Comments on “An analysis of the international tourism demand in Spain” by P. González and P. Moral

Although the state-space, unobserved component approach to forecasting has many advantages, it must be applied carefully in practice and should not be used in an uncritical, ‘black box’ fashion. In particular, such an approach to the modelling and forecasting of Spanish tourism data is inappropriate and leads to misleading conclusions, particularly in relation to the uncritical selection and use of explanatory regression variables.     

Monetary policy and macroeconomic stability in Latin America: The cases of Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico

In 1999, new monetary policy regimes were adopted in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, combining inflation targeting with floating exchange rates. These regime changes have been accompanied by lower volatility in the monetary stance in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, despite higher inflation volatility in Brazil and Colombia. This paper estimates a conventional New Keynesian model for these four countries and shows that: i) the post-1999 regime has been associated with greater responsiveness by the monetary authority to changes in expected inflation in Brazil and Chile, while in Colombia and Mexico monetary policy has become less counter-cyclical, ii) lower interest-rate volatility in the post-1999 period owes more to a benign economic environment than to a change in the policy setting, and iii) the change in the monetary regime has not yet resulted in a reduction in output volatility in these countries.     

Social isolation and its relationship to multidimensional poverty

While the multidimensionality of poverty is well-recognised, one dimension of poverty which has been often overlooked is weak social connectedness. This paper draws on conceptual, participatory and measurement literatures to show that social connectedness appears to be an important missing ingredient of multidimensional poverty analyses, with social isolation being a feature which exacerbates the condition of poor persons. To provide contextual detail as to its impact on persons in marginalized communities, we present qualitative primary data from South Africa and Mozambique and review pertinent studies of the First Nations of Canada and among persons with disability. A policy challenge for social isolation is that it is often seen as stemming from an individuals’ capacity rather than resulting from the broader social context. The closing section outlines areas for policy.     

NYSE Euronext-Deutsche Börse merger: Let the dance go on!

While it has often been said that trading is like dancing, exchanges have certainly been dancing with one another for some time, following the need to diversify and cope with the results of a challenging liberalisation process. The proposed merger between NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Börse would create the world’s biggest exchange by revenues and total value. This needs the approval of 47 regulators across the globe, including the US Department of Justice and the European Commission. These institutions would be well advised not to try to stop the dance.     

宝丽来之战略标准化管理模型:10项行动原则

摄影业回望 摄影业(photographic indus-try)已经被重新定义为"影像"业("imaging"industry),其组成也不再仅限于照相机、卤化银感光材料.在今天的美国,影像业已经发展成为了包含许多门类、税收高达1550亿美元的重要产业.除了业余和专业的摄影外,影像业还包括复印产品(copying products)和服务、形象艺术(graphic arts)、桌面出版系统(desktop publish-ing)、计算机辅助图像设计、医学诊断、显微镜方法、印刷以及消费者视频(consumer video)等等.