Direct and Spillover Effects of Unconventional Monetary and Exchange Rate Policies

This paper explores the direct effects and spillovers of unconventional monetary and exchange rate policies. We find that official purchases of foreign assets have a large positive effect on a country’s current account that diminishes considerably as capital mobility rises. There is an important additional effect through the lagged stock of official assets. Official purchases of domestic assets, or quantitative easing (QE), appear to have no significant effect on a country’s current account when capital mobility is high, but there is a modest positive impact when capital mobility is low. The effects of purchases of foreign assets spill over to other countries in proportion to their degree of international financial integration. We also find that increases in US bond yields are associated with increases in foreign bond yields and in stock prices, as well as with depreciations of foreign currencies, but that all of these effects are smaller on days of US unconventional monetary policy announcements. We develop a theoretical model that is broadly consistent with our empirical results and that highlights the potential usefulness of domestic unconventional policies as responses to the effects of foreign policies of a similar type.     

Once were farmers: Occupation, social mobility, and mortality during industrialization in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec 1840–1971

We study men's adult mortality and longevity by socio-occupational status during industrialization in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec. Data were extracted from the BALSAC database (Université du Québec à Chicoutimi), which comprehensively traces the demographic history of the region since the beginning of the French Canadian settlement in 1840 up to the early 1970s. Using five occupational classes and controlling for year, age at marriage, urban/rural residence, and literacy, we found no evidence for the emergence of a socioeconomic gradient in mortality. At least until the early 1970s, mortality in the region is the lowest for farmers and appears to be driven by occupational risk rather than fundamental social causes.     

Reproducibility investigation of elicitation techniques in risk assessment for hydraulic turbines

Abstract

Certain elicitation techniques exert some control on expert opinions by leading them to a consensus or to a specific choice. In the absence of such guidelines, experts rely on their own knowledge to formulate opinions. This can result in large dispersions and affects the decision maker’s judgment. In this situation, we wonder what the relevant elicitation techniques are and how we can help experts to express their knowledge. From literature review, it is hard to decide if elicitation techniques are equivalent or not, which justifies the reproducibility analysis that we carry out in this paper. In this study, multiple experts have been involved in order to predict the defect size in hydraulic turbines, according to four proposed elicitation techniques. The comparison between these techniques was performed based on a suggested algorithm using the area metric concept. Our Findings show that elicitation techniques with ‘support’ tend to limit variations between experts and might be suitable only when prior knowledge on the expected elicited variable is available. Otherwise, we can end up with a distorted opinion of the elicited variable and an erroneous risk assessment.     

Optimizing suicide and trespass prevention on railways: a problem-solving model from the RESTRAIL project

Suicides and trespassing accidents result in more than 3800 fatalities in Europe, representing 88% of all fatalities occurring within the EU railway system. This paper presents a problem-solving model, which consists of a multistep approach structuring the analysis of a suicide or trespass-related problem on the railways. First, we present the method used to design, evaluate and improve the problem-solving model. Then we describe the model in detail: it comprises six steps with several subsequent actions, and each action is approached through a checklist of prompting questions and possible answers. At the end, we discuss the added value of this model for decision makers and its usability in the selection of optimal prevention measures.     

Do Entrepreneurial SMEs Perform Better Because They are More Responsible?

Many scholars have investigated the direct impact of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on performance, but this direct association seems both spurious and ambiguous because many parameters may have an indirect influence on this relationship. The present study thus considers sustainable practices—environmental practices, social practices in the workplace (SPW), and social practices in the community (SPC)—as three probable mediators in the relationship between EO and performance, which is considered in terms of its financial and non-financial dimensions. We seek to show to what extent small- and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) sustainable practices are useful assets, which are supported by EO, to improve performance. Using a structural equation modeling approach, data collected from 406 French SMEs were tested against the model. Our findings reveal that EO has a positive impact on the implementation of sustainable practices and that SPW partially mediate the link between EO and performance. Taken together, these findings suggest that EO plays a role in indirectly promoting performance by enhancing certain human resource management practices.     

Proximity and Micro-Enterprise Manager’s Ethics: A French Empirical Study of Responsible Business Attitudes

This research article analyses the influence of micro-enterprise (ME) managers’ perception of their relationship to their environment on the nature of their ethics. We carried out a survey with the head managers of 125 French MEs, providing a large set of primary data. Two types of variables were defined: (1) variables related to the nature and intensity of the relationships between ME managers and their social environment, and (2) variables related to the ethical framework that the managers used. The results of univariate and bivariate analyses show significant statistical relationships between the variables that indicated perceived embeddedness in the community and ethical variables. This result underlines the idea that “communities of ethics” may have an important influence in MEs.     

Industrial market segmentation by the structure of the purchasing process

This article presents a methodology for segmenting industrial markets on the basis of functional involvement in phases of the purchasing decision process. A decision matrix is developed as a structured measurement instrument to collect information about the composition of decision making units within target firms. The implications of this segmentation approach for industrial marketing strategy formulation are discussed.     

Measuring perceived pre-purchase risk for a new industrial product

Risk is an important element in industrial adoption decisions. This paper proposes a method to investigate how different group of individuals influencing the adoption of a new industrial product differ in their assessment of the risks. Two dimensions of risk are distinguished: (1) the likelihood that adoption of the new product will have undesirable consequences, and (2) the perceived intensity of these consequences both at the organizational and at the individual level. Purchase consequences are measured in terms of product economics and product reliability. Multivariate analysis of variance is used to assess how decision participants differ in their assessment of risk components. An attempt is made to assess the relative importance of these various components in the formation of individual preferences. The implications of the analysis for the development of better industrial marketing strategies are discussed.     

Linking participatory and GIS-based land use planning methods: A case study from Burkina Faso

Sustainable land use planning is crucial for realizing the aim of food security and for combating land degradation in the Sahel. A participatory land use planning workshop was organised in a village in the eastern region of Burkina Faso to investigate land use problems, their causes, effects and possible solutions. Participatory research tools and GIS were combined to get insight into possible conflicts or synergies between different land use options as mapped by different ethnic groups. Pictograms were used to locate alternative land use options on the map, after which they were digitised for analysis with GIS. The workshop confirms the importance of integrating scientific and local knowledge to develop concrete options for sustainable land use that fit to local realities and aspirations. Local people are knowledgeable about the driving forces behind land degradation, they take actions to combat the effects of degradation, and they have concrete ideas about alternative land use options. The use of GIS proved its added value in the participatory process of integrated land use planning. The maps that were produced also facilitate discussions between community members, researchers and government representatives at the regional level, both regarding current land use problems and regarding alternative options as perceived by the local population.