Measuring time-varying financial market integration: An unobserved components approach

We measure the time-varying degree of world stock market integration of five developed countries (Germany, France, UK, US, and Japan) over the period 1970:1–2011:10. Time-varying financial market integration of each country is measured through the conditional variances of the country-specific and common international risk premiums in equity excess returns. The country-specific and common risk premiums and their conditional variances are estimated from a latent factor decomposition through the use of state space methods that allow for GARCH errors. Our empirical results suggest that stock market integration has increased over the period 1970:1–2011:10 in all countries but Japan. And while there is a structural increase in stock market integration in four out of five countries, all countries also exhibit several shorter periods of disintegration (reversals), i.e. periods in which country-specific shocks play a more dominant role. Hence, stock market integration is measured as a dynamic process that is fluctuating in the short run while gradually increasing in the long run.     

Employee Mental Illness: Managing the Hidden Epidemic

While the high prevalence of mental illness in workplaces is more readily documented in the literature than it was ten or so years ago, it continues to remain largely within the medical and health sciences fields. This may account for the lack of information about mental illness in workplaces (Dewa et al. Healthcare Papers 5:12–25, 2004) by operational managers and human resource departments even though such illnesses effect on average 17 % to 20 % of employees in any 12-month period (MHCC 2012; SAMHSA 2010; ABS 2007). As symptoms of mental illness have the capacity to impact negatively on employee work performance and/or attendance, the ramifications on employee performance management systems can be significant, particularly when employees choose to deliberately conceal their illness, such that any work concerns appear to derive from issues other than illness (Dewa et al. Healthcare Papers 5:12–25, 2004; De Lorenzo 2003). When employee non-disclosure of a mental illness impacts negatively in the workplace, it presents a very challenging issue in relation to performance management for both operational managers and human resource staff. Without documented medical evidence to show that impaired work performance and/or attendance is attributable to a mental illness, the issue of performance management arises. Currently, when there is no documented medical illness, performance management policies are often brought into place to improve employee performance and/or attendance by establishing achievable employee targets. Yet, given that in any twelve-month period at least a fifth of the workforce sustains a mental illness (MHCC 2012; SAMHSA 2010; ABS 2007), and that non-disclosure is significant (Barney et al. BMC Public Health 9:1–11, 2009; Munir et al. Social Science & Medicine 60:1397–1407, 2005) such targets may be unachievable for employees with a hidden mental illness. It is for these reasons that this paper reviews the incidence of mental illness in western economies, its costs, and the reasons why it is often concealed and proposes the adoption of what are termed ‘Buffer Stage’ policies as an added tool that organisations may wish to utilise in the management of hidden medical illnesses such as mental illness.     

Portfolio allocation using multivariate variance gamma models

In this paper, we investigate empirically the effect of using higher moments in portfolio allocation when parametric and nonparametric models are used. The nonparametric model considered in this paper is the sample approach; the parametric model is constructed assuming multivariate variance gamma (MVG) joint distribution for asset returns.We consider the MVG models proposed by Madan and Seneta (1990), Semeraro (2008) and Wang (2009). We perform an out-of-sample analysis comparing the optimal portfolios obtained using the MVG models and the sample approach. Our portfolio is composed of 18 assets selected from the S&P500 Index and the dataset consists of daily returns observed from 01/04/2000 to 01/09/2011.     

Machiavellianism,stakeholder orientation,and support for sustainability reporting

This study investigates the relations among Machiavellianism, the stakeholder orientation, and Italian managers' support for corporate social and environmental reporting (SER). These relationships have not previously been investigated among a sample of experienced managers but have important implications. As anticipated, Machiavellianism had a strong negative association with the support for SER. Machiavellianism was also negatively related to the stakeholder orientation, which in turn was positively correlated with the support for SER. Support for the stakeholder orientation partially mediated the association between Machiavellianism and SER. The findings advance our understanding of the motivations for sustainability reporting by documenting that managers' fundamental personality traits and economic ideologies are closely associated and are important determinants of normative support for social and environmental disclosures. We further suggest that the results support the case for mandated compliance‐with‐standard sustainability reports coupled with a requirement that such reports be independently audited.     

Lost in transition?

