Uncovered Interest Parity at Long Horizons: Evidence on Emerging Economies*

This paper estimates uncovered interest parity (UIP) at long horizons using bilateral US dollar rates vis‐à‐vis mature economy and emerging market currencies. The paper finds support in favor of UIP for dollar rates vis‐à‐vis major mature economy currencies, but far less against emerging market currencies. There are also signs that political risk and the exchange risk premium help explain the empirical failure of UIP for these latter currencies. This suggests that whether UIP holds depends more on the currency than on the horizon.     

Big data in smart tourism: challenges,issues and opportunities

In the era of digital transformation, Big Data have assumed a crucial role in changing the global travel and providing significant challenges and opportunities for established companies, as well as new entrants into the tourism industry. All these companies can get valuable information on Big Data for predicting tourist demand, enabling better decision-making, managing knowledge flows and interaction with customers, and providing the best service in a more efficient and effective way. This can result in improved productivity, increased customer satisfaction, personalized marketing campaigns, and more efficient operations. However, open research issues about the role of Big Data in the tourism industry can be still recognized. With these premises, this Editorial aims to present the articles included in the special issue of Current Issues in Tourism titled ‘Big data in smart tourism: challenges, issues and opportunities’, which has called for research contributing to the recent debates on the implications and challenges of the adoption of Big Data to improve the competitiveness of tourism destinations and companies. Main topics considered by the accepted articles include a literature review proposing a novel theoretical investigative frameworks, metrics and critical dimensions, and empirical investigations of the use of Big Data in different tourism contexts.     

Transport biofuels in the European Union: The state of play

The implementation of the Biofuels Directive (2003/30/EC) in 25 member states is assessed here. Implementation problems are identified and analysed for the purpose of suggesting a way forward for biofuels policy in the European Union. Three main patterns are observed: effective implementation, formal compliance and weak implementation. Problems encountered in the policy process are both of a practical and more fundamental nature, i.e., due to a lack of consensus on the priority of competing policy objectives and disagreement on the suitability of first-generation biofuels for reaching the objectives. In this situation, stronger enforcement of targets does not appear to be a constructive way forward. Based on our analysis, we argue that the European Union should instead, and in agreement with the principle of subsidiarity, allow member states more flexibility.     

An evaluation of the performance and suitability of R × C methods for ecological inference with known true values

Ecological inference refers to the study of individuals using aggregate data and it is used in an impressive number of studies; it is well known, however, that the study of individuals using group data suffers from an ecological fallacy problem (Robinson in Am Sociol Rev 15:351–357, 1950). This paper evaluates the accuracy of two recent methods, the Rosen et al. (Stat Neerl 55:134–156, 2001) and the Greiner and Quinn (J R Stat Soc Ser A (Statistics in Society) 172:67–81, 2009) and the long-standing Goodman’s (Am Sociol Rev 18:663–664, 1953; Am J Sociol 64:610–625, 1959) method designed to estimate all cells of R × C tables simultaneously by employing exclusively aggregate data. To conduct these tests we leverage on extensive electoral data for which the true quantities of interest are known. In particular, we focus on examining the extent to which the confidence intervals provided by the three methods contain the true values. The paper also provides important guidelines regarding the appropriate contexts for employing these models.     

The “Bologna Process” and college enrollment decisions

We use survey data on high school graduates before and after the Italian reform of tertiary education implementing the “Bologna Process” to estimate its impact on college enrollment. Individuals leaving school after the reform have a probability of enrollment that is 15% higher compared to otherwise identical individuals. This increase is concentrated among individuals with good school performance and low parental background. We interpret this result as an indication of the existence of constraints – for good students from less advantaged households – on the optimal schooling decision. We also find a small negative impact of the reform on university drop-out.     

The hidden problem of Facebook and social media at work: What if employees start searching for other jobs?

Companies are increasingly encouraging employees to use Facebook and other social media to interact with coworkers in order to empower collaboration and knowledge sharing. Yet, there is a hidden problem that has been neglected by managers. The more employees interact with coworkers through social media to facilitate their work in the organization, the more likely they are to learn about and become interested in other companies via social media, form new work connections outside the organization, and engage in job search behaviors. The use of social media to facilitate work and benefit organizations could paradoxically risk fostering withdrawal intentions and turnover, which damage organizations. This article provides evidence of this paradox from an empirical study. After having identified the problem, the article proposes both the solutions to avoid and the solutions to adopt, illustrating best practices from successful companies, comparing their benefits and costs, and indicating the situations in which each solution is best implemented. To conclude, I offer 10 recommendations to turn the problem into an opportunity and use social media as an innovative recruitment tool.     

Search Costs,Behavioral Biases,and Information Intermediary Effects

In many markets, buyers, sellers, and their agents have differential information about the quality of heterogeneous assets. We study negotiated transaction prices in the commercial real estate market, which is characterized by heterogeneous assets, illiquidity, and highly segmented local markets, all of which increase the importance of asymmetric information in negotiated pricing outcomes. Using 114,588 industrial, multi-family and office sale transactions that occurred during 1997–2011, we document that distant commercial real estate buyers pay, on average, premiums of 4 % to 15 % relative to local buyers, controlling for individual property characteristics as well as time fixed-effects. We also examine the extent to which the sources of these observed premiums are a product of higher search costs/information asymmetry problems associated with distance (search cost channel) or a result of reference-dependence preference/anchoring based on the price levels in the investors’ local market (behavioral biases channel). Our results suggest the observed price premiums are explained by distant investors who face higher search costs and are at an information disadvantage compared to investors located in closer proximity to the property. In contrast, anchoring plays a more muted role in explaining observed premiums. The use of an intermediary (broker) increases, on average, the acquisition prices of buyers and decreases the disposition prices of sellers by 3 % to 8 %. This result is consistent with the incentive real estate agents have to convince sellers to dispose of their properties too quickly and to convince buyers to search less and therefore pay higher prices.