Modernity/art and Marketing/aesthetics—a Note on the Social Aesthetics of Georg Simmel

This paper interrogates and contrasts representations of work and Utopia in two examples of popular culture. The examples are a sample of contemporary popular management books and a sample of work-related themes in the popular music of Bruce Springsteen. In comparing the two the paper examines how they both use utopian representations as a key element of their claims, yet do so in markedly different ways. It is argued that Springsteen uses a “voice from within” to explore the ambiguities and paradoxes that emerge from the gap between real experience and utopian desire. Conversely, popular management books tend to speak from a “voice from above” that actively suppress ambiguity and ignore power in order to reproduce the dominant ethos of contemporary capitalism. Thus while popular management provides uncritical support for its imaginary Utopia, Springsteen provides a compelling critique of the promises of economic freedom through capitalism—promises which management writers are so often complicit in (re)producing.     

Is job insecurity on the rise? Evidence from Canadian perception data

Abstract .  This paper examines the unexplored issue of worker insecurity perception in Canada. Specifically, we explore for changes in worker perceptions of job security using Canadian Gallup data for the 1977–2006 period. We find that the high levels of perceived insecurity of the early to mid-1990s were only cyclical in nature, not evidence of structural change. We also explore for differences across socio-economic groups and find that university educated workers, full-time workers, and white-collar workers all felt relatively more secure about present and future job prospects. Interestingly, union members tend to be more concerned about job security (than non-union).     

Childbearing Age,Family Allowances,and Social Security

Although the optimal public policy under an endogenous number of children has been widely studied, the optimal public intervention under an endogenous timing of births has remained largely unexplored. This paper examines the optimal family policy when the timing of births is chosen by individuals who differ as to how early fertility weakens future earnings. We analyze the design of a policy of family allowances and of public pensions in such a setting, under distinct informational environments. Endogenous childbearing ages is shown to affect the optimal policy through the redistribution across the earnings dimension and the internalization of fertility externalities. Contrary to common practice, children benefits differentiated according to the age of parents can be part of the optimal family policy. Our results are robust to introducing: (i) children as durable “goods”; (ii) education choices; (iii) varying total fertility.     

Project Leadership Influences Resistance to Change: The Case of the Canadian Public Service

This article analyzes how leadership affects resistance to change in projects. Using Dulewicz and Higgs' (2005) leadership framework in the context of the Canadian Public Service, types of resistance and factors influencing them were listed, leading to the identification of competence areas for the project manager. It was found that an engaging leadership style, developed through proper training, effectively reduced resistance to change. Other factors, such as the inclusion of affected people in the decisions, as well as a formal project management methodology, were instrumental in reducing resistance. Finally, upper management support was identified to be a mandatory success factor.     

Revisiting the shocking aspects of Asian monetary unification

There is renewed interest in monetary cooperation in Asia. To the extent that such cooperation evolves to include discussions about co-ordination of exchange rate policies it is important to evaluate the desirability of such co-ordination. Such an evaluation involves in part an assessment of the cross-country correlation of macro-economic shocks, a criterion used in the past to assess the desirability of monetary unification. In revisiting this question this paper not only updates previous studies, but it makes two significant methodological contributions to the literature based on estimates of vector autoregression (VAR) models. Our empirical specification allows for the possibility that aggregate demand and aggregate supply shocks are contemporaneously correlated within each economy, on the one hand, and takes explicit account of third-country common influences on each economy, on the other. Our results show that previous findings in the literature do not always hold up when our modelling methodology is applied to the data. With respect to the implications for monetary unification our results do not clearly identify a group of countries for which shocks are unambiguously highly correlated and which therefore would be able to perform well with a common monetary policy. The correlation structure differs between aggregate demand shocks and aggregate supply shocks.     

Enter the dragon: Interactions between Chinese,US and Asia-Pacific equity markets, 1995–2010

This paper applies a variety of short-run and long-run time series techniques to data on a broad group of Asia-Pacific stock markets and the United States extending to 2010. Our empirical work confirms the importance of crises in affecting the persistence of equity returns in the Asia-Pacific region and offers some support for contagion effects. Post-Asian financial crisis quantile regressions yield substantial evidence of long-run linkages between the Shanghai market, the US market and many regional exchanges. Cointegration is particularly prevalent at the higher end of the distribution. Our results suggest that the enormous growth of the Shanghai market in the new millennium has been accompanied by a meaningful level of integration with other regional and world markets in spite of ongoing capital controls.     

EZB-Schuldverschreibungen — neue Verwendung für ein altes Instrument?

Wirtschaftsdienst - Als Reaktion auf die Corona-Krise haben die Notenbanken des Eurosystems ihre Anleihekäufe im Rahmen des APP-Programms weiter aufgestockt und um das PEPP-Programm erweitert....     

Nonlinearity and temporal dependence

Nonlinearities in the drift and diffusion coefficients influence temporal dependence in diffusion models. We study this link using three measures of temporal dependence: ρ-mixing$\rho \text{-}mixing$, β-mixing$\beta \text{-}mixing$ and α-mixing$\alpha \text{-}mixing$. Stationary diffusions that are ρ-mixing$\rho \text{-}mixing$ have mixing coefficients that decay exponentially to zero. When they fail to be ρ-mixing$\rho \text{-}mixing$, they are still β-mixing$\beta \text{-}mixing$ and α-mixing$\alpha \text{-}mixing$; but coefficient decay is slower than exponential. For such processes we find transformations of the Markov states that have finite variances but infinite spectral densities at frequency zero. The resulting spectral densities behave like those of stochastic processes with long memory. Finally we show how state dependent, Poisson sampling alters the temporal dependence.