Communicating the ‘migrant’ other as risk: space,EU and expanding borders

Forced migration and border spaces as fault lines posing risks to society through the notion of ‘Othering’, remain under-explored in risk literature. With Europe facing its biggest humanitarian crisis with forced migration and displacement due to conflict zones, the borders of the European Union have received renewed attention in media. Refugees and the displaced are often depicted as ‘migrants’ and are seen as transgressing borders as illegitimate entities. Although increasing attention has been paid to border patrol and issues of securitization since 9/11, the ‘migrant’ body as ‘risky body’ in political and policy discussions is under-conceptualized and theorized in risk literature. We examine political discourses of the UK Government to discern how the migrant and the expanding borders of the EU are framed as forms of societal and economic risk and equally how these are mitigated with and through the discourse of space and borders. We take a constructionist approach to the ‘migrant’ problem in the EU and UK where risk is socially constructed through political discourse.     

Sectoral Effects of Monetary Policy: Evidence from Malaysia

The present paper analyzes the effects of monetary policy shocks on aggregate and eight sectoral outputs for Malaysia using vector autoregressive models. In line with many existing studies on Malaysia, the results are supportive of the real effects of monetary policy shocks. More importantly, we find evidence suggesting sector-specific responses to innovations in monetary policy. In response to positive interest rate shocks, we note that the manufacturing, construction, finance, insurance, real estate and business services sectors seem to decline more than aggregate production. By contrast, we observe the relative insensitivities of agriculture, forestry and fishing, mining and quarrying, electricity, gas and water to interest rate changes. The results, therefore, seem to confirm potential disparities in the effect of monetary policy on real sectoral activities.     

Korean unification prospects: an assessment through the BDN-model

The debate on the possible unification of South Korea and North Korea has often been assessed from the economic perspective, which is insufficient since unification entails not only the integration of two economies but political, social and technological integration of two territories. Using the box negotiation diagram model, this paper expands the scope of the study on South Korea and North Korea unification through a multidisciplinary approach encompassing the political, economic, social and technological perspectives. Given the huge imbalanced points of unification drawn from our analysis, we observed more divergence than convergence hence, hinging the possibility of unification of serious negotiation.     

Institutional Quality and CO2 Emission–Trade Relations: Evidence from Sub‐Saharan Africa

This paper examines the roles of trade, institutional quality and their interactions in explaining carbon dioxide emissions in a panel sample of 40 Sub‐Sahara African countries using the system generalised method of moments. We find that institutional reforms are unequivocally environmental improving. Meanwhile, the impacts of trade on the environment tend to depend on the institutional setting of a country. More specifically, trade openness is harmful to the environment in countries with low institutional quality and beneficial to the environment in countries with high institutional quality. This means that institutional reforms are a perquisite for the countries with low institutional quality to actualise the beneficial environment effect of trade. As for the countries with adequate institutional quality, trade and institutions are reinforcing each other in bringing down pollution. From these results, we conclude that trade openness implemented in a sound institutional setting potentially brings better trade, more growth and better environment.     

Provision of financial information and its impact on the relationship between executives and venture capital managers: A study of the private equity market in Egypt

This study makes an attempt to further understand the practices of private equity/venture capital (PE/VC) in developing markets. We focus our attention on the relationship between PE/VC firms and the investee companies (ICs) and its development. We investigate the provision of financial and non-financial information and its effects on the development of the relationship between chief executive officers (CEOs) and PE/VC managers in Egypt as one of the developing markets. Data were collected from Egyptian PE/VC firms via semi-structured interviews. Both similarities and differences were found between Egyptian PE/VC in respect of developing the relationships with their ICs. Results show that the provision of timely information allows PE/VC managers to: (i) have a higher degree of trust on CEOs; (ii) be more supportive of the CEO's strategic decisions; and (iii) interact more frequently with the ICs. The origin of the PE/VC firms seems to have an effect on the Egyptian PE/VC firms’ behaviours. International PE/VC firms are also more likely to get involved in every decision at the strategic level of the ICs. The current study provides some implications for both CEOs of the ICs and PE/VC managers. It is important for PE/VC managers to develop and maintain successful relationships with ICs, which will promote a positive image of the PE/VC firms that can be used for marketing purposes, which in turn can be translated into more deals in the future.     

Does order flow in the European Carbon Futures Market reveal information?

This paper identifies the classes of agents at play in the European Carbon Futures Market and analyzes their trading behaviour during the market's early development period. A number of hypotheses related to microstructure are tested using enhanced ACD models. Evidence is presented that the market is characterized by three different groups of traders: informed, fundamental, and uninformed. OTC trades are distinct to regular trades and are used strategically by the informed. Fundamental traders react faster in Phase II and the informed counteract by increasing their trade size and speed. The results indicate enhanced market transparency and increased market maturity.     

The effects of Federal funds rate surprises on S&P 500 volatility and volatility risk premium

In this paper, we examine the effects of expected and surprise components in Federal funds target rate changes on realized and implied volatility. We find that surprise changes in the target rate significantly increase volatility. Consistent with the efficient market hypothesis, our analysis suggests that the expected component of a target rate change as well as the target rate change itself, do not significantly affect volatility. We also show that larger than expected decreases in the Federal funds target rate tend to lower the volatility risk premium.     

The Impact of Settlement Procedures on Day-of-the-week Effects: Evidence from the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange

Using daily data from 1983 to 1993 for the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange Composite Index (KLSI) we examine the day-of-the-week effect. Our initial findings indicate that there is a marginally significant negative Monday effect (in keeping with US studies) and a significant positive Wednesday and Thursday effect for the whole period. We consider a number of possible explanations for these results including the impact of: closed market effects ; the time zone hypothesis ; market size and price ; the January Effect ; and the possibility of mismeasured risk . However, we believe that the most likely cause of the seasonal effects documented between 1983 and 1993, can be traced to the pre-1990 settlement procedures on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange since we find that after this date nearly all of the seasonal variation in daily stock returns disappears. Thus we highlight in this paper the importance of considering the microstructure of financial markets in empirical tests of apparent market anomalies.     

On the Causes and Effects of Exchange Rate Volatility on Economic Growth: Evidence from Ghana

What drives exchange rate volatility, and what are the effects of fluctuations in the exchange rate on economic growth in Ghana? These questions are the subject matter of this study. The results showed that while shocks to the exchange rate are mean reverting, misalignments tend to correct very sluggishly, with painful consequences in the short run as economic agents recalibrate their consumption and investment choices. About three quarters of shocks to the real exchange rate are self-driven, and the remaining one quarter or so is attributed to factors such as government expenditure and money supply growth, terms of trade and output shocks. Excessive volatility is found to be detrimental to economic growth; however, this is only up to a point as growth-enhancing effect can also emanate from innovation, and more efficient resource allocation.