Risk‐Off Episodes and Swiss Franc Appreciation: The Role of Capital Flows

During episodes of increased global risk aversion, or risk‐off episodes, safe haven currencies such as the Swiss franc tend to appreciate. The immediate impact of a risk‐off shock is an increase in net private inflows to Switzerland, mostly driven by a reduction in Swiss residents’ net purchases of foreign debt securities and reduced foreign exposure by Swiss banks. Given that the bulk of capital movements related to risk‐off episodes is driven by decisions of Swiss residents, capital flow management policies that discriminate based on the residency of the investor (capital controls) are not likely to be effective at reducing the impact of risk‐off episodes. However, prudential policies that limit leveraging or foreign exposure by Swiss banks may diminish the volatility of capital flows during risk‐off episodes.     

The development of the Personality Audit: a psychodynamic multiple feedback assessment instrument

The Personality Audit (PA) was developed to meet a need for a relatively simple multiple feedback instrument that could clarify the various motivational needs of executives. Using a psychodynamic approach to leadership, the PA allows the test-taker to assess him- or herself in seven personality dimensions important in human behaviour and to identify personal ‘blind spots’. The resulting insights can be used to formulate appropriate leadership development goals.

The objective of this paper is to describe the design and psychometric properties of the PA. This instrument, in contrast with other tools that can be used to clarify the inner theatre of individuals, is designed not only to report information given by the test-taker but also to reflect the perceptions of observers representing both the test-taker's public and private spheres. This paper describes in detail the conceptual foundations of the questionnaire, the psychometric methods used to confirm its validity and reliability, and possible directions for future research.     

Wage inflation and labour conflicts in the Netherlands : An empirical investigation using the co-integration approach

The ‘wage space’, which is defined as the sum of price inflation and labour productivity growth, has played a major role as an indicator of allowable wage increases in the post-war wage negotiations in the Netherlands. This paper shows that: (a) wages and the wage space are co-integrated; (b) the deviation between wages and the wage space may act as an error correction term in the wage equation when both variables are identified as I(2); and (c) political consensus and the threat of labour conflicts (rather than actual strike activity) may be identified as the ‘mechanism’ behind this error correction in the wage equation.     

Central bank disclosure as a macroprudential tool for financial stability

The Basel Capital Accord (pillar 3) states that disclosure of information (transparency) is essential to financial stability. This study analyzes, through inflation reports, the disclosure of information from the Central Bank of Brazil concerning the credit market. We consider credit risk and capital buffers as measures of financial stability in this analysis. Furthermore, in order to measure the perception of the monetary authority on the credit market, we built two indices based on the central bank’s communication on credit development. We performed a panel data analysis based on a sample of 125 banks for the period from June 1999 to September 2014 (7000 observations). The findings suggest that central bank communication regarding expectations concerning the credit market contributes to financial stability. Therefore, this kind of communication of central banks (about credit development) may constitute an important macroprudential tool to improve financial stability.     

Fiscal multipliers in the Eurozone: an SVAR analysis

We compute the value of fiscal multipliers (for government primary expenditure, Income and wealth taxes and for Production and import taxes) in the Eurozone countries since the creation of the currency union (2000Q1-2016Q4), in order to understand how the values can vary according to the public debt level, the pace of economic growth, and the output gap. Imposing quarterly fiscal shocks, the results showed that government expenditure had a positive effect on output, with an annual accumulated multiplier of 0.44, whereas tax multipliers presented negative signs: the Income and wealth and the Production and import taxes stood at ?0.11 and ?0.55, respectively. Furthermore, the spending multiplier showed a higher value for countries with lower levels of public debt, during recessions, and in countries with negative output gaps. On the other hand, tax shocks seemed to be recessive in highly indebted countries and those facing positive output gaps.     

THE ESSENCE OF THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL

In a lecture in November 2008, Professor Huerta de Soto set out the key contributions of the Austrian School to economic thought.     

Corporate financial soundness and its impact on firm performance: implications for corporate debt restructuring in Slovenia

This article studies the extent of corporate leverage and range of excessive debt of Slovenian firms during the recent financial crisis. Half of all firms (of those with some non-zero debt and at least one employee) are found to face an unsustainable debt-to-EBITDA leverage ratio beyond 4, accounting for almost 80% of total outstanding debt. Moreover, a good quarter of all firms experience debt-to-EBITDA ratios exceeding 10 and hold almost half of total aggregate net debt. We then examine how this financial distress affects firm performance in terms of productivity, employment, exports, investment and survival. We find that, while less important during the good times (pre-recession period), lack of firms’ financial soundness during the period of financial distress becomes a critical factor constraining firm performance. The extent of financial leverage and ability to service the outstanding debt are shown to inhibit firms’ productivity growth as well as the dynamics of exports, employment and investment. Micro and small firms are found to suffer relatively more than larger firms from high leverage in terms of export and employment performance during the recession period.     

Schedule evaluation in unstable manufacturing environments

This paper provides a new approach to validate the feasibility of schedules of multiple-step mixed-model unstable manufacturing environments with different changeover times. Traditionally, continuous lines in a manufacturing process run the same sequence in order to minimize WIP inventory and lead time. Nevertheless, multiple reasons such as different product mixes or setup times can lead managers to run different sequences in continuous lines. Unfortunately, lack of reliability of supply and demand in these environments makes it difficult to manage product inventories and often leads to starvation due to the discoordination between the schedules of both lines. This approach is based on a new type of visual representation of schedules and an estimate the probability of starvation. It assumes stochastic supply and demand and a predefined schedule sequence based on batches of different sizes.     

The struggle for space: Past and future of the space race

This article is geared toward shedding some more light on what may be the next space race and its contours.Space flight is undoubtedly a human achievement of the second half of the 20th century, and probably the most audacious one of the past century. The space race started suddenly in the 1950s and has grown explosively during the following two decades, but decreased steadily after the 1970s. After the 1990s, however, we have seen a shy rebirth of space-related activities, when many other actors (states) entered the stage, adding up to the agonizing role of the two-actor piece that we have witnessed during the so-called Cold War.The opening years of the 21st century provided a more complex narrative for space exploration. At the start of the new millennium a new technosphere [1] emerged, dominated by what is used to be called as the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), with the Internet playing the leading role among the bandwagon of technological novelties that appeared during the twilight of space activities. In despite of the fact that artificial satellites represent the very backbone of the global communications system, space activities seem to play a secondary role amidst the apparently accelerated rate of change concerning the technological systems of the present technosphere. But, as it is demonstrated in this paper, things are changing, and very probably a renewed space race will unfold in the coming decades.A question may be placed: what happened? Why the Earth stood still with regard to the race toward the cosmos? Answer: futurists, even prestigious ones like Herman Kahn and Arthur Clarke, did not consider the existence of socioeconomic long waves (Kondratieff waves, or K-waves for short) with their two decades long economic downturn, which has contributed to the deceleration of space-related activities.Analyzing the worldwide evolving scenario of space-related activities during the last eighty years under the framework of the succeeding K-waves and applying some technological forecasting tools, namely the logistic analysis, technological surveillance and intensive data mining, scrutinizing more than 7500 events occurred in the period 1930–2010 related with space activities, it is demonstrated that the space race like the one that we have witnessed until now is a natural growth process that has saturated at the dawn of this century. The same analysis demonstrates that a new growth process in this field might be nowadays under way with contours very different from that imagined by futurists and science fiction writers sixty years ago. Also the main trends in the usage of launching vehicles and satellites are framed and discussed in this paper.