Using data for Germany and 23 other economies in Eastern and Western Europe, this paper estimates the monetary returns to education acquired under communism more than 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We show that, in the 2000s, Eastern European workers who completed their education under communism earned in the 2000s similar returns to their education as did workers belonging to the same age cohorts who studied in Western Europe. This might suggest that education under communism is still as valuable as education attained in Western Europe. However, individuals educated under communism are more likely than their Western counterparts to be unemployed, retired or disabled, and therefore to earn lower or zero returns to their education. Moreover, when we allow the returns to pre‐ and post‐secondary education to differ, we find that senior males who have attained only primary or secondary education under communism are penalized in the post‐transition Eastern European labour markets, and that those who have completed post‐secondary education under communism enjoy in these markets higher payoffs to their education than similarly educated Western European individuals who are employed in the West.     

The political economy of Ecuador’s external debt default

The default of the 2012 and 2030 Global Bonds during the early stages of the Alianza PAIS government in Ecuador is best understood in the context of the social conflicts that characterized the exhaustion of neoliberalism in the country and the struggle between different fractions of capital for the direction of the process of accumulation. The restructuring of external debt and the new wave of public borrowing facilitated a boost in public spending that spurred economic growth and provided a ‘fiscal pacification’ of social unrest and political instability. The movements in public debt have also been a lever for State and geopolitical repositioning that reflects a new moment in the correlation of social forces and hegemony in the world economy. In this new scenario, however, Ecuador has not overcome the structural imbalances and contradictions that underpin its external debt problematic.     

Transformational Strategies and Productivity Growth: A Transformational-Activities Perspective on Stagnation in the New-Normal Business Landscape

Declines in productivity growth substantially explain new-normal business stagnation; yet in order to address situations of slack productivity growth, firms can choose from six generic transformational strategies: retirement, renewal, retrenchment, replication, redeployment, and recombination. While the extant literature focuses on specific transformational strategies that particular firms, or industries, take in responding to productivity threats, questions regarding which transformational strategies are commonly employed and commonly successful have been neglected. Answering these broader questions allows factoring how firms might respond to new-normal conditions; and yields normative implications regarding the transformational strategies – and policies – that enhance productivity growth and reverse new-normal stagnation. Using cross-industry panel data, we identify the transformational strategies that are both commonly employed and commonly successful. Our empirical results indicate that firms react to productivity threats via a variety of strategic responses; yet, engaging in renewal and recombination uniquely address such threats.     

Synergies and competition: Export survival in Africa and Latin America

Using firm-level export data from six African (Burkina Faso and Senegal) and Latin American (Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay) countries, we examine factors that determine the survival of export flows. We explore the effects on export survival of changes in the number of home-country exporters serving the same destination, firm-level export diversification, and country-level factors. Unlike previous studies, we find that export survival rates decrease with the number of co-exporters selling the same product to the same country. We also find that the relationship between firm-level product diversification and export flow survival is hump-shaped: firms that do not diversify or are highly diversified have lower survival of product-destination flows. Our findings are robust to various alternative specifications. The main findings hold across both regions and all countries. However, the number of co-exporters negatively affects survival in Africa more than in Latin America.     

Cultural tourism: an integrated analysis based on official data

Quality & Quantity - The main aim of this paper is to analyze cultural tourism in Italy and its relationship with the territory (that is considered the principal driver of the analysis) and to...     

Mind the gap: line managers as effective or non‐effective talent spotters

Due to the centrality of line managers’ role in the talent identification process, this qualitative study aims to determine what effective and non‐effective talent spotters do differently from one another in relation with an ‘ideal’ talent identification model offered by the literature. A double‐blind design was applied to the sample designated by the Corporate Talent Management Director of a Latin American multinational firm. 20 senior and middle managers, some effective and some others non‐effective, who work in different countries, participated in the study. Findings show that effective talent spotters perform three key stages of the talent identification model and they do it extremely well: differentiation of potential from performance, matching process and design of developmental challenges. The clear differentiation of potential from performance constitutes the crucial stage since a fuzzy differentiation taints the following stages. Not only is it necessary to perform these key stages but they should be executed in line with the principles of the talent management literature. Recommendations for practice, including specific guidelines for Talent Managers are proposed.