The 1994–1995 Mexican Currency Crisis and U.S. Bank Stock Returns

We investigate the impact of the 1994–1995 Mexican currency crisis on U.S. bank stock returns. We use a jump-diffusion model rather than a pure diffusion model to describe daily stock returns, because the public release of unexpected information generally is associated with discrete jumps in prices. Traditional event study models pool both announcement effects and trading effects and may lead to inefficient estimators. The jump-diffusion model can separate the impact of informed trading from unanticipated public announcements. Our results indicate that the variance of the jumps is large and increases with bank size and portion of loans to Mexico.     

Debt Crises and Risk‐Sharing: The Role of Markets versus Sovereigns

Using a variance decomposition of shocks to gross domestic product (GDP), we quantify the role of international factor income, international transfers, and saving in achieving risk‐sharing during the recent European crisis. We focus on the subperiods 1990–2007, 2008–2009, and 2010 and consider separately the European countries hit by the sovereign debt crisis in 2010. We decompose risk‐sharing from saving into contributions from government and private saving, and show that fiscal austerity programs played an important role in hindering risk‐sharing during the sovereign debt crisis.     

The nexus between gender,collective action for public goods and agriculture: evidence from Malawi

Across the developing world, public goods exert significant impacts on the local rural economy in general and agricultural productivity and welfare outcomes in particular. Economic and social‐cultural heterogeneity have, however, long been documented as detrimental to collective capacity to provide public goods. In particular, women are often underrepresented in local leadership and decision‐making processes, as are young adults and minority ethnic groups. While democratic principles dictate that broad civic engagement by women and other groups could improve the efficiency and effectiveness of local governance and increase public goods provision, the empirical evidence on these hypotheses is scant. This article develops a theoretical model highlighting the complexity of constructing a “fair” schedule of individual contributions, given heterogeneity in costs and benefits that accrue to people depending, for instance, on their gender, age, ethnicity, and education. The model demonstrates that representative leadership and broad participation in community organizations can mitigate the negative impacts of heterogeneity on collective capacity to provide public goods. Nationally representative household survey data from Malawi, combined with geospatial and administrative information, are used to test this hypothesis and to estimate the relationship between collective capacity for public good provision and community median estimates of maize yields and household consumption expenditures per capita. The analysis shows that similarities between the leadership and the general population in terms of gender and age, and active participation by women and young adult in community groups, alleviate the negative effects of heterogeneity and increase collective capacity, which in turn improves agriculture productivity and welfare.     

Gender and agriculture in sub‐Saharan Africa: introduction to the special issue

This special issue contributes to the literature on gender differences in sub‐Saharan African agriculture primarily by using new and innovative micro‐data. The first six articles have a strong focus on understanding the extent and drivers of gender differences in land productivity and use data from nationally representative household surveys that are implemented under the Living Standards Measurement Study‐Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS‐ISA) initiative. The LSMS‐ISA data are multi‐topic, with geo‐referenced household and plot locations, and information on production and identity of managers and owners at the plot level. The last two articles in the volume rely on in‐depth quantitative and qualitative case study data, which, in combination with the nationally representative data, allow for greater insights into the extent and correlates of gender differences in sub‐Saharan African agriculture. While there does seem to be persistent evidence of gender gaps, the studies find the sources of these gaps to vary within and across countries. This makes designing policies to address gender gaps more challenging, yet of crucial importance. What is clear is that the failure to directly and explicitly address the underlying causes of the disparities is likely to end up exacerbating the observed gender gaps.     

Technology's Promise: Expert Knowledge on the Transformation of Business and Society

An empirical study into innovation supporting and blocking factors has been conducted of the strategic perceptions of stakeholders within the supply chain of a mature industry sector, based on interview analysis. The data revealed strategic intentions and assumptions that support the emergence of two distinct trajectories of change in the industry based on co-partnership and ad-hoc relationships respectively. A model of the trajectories using current partnership theories of lean supply indicated that the co-partnership trend offers some scope for incremental innovation; the ad-hoc relationship trend offered rather less scope for incremental innovation. Both trends seem to be reducing the scope for development of entrepreneurial networks within which independent design innovators can flourish. The strategic assumptions identified point to an environment that is not supportive of radical innovation. The absence of in-house R&;D capabilities may be an important factor in the industry's difficulties in innovating.     

