A neglected contribution to monetary theory in the eighteenth century: Anders Wappengren on paper money,floating exchange rates,and purchasing power parity

Abstract

Between 1789 and 1803 the National Debt Office issued unbacked interest bearing notes whereas the Bank of Sweden issued silver backed notes. The massive note issuance by the National Debt Office led to different exchange rates and two units of account. The situation gave rise to an early paper standard theory formulated by Anders Wappengren, a well-read merchant who was strongly influenced by Adam Smith and the French physiocrats. Wappengren had a firm understanding of monetary systems and the adjustment mechanism under floating exchange rates, including such concepts as purchasing power parity and price stickiness.     

Forecasting Turkey’s Credit Ratings with Multivariate Grey Model and Grey Relational Analysis

The concept of credit rating rooted back to mid-nineteenth century has become one of the most important elements in the world economy together with the globalization period gradually accelerating in the last two decades and increasing the interaction and sensitivity in the international markets. With the globalization and deepening in the financial markets; the effect, reliability and stability of knowledge of the actors who are in charge for directing the global capital flows have quite a big importance in terms of the decisions to be made in the future. In this process, credit rating agencies eliminating the information asymmetry between the countries and institutions who want to create financial resource by borrowing from the savings owners and foreign institutions. Credit ratings determined by the mentioned organizations are accepted as an indicator of the countries to meet the financial obligations in other words their creditworthiness. For Turkey’s economy having a structure with a high level of external financing needs in terms of accelerating the growth and development process, it is inevitable to have an international creditworthiness increasing long-term investment tendency meeting foreign capitals’ trust search. In this study, firstly the determinants of the credit ratings given by credit rating agencies are determined and then forecasting Turkey’s future credit ratings by combining them with multivariate grey model and grey relational analysis are performed.

     

On the multi-utility representation of preference relations

We develop the ordinal theory of (semi)continuous multi-utility representation for incomplete preference relations. We investigate the cases in which the representing sets of utility functions are either arbitrary or finite, and those cases in which the maps contained in these sets are required to be (semi)continuous. With the exception of the case where the representing set is required to be finite, we find that the requirements of such representations are surprisingly weak, pointing to a wide range of applicability of the representation theorems reported here. Some applications to decision theory under uncertainty and consumer theory are also considered.     

An unrequited affinity between talent shortages and untapped female potential: The relevance of gender quotas for talent management in high growth potential economies of the Asia Pacific region

We demonstrate that gender quotas have not attracted due interest as a talent management formulation in the Asia Pacific region. Drawing on a literature review, this paper illustrates the utility of gender quotas for talent management in the context of high growth potential economies in the Asia Pacific region, i.e. China, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan. These five economies are characterized with talent shortages on the one hand, and untapped female potential on the other. We show the necessity and legitimacy of considering gender quotas as part of talent management strategy in the region in order to leverage untapped female potential for addressing talent shortages.     

An Options Approach to Valuing Expansion Flexibility in Flexible Manufacturing System Investments

Flexibility in manufacturing processes provides an ability to change or even reverse the decisions made in earlier periods. The traditional economic evaluation methods of investments in flexible manufacturing systems ignore the value of flexibility, which should be one of the key issues in the justification process. Options approach appears as a means of overcoming the limitations of conventional discounted cash flow methods. In this work, a methodology for valuing expansion flexibility of flexible manufacturing systems is presented. Expansion flexibility in a phased manufacturing investment can be valued by viewing an initial investment as being analogous to purchasing an option to exchange one risky asset for another risky asset within a time period from the initial investment. While keeping the option to expand is of value, a thorough analysis requires that the opportunity cost of delaying expansion be taken into account. In this paper, an analytic approximation methodology for valuing sequential American exchange options on dividend paying stocks is employed for valuing expansion flexibility. A comprehensive numerical example is presented to illustrate the approach, and sensitivity analyses are performed.     

