Anomalies: Is it the Economy?

There is still no consensus on whether small firm or value stock anomalies exist. We examine the last half of the 20th century and apply a six‐factor macroeconomic model to test for the presence of these abnormal returns. Using four proxies for value, we find that detecting this anomaly is sensitive to choice of proxy, the magnitude of the abnormal returns varies over time, and the anomaly does not persist through time. Additional tests provide evidence that abnormal returns for small, value‐oriented, and growth‐oriented firms differ significantly under restrictive versus expansive monetary policy regimes.     

Nutrition, health and economic policies in Europe

This article explores the economic issues associated with diet choices and nutrition policies in Europe. A review of the current and potential policy measures is provided and the issues associated with the development of a common nutritional policy in Europe discussed, with a special focus on the collection of appropriate data for benchmarking. We propose a classification for the wide range of nutrition policy tools and the most recent developments are discussed with reference to policy actions in France, Italy and the United Kingdom.     

Retirement expectations, pension reforms, and their impact on private wealth accumulation

We estimate the effect of pension reforms on households' expectations of retirement outcomes and private wealth accumulation decisions exploiting a decade of intense Italian pension reforms as a source of exogenous variation in expected pension wealth. The Survey of Household Income and Wealth, a large random sample of the Italian population, elicits expectations of the age at which workers expect to retire and of the ratio of pension benefits to pre-retirement income between 1989 and 2002. We find that workers have revised expectations in the direction suggested by the reform and that there is substantial offset between private wealth and perceived pension wealth, particularly by workers that are better informed about their pension wealth.     

Diversification for general copula dependence

We generalize the extreme value analysis for Archimedean copulas (see Alink , Löwe and Wüthrich , 2003) to the non-Archimedean case: Assume we have d ≥2 exchangeable and continuously distributed risks X ₁,…, X _d . Under appropriate assumptions there is a constant q _d such that, for all large u , we have . The constant q _d describes the asymptotic dependence structure. Typically, q _d will depend on more aspects of this dependence structure than the well-known tail dependence coefficient.     

The Impact of Chinese Exports on Global Import Prices*

This paper evaluates the evidence bearing on the question of whether China's buoyant export growth has led to significant changes in the import prices, and thus inflation performance, of its trading partners. This evidence suggests that the impact of Chinese exports on global import prices has been, while non‐ negligible, fairly modest. We identify a statistically significant effect of US imports from China on US import prices, but given the size of this effect and the relatively low share of imports in US GDP, the ultimate impact on US consumer prices has likely been quite small. Moreover, imports from China had little apparent effect on US producer prices. Finally, using a multi‐country database of trade transactions, we estimate that, since 1993, Chinese exports lowered annual import inflation in a large set of economies by 0.25 percentage point or less on average.     

Spillovers and the growth of local industries

In this paper we investigate the nature and directions of inter-industry dynamic linkages across Italian manufacturing sectors. We perform a very disaggregated analysis in order to identify, for each 3-digit industry, which composition of industrial activity is more conducive to growth. We find that diversity matters for growth, but each industry needs its own diversity. We provide some evidence of clustering of industries based on dynamic externalities. We find that many spillovers occur within input-output relationships. They often originate in downstream sectors favouring the growth of upstream industries. Lastly, the importance of spillovers does not depend on the technological intensity of the industry.     

How terrorism affects the economic performance? The case of Pakistan

We examine application of the Economics of Crime Monitoring Model (ECM-Model) Ruiz Estrada and Ndoma (J Policy Model 36:867–882, 2014) on Pakistan terrorism activities. The application of ECM-Model is used to evaluate the impact of terrorism on the economic performance of Pakistan economy. First part of the research work is related to introduction and background of study. The second section is associated with the theoretical and conceptual frame work that explains how terrorism affects the economy. The third part of the paper describes the methodology of the model. The fourth part of this research paper elaborates the results of the study. The second last part of the paper is the econometrics techniques and results which support the model and last part of the research work is conclusion and recommendations.     

R&D Spillovers on a Salop Circle

The paper describes quality/price equilibrium and welfare effects of R&D spillovers when firms are located around the circumference of a Salop circle, and the extent of the spillovers may depend on the geographic proximity between firms. In particular, we show that an increase in competition may have a positive effect on the provision of quality and firms' profits. We also extend the model allowing a multinational enterprise to locate at the centre of the circle. In this scenario it is important to understand the interplay of local R&D spillovers with the spillovers that propagate from and to the centre. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tourist satisfaction and the souvenir shopping of domestic tourists: extended weekends in Spain

The satisfaction dimensions of domestic tourists when buying souvenirs are studied in relation to the overall satisfaction of the same tourists, a theme that has received little attention in the prior scientific literature. The research data were gathered from interviews with domestic tourists visiting Seville over an extended weekend. The results show that souvenir shopping satisfaction consists of four factors: internal attraction, service differentiation, service provision and external attraction. The last two, moreover, influence the overall tourist satisfaction rates. A discussion of these results and their implications help contribute to a better understanding among both scholars and practitioners of tourist satisfaction.