Macroeconomic Effects of an Ageing Population in Mauritius

The economic literature focuses mostly on faster ageing of population among developed countries; however, many developing countries experience even more dramatic pace of this process. Mauritius, with the median age of population higher than the world average since 1990s, represents a prominent example of such a case. In this paper, we analyse demographic developments in Mauritius and discuss their macroeconomic implications using an open-economy OLG model with demographic shocks. We project that a decline in the Mauritian interest rate and net foreign assets to GDP resulting from ageing will be accompanied by a temporary increase in GDP, consumption and investment.     

Demographic impacts in central and eastern European countries

All countries undergoing socioeconomic transformation in the central, eastern, and southeastern parts of Europe, regardless of the progress made in systemic transformation, have witnessed significant changes in their population. This paper presents some of these demographic changes and considers the dynamics produced by a drop in reproduction rates and the declining frequency of marriages. The intensity of these changes tended to vary. All of the countries, with the exception of Albania, are characterized by low birth rates approaching nominally the level of death rates. Infant mortality rates in the majority of the countries were relatively high at the beginning of the 1990s compared with their minimum.     

Cross-country linkages as determinants of procyclicality of loan loss provisions

Procyclicality in banking may result in financial instability and therefore be destructive to economic growth. The sensitivity of different banking balance sheet and income statement variables to the business cycle is diversified and may be prone to increasing integration of financial markets. In this paper, we address the problem of the influence of financial integration on the transmission of economic shocks from one country to another and consequently on the sensitivity of loan loss provisions (LLPs) to the business cycle. The application of the seemingly unrelated regression equations (SURE) approach to 13 OECD countries in 1995–2009 shows that the procyclicality of LLPs is statistically significant almost in the whole sample of countries. Regardless of the econometric specification, the income-smoothing, capital management and risk management hypotheses are hardly supported by the data. However, in SURE specification, the relationship of bank-specific variables is of higher statistical significance than in the country regression approach. Hence, cross-country interconnectedness is not only economically, but also empirically important when analyzing cross-country diversifications of LLPs.     

MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD ESTIMATION OF FACTOR MODELS ON DATASETS WITH ARBITRARY PATTERN OF MISSING DATA

In this paper we modify the expectation maximization algorithm in order to estimate the parameters of the dynamic factor model on a dataset with an arbitrary pattern of missing data. We also extend the model to the case with a serially correlated idiosyncratic component. The framework allows us to handle efficiently and in an automatic manner sets of indicators characterized by different publication delays, frequencies and sample lengths. This can be relevant, for example, for young economies for which many indicators have been compiled only recently. We evaluate the methodology in a Monte Carlo experiment and we apply it to nowcasting of the euro area gross domestic product. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

School competition and the quality of education: introducing market incentives into public services

Existing research indicates that introducing school choice and competition into the public education system might improve the quality of schooling. Yet, up to date most empirical work on school choice has concentrated on developed countries and it is far from obvious that the experience of these countries can be of any guidance for transition economies. Our work intends to fill this gap. We concentrate on the case of Poland. We argue that in Poland, school choice and competition tends to improve average education quality and efficiency of public education expenditure.     

Representations of Hosts in Travel Writing: The Guardian Travel Section

In this paper, we examine representations of hosts to tourist destinations covered in journalistic travel reports published in the Travel Section of the Saturday edition of the British broadsheet newspaper The Guardian in 1997. Methodologically, the paper is anchored within the constructionist view of discourse, i.e. we assume that in the linguistic representation of people, places, or events, discursive choices not only describe the reality but also construct its ideologically preferred version. We demonstrate that in the travel reports examined here, local people tend to be represented in three principal categories: (1) homogeneous ethnic or social group; (2) observed bearers of the 'national' or 'community' characteristics; or (3) as 'featureless' helpers to the travellers. Arguing that these representations are constitutive of Foucauldian regimes of truth we propose that the reports are a means of constructing a known and tamed reality that is safe for the readers/prospective tourists to travel to.     

Comments on Longmore's Article

In his recent paper [3], Dean R. Longmore develops a new concept of the Payback Period project evaluation criterion, the so-called Time-Adjusted Payback Period, which is supposed to be NPV-compatible and is, therefore, expected by the author to address the needs of practitioners. In this paper, it is indicated that the formulation of the proposed criterion is mathematically incomplete, and its complete version is presented. It is also shown, using numerical examples, that the criterion devised in [3] does not reflect the true content of its name and constitutes, instead, an artificial profitability index. Although this index, in its complete version, is indeed NPV-compatible, it does not, however, offer any advantages over the NPV.     

The design of patent pools: the determinants of licensing rules

Patent pools are an important but little‐studied economic institution. In this article, we first make a set of predictions about the licensing terms associated with patent pools. The theoretical framework predicts that (i) pools consisting of complementary patents are more likely to allow members to engage in independent licensing and (ii) the requirement that firms license patents to the pool (grantbacks) should be associated with pools that consist of complements and allow independent licensing. We then examine the terms of 63 pools, and show that licensing rules are consistent with these hypotheses.