The impact of volatility on growth in China

China’s path to emerging as the world’s second largest economy has not been a smooth one. This paper considers whether the volatility of growth has had an impact on the trend rate of growth. In doing so it aims to promote a better understanding of the determinants of China’s impressive trend rate of growth and also shed light on questions such as whether the trend rate of growth might have been even higher had the government and central bank been better able to offset volatility. Utilizing a GARCH-M model, the results of the empirical analysis suggest that the impact of volatility has been either positive or insignificant, but not negative.     

Financial Restructuring in Fresh‐Start Chapter 11 Reorganizations

We find that firms substantially reduce their debt burden in “fresh‐start” Chapter 11 reorganizations, yet they emerge with higher debt ratios than what is typical in their respective industries. While cross‐sectional regressions reveal that post‐reorganization debt ratios are more in line with the predictions of the static trade‐off theory, they also reveal that pre‐reorganization debt ratios affect post‐reorganization debt ratios. Collectively, these results suggest that impediments in Chapter 11 prevent firms from completely resetting their capital structures. We also find that firms that reported positive operating income leading up to Chapter 11 emerge faster, suggesting that it is quicker to remedy strictly financial distress than economic distress.     

Capacity management for hospitality and tourism: A review of current approaches

In this article we provide a review of current capacity management approaches applicable to hospitality and tourism enterprises. While many of the traditional methodologies involve closed-form analytical calculations, newer methods have been developed that address more complex problems. These more recent methods include the creative use of mixed models such as those that integrate visitor-preference and operations-research models, linear programming, and simulation models. We consider the full range of methodologies, the advantages and disadvantages, and potential applications to both physical and human capacity estimation. We highlight the ways that various leisure industries can benefit from different approaches to capacity management.     

Do Investors Value a Firm’s Commitment to Social Activities?

Previous empirical research has found mixed results for the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) investments on corporate financial performance (CFP). This paper contributes to the literature by exploring in a two stage investor decision-making model the relationship between a firm’s innovation effort, CSR, and financial performance. We simultaneously examine the impact of CSR on both accounting-based (financial health) and market-based (Tobin’s Q) financial performance measures. From a sample of top corporate citizens, we find that: (1) a firm’s social responsibility commitment (CSR) contributes to its financial performance; (2) after controlling for investment in innovation activities, CSR continues to have a positive impact on a firm’s financial performance; (3) the customer dimension of CSR has a positive effect on both CFP measures, whereas the employee dimension indicates a significant impact only on financial heath; and (4) the community relation dimension of CSR only affects the market-based CFP measure of firms with high innovation intensity.     

Supply Elasticity Estimates for the Sydney Housing Market

This article presents estimates of the supply elasticity for residential property in metropolitan Sydney over the period 1991–2006. Our results suggest that supply is inelastic—less than unity—for all types of housing, although the supply elasticity is relatively larger for strata properties (apartments and flats) than for non‐strata properties (separate and semi‐detached houses, terraces and townhouses). We also find evidence of a significant fall in supply elasticity between 1991–1996 and 2001–2006. When the median time taken by a local council to decide on a development application is included in the supply curve, it is found to have a negative effect on the supply of residential property. However, split‐sample estimates indicate this effect is largely confined to the 1991–1996 period.     

Pension Type and Retirement Wealth

In this article I analyze the effect of a shift from defined-benefit pensions to defined-contribution pensions on retirement wealth. Regressions results suggest that workers with a defined-benefit pension appear to have more retirement resources than those who either have no pension or have a defined-contribution pension, although individual savings is generally insufficient. I use the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS), which contains data on individuals 51 to 61 years of age.     

Occupational Segregation and the Gender Wage Gap in a Dynamic East Asian Economy

Labor markets in the East Asian “miracle” economies have undergone profound changes in recent decades as their comparative advantage in low-wage labor diminished and jobs shifted toward higher-skill manufacturing and services. This study uses an occupational decomposition technique to examine how such shifts in East Asia's occupational structures have affected trends in their gender wage gaps. The wage gap is decomposed into across-occupation and within-occupation factors that are each further separated into wage and employment components. Results based on a comprehensive labor force data set for Taiwan show that within-occupation pay discrepancies account for the bulk of gender wage inequity.     

Operationalizing the interpretive turn: Deploying qualitative methods toward an economics of meaning

In his original essay advocating the interpretive turn in economics, Lavoie makes an explicit argument favoring (1) an economics of meaning and (2) the growth of knowledge through discursive rivalry within the scientific community. This paper contends that within Lavoie's explicit argument is an implicit case for a particular mode of discovery that resists the excesses of formalism common within the economics discipline and instead puts the investigator, the investigator's theoretical lens, and the subject under investigation in close proximity to one another. With the nodal points of this triangulated relationship in closer proximity to one another, an iterative learning process emerges that is itself a source of social scientific discovery. Further, and in connection to this mode of discovery, is the implicit case favoring qualitative research methods that correct the economics discipline's excessive reliance upon quantitative analysis in its empirical investigations that distances the investigator from the subject under investigation. The goal of this paper is to make these implicit arguments explicit.