Competition among regulators and credit market integration

We analyze the incentives for independent bank regulators with financially integrated jurisdictions to form a regulatory union. Externalities lead competing regulators to choose suboptimally low standards. Centralized regulation, however, entails a loss of flexibility if equal standards must be applied across jurisdictions. We find that, first, centralized regulation will more likely emerge among relatively homogeneous jurisdictions/countries. Second, centralized regulation will be unanimously preferred to independence only if it entails standards higher than those of the country with the highest individual standards. Third, financial integration among more than two jurisdictions may prevent partial unions, which, in turn, may prevent more comprehensive agreements.     

Les producteurs brésiliens et l'instabilité des prix : Différences de comportement entre le Nord et le Sud

Cet article présente une analyse des décisions des agriculteurs brésiliens en situation d'incertitude. Après avoir souligné les problèmes liés au calcul de l'instabilité des prix en série temporelle, une équation d'offere est développée à partir d'un modèle « de sécurité>> selon lequel le producteur est supposé maximiser son profit espéré, sous des contraintes de liquidité et de sécurité. Le modèle est testé sur données de panel, pour trois produits — le coton, le riz et le maïs – de façon à mettre en évidence des différences de comportement vis-à-vis du risque de prix entre les agriculteurs du Nord-Est et du Centre-Sud du Brésil.     

A survey of cross-sectional and time-series literature on factors affecting child welfare

This paper reviews the literature on the socio-economic determinants of child welfare. Cross-sectional evidence is first analysed. The relevant literature is subdivided into four groups of studies depending on the main factors influencing child welfare: demographic; related to family circumstances; related to health care and sanitation; and economic. The very few time-series studies on this subject are then examined. While the existing literature does not allow definitive conclusions to be drawn on the predominance or relative importance of these four sets of factors, this paper identifies three related research areas for which particularly severe gaps seem to emerge and for which additional investigation appears necessary. These are: over-time studies, studies for low-income, high-mortality countries of Africa, for middle-income countries and for high-income, high-mortality countries, and studies measuring impact on the basis of indicators of welfare other than infant mortality rates.     

Hypothesis of Price Formation in Input–Output Tables

The goal of this paper is to check if different theoretical approaches to price formation can be verified in the structure of empirical input–output tables. From a propositive point of view, the hypothesis is made of two different markets (the ‘industrial’ market of intermediate and investment goods; and the ‘commercial’ market of final consumption goods), with two different mechanisms of price formation. The consequences of this hypothesis are outlined as regards deflation procedures. An empirical test of the theories about price formation and of the method of deflation suggested by the two-market hypothesis is made using 1985 Italian input–output tables at 1980 prices.     

Ethics,ideology and nutrition

What drives nutritionists in their daily work? Why do they choose nutrition and not another field? Presumably it is the appeal of working, either locally or globally, to alleviate the suffering caused by malnutrition. This article explores the political awareness of nutritionists, the political implications of their daily activities and suggests an enhanced role for nutritionists in the battle against malnutrition. The starting point for this article is the motivating principles behind individual nutritionists.     

Turbulence underneath the big calm? The micro-evidence behind Italian productivity dynamics

Italy ranked last in terms of manufacturing productivity growth according to OECD estimates over the last decade, with a flat, if not declining, trend. In this work we investigate the underlying firm-level dynamics of enterprises on the basis of a database developed by the Italian Statistical Office (ISTAT) covering the period 1989?C2004 and containing information on more than 100,000 firms. Over this period not only have the indicators of the central tendency of the distribution of labor productivity not significantly changed, but also the whole sectoral distributions have remained relatively stable over time, with their support at least not shrinking, or even possibly widening, over time. This is even more surprising if one takes into consideration the ??Euro?? shock that occurred during the period investigated. On the contrary, we observe that inter-decile differences in productivity have been increasing. Further, heterogeneous firms?? characteristics (i.e. export activity and innovation) seem to have contributed to boosting such intra-industry differences. Given such wide heterogeneities we resort to quantile regressions to identify the impact of a set of regressors at different levels of the conditional distribution of labor productivity. One phenomenon that we observe is what we call a tendency toward ??neo-dualism?? involving the co-existence of a small group of dynamic firms with a bigger ensemble of much less technologically progressive ones.     

A general theory of controllability and expectations anchoring for small-open economies

Rational expectations are often used as an argument against policy activism, as they may undermine or neutralize the policymaker’s actions. Although this sometimes happens, rational expectations do not always imply policy invariance or ineffectiveness. In fact, in certain circumstances rational expectations can enhance our power to control an economy over time. In those cases, policy announcements can be used to extend the impact of conventional policy instruments. We present a general forward-looking policy framework and use it to provide a formal rationale for testing when policymakers can and cannot expect to be able to manage expectations. To describe the relevance of our results applications are shown for policy design in small-open economies. Those are the cases where domestic policies are at their weakest and our ability to influence expectations most constrained.     

Tourism and community resilience in the Anthropocene: accentuating temporal overtourism

Abstract

Global tourism growth is unprecedented. Consequently, this has elevated the sector as a key plank for economic development, and its utility is deeply embedded in political, economic and social-ecological discourse. Where the expansion of the sector leverages natural and cultural landscapes, this applies pressure to social and ecological underpinnings that if not reconciled, can become problematic. The way this plays out in Australia’s Shipwreck Coast and the wider Great Ocean Road region, especially the implications for community resilience, is the focus. Emphasis is placed on the vulnerability of peripheral coastal areas to development that withdraws from destination endowments, yet fails to provide commensurate economic yield as a suitable trade-off. This is obvious where tourism intensification has led to concerns about the breach of normative carrying capacities. Temporal overtourism driven by seasonal overcrowding is countenanced as emblematic of tourism in the Anthropocene where focus tends to be largely growth-oriented, with much less attention given to bolstering social-ecological resilience, especially community resilience. At stake is the resilience of regional areas and their communities, who in the absence of garnering commensurate economic returns from tourism expansion find themselves in social and ecological deficit.