Where is Urban Politics?

We outline the rationale for reopening the issue of the spatiality of the ‘urban’ in urban politics. There is a long tradition of arguing about the distinctive political qualities of urban sites, practices and processes. Recent work often relies on spatial concepts or metaphors that anchor various political phenomena to cities while simultaneously putting the specificity of the urban itself in question. This symposium seeks to extend debates about the relationship between the urban and the political. Instead of asking ‘what is urban politics?’, seeking a definition of the urban as a starting point we begin by asking ‘where is urban politics?’. This question orients all of the contributions to this symposium, and it allows each to trace diverse political dimensions of urban life and living beyond the confines of ‘the city’ as classically conceived. The symposium engages with ‘the urban question’ through diverse settings and objects, including infrastructures, in‐between spaces, professional cultures, transnational and postcolonial spaces and spaces of sovereignty. Contributions draw on a range of intellectual perspectives, including geography, urban studies, political science and political theory, anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, planning and environmental studies — indicating the range of intellectual traditions that can and do inform the investigation of the urban/political nexus.     

Why Do African Banks Lend So Little?

We put forward a plausible explanation of African banking sector under‐development in the form of a bad credit market equilibrium. Using an appropriately modified Industrial Organization model of banking, we show that the root of the problem could be unchecked moral hazard (strategic loan defaults) or adverse selection (a lack of good projects). Applying a dynamic panel estimator to a large sample of African banks, we show that loan defaults are a major factor inhibiting bank lending when institutional quality is low. We also find that once a threshold level of institutional quality has been reached, improvements in the default rate or institutional quality do not matter. This provides support for our theoretical predictions.     

Asymmetric Information and the Russian Individual Savings Market

The article considers the influence of informational imperfections on the performance of the Russian financial market. The focus is on the individual savings market, which exhibits inefficiencies, including those associated with the market power of a dominant agent—Sberbank. Reinforcement of Sberbank's dominance on the market in the period 1994‐98 (before the August default combined with financial crisis) is explained as a consequence of asymmetric information about the probability of bankruptcy of a new bank. Under asymmetric information a new private bank has to provide specific quality signals in order to attract depositors. Two major lines of inquiry are the criteria for choosing forms of savings, including that of a bank in which to deposit money, by Russian citizens, and banks' advertising strategies to confirm the factual risk of default. Within the conceptual framework of a game with separating equilibrium, we analyse the behaviour of the agents on both supply and demand sides in the market. We find that there is evidence of using advertising as a tool of quality signalling at a certain phase of the Russian individual savings market's development.     

Life after death? Analyzing post-defection consumer brand equity

The industry literature is full of the idea of winning back lapsed customers. Yet marketing practitioners and academics know very little about what happens to customers after they stop buying the brand. This research investigates the brand equity of lapsed customers of five major financial institutions. The analysis compares the propensity for positive and/or negative brand associations, overall brand evaluation, and the propensity to consider the brand in the future across the main segments of lapsed customers. The results show that the group of lapsed customers is not homogenous, but consists of distinct segments. Customers who defected for different reasons also differ in their post-defection brand equity. The paper concludes with implications for winback strategies for lapsed customers and brand equity measurement and management.     

Industry equilibrium with random exit or default

An industry consisting of a large number of small price taking firms subject to idiosyncratic productivity shocks is considered. At the moment of entry, a firm takes on debt. We show that in a competitive equilibrium, some firms exit and pay out their debt while others choose to default. The outcome depends on the realization of firm‐specific shocks. The paper demonstrates that if the firms self‐select between exit with debt repayment and default, then the default region is disconnected from the exit region. The methodological contribution of the paper is the analytical characterization of the long‐run equilibrium for two scenarios of the initial distribution of productivity shocks. We consider two public policy mechanisms—contract enforcement and creditor protection. Our policy recommendation is that regulators need to reduce the contract enforcement if they want to decrease the long‐run default rate.     

The impact of volatility on growth in China

China’s path to emerging as the world’s second largest economy has not been a smooth one. This paper considers whether the volatility of growth has had an impact on the trend rate of growth. In doing so it aims to promote a better understanding of the determinants of China’s impressive trend rate of growth and also shed light on questions such as whether the trend rate of growth might have been even higher had the government and central bank been better able to offset volatility. Utilizing a GARCH-M model, the results of the empirical analysis suggest that the impact of volatility has been either positive or insignificant, but not negative.     

Financial Restructuring in Fresh‐Start Chapter 11 Reorganizations

We find that firms substantially reduce their debt burden in “fresh‐start” Chapter 11 reorganizations, yet they emerge with higher debt ratios than what is typical in their respective industries. While cross‐sectional regressions reveal that post‐reorganization debt ratios are more in line with the predictions of the static trade‐off theory, they also reveal that pre‐reorganization debt ratios affect post‐reorganization debt ratios. Collectively, these results suggest that impediments in Chapter 11 prevent firms from completely resetting their capital structures. We also find that firms that reported positive operating income leading up to Chapter 11 emerge faster, suggesting that it is quicker to remedy strictly financial distress than economic distress.     

Capacity management for hospitality and tourism: A review of current approaches

In this article we provide a review of current capacity management approaches applicable to hospitality and tourism enterprises. While many of the traditional methodologies involve closed-form analytical calculations, newer methods have been developed that address more complex problems. These more recent methods include the creative use of mixed models such as those that integrate visitor-preference and operations-research models, linear programming, and simulation models. We consider the full range of methodologies, the advantages and disadvantages, and potential applications to both physical and human capacity estimation. We highlight the ways that various leisure industries can benefit from different approaches to capacity management.