Exchange-rate Regimes and the Transition Process in the Western Balkans

Although the importance for successful transition of a monetary policy aiming at a sustainable price level has often been stressed in the academic literature, there is still ample room for further research into the choice of the exchange-rate system throughout the different phases of the transition process. This article deals with the question of how the choice of a specific exchange-rate system affects the economic success of a country in transition and, above all, its gradual integration into the European Union (EU) and European Monetary Union (EMU). It focuses on the transition process in five South-Eastern European countries (SEECs). The authors are grateful for valuable comments received from participants in the EUROFRAME 2006 Conference in Berlin, Germany, the ICMAIF 2007 Conference in Rethymno, Greece, and the EEFS 2007 Conference in Sofia, Bulgaria.     

Introduction to the Special Issue on “Exchange Rates,Financial Integration and Uncertainty”

Open Economies Review -     

Quasi‐Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Health Information on Preventive Behaviour in Europe

We investigate the effect of information on preventive decisions in a quasi‐experimental setting arising from the implementation of local breast cancer screening programmes in Europe. To identify the causal effect of invitation on preventive uptake, we link administrative public data on regional screening policies to individual data from the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and exploit regional variation in the availability of screening policies and in age eligibility criteria. We find home invitation increases mammography uptakes by around 24%. Significant effects are found when at least 50% of the population is reached by the invitation letter. The stock of health information and the ability to process the information received seem to play a significant role, as the effects of invitation are higher among low educated and lower among cognitively impaired women.     

Dissecting long-run and short-run causalities between monetary policy and stock prices

We adopt a Cointegrated Vector-Autoregressive (CVAR) model to analyze the long-run behavior and short-run dynamics of stock markets across five developed and three emerging economies. Our main aim is to check whether liquidity conditions play an important role for stock market developments. As an innovation, liquidity conditions enter the analysis from three angles: in the form of a broad monetary aggregate, the interbank overnight rate and net capital flows which represent the share of global liquidity that arrives in the respective country. A second objective is to understand whether central banks are able to influence the stock market.     

Productivity Shocks and Real Effective Exchange Rates

This paper provides new insights into the relationship between exchange rates and productivity developments for European Economies. We focus on the question whether productivity changes have a long‐run impact on real effective exchange rates for a large number of European economies. Focusing on a sample period running from 1995 until 2013, we adopt a cointegrated vector autoregressive approach and distinguish between long‐run equilibrium, short‐run dynamics and long‐run impact of shocks. Our findings show that for several industrialized economies, real effective exchange rates and labor productivity are not related over the long‐run. A possible explanation for this result is that wage developments do not reflect increases in labor productivity to a large degree, which prevents a transmission to the real effective exchange rate through the price channel. The results for Central and Eastern European Countries are more encouraging since a positive impact of labor productivity on real effective exchange rate is frequently observed.     

Das europäische Verfahren zur Vermeidung und Korrektur von Leistungsbilanzungleichgewichten

The Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP) is part of a institutional framework known as the so-called “sixpack“, which has come into effect on December 13th 2011 in response to the European financial and debt crisis. The crisis has shown that internal and external imbalances (in particular current account deficits) are strongly intertwined. The MIP should identify external imbalances at an early stage and thus compel countries to correct these imbalances to forestall potential crises. Methodological questions are discussed, which are to be resolved to ensure the effectiveness of the MIP.     

Big Data and Automation in Strategic Communication

Big data and automation pose huge challenges for strategic communication. This article contributes to the limited body of knowledge in the field by introducing the concepts, outlining opportunities and potential problems, and identifying current perceptions and applications in the professional field. A large-scale survey, with respondents from across more than 40 countries, explores the expertise of communication professionals, applications within communication departments and agencies, and consequences for the profession at large. The study shows a large gap between the perceived importance and current practices, a lack of competencies and ethical reflection, and a limited use of opportunities. The full potential of big data analytics and algorithms has not been leveraged until now, which calls for new initiatives in the practice and further research.     

Scope of improvement in water usage efficiency in manual dishwashing: A multicountry study by questionnaire survey

Over recent decades, water conservation have become increasingly an utmost important issue for debate, and this includes the domestic sector. Reducing demand water by improving the efficiency of water use in domestic sector requires an understanding of how water is used and in what ways water savings can be realized. The focus of this global, web‐based, consumer questionnaire survey was to analyze individual consumer attitudes towards using water in manual dishwashing and understand the likelihood of a prospect of changing the daily manual dishwashing method resulting to a more efficient domestic usage of water. This study was designed to investigate the manual dishwashing technique used in the 5249 households of nine different countries ‐ China, Germany, Italy, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, India, South Africa and Argentina. Besides socio‐demographics, technical questions like cleaning steps, hygiene questions motivational question, environmental awareness questions, questions on payment for water and electricity, questions on information sources about household work were included in the study. It was found that the awareness to conserve water was common among the Asian participants but it necessarily was not practiced in the households as individual washing of dishes was found to be quite high. Among the many outcomes, important one was that ‘running tap method’ was found to be most prevalent (86%) among Russian participants, complimenting their detached approach towards conserving domestic water usage. In South American countries like Brazil (66%) and Argentina (51%), high occurrence of ‘running tap rinse’ was found to be a common practice, confirming the lack of conscious use of water in manual dishwashing in the subcontinent. Based on the overall responses, awareness of a new and efficient technique of manual dishwashing could be propagated through the most voted mediums of Internet (81%) and TV (69%).     

Global consumer study to identify water wastage in the usage of automatic dishwashers

In dishcleaning automatic dishwashers do clearly win over manual cleaning when it comes to efficiency: Resources can be saved without compromising on hygiene. But mistakes in the usage behaviour can equalize saving advantages. Consumers in nine countries, covering different regions of the world, were asked about their dishcleaning behaviour to identify if this household work is done in a resource saving way. By analysing mistakes in the current behaviour, the potential of water savings shall be estimated.