The impact of foreign direct investment on host country exports: A meta-analysis

In this paper, we present a synthesis of the literature examining the impact of foreign direct investment on host country exports. We reviewed and summarised 37 theoretical papers, 27 micro-level empirical studies and analysed 627 specifications from 117 macro-level empirical studies. In exploring the reasons behind the variations of the reported effects in the empirical literature, we applied meta-regression methodology. Our results indicate that the existing empirical literature generally reports a positive impact of foreign direct investment on exports, especially in developing countries. The reported effects are sensitive to research design, model specification and the context of the research. No publication bias was detected in the sampled studies. Based on our results, we provide some avenues and guidelines for future research on this topic. Our results could also have some important implications for policymakers.     

Pre-crisis reforms,austerity measures and the public-private wage gap in two emerging economies

This paper analyzes crisis adjustments of the public and private sectors in two emerging market economies, Croatia and Serbia, during the 2008–2011 period. It focuses on public-private wage gaps at the onset of and during the crisis, decomposed into structural and composition effects using an extension to the Oaxaca-Blinder method based on Recentered Influence Function (RIF) regressions and reweighting. The main results indicate that at the beginning of the crisis public sector workers in both countries enjoyed a significant wage premium, with the premium in Serbia being about three times higher than in Croatia. During the crisis, both countries experienced a similar increase of the premium, with Croatia reaching the size of gap usually estimated for EU countries, while Serbia stayed largely ahead. The results also show that the wage distribution in the public sector is more compressed than in the private sector in both countries, which is further exacerbated by the crisis. Despite the introduced austerity measures, public sector workers continue to enjoy well-protected and privileged jobs in terms of wages relative to their private sector counterparts. Structural reforms undertaken prior to the crisis played a decisive role in determining the countries’ responses to the crisis.     

MODEL UNCERTAINTY AND SCENARIO AGGREGATION

This paper provides a coherent method for scenario aggregation addressing model uncertainty. It is based on divergence minimization from a reference probability measure subject to scenario constraints. An example from regulatory practice motivates the definition of five fundamental criteria that serve as a basis for our method. Standard risk measures, such as value‐at‐risk and expected shortfall, are shown to be robust with respect to minimum divergence scenario aggregation. Various examples illustrate the tractability of our method.     

Book Review

Tourist experiences are often profound and help to shape the social world of actors. Memories of travels become part of lived experiences to share with others. Experiences of travels or holidays achieve iconic status in everyday lives, and are communicated through the stories of life into lived identities. Accounts of touristic experiences in naturalistic everyday interaction have a story-like quality to them which become mythologised, fabled and flamboyantly and richly narrated to friends and relatives back home. However it is often extremely difficult to collect naturally occurring data of these storied experiences. Interviews in contrast appear to have a more structured and less naturalistic quality. This paper argues that using less structured interview situations, and a very close, fine-detailed analysis of interview data that draws upon socio-linguistic approaches, it is possible to reveal the underlying narrative structure of accounts for and of touristic experience. The paper argues that the natural attitude of the tourist is a ‘narrativistic’ attitude, that an account of touristic experience requires the development of a story, to define, describe and provide reasoned accounts for touristic events. Thus stories are crucial to the development of touristic accounts, and understandings of touristic experience must take account of these narrative structures in order to fully understand what tourists do when they talk about their experiences: they talk about their identities and their worlds. This paper explores how such narratives are constructed and what ‘things’ (other than the events themselves) they communicate.     

A general characterization of one factor affine term structure models

We give a complete characterization of affine term structure models based on a general nonnegative Markov short rate process. This applies to the classical CIR model but includes as well short rate processes with jumps. We provide a link to the theory of branching processes and show how CBI-processes naturally enter the field of term structure modelling. Using Markov semigroup theory we exploit the full structure behind an affine term structure model and provide a deeper understanding of some well-known properties of the CIR model. Based on these fundamental results we construct a new short rate model with jumps, which extends the CIR model and still gives closed form expressions for bond options. Manusript received: June 2000, final version received: October 2000     

Single-case technique for teaching the tax research process

This article describes an instructional technique using a single current tax case to demonstrate the many facets of tax research methodology. The technique is just one resource used for teaching the graduate tax research course, and provides for a richer contextual environment in which to learn the tax research process. Using a single case based on actual events, the many sources of statutory and judicial tax authority were incrementally evaluated to solve the tax problem, and integrally analysed for the final conclusions. In addition, the case centred on a very public and political tax issue, which generated increased interest among students and illustrated the political process associated with tax law development. Application of the technique for desired learning outcomes and assessment objectives are also discussed.     

Some remarks on lower hemicontinuity of convex multivalued mappings

Summary. For a multifunction a condition sufficient for lower hemicontinuity is presented. It is shown that under convexity of graph it is possible for a multifunction to be not continuous only when a special representation of points of its domain is not feasible.Received: 4 September 2004, Revised: 10 January 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: C61.     

A hotel sustainability business model: evidence from Slovenia

This research explores and develops a hotel sustainability business model (HSBM) to study the sustainability orientation of the Slovenian hotel industry. Based on a comparative analysis of the existing sustainability and triple bottom line models, the usual content of a three-line HSBM (economic, environmental and sociocultural) was extended to include customer satisfaction, environmental education and power to implement changes. Financial, marketing and tourism sustainability experts investigated best practices in sustainability measurements and gathered appropriate sustainability indicators; expert opinion and the Delphi method refined and reduced an initial 79 indicators to 36 operational indicators, able to fulfil the HSBM's sub-categories within the extended triple bottom line. The HSBM's concept was used to study the sustainability of Slovenian hotel firms to reveal how important these indicators are for hotel managers and do they monitor them. Results indicated strong importance and measurement of economic and marketing indicators, such as profitability and customer satisfaction. Following the socialist tradition, companies recognise the importance of human resources, but the importance of environmental education and awareness building, biodiversity, and the establishment of partnerships with stakeholders to implement sustainable tourism development are neglected. Economic performance was, for example, monitored by 66% of respondents, environmental performance by 28% and social performance by 42%.     

Understanding the Enforcement Malfunction of Consumer Legislation in Serbia

The new Serbian Law on Consumer Protection was passed in October 2010, and its enactment and general outlook may be attributed to the continuous political pressure and financial and technical support by the European Union (EU). This paper outlines several factors that may have contributed to the weakness of enforcement in Serbia, so that while consumer legislation is fairly harmonized with the EU acquis, national standards of consumer protection lag behind those in the EU. These tentative explanations of the enforcement malfunction include (1) the lack of institutional capacity to receive the professional and technical support of the EU, (2) external pressure as the main incentive for legislative change, (3) the lack of belief in the social relevance of legislative changes as such, (4) the deficiency of the enforcement mechanisms and the lack of appreciation of their importance, and (5) the absence of cooperation between the stakeholders and institutional resistance to change. Consumer protection is not an exceptional field characterized by the risks of enforcement failure. Moreover, the difficulties described in the article are not limited to Serbia, as they also happen in other jurisdictions, even if in different shapes and forms. The success of aligning the national norms to those of the EU and the success of legal transplants in general are always quite uncertain. In that sense, the case of consumer policy in Serbia should be understood as an instance that may illuminate a class of phenomena.     

Investigating the determinants of banking coexceedances in Europe in the summer of 2008

We examine the nature, extent and possible causes of bank contagion in a high frequency setting. Looking at six major European banks in the summer and autumn of 2008, we model the lower coexceedances of these banks returns. We find that market microstructure, volatility (measured by range based measures) and limited general market conditions are key determinants of these coexceedances. We find some evidence that herding occurred.