Private Equity as Canary in a Coal Mine: Building the Ecosystem for Effective Global Financial Integration

A burgeoning private equity (PE) industry provides investment capital to build the capacity of an economy for innovation and entrepreneurial growth. We argue that for PE to contribute to this, capacity building requires effective systems for allocation of financial capital to the private sector and an ecosystem of supportive organizations. To illustrate these claims, we review the recent history of PE in the Middle East–North Africa region to contrast the PE industry in Middle East–North Africa, which stagnated after the financial crisis, with the industry in Turkey, which recovered quickly from a brief pause after the crisis and has thrived since 2008. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exchange Rate Predictability in Finite Samples

The goal of the present study is to re‐examine the exchange rate predictability with an approach that accounts for the negative effect of the finite‐sample estimation error on forecast accuracy in the in‐sample test. We consider various exchange rate models and find that despite the presence of significant population‐level predictive content in the exchange rate model, the coefficients of the predictive variables could be small enough that, with the available sample, they are estimated so imprecisely that a random walk model can be expected to forecast at least as well as the exchange rate model.     

新兴市场资本流入面临大幅下滑风险

在金融市场局势依然严峻的同时，投资者也不应忘记实体经济层面的风险未来几个季度中，全球经济增长可能会大幅减速。我们担心，本次经济下滑将在众多国家同步出现，而且其持续时间有可能超出我们过去的预计。基于这种担忧，本文着重分析了新兴市场货币面临的一顶风险新兴市场经济体不仅将出现明显的经济减速，而且流入的全球资本也很可能会大幅萎缩，从而打击其货币。     

经济手段VS环境正义:欧盟的视角

本刊第六期，第八期连续刊发“以市场为基础的环保改革是否加剧了环境非正义？”一文，从美国的视角，介绍了以市场为基础的环境经济手段在环境管理过程中可能引发的环境非正义，并提出了应对之策。     

以市场为基础的环保改革是否加剧了环境非正义?

尽管传统的命令控制型环境法规并未明文要求政府避免实施会对少数种族和低收入社区造成不当影响的行为,但是那些法规显然也并非鼓励污染的不当分配.相反,诸多以市场机制为基础的环保措施却明显鼓励污染者将污染转移到低收入社区,常常不可避免地加剧环境权益分配不公问题.     

Products and Productivity*

When firms make decisions about which product to manufacture at a more disaggregated level than observed in the data, measured firm productivity reflects both characteristics of the firm and attributes of the products that are non‐randomly chosen by the firm. This paper develops a model of industry equilibrium in which firms endogenously sort across products and characterizes the resulting bias in measured firm and aggregate productivity. Calibrating the model's parameters, we show that endogenous product selection can have quantitatively important effects on measured firm and aggregate productivity and their response to changes in parameter values.     

Operationalizing Trust,Reliance, and Dependence in Business Relationships: Responding to the Ongoing Naming and Cross-Level Problems

Purpose: This article is to test the proposition that the 3 conceptually related constructs of trust, reliance, and dependence are distinct from each other and to test the proposition that the quality of business relationships can be measured with a formative index incorporating trust and reliance.

Methodology/Approach: The authors' propositions are tested with a survey sample of 221 firms in the U.K. construction industry. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses are used to analyze the survey data.

Findings: The independence of the 3 focal constructs of trust, reliance, and dependence is confirmed. The formative index is found suitable for evaluating the level of relationship quality in which reliance carries more significant weight than trust.

Research Implications: The separation of the overall construct of “trust” into trust at interpersonal level and reliance at interorganizational level, as found in this study, overcomes the problem existing in past studies that researchers rarely specify at which level trust operates. The clear conceptual distinction between reliance and dependence as found in this study implies that although both operate at the organizational level, they do not have overlapping boundaries. The finding that reliance is a more important impact factor than trust in constructing the formative index supports the notions that reliance is a necessary and sufficient condition for developing sustainable business relationships, and trust is an insufficient condition to sustain an ongoing business relationship.

Practical Implications: Reliance sets the keynote of the business relationship. In contrast, trust as the interpersonal variable only acts as the facilitator to create a favorable social environment. Nevertheless, both trust and reliance have a significant and positive weight in the relationship quality index formed. This means that a business relationship with high levels of both trust and reliance is particularly resilient and stable and is the most successful and desirable one which is frequently oriented toward the long run.

Originality/Value/Contribution: The confirmation of the difference between trust and reliance makes an important contribution to the study of trust in business to business marketing by showing that what has traditionally been treated as theoverall construct of trust can and should be regarded as being made up of two separate constructs: interpersonal trust and interorganizational reliance. The difference between reliance and dependence as an additional finding makes another important contribution by providing conceptual clarity of the two constructs and confirming that there is no overlapping boundary between them. The formative index and the relative importance of its components are another important contribution of this study.