Supply-Side Policy and Economic Growth: A Case Study of the UK

Open Economies Review - This paper investigates the potential for a causal relationship between certain supply-side policies and UK output and productivity growth between 1970 and 2009. We outline...     

Rational Expectations and Security Analysts' Earnings Forecasts

This paper investigates the rationality of security analysts' forecasts. The forecasts of analysts participating in Lynch, Jones, and Ryan's Institutional Brokers Estimate System (I/BE/S) data base are evaluated relative to past values of their own forecast errors, past values of forecasted earnings per share, and quarterly percentage changes in publicly available macroeconomic and financial time series. The publicly available series include the consumer price index, unemployment rate, oil prices, stock prices, gross national product, and corporate profits. The authors conduct a generalized orthogonality test and include only information available to analysts at the time the forecasts are made. The empirical results reject analyst forecast rationality, but not without exception.     

Gender and sustainable tourism: reflections on theory and practice

Despite the rich and diverse tradition of research on the gender dimensions of tourism, such studies have had little impact on transforming unequal gendered power relations in the sector itself. In this paper, we are concerned with why this is the case and what steps might be taken to redress this situation. The paper argues that the challenges inherent in gender mainstreaming processes within public policies worldwide are replicated and – to some extent – exacerbated in the tourism sector. We contend that, despite its substantive insight into the sector, the impact of such literature has been minimal. We further suggest that this is, in part, due to the sustainable tourism paradigm's resistance to incorporating gender equality and gender analysis as core principles. In order to develop these arguments, we reflect on our experiences as specialist consultants in gender and sustainable tourism, drawing out some of the key tensions of integrating gender into sustainable tourism projects. In conclusion, we argue that there is substantive work to be done for gender to be integrated into the theory and practice of sustainable tourism, offering recommendations as to how this process might be improved.     

Stepping out of the Twilight? Assessing the Governance Implications of Land Titling and Regularization Programmes

This article engages with the discussions on the benefits and drawbacks of land titling programmes that seek to regularize informal urban settlements in developing countries. It is based on fieldwork in two neighbourhoods of Maputo, Mozambique, that are currently part of a municipal government regularization programme supported by the World Bank. The fieldwork explored an informal titling system administrated by the neighbourhood authorities upon which local residents rely to prevent land conflicts and to provide proof of residence. The findings add to the literature that demonstrates growing unease with a strictly dyadic formal/informal analysis of land occupation, and further queries the assumption that the state and the informal settler are diametrically opposed, with the former granting formal rights to the latter. In the process of these discussions, the article highlights the limited scholarly attention that has been granted to the governance implications of land titling programmes.     

Export promotion agencies: Do they work?

The number of national export promotion agencies (EPAs) has tripled over the last two decades. While more countries made them part of their export strategy, studies criticized their efficacy in developing countries. EPAs were retooled, partly in response to these critiques. This paper studies the impact of today's EPAs and their strategies, based on new survey data covering 103 developing and developed countries. Results suggest that on average they have a statistically significant effect on exports. Our identification strategies highlight the importance of EPA services for overcoming foreign trade barriers and solving asymmetric information problems associated with exports of heterogeneous goods. There are also strong diminishing returns, suggesting that as far as EPAs are concerned, small is beautiful.     

Determinants of Investor Demand for Cross‐Listed Firms

By focusing on the decisions of investors to invest in cross‐listed stocks, this paper presents new evidence on why we observe striking differences in the percentage of trade in foreign markets for cross‐listed stocks. With a large sample of Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) stocks cross‐listed in the U.S. and Canada, we document the effect of investor recognition and risk characteristics on the distribution of trading volume. Firms that are more visible to American investors are traded more heavily in the U.S. At the same time, firms that offer diverse risk characteristics are attractive to Americans. While investors understand the benefits of international diversification, as they are attracted to stocks that are different (e.g., the stock of small firms with few assets in the U.S.), they also seek stocks that provide them with high returns.     

WHEN AND HOW THE PUNISHMENT MUST FIT THE CRIME

In repeated normal‐form (simultaneous‐move) games, simple penal codes (Abreu, Journal of Economic Theory 39(1) (1986), 191–225; and Econometrica 56(2) (1988), 383–96) permit an elegant characterization of the set of subgame‐perfect outcomes. We show that in repeated extensive‐form games such a characterization no longer obtains. By means of examples, we identify two types of settings in which a subgame‐perfect outcome may be supported only by a profile with the property that the continuation play after a deviation is tailored not only to the identity of the deviator but also to the nature of the deviation.     

Unintended trajectories: liberalization and the geographies of private business flight

The global commercial aviation industry has undergone significant regulatory reform during the last 30 years. This paper explores something of the relationship between air transport liberalization and the growth of private business aviation and suggests that the sector’s development is largely an unintended consequence of the increasingly deregulated operating environment in that it has developed to overcome some of liberalization’s negative impacts, including delays, congestion, and perceptions of poor customer service. We argue that liberalization has created innovative market opportunities for private business aviation and illustrate how the sector’s operating models are facilitating new, as yet largely undocumented, forms of aerial mobility. The paper examines: the advantages of private business aviation over scheduled services; business strategies in the sector, especially the idea of fractional jets; the impact of new technologies, particularly the Very Light Jet (VLJ); and, finally, employs Europe as an example of the spatialities of private business aviation.     

Mortality Inequality in England over the Past 20 Years*

In this paper, we study the evolution of age‐group‐ and gender‐specific mortality and mortality inequality in England between 2003 and 2016, by comparing small geographic areas ranked by deprivation and grouped into bins of similar population size. We show that across all age groups, but especially in the older age groups (65+), there has been a clear and significant reduction in rates of mortality since 2003. In spite of these improvements, we continue to see significant inequalities in mortality across most age groups in 2016 and evidence of rising inequalities among women in the 65+ and men in the 80+ age groups. Furthermore, we see a striking stalling of the downwards trend in mortality and mortality inequality observed between 2003 and 2010 during the years of economic austerity in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis in England between 2010 and 2016. Analysis of specific causes of death among adults aged 20–79 allows us to examine the drivers and dynamics of these trends in more depth, as well as to consider scope for, and types of, interventions that would be appropriate at different ages.