Internal Service Quality and the Psychosocial Work Environment: An Empirical Analysis of Conceptual Interrelatedness

There is a need to integrate service quality concepts withconcepts from other research fields, such as the psychosocialwork environment, to help us better understand and create abasis for quality control in services. The main aim of this paperis to explore empirically the relationships between thepsychosocial work environment and internal service qualily. Weuse concepts and measures derived from psychosocial workenvironment theory and service quality theory respectively. Datawere collected from 555 employees in a Swedish computerservice company using questions from a Stress Profile as well as from a Quality Profile. All 52 items from the Stress Projile and20 items from the Quality Profile were entered into a factoranalysis. The main result of the study is not the exact outcome ofthe factor analysis per se, but rather the point that questionsderived from two different research fields appear to measuredifferent mental representations of work conditions. Clearly,interdependence exists between the psyclzosocial workenvironment and internal quality. It is quite concmon to ncap adrestructure service processes in order to improve internal qualityin an attempt to solve quality problems created by organisationalchanges. We suggest that it should be equally inportant to takenieasures to increase work satisfaction by improvingpsychosocial work conditions.     

A predictive filtering approach for clarifying bibliometric datasets: an example on the research articles related to industry 4.0

ABSTRACT

This study proposes a filtering approach based on text classification and a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making technique to select the relevant bibliometric data for further analyses in the scope of bibliometrics, scientometrics, and related methodologies. The proposed approach is illustrated on Industry 4.0 and internet of things which are the concepts that currently draw utmost attention with a growing number of research and applications. Accordingly, various findings are presented revealing the characteristics of the selected bibliometric data with the help of text and network analytics. The potential contribution of this study is two-fold such that the study not only suggests a novel approach for clarifying the retrieved bibliometric data but also emphasises the mainstream research areas and directions of Industry 4.0 along with the concept of the internet of things. Thus, an analysis framework with computing techniques has been used to reveal the characteristics of literature in a field of technology.     

Do Migrants get Good Jobs in Australia? The Role of Ethnic Networks in Job Search*

We study the role of ethnic networks in migrants’ job search and the quality of jobs they find in the first years of settlement. We find that there are initial downward movements along the occupational ladder, followed by improvements. As a result of restrictions in welfare eligibility since 1997, we study whether this increases the probability that new migrants accept ‘bad jobs’ quickly and then move onto better jobs over time. Holding employability constant, our results support this view. However, accounting for their higher employability, new migrants seem to fare better up to 1.5 years after settlement.     

Market power and hot air in international emissions trading: the impacts of US withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol

Ten years after the initial Climate Change Convention from Rio in 1992 the industrialized world is finally likely to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which will impose legally binding greenhouse gas emission reductions on the developed world. However, the Kyoto Protocol will enter into force without the USA, which withdrew under President Bush in March 2001. Accounting for hot air and market power of the Former Soviet Union on emission permit markets, it is shown that US withdrawal has important consequences on environmental effectiveness, compliance costs, and excess costs of market power under the Kyoto Protocol. Non-compliance of the USA implies a dramatic decrease in environmental effectiveness as well as compliance costs of OECD countries whereas the Former Soviet Union and transitional economies in Eastern Europe suffer from a huge decline in permit sales revenues. Excess costs of market power in permit trade increase in relative terms, but decline substantially in absolute terms due to US withdrawal. Policy options are quantified to bypass the problems of hot air and market power through compensation mechanisms.     

A new perspective on the competitiveness of nations

The capability of firms to survive and to have a competitive advantage in global markets depends on, amongst other things, the efficiency of public institutions, the excellence of educational, health and communications infrastructures, as well as on the political and economic stability of their home country. The measurement of competitiveness and strategy development is thus an important issue for policy-makers. Despite many attempts to provide objectivity in the development of measures of national competitiveness, there are inherently subjective judgments that involve, for example, how data sets are aggregated and importance weights are applied. Generally, either equal weighting is assumed in calculating a final index, or subjective weights are specified. The same problem also occurs in the subjective assignment of countries to different clusters. Developed as such, the value of these type indices may be questioned by users. The aim of this paper is to explore methodological transparency as a viable solution to problems created by existing aggregated indices. For this purpose, a methodology composed of three steps is proposed. To start, a hierarchical clustering analysis is used to assign countries to appropriate clusters. In current methods, country clustering is generally based on GDP. However, we suggest that GDP alone is insufficient for purposes of country clustering. In the proposed methodology, 178 criteria are used for this purpose. Next, relationships between the criteria and classification of the countries are determined using artificial neural networks (ANNs). ANN provides an objective method for determining the attribute/criteria weights, which are, for the most part, subjectively specified in existing methods. Finally, in our third step, the countries of interest are ranked based on weights generated in the previous step. Beyond the ranking of countries, the proposed methodology can also be used to identify those attributes that a given country should focus on in order to improve its position relative to other countries, i.e., to transition from its current cluster to the next higher one.