THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS AND SUPPLY‐SIDE ECONOMICS

The coalition has given the Liberal Democrats the opportunity to demonstrate their support for – or opposition to – supply‐side economics. The person who has done most on the supply side is Ed Davey, in the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. In a remarkable legislative achievement for a Parliamentary Under Secretary in under two years in office, Davey ensured that the privatisation of Royal Mail reached the statute books, liberalised the terms and conditions for Post Office counters, and liberalised employment and retirement laws.     

Continuous‐time models,realized volatilities,and testable distributional implications for daily stock returns

We provide an empirical framework for assessing the distributional properties of daily speculative returns within the context of the continuous‐time jump diffusion models traditionally used in asset pricing finance. Our approach builds directly on recently developed realized variation measures and non‐parametric jump detection statistics constructed from high‐frequency intra‐day data. A sequence of simple‐to‐implement moment‐based tests involving various transformations of the daily returns speak directly to the importance of different distributional features, and may serve as useful diagnostic tools in the specification of empirically more realistic continuous‐time asset pricing models. On applying the tests to the 30 individual stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average index, we find that it is important to allow for both time‐varying diffusive volatility, jumps, and leverage effects to satisfactorily describe the daily stock price dynamics. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Jumps and betas: A new framework for disentangling and estimating systematic risks

We provide a new theoretical framework for disentangling and estimating the sensitivity towards systematic diffusive and jump risks in the context of factor models. Our estimates of the sensitivities towards systematic risks, or betas, are based on the notion of increasingly finer sampled returns over fixed time intervals. We show consistency and derive the asymptotic distributions of our estimators. In an empirical application of the new procedures involving high-frequency data for forty individual stocks, we find that the estimated monthly diffusive and jump betas with respect to an aggregate market portfolio differ substantially for some of the stocks in the sample.     

Networks,Place and Identities in Post‐industrial Mining Communities

This article engages with the theme of the symposium by examining the role and meaning of networks in the context of a former coal‐mining region in the UK. Mining communities have historically been noted by sociologists and historians for their strong social ties and extended families as well as for forming the bedrock of discussion of class and place. In the wake of the closure programme of the 1980s and early 1990s, such identities have been fundamentally challenged. The notion of networks is explored in four distinct but ultimately interrelated senses: occupational/work networks; networks around place; networks of class relations; and, finally, networks as relationships of family, kin and generation. Material presented here is based on research that investigated four former coalfield communities in the UK after closure, focusing on a former pit village in the North East of England. It begins with a discussion of community and the coalfield within sociological and historical literatures. It then proceeds to discuss the changing nature of community and social networks post‐coal by focusing on the experience of two separate cohorts of former workers. It concludes by arguing for a historical understanding of the patterning of networks. Cet article s’inscrit dans le th? me du symposium en étudiant le rôle et la signification des réseaux dans le cadre d’une ancienne région miniàre anglaise. De tous temps, sociologues et historiens ont distingué les communautés miniàres, celles‐ci présentant de solides liens sociaux et des familles étendues, tout en étant à la base des débats de classes et de lieux. À la suite du plan de fermeture des années 1980 et du début des années 1990, ces identités ont été profondément remises en cause. La notion de réseaux est examinée dans quatre sens distincts, quoique liés en définitive: réseaux professionnels, réseaux autour du lieu, réseaux liés à la classe, et réseaux de relations de famille, parenté et génération. Les éléments présentés sont issues de recherches sur quatre communautés d’un ancien bassin charbonnier anglais apràs la fermeture des mines, et plus particuliàrement sur un village du nord‐est de l’Angleterre. Apràs avoir abordé la communauté et le bassin charbonnier au travers de documents sociologiques et historiques, l’article s’intéresse à la nature évolutive des réseaux de la communauté et des réseaux sociaux apràs l’àre du charbon, en s’attachant à l’expérience de deux groupes distincts d’anciens ouvriers. Il conclut en défendant une appréhension historique de la modélisation des réseaux.     

Milk sales and dietary diversity among the Maasai

In Maasai culture, responsibilities are traditionally divided between genders. Men are in charge of grazing and managing the livestock herds. Women take care of the family, administer food supplies, and are responsible for milking. For them, balancing home consumption of milk (for the family and for the calves), milk sale, and food purchase is a major task. In this article, we first investigate how different milk sales groups vary regarding the use of different food items and the respective quantities consumed by the enkaji, i.e., a Maasai subhousehold. Then, we address the commercialization decision and assess the effect of milk sales on the enkaji's food item use and food consumption. Using the data of Maasai enkajijik in the milk catchment area of a milk collection center in Ngerengere, Tanzania, we estimate the effects by employing propensity score matching procedures. Our findings suggest that milk sellers, especially those selling to the milk collection center, have a more diverse diet. In terms of per person consumption, the groups are markedly similar. Therefore, we conclude that income generated by milk sales is invested in diet diversification rather than in increasing the quantity of food consumed, hence the enkajijik appear not to make use of caloric terms of trade.     

Indigenous Peoples’ Health Care: New approaches to contracting and accountability at the public administration frontier

Abstract

This article analyses reforms to contracting and accountability for indigenous primary health care organizations in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. The reforms are presented as comparative case studies, the common reform features identified and their implications analysed.

The reforms share important characteristics. Each proceeds from implicit recognition that indigenous organizations are ‘co-principals’ rather than simply agents in their relationship with government funders and regulators. There is a common tendency towards more relational forms of contracting; and tentative attempts to reconceptualize accountability. These ‘frontier’ cases have broad implications for social service contracting.     

Border effects for domestic and international Canadian passenger air travel

An augmented gravity model of passenger air travel between five Canadian airports and destinations within and without of Canada reveals a substantial border effect. After controlling for GDP, populations and distance, the number of seats offered on domestic routes is about six times the number on international flights. This result is consistent with the border effects found in studies of international merchandise trade.     

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Virtual Reality and Innovation Potential

This article examines how companies can harness virtual reality (VR) technology to help make themselves more innovative. VR has some unique characteristics which, taken together, can help companies to develop three features common to many innovative organisations: a capacity to experiment in depth; involvement of all in the innovation process; and an ability to capture ideas generated in the innovation process. However, some obstacles need to be overcome before VR fulfils this potential.