Neo‐Fisherism and inflation control

According to conventional central banking wisdom, an inflation‐targeting central bank should increase (decrease) its nominal interest rate target when inflation is above (below) its target. According to neo‐Fisherites, conventional central bankers have the sign wrong. Essentially all mainstream macroeconomic models tell us that increases in nominal interest rates increase inflation—in the short run and in the long run. This paper reviews neo‐Fisherian theory and evidence and addresses issues relating to inflation control in low real interest rate environments.     

Forecasting Bordeaux wine prices using state-space methods

Generic Bordeaux red wine (basic claret) can be regarded as being similar to an agricultural commodity. Production volumes are substantial, they are traded at high frequency and the quality of the product is relatively homogeneous. Unlike other commodities and the top-end wines (which represent only 3% of the traded volume), there is no futures market for generic Bordeaux wine. Reliable forecasts of prices can to large extent replace this information deficiency and improve the functioning of the market. We use state-space methods with monthly data to obtain a univariate forecasting model for the average price. The estimates highlight the stochastic trend and the seasonality present in the evolution of the price over the period 1999 to 2016. The model predicts the path of wine prices out of sample reasonably well, suggesting that this approach is useful for making reasonably accurate forecasts of future price movements.     

Hedonic Amenity Valuation and Housing Renovations

Hedonic and repeat sales estimators are commonly used to value such important urban amenities as schools, environmental quality and access to transit. Given that property data often omits information on quality differences between same‐aged homes as well as changes in structural attributes over time, researchers must assume that property renovations are uncorrelated with neighborhood amenities. We formally test if this assumption is valid by incorporating detailed data on renovations in Charlotte, North Carolina. We begin by testing how the inclusion of minor and major home improvements influences hedonic and repeat sales indices. Results find limited bias in hedonic indices and that renovated properties are no more likely to be sold than nonrenovated properties. Using the introduction of Charlotte's light rail‐transit system in 2000, we estimate a positive bias of between 1.6% and 19.9% on the capitalized benefits of access to light rail due to omitted information on renovations. Our results show that a number of common data cleaning techniques used to address missing information on structural improvements may worsen this bias.     

Confidence sets for the date of a break in level and trend when the order of integration is unknown

We propose methods for constructing confidence sets for the timing of a break in level and/or trend that have asymptotically correct coverage for both I(0) and I(1) processes. These are based on inverting a sequence of tests for the break location, evaluated across all possible break dates. We separately derive locally best invariant tests for the I(0) and I(1) cases; under their respective assumptions, the resulting confidence sets provide correct asymptotic coverage regardless of the magnitude of the break. We suggest use of a pre-test procedure to select between the I(0)- and I(1)-based confidence sets, and Monte Carlo evidence demonstrates that our recommended procedure achieves good finite sample properties in terms of coverage and length across both I(0) and I(1) environments. An application using US macroeconomic data is provided which further evinces the value of these procedures.     

Making the Prevention of Homelessness a Priority: The Role of Social Innovation

Mass homelessness emerged in Canada in the wake of neoliberal policies that reduced government production of housing and other supportive measures. Efforts to reduce homelessness have occurred in three stages: 1) an emergency response in the 1990s that consisted mostly of investment in shelters, soup kitchens, and day programs, 2) the implementation of community plans to end homelessness, combined with the adoption of Housing First as a strategy that seeks to provide reliable shelter as a first step to anyone without it, followed by other remedial services, and 3) the recent development in Canada of early intervention strategies to prevent homelessness from its inception. The second stage was highly successful in dealing with the situation of chronically homeless adults, and many communities have begun to see reductions in homelessness. However effective, this approach does not break the cycle by intercepting potentially homeless individuals in their youth, which is when it begins for many people. Canada is at the beginning stages of the move towards a stronger focus on prevention, aided by a social innovation agenda to identify, design, test, and evaluate preventive interventions to determine which ones will be most strategically effective, setting the stage for implementation and going to scale.     

Political economy of the US–Mexican tomato trade agreement

We develop a political economy model to analyse the US–Mexican tomato trade agreement by treating the minimum import price as a negotiated settlement. We incorporate the special characteristics of the US–Mexican tomato dispute, namely trade among large countries, the role of competing fresh and processed tomato lobbies, quota revenues accruing to Mexican producers, bargaining for a minimum import price rather than a tariff, and the role of the Canadian tomato market. We show the importance of the size of the lobby group's supply, the weight elected officials' place on national welfare, and the elasticities of export supply and import demand in determining the optimal price wedge. For the United States, larger fresh tomato or cherry–grape tomato supply intensifies the degree of protection awarded to US growers, while US processors work to mitigate this effect. From Mexico's perspective, larger Mexican fresh or cherry–grape output induces a push towards free trade due to the agreement's depressing effect on Mexican prices, while Mexican processors and quota revenues exacerbate the price wedge.     

Attitudes about EU expansion and zero‐sum thinking

EU expansion can be seen as a positive‐sum process benefiting all countries by creating larger markets that stimulate more productive economies through increased specialization and economies of scale, implying that the general public in all countries should favour expansion. Contrarily, expansion can be perceived as zero‐sum. Capital and production relocate from higher to lower wage regions while labour does the opposite, possibly raising unemployment and reducing wages in the higher wage regions. The general public in these countries may come to oppose EU expansion attributing any deterioration in their work situation to the gains of new citizens of the European Union. Analysis of changes in Irish attitudes towards EU expansion in 2002, 2007 and 2009 finds no evidence of a link from lowered economic conditions to increased opposition to EU expansion. The only evidence for zero‐sum thinking is that diminished economic circumstances are associated with increased opposition to immigration, but this is not associated with increased opposition to further EU expansion.     

Sustainable Consumption Behavior in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Conceptual Framework

This paper develops a conceptual framework for investigating the adoption patterns, inhibitors, and facilitators (PIF) of sustainable consumption in sub-Sahara African (SSA) settings. Literature evidence shows paucity of empirical studies on sustainable consumption from SSA, which partly explains lack of suitable conceptual framework to guide research in this area. Also, the existing frameworks, which were developed outside SSA may not be suitable for constructing sustainable consumption behavior in SSA because of its peculiarities. The key significance of this article is the potential of providing future researchers in this area with a framework to guide and manage their studies. As a conceptual article, insight was drawn from a plethora of scholarly articles in the domain of sustainable consumption and related areas. The framework is built on four key constructs—adoption patterns, inhibitors, facilitators (PIF), and intention. As a guide for studies from the SSA, the article includes an empirical section, which provides preliminary empirical validation for the proposed PIF conceptual framework based on a pilot test. The result from the pilot study, using structural equation modeling (SEM), led to positing the PIF Sustainable Consumption model, thus giving support for the PIF Conceptual Framework, which this article puts forward. In addition, the proposed PIF conceptual framework is capable of providing insight for crafting sustainability-related policies. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.