Comparison of Two Methods of Identifying Input-Output Coefficients for Exogenous Estimation

Input-output (IO) updating research indicates substantial improvements in the forecasts when some of the coefficients have been exogenously estimated and included in the updating process. Several methods for identifying the appropriate subsets have been proposed. The present paper attempts to assess the relative performances of two such approaches: 'the largest coefficients' and 'the most important parameters' criteria. Utilizing these criteria, a set of coefficients from the 1966 IO table of the former Soviet Union were selected and exogenously determined. The remaining coefficients were updated to 1972 by means of naive, RAS, and Lagrangian techniques. Comparison of the results with the 1972 benchmark table provided the desired answers.     

Keeping the faith: Belonging to the critical community

This short reflective piece explores what it means to adopt a ‘critical’ position in organizational scholarship. We offer three separate narratives that combine when we consider what it means to believe in being critical. Each narrative examines the identification with this particular academic perspective from a different standpoint, including the performance of rationality and embodiment; the assessment of quality through the in-group/out-group theories of social psychology; and the implications of hyper-performativity for having a range of critical voices heard. We conclude by suggesting ways in which the critical community might adopt a more reflective position about embodied behaviors.     

Exact arbitrage, well-diversified portfolios and asset pricing in large markets

For a market with an atomless continuum of assets, we formulate the intuitive idea of a “well-diversified” portfolio, and present a notion of “exact arbitrage”, strictly weaker than the more conventional notion of “asymptotic arbitrage”, and necessary and sufficient for the validity of an APT pricing formula. Our formula involves “essential” risk, one based on a specific index portfolio constructed from factors and factor loadings that are endogenously extracted to satisfy an optimality property involving a finite number of factors. We illustrate how our results can be translated to markets with a large but finite number of assets.     

Spatial patterns and economic contributions of mining and tourism in biodiversity hotspots: A case study in China

Mining activities and tourism are both growing fast in biodiversity intense areas globally. However, the dynamic and interactions between mining and tourism when they both occur in biodiversity hotspots, and how they together may impact the economy and environment in these biodiversity rich areas, remain unclear. This paper examined how the two industries interact in terms of their economic contributions and spatial patterns in a biodiversity hotspot, Yunnan, China. We used correlation analyses to measure the relationships between mining activities, tourism visits and local gross domestic productions. We also employed a distance-based technique to investigate the nature of any dependency between mining and tourism sites. Results showed that mining activities tend to be in relatively fluent areas while tourism tends to occur in less developed areas. Our results showed that the location of tourism and mining sites are likely to be close to one another but the two industries usually perform better economically when they are apart from each other. These findings can provide insights on how mining and tourism together may impact the economy and environment in biodiversity rich areas, and provide important information for managers and planners on balancing mining and tourism development in these areas.     

Further evidence on the credit view: the case of Finland

The present paper provides further empirical evidence on the credit view (i.e., bank credit availability has a positive impact on macroeconomic activity) by investigating the case of Finland. The Finnish economy suffered a severe recession in the early 1990s that was marked by widespread banking crisis and extensive government intervention. Using monthly data for the 1980–1996 period, unrestricted and restricted vector autoregression (VAR) models with GDP, money supply, consumer prices, bank credit, and exports were estimated. It is found that, while money supply had the largest effect on economic output, bank credit exhibited a fairly strong effect on output that exceeded price effects for the most part. Exports had little impact on fluctuations in GDP but did help to explain industrial output changes over time. Based on these results, it is concluded that there is empirical support for the credit view in Finland. By implication, government intervention in Finland to restore safety and soundness during the banking crisis likely limited further damage to the macroeconomy associated with disruption of credit intermediation services.     

The dominant borrower syndrome

The financing channel of a fiscal stimulus matters for the size and the sign of the fiscal multiplier. We develop a general equilibrium model where a fiscal stimulus is partially bank-funded and the government becomes the dominant borrower from banks relative to entrepreneurs. This leads to a negative impact on credit spreads, investment and a contraction in output. We support our story with a structural vector autoregression for a sample of developing countries featuring the dominant borrower syndrome.     

How stable is the demand for money in emerging economies?

One of the key elements of implementing the monetary policy is stability of the demand for money. The literature includes a large number of studies that have tested the stability of the money demand in developed as well as less-developed countries but not in emerging economies of Eastern Europe. As market-based data becomes available from these countries, there is an urgency to test old theories for these modern market-oriented economies. In this article we consider the experiences of Armenia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia and the Slovak Republic. Using the bounds testing approach to error-correction modelling and cointegration, we show that money demand is stable in these countries.