Disorderly adjustments to the misalignments in the Korean won

This paper estimates the equilibrium exchange rates for Korea'sreal effective rates using Clark and MacDonald's (1999) behaviouralequilibrium exchange rate (BEER) approach. The estimation resultsuggests that the real exchange rate was substantially overvaluedduring the period prior to the currency crisis of 1997–98.The subsequent adjustment, however, was disorderly in the sensethat the real exchange rate overshot its long-run equilibriumvalue. There was also a large deviation from the BEER, indicatingthat the sharp depreciation was not an equilibrium phenomenon.     

Asymmetric technological distance measure based on language model

This article introduces a novel technological distance measure between companies based on their patent portfolios. We describe the technological position or characteristics of companies by applying the framework of language modelling technique in information retrieval on their patent portfolios. The proposed novel approach is an asymmetric measure and better captures the technological characteristic of a company and hence is a more accurate distance measure.     

Inflation and public debt reversals in advanced economies

This paper quantitatively assesses the effects of inflation shocks on the public debt-to-GDP ratio in 19 advanced economies using simulation and estimation approaches. The simulations suggest that 1 percentage point shock to the inflation rate can reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio by about 0.7 percentage points on average across countries, while the estimated impulse responses are a little larger and more persistent. Additional assumptions taking into account financial repression do not necessarily make these effects substantially larger. These results imply that modestly higher inflation, even if accompanied by some financial repression, could reduce the public debt burden only marginally.     

Tourist perceptions of souvenir authenticity: an exploration of selective tourist blogs

Authenticity is a well-researched concept in tourism studies and has been an important theme during the past decades. However, literature specifically concerning souvenir authenticity in the context of tourism is limited. Handicrafts were originally made to fulfil the needs of communities such as pottery for carrying water and storing food. With the advent of tourism, changes occurred in the functions and forms of artworks and artisans began to change their crafts based largely on tourists' expectations of what souvenirs should be. The current study examined travel blog posts to understand tourist perceptions of souvenir authenticity using constructivist grounded theory. Fourteen international travel blog posts between June 2007 and February 2012 were analysed. Bloggers from Canada, USA, and England blogged about their trips to Indonesia, Croatia, Brazil, Canada, Spain, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Senegal, France, Peru, USA, Belgium, and Argentina. Four themes emerged describing authenticity: (1) using local materials at the destination, (2) crafting by hand and produced locally by artist, (3) displaying artist's signature or hallmark, and (4) uniqueness costing more, but higher quality and better design. Further analysis illuminates that constructivist authenticity is subjectively based upon individual connection to an object, their social networks, preconceived notions, and cultural biases.     

The impacts of suppliers and mutual outsourcing on organizational forms

We consider a downstream duopoly model with a monopolistic common supplier and mutual outsourcing between the two symmetric downstream firms. The market structure captures the recent procurement environment in the smartphone industry. We also incorporate managerial delegation into the duopoly model because deciding on organizational forms within a firm is critical to achieving better performance in almost all industries. There is an equilibrium in which only one of the firms delegates its downstream production to its sales manager. A delegating firm becomes less aggressive. The profits when both firms delegate can be higher than those when no firm delegates. Social welfare when both firms delegate can be smaller than that when no firm delegates.     

Community (Dis)connection Through Leisure for Women in Prison

This article examines incarcerated women's leisure and re-entry into community. Framed in creative analytic practice, two poems reflect two major themes: (1) women's experiences of disconnection from community prior to and deepened by experiences in prison and (2) leisure and community re-entry, which describes complex meanings of leisure for women in prison and implications for return to community. These poems elucidate six often incongruous facets of leisure experience. Structures embedded in leisure service provision stigmatize and limit rather than encourage opportunities for incarcerated women to make personal choices regarding leisure. Leisure also provides contexts of relationship and humanity for women as they re-enter community.     

Exclusive contracts when the incumbent can establish a direct retailer

This paper constructs a model of anticompetitive exclusive dealings with potential downstream competition. Unlike in previous studies, the incumbent can establish a direct retailer with some fixed payment and can offer an exclusive contract to a downstream buyer twice. We show that the existence of these two options helps the incumbent deter socially efficient entry and earn almost monopoly profits even in the absence of scale economies and downstream competition.     

An Airline Merger in Japan: A Case Study Revealing Principles of Japanese Merger Control

This paper is a case study of a Japanese merger control in the airline industry. The objective is to investigate the underlying principles of the Fair Trade Commission of Japan (JFTC) through a domestic merger on airlines, where reports are available. From applying a checklist arranged by Röller et al. (Working Paper No. 543, The Research Institute of Industrial Economics, 2000), the merger control policy of the JFTC is competition-oriented, systematic designed and transparent. But the direction of the policy is a kind of regulatory one.     

Local risk-minimization for Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard models

We obtain explicit representations of locally risk-minimizing strategies for call and put options in Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard models, which are Ornstein–Uhlenbeck-type stochastic volatility models. Using Malliavin calculus for Lévy processes, Arai and Suzuki (Int. J. Financ. Eng. 2:1550015, 2015) obtained a formula for locally risk-minimizing strategies for Lévy markets under many additional conditions. Supposing mild conditions, we make sure that the Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard models satisfy all the conditions imposed in (Arai and Suzuki in Int. J. Financ. Eng. 2:1550015, 2015). Among others, we investigate the Malliavin differentiability of the density of the minimal martingale measure. Moreover, we introduce some numerical experiments for locally risk-minimizing strategies.