major international stock market indexes and a modified EGARCH specification, the links between stock market returns, volatility and trading volume are investigated in a new nonlinear conditional variance framework with multiple regimes and volume effects. Volatility forecast comparisons, using the Harvey-Newbold test for multiple forecasts encompassing, seem to demonstrate that the MSV-EGARCH complex threshold structure is able to correctly fit GARCH-type dynamics of the series under study and dominates competing standard asymmetric models in several of the considered stock indexes.

The use of Fx derivatives and the cost of capital: Evidence of Brazilian companies

Large corporations have been using derivative instruments as a tool to protect their indirect exposure, as FX risks. A sample with 47 non-financial Bovespa Listed Brazilian companies from 2004 and 2010 was used to test the hypothesis that use of derivatives as a risk management policy tool reduces companies' cost of capital. In contrast to other countries, results rejected this hypothesis, showing that in Brazil there is a positive relationship between using these tools and cost of capital. However, a more in-depth analysis based on the TACC model for a Brazilian company, this hypothesis was not rejected after the 2008 crisis.     

Tourism and employment in the Gambia

In addition to providing formal wage labor in hotels, airports, and the service infrastructure, tourism is said to provide possibilities for independent indigenous enterprise in handicrafts, entertainment, transport, through which the Gambians may, in effect, economically “lift themselves up by their bootstraps.” Such is the theory. This paper analyzes the actual employment possibilities in The Gambia provided by its recent tourism investment. From the findings of an economic survey the author concludes that hopes of economic development being catalyzed by tourism are unfounded and misleading. This conclusion is supported by a structural analysis and a characterization of the tourist industry in The Gambia by an investigation into the economic forces at work in the country, and by direct observations made by informants and the author concerning the impact tourism has made in spheres non-economic: the moral, the social, and the family.     

General causal models in business ethics: An essay on colliding research traditions

The construction of causal models for research in business ethics has become fashionable in recent years. This paper explores four recent proposals, comparing and contrasting their views. The primary purpose of this paper is to expose several confusions inherent in such models and to account for these errors in terms of a failure to distinguish between models as theories and models as representing a research tradition. We conclude with a brief set of recommendations for linking two major research traditions in business ethics: empiricism and ethical theory.F. Neil Brady is Professor of Management at San Diego State University. He is the author ofEthical Managing: Rules and Results (Macmillan, 1990) and numerous articles on business ethics. His research focuses on the application of ethical theory to business decision making.Mary Jo Hatch is an Associate Professor at San Diego State University and visiting Associate Professor at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. Her research interests include the link between business ethics and organizational culture, and humor in management teams. She has published articles on organizational culture and the behavioral and symbolic aspects of organizations as physical structures.