Are Venture Capitalists a Catalyst for Innovation?

In this paper we test two hypotheses concerning the presence of innovation in venture capital investments and the growth of innovative venture backed firms. To examine these hypotheses we considered sample of 37 Italian venture backed firms that went public on the Italian Stock Exchange between 1995 and 2004 and by a statistical matching procedure we picked 37 twin firms among the non‐venture backed IPOs for the same period. Our evidence shows that innovation is an important factor during the selection phase but once the investment is made, the company does not promote continued innovation and concentrates all efforts to improve other economic and managerial aspects.     

On measuring speculative and hedging activities in futures markets from volume and open interest data

This article provides a critical assessment of the line of research that measures speculative and hedging activities in futures markets from volume and open interest data. It makes several contributions. First, a detailed theoretical analysis of the measures proposed in the previous literature as proxies for speculative activity clarifies the circumstances in which they fail, as well as the assumptions that have to be made, when they are used as intended. Second, we propose a new way of combining the volume and the open interest figures, which provides additional information regarding the type of trading activity that takes place in the market on a given date. Finally, we analyse empirically the basic statistical properties of all the ratios when they are applied to real data for some of the stock index futures contracts most actively traded in the world. This empirical analysis shows the diverse behaviour of the ratios when they are applied to a common sample of real data, which confirms our previous theoretical findings. Our contributions should be taken into account when any of the measures is used as a proxy for the relative importance of speculative demand in empirical analyses.     

Exogenous and Endogenous Attention and the Convergence of Analysts’ Forecasts

The propensity of the forecasts of sell-side financial analysts to converge (or diverge) is a function of their exogenous and endogenous selective attention and overconfidence. When returns are negative, the endogenous form of selective attention—a static measure of analysts’ goal-driven attention at a particular point in time—has a positive association with convergence. The exogenous form of selective attention—a relatively involuntary dynamic process of exogenous attentional shift driven by external changes in the market over time—is associated with a tendency for forecasts to diverge.     

The interactive effects of organizational and leadership career management support on job satisfaction and turnover intention

In the organizational career management literature, scholars have focused on career management policies, with little attention given to practices that can vary within organizations. And despite its recognized importance, research on the role of leaders in the career management process is also scant. In this study, we investigate the effects of career management practices (OCPs) and leadership career support (LCS) on employee attitudes. Grounded on coping theory, we propose that career support received from line managers can be particularly consequential when OCPs are lacking. We analyze the moderating effects of LCS on the relationship between OCPs and both job satisfaction and turnover intention in a sample of employees from a large Brazilian organization, applying multiple regression analyses. Results showed that OCPs and LCS are positively related to job satisfaction and that OCPs are negatively related to turnover intention. In addition, we confirmed that LCS moderates the relationship between OCPs and both job satisfaction and turnover intention. Finally, we observed that the relationship between OCPs and turnover intention is mediated by job satisfaction. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Germany and Italy: conflicting policy paradigms towards European monetary integration?

In the literature on European monetary integration Germany and Italy are mostly strongly contrasted. However, this paper argues that there were important similarities between the policy paradigms in these two countries, in particular if a broader historical perspective is adopted. This work analyses the policy paradigms towards European monetary integration in Italy and Germany. Moreover, it contextualises these paradigms into the national institutional setting: while Germany was characterised by power sharing institutions, Italy featured power fragmentation (something which also affected the economic performance of both countries). There were significant differences between the policy paradigms of foreign policy-makers and economic policy-makers. Foreign policy makers, in both countries, under the influence of a European federalist vision, were strongly in favour of European monetary integration. These beliefs of foreign policy decision makers were crucial in charting EMU policy at history-making moments. The pro EMU policy paradigms of foreign policymakers contrasted, during most of the period covered, with the more sceptical beliefs of economic policy makers. In both countries, economic policy-makers, at different moments, had doubts whether enough “convergence” had been reached to make a more stable exchange rate system sustainable.

US household real net worth through the Great Recession and beyond: Have we recovered?

Household data adjusted for inflation show that net worth is still below its pre-Great Recession levels, unlike aggregate Federal Reserve data. Poorer and younger households both lost and recovered more net worth percentage-wise. Financial assets have recovered more than non-financial assets.     

Volatifity spillovers on precious metals markets and the G-7： The effects of the Asian crisis

This paper investigates the nature of volatility spillovers between stock returns and precious metals returns for the G-7 countries over the 1995-2006 period. We divide our sample into a number of sub periods, prior to, during and after the Asian crisis, with the objective to provide a wide analysis of the behaviour of these two markets taking into account the effects of the Asian crisis; We use EGARCH modelling, which takes into account whether bad news has the same impact on volatility as good news. The results show that there is no evidence of volatility persistence from stock returns to precious metals returns, but overall the results are significant in the other way around. In terms of volatility spillovers effects, the main findings are that there is evidence of volatility spill over running in a bidirectional way in almost all the cases. And finally, the results from asymmetric spillovers effects show that negative news has a stronger impact in these financial markets than positive news.     

Welfare-State Retrenchment: The Partisan Effect Revisited

This paper aims to shed light on the role of the ‘ideology’of political parties in shaping the evolution of the welfarestate in 18 developed democracies, by providing empirical findingson the determinants of social-programme entitlements and socialspending over the period 1981–99. The paper shows thatstructural change is a major determinant of the extent of socialprotection. Our results suggest that overall spending is drivenup by structural change. On the other hand, strong structuralchange has a negative influence on welfare entitlements measuredby the net rate of sickness insurance. Partisan influence playsan important role in the dynamics of the welfare state. Left-winggovernments strengthen the positive effect of shocks on aggregatesocial expenditure, while right-wing governments undertake evenstronger cutbacks in replacement rates as a reaction to structuralchange. Footnotes ¹ E-mail addresses: bruno.amable{at}ens.fr; donatella.gatti{at}cepremap.cnrs.fr;jan.schumacher{at}wiwi.uni-regensburg.de     

Co-ordinating fiscal authorities in the euro-zone: a key role for the ECB

This paper examines the conditions for fiscal restraint to emergeas Nash equilibrium in the game between fiscal authorities ina monetary union and discusses the implications for the ECB'smonetary strategy. We show that fiscal authorities fail to internalizethe adverse area-wide effects of their policies when the ECBtargets union-wide aggregates. To address this co-ordinationfailure, we propose that the ECB reacts to fiscal restraintby implementing a monetary reward. Applying the pareto- andrisk dominance criteria to the ensuing co-ordination game, weshow that the ECB can ensure convergence upon fiscal restraintby adopting a weakly countercyclical reaction function.