Backhouse and Boianovsky on “disequilibrium theory”. A review article of transforming modern macroeconomics. Exploring disequilibrium microfoundations, 1956–2003

Abstract

This article is an in-depth analysis of Backhouse and Boianovsky's book, Transforming Modern Macroeconomics: Exploring Disequilibrium Microfoundations, 1956–2003. I start with questioning Backhouse and Boianovsky's too broad understanding of the disequilibrium approach. Thereby they bring together theories that should be kept separate, those by Patinkin, Clower and Leijonhuvud on the one hand, and those by Barro and Grossman, Drèze and Benassy, on the other. I also substantiate my disagreement with their claim that an inner link exists between fixed price equilibrium theories and imperfect competition modelling. Finally, I put forward a few conjectures about the reason why fixed price modelling petered out.     

Machine learning for quantitative finance: fast derivative pricing,hedging and fitting

In this paper, we show how we can deploy machine learning techniques in the context of traditional quant problems. We illustrate that for many classical problems, we can arrive at speed-ups of several orders of magnitude by deploying machine learning techniques based on Gaussian process regression. The price we have to pay for this extra speed is some loss of accuracy. However, we show that this reduced accuracy is often well within reasonable limits and hence very acceptable from a practical point of view. The concrete examples concern fitting and estimation. In the fitting context, we fit sophisticated Greek profiles and summarize implied volatility surfaces. In the estimation context, we reduce computation times for the calculation of vanilla option values under advanced models, the pricing of American options and the pricing of exotic options under models beyond the Black–Scholes setting.     

South Africa's titanium industrial policy: A product space perspective

South Africa is a globally significant player in the titanium raw mineral production industry but does not play a large role in its downstream mineral processing. Since downstream activities generate much higher value added, the government has sought to support the end-to-end titanium value chain to capture more value from raw titanium before export through ‘beneficiation’-related policies. This paper applies the input–output product space methodology to generate an overview of those sub-sectors within the titanium value chain that are likely to support long-term economic growth in South Africa. We then evaluate whether the selected global value chain activities are supported by the current industrial policy and/or whether a focus on currently excluded global value chain activities is recommended. Our results confirm that although beneficiation appears to make sense in the titanium industry in South Africa, it should (from a product space perspective) be applied neither automatically nor sequentially moving down the value chain. The paper concludes with the shortcomings of the approach and various avenues for future research.     

Cooperative movement and widespread prosperity across Italian regions

Our goal is to participate in the debate on regional well-being. To this end, we explore the relationship between prosperity and the cooperative movement at the regional level in Italy between 2010 and 2019. We summarize prosperity through an index originally proposed by Amartya Sen and we apply it to classify Italian regions. We then perform panel analyses showing that there is a positive and significant association between such an index and the cooperative presence. We detect that, and explain why, the cooperative movement contributes to the regional prosperity more through its employment than in terms of the added value it generates.     

Better to be direct? Evidence from the abolition of direct elections in Italian local governments

This paper provides evidence for the importance of direct electoral processes by investigating the consequences for public spending of an unexpected reform that repealed direct elections for local (provincial) politicians in Italy. Direct elections were substituted with indirect ones, whereby directly elected municipal politicians choose a municipal mayor to serve as provincial president. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I document two main consequences of the reform. First, municipalities connected to the provincial presidents tend to receive disproportionately more public funds after the reform, suggesting geographic favoritism increased. Second, the share of provincial resources spent on public goods drops in favor of bureaucratic costs. I discuss suggestive evidence that these results are driven by weaker electoral incentives rather than by the selection of worse politicians.     

Full circle support: unpacking the relationship between women entrepreneurs’ family-to-work support and work interference with family

With an anchoring in conservation of resources theory, this study examines the mediating role of women entrepreneurs’ work-related emotional exhaustion in the relationship between their family-to-business support and work interference with family, as well as the moderating role of the entrepreneurial character of their company’s strategy in this process. Survey data collected from women entrepreneurs in Argentina indicate that a notable reason that business support received from the family diminishes work interference with that same family is that it abates the sense of being overburdened by work. This benefit of reduced exhaustion is especially prominent to the extent that women entrepreneurs pursue an energy-consuming, entrepreneurial strategy for their business. For entrepreneurship scholars and practitioners, this research accordingly reveals a critical channel through which supportive family relationships can decrease the probability that women entrepreneurs bring work challenges home (i.e., diminished depletion of work energy), and it shows how this explanatory factor varies with the strategic profile they adopt for their business.

     

Entrepreneurial by Design: How Organizational Design Affects Family and Non‐family Firms’ Opportunity Exploitation

Opportunity exploitation is a key aspect of the corporate entrepreneurship process and is particularly important to maintain a family firm through multiple generations. Drawing on an organizational design perspective, we investigate opportunity exploitation in family versus non‐family firms. The empirical analyses on survey data from a sample of 224 Italian firms reveal that family firms exploit significantly fewer opportunities than non‐family firms, and this result is fully mediated by the organization of their TMT. Our findings show that how family firms organize is crucial for opportunity exploitation, thus extending and enriching prior corporate entrepreneurship research, highlighting the importance of bringing an organizational design perspective to corporate entrepreneurship and family business studies.     

COMMON‐ENEMY EFFECTS: MULTIDISCIPLINARY ANTECEDENTS AND ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES

A disparate literature hypothesizes what can broadly be described as the common‐enemy effect: the fact that the interaction with a common enemy (formed by Nature, an individual, or a group) increases cooperation. This review identifies the multidisciplinary antecedents of this effect, and then distinguishes between several strands of literature applying noncooperative game theory to account for it. A first strand argues that the threat posed by a common enemy makes each player's cooperative effort more critical. In a second strand a behavioral common‐enemy effect caused by group interaction is studied experimentally. A third strand models the common‐enemy effect as the formation of a coalition of players against another player in a contest. A fourth strand formalizes the principle that the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’, either in a model of social relations, interdependent altruistic preferences, or indirect reciprocity in repeated games. The connections between these strands of literature are investigated, and questions for future research are proposed.     

The determinants of business contribution to the 2030 Agenda: Introducing the SDG Reporting Score

Within the 2030 Agenda, the United Nations have explicitly required that the Member States introduce within their jurisdictions new forms of regulations about non-financial reporting practices. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects related to the transposition of Directive 2014/95/EU by analyzing firm-level, governance-level, and report-level determinants of business reporting on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To conduct such an analysis, this study defines and introduces the SDG Reporting Score (SRS)—a qualitative proxy representing a firm orientation toward SDG reporting. The study sample includes the non-financial reports of 153 Italian Public Interest Entities. The results show a positive relationship between a firm's SRS and various determinants, such as the presence of independent directors on the board, expertise with non-financial reporting, and length of the report. Finally, the highest levels of SRS are achieved by firms operating in environmental sensitive sectors.