A Comparative Analysis of Chinese and Japanese Company and Brand Icons

The current study evaluates company and brand icons and investigates their similarities and differences across two cultures: Chinese and Japanese. A systematic analysis of icons was conducted using the normative criteria for effective brand mark design found in the marketing literature. Results show that compared with Japanese icons, Chinese icons are more likely to contain letter marks, have pictorial elements representative of benefits, have conceptual similarity with the company/brand name, be balanced, be more complex, and be less likely to be abstract.     

Systemic analysis of UK foresight results: Joint application of integrated management model and roadmapping

This paper proposes a new systems approach to foresight studies. The paper will first indicate the complex and conflicting nature of long-term decision-making process. Then, the need for systems approach will be highlighted by the analysis of 1995 UK Delphi survey results and the scenarios of 2000 UK foresight scenarios. The paper proposes two methodologies, namely Integrated Management Model (IMM) and Roadmapping, in order to overcome challenges introduced by the multidimensional characteristics and complex nature of foresight studies. Based on systemic approach, IMM offers a useful way of developing long-term normative policies and strategies and their transformations into actions by considering necessary changes in organizational structures and behaviors. In addition, roadmapping is used to capture, manipulate and manage information to decrease complexity in the foresight by constructing roadmaps. In the paper, IMM and roadmapping are employed first to analyze UK foresight results and then to develop a new methodology to formulate Delphi events and scenarios for the successful implementation of foresight. This paper also promotes the integrated use of foresight techniques such as scenarios and Delphi rather than one for another.     

The Big Picture - trends, drivers, wild cards, discontinuities and weak signals

Following work done in the UK, Canada and now starting across Europe,¹ there appears to be renewed interest in charting the boundaries of what to expect between 2010 and 2025 as the character of the 21st century begins to become firmly established. What are the shaping forces, or sources of change and what might be their impacts, particularly where these may create entirely new challenges and opportunities?Futures experts (attendees of the FTA 2008 Conference) were invited to state their opinions on these questions by considering the trends, drivers, wilds cards, discontinuities and weak signals likely to shape the future through the Big Picture Survey. The survey was launched 6 months prior to the Conference. More than 250 responses were submitted by the Conference date. The results collected were synthesised and presented back to the attendees in a plenary presentation by the authors.The current paper aims to clarify the concepts first by suggesting definitions and discussing the distinctions between them. The paper then presents the rationales of conducting the Big Picture Survey (BPS), presents its methodology and discusses the results of the survey in a greater extent.     

An empirical investigation of U.S. bank risk and the Mexican peso crisis

This paper examines two pairs of hypotheses about the effect of the Mexican Peso crisis on U.S. bank stock returns. We use a three-index market model as our empirical methodology because bank stocks are influenced more by both interest rate risk and foreign exchange risk than other non-banking stocks. The results show that the market reacted to each event promptly, supporting semi-strong market efficiency. To find out whether these effects created a domino effect in the U.S. banking system, a set of cross-sectional regressions were run. In general, the empirical results support the investor-contagion hypothesis, which indicates that the market penalized or rewarded banks without regard to their ecposure to the market for Mexican loans.     

FDI,Productivity and Financial Development

This paper examines the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on growth by focusing on the complementarities between FDI inflows and financial markets. In our earlier work, we found that FDI is beneficial for growth only if the host country has well‐developed financial institutions. In this paper, we investigate whether this effect operates through factor accumulation and/or improvements in total factor productivity (TFP). Factor accumulation – physical and human capital – does not seem to be the main channel through which countries benefit from FDI. Instead, we find that countries with well‐developed financial markets gain significantly from FDI via TFP improvements. These results are consistent with the recent findings in the growth literature that shows the important role of TFP over factors in explaining cross‐country income differences.