Reflections on the perspectives of the global economy from the point of view of emerging economies

 Recently a number of emerging economies, with high inflation and various kinds of imbalances have experienced what has come to be referred to as dollarization– the phenomenon of currency substitution where the dollar gradually replaces the national currency in the performance of its fundamental functions. The phenomenon is most commonly encountered as a component of the exchange-rate-based stabilization programs implemented in a number of emerging economies in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. The fundamental issue we want to explore is whether this process forces the monetary authorities of emerging economies to act with their hands tied, as if caught in a trap. It is argued that when the expansion of liquidity and domestic credit is determined by the quantity of foreign-exchange reserves, an independent monetary policy vanishes and national sovereignty itself is shackled. Since this scenario typically occurs in a world of increasing globalization of finance, this paper also discusses (with reference to emerging economies) the risks and implications of capital inflows for macroeconomic policy autonomy, economic instability, and vulnerability to external shocks.     

Distributing the Benefits from the Commons: A Square-Root Formula

What should be the distribution of the benefits of a fishery (or common-pool resource) where a group of fishers catch fish and sell it to consumers? I propose that, for each person i, where i is a fisher or a consumer, i's returns should be proportional to i's contributions. Unexpectedly, this implies that the fraction of benefits accruing to consumers must be √value of total output of fish/√value of total outputs of fish+√value of total fishers' labor.     

The role of mental health and addiction among high-cost patients: a population-based study

Aims: Previous work found that, among high-cost patients, those with a majority of mental health and addiction (MHA)-related costs (>50%) incur over 30% more costs than other high-cost patients. However, this work did not examine other high-cost patients in depth or whether they had any MHA-related costs. The objective of this analysis was to examine the role of MHA-related care among other high-cost patients.

Methods: Using administrative healthcare data from Ontario, Canada, this study selected all patients in the 90th percentile of the cost distribution in 2012. It focused primarily on two groups based on the percentage of MHA-related costs relative to total costs: (1) high-cost patients with some MHA-related costs (0%?>?and <50%) and (2) high-cost patients with no MHA-related costs (0%). We examined socio-demographic and clinical characteristics, utilization and costs for both groups, and modeled patient-level costs using appropriate regression techniques. We also compared these groups with high-cost patients with a majority of MHA-related costs (>50%).

Results: High-cost patients with some MHA-related costs incurred over 40% more costs than those without ($27,883 vs $19,702). Patients with some MHA-related costs were older, lived in poorer neighborhoods, and had higher levels of comorbidity compared to those without. After controlling for relevant variables, having any type of MHA-related utilization increased costs by $2,698. Having a diagnosis of psychosis had a large impact on costs.

Limitations: This study did not examine children and adolescents. We were only able to account for 91% of all costs incurred by the public third-party payer; addiction-related costs from community-based agencies were not available.

Conclusions: High-cost patients with MHA incur higher costs compared to those without. When considering interventions aimed at high-cost patients, policy-makers should consider their complex nature, specifically both their physical and MHA-related comorbidities.     

Towards a ‘progressive mediation approach’ in planning

This article is concerned with planning for the ‘disadvantaged’, a term defined in the main text. It is argued that the prevailing planning approach in South Africa is inadequate for dealing with present social realities. A more socially relevant approach, the ‘Progressive Mediation Approach’, derived from an analysis of mediation theory, is proposed. For ease of analysis and argument the article focuses on the urban scale and on the discipline of Town and Regional Planning but its relevance to other disciplinary forms of planning is evident.     

Conservation agriculture practices adopted in southern Brazil

The adoption of conservation agriculture (CA) practices are essential for soil and water conservation. In CA, farmers must adopt no-tillage (NT) with crop rotation to maintain a permanent soil cover. In Brazil, mainly in the South region, for CA to be more efficient, practices such as contour farming and agricultural terraces should also be adopted. Thus, the objective of this study is to determine the extent to which NT has been adopted with crop rotation and others soil and water conservation practices. Data from the Agricultural Census in Paraná State, southern Brazil, were used. For the data analysis, the relationship between the level of adoption of NT and the use of crop rotation, contour farming and agricultural terraces was analyzed. A factor and cluster analysis were performed to distinguish regions in terms of soil and water conservation practices. The results show good overall soil and water conservation practices, although heterogeneity has been observed in the adoption practices between regions. Adoption of NT is high in almost all the studied regions. The conservation practice most widely used with NT is contour farming, whereas the least used is agricultural terraces. Conservation practices for runoff control are being neglected by farmers.     

Omnichannel approach: Factors affecting consumer acceptance

Abstract

The omnichannel approach is a new commercial opportunity that aims to offer consumers a unique and satisfying experience through any touch point. This research aims to understand the factors that might lead consumers to accept and use this new approach. The conceptual model was tested empirically using primary data collected from 210 Portuguese participants. The results reported suggest that perceptions of usefulness, ease of use, and compatibility have a positive effect on brand experience, which strongly affects the behavioral intention to use. Additionally, a moderation analysis, using user status as a moderator, shows that while usefulness is important to uniquely explain use intention for low frequency, ease of use is only a good predictor of use intention for high-frequency users. This research provides useful insights for academic research by shedding light on this new phenomenon, and simultaneously for businesses by deriving some implications for defining their omnichannel strategies.     

Assessing Organizational Adoption of Information Systems Outsourcing

The information systems outsourcing (ISO) field continues to grow, as organizations consistently seek improvements in IT activities. The global scope of outsourcing participation and growth leads to gaps of knowledge related to the contextual factors that influence ISO adoption. Using the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework, this study identifies and contextualizes the determinants of ISO adoption. Data collected from 261 firms suggest that relative advantage, firm size, top management support, and competitive pressure are the main determinants of ISO. This study highlights the importance of assessing ISO using the TOE theoretical lens, and offers replication of prior results, the lack of which is a growing concern in social science research.     

The Aggregate Behavior of Banks: A Proposal for Prudential Supervision

This study seeks to investigate a macroeconomic approach that could help bank regulators and supervisors perform their task of ensuring financial stability. To achieve this, an attempt is made to explain the behavior of banks by analyzing aggregate time series of credit lending and deposit-taking, which are the variables involved in financial intermediation. This article's main contribution is to present evidence of banks’ behavior in their role as financial intermediaries, in terms of the performance of the variables that represent their credit-granting or deposit-taking decisions. For this purpose the study used a vector autoregressive model to construct impulse response functions and the Granger test. The results demonstrate the existence of bilateral causality between credit lending and deposit--taking, suggesting that banks actively manage the financial intermediation process. In addition, the results show that shocks to deposits destabilize the credit lending process, and credit supply shocks, in turn, destabilize deposit-taking. The latter result is important for understanding how financial instability can arise, and is thus relevant for the bank regulator.