Information acquisition and financial contagion

This paper incorporates costly voluntary acquisition of information à la Nikitin and Smith (2007) [Nikitin, M., Smith, R.T., 2007. Information acquisition, coordination, and fundamentals in a financial crisis. Journal of Banking and Finance, in press, doi:10.1016/j.jbankfin.2007.04.031], in a framework similar to Allen and Gale (2000) [Allen, F., Gale, D., 2000. Financial contagion. Journal of Political Economy 108, 1–33], without relying on any unexpected shock to model contagion. In this framework, contagion and financial crises are the result of information gathering by depositors, weak fundamentals and an incomplete market structure of banks. It also shows how financial systems entering a recession can affect others with apparently stronger economic conditions (contagion). Finally, this is the first paper to investigate the effectiveness of the Contingent Credit Line procedures, introduced by the IMF at the end of the nineties, as a mechanism to prevent the propagation of crises.     

关于"健康·维权"的几个问题

2005年3月6日,湖南省消费者委员会、中南大学湘雅三医院与本刊编辑部联合主办,北京中宏生物工程有限责任公司协办,在中南大学湘雅三医院报告厅举行了“‘健康·维权’论坛暨湖南省健康消费教育学校成立”大会。许多领导同志、专家学者及实际部门工作人员出席了这次会议。这里选发大会的部分发言与论文。     

The Third Policeman: ‘The true and fair view’, language and the habitus of accounting

This paper explores the role and context of the ‘true and fair view’ (‘TFV’) in accounting and auditing. Utilising the work of Bourdieu as a lens, the paper argues that the world of the TFV is a subjective world with which we think we are objectively familiar. Bourdieu's ‘practical theory’ of habitus suggests that the TFV is shaped by the practice of ‘native virtuosos’ who have a ‘feel for the game’. The paper argues that the conceptualisation of the TFV privileges practice and authenticates the accounting habitus. Hence, whilst language maintains and reinforces social structures, it is in turn created by the routines of practice. By dominating the declaration of the TFV, the auditor effectively reinforces the status quo and the constitution of hierarchy and inequity that exists in the accounting field: the TFV, in Bourdieu's terms, ‘becomes what they are’.     

Human resource systems as antecedents of hotel industry market orientation: An empirical study in the Canary Islands, Spain

This paper studies how the different dimensions determining the human resource management system (recruiting, training, evaluation and compensation) influence the market orientation of hotels. There is also an exploratory analysis of the differences in the human resource management systems according to the following hotel classification data: star rating, size, ownership, time-share offer, type of location, customer satisfaction and profitability.     

项目的成功与优秀的项目

维修管理已经经历了一系列的重大变革。这个典型的以知识为中心的方案把维修工作提高到战略水平。与以知识为中心的战略思想相比较，公司开展的合理化工作也更加受到重视。任务对外协作、技术的加速发展、由于故障或失效造成损失的最少化，以及维修活动复杂程度的增加，这些对于维修管理领域推广以项目为导向（Projict—Oriented）的方案都作出了重要贡献。维修项目的成功与否影响整个公司的成功。对于项目的成功将介绍几种不同的解释，并将探讨确定如何判断项目成功的方法。最后综合迄今为止的研究成果，提出优秀的维修模式。     

On Combining Partial and Incompatible Information in E-negotiation and E-arbitration

The complexity of the problems to be addressed in an e-democracy framework and the variety of involved stakeholders, with different backgrounds, views and access to information sources, lead us to consider the case in which an e-negotiation should be performed among subjects who have partial, sometimes incompatible, information and can hardly gather to discuss issues together, under the supervision of a facilitator. We propose a statistical method which addresses the issue of partial and incompatible information, merging it and then using it to get a final decision, possibly in an automatic way, through processes of e-negotiation and e-arbitration.      

DOES THE IMPACT OF INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY ON ECONOMIC GROWTH DEPEND ON INITIAL INCOME LEVEL?

The aim of this paper is to determine the most adequate institutional variables to introduce into a growth model, depending on the income levels of countries. The results show that, for rich countries, the rule of law is fundamental while, for poor countries, it is control of corruption. This has important implications for any agenda of institutional reform in either type of country.     

Central Bank Communication and Financial Market Comovements in the Euro Area

Open Economies Review - We examine whether unscheduled communication of members of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) Governing Council affects financial market comovements. To assess...     

Motivations of educational tourists in non-English-speaking countries: the role of languages

ABSTRACT

Learning a language or improving one’s foreign language skills may be a key motivator for students to decide to participate in an exchange program as well as choose the destination for their studies. Nevertheless, studies on educational tourism are limited, and there is no research on the motivations of students visiting non-English-speaking countries. To fill this gap, this paper aims to examine the motivations of university students in non-English-speaking destinations by using the push-and-pull framework. Primary data were collected through an online survey from 190 and 205 students who participated in mobility programs in a Spanish university and in a German university respectively. Empirical findings reveal that languages are a key motivating factor for either growing personally through cultural enrichment, or growing professionally. Furthermore, these data allow generic recommendations so that the destinations can attract a larger number of international students.     

Sampling method for monitoring the alternative accommodation market

Tourism is an extremely competitive industry where effective destination management is necessary to compete. One of the main destination management stakeholders is the hotel industry. Since the advent of the Internet websites that facilitate the sharing economy, the hotel industry has had to compete with an alternative accommodation market. This alternative market is difficult to monitor as there is no official data. Current research works on developing methods for calculating tourism metrics for a destination based on digital footprint with the objective of offering figures to complement official statistics. The objective of our research is to develop a method to monitor the alternative accommodation market based on data collected from Airbnb. This paper reports the results of the first step: the design of a sampling method for data scraping from this website that provides a representative sample of the accommodation offer of the Basque Country distributed through it and its prices. The results show that the length-of-stay (LOS) parameter of the queries to the website is key to obtaining a representative sample of the accommodation offered through this channel. A sampling method based on the representative values of LOS inferred from a data sample is proposed.