Monetary and commercial policy in a two-country flexible exchange rate model with perfect capital mobility

A two-country portfolio-balance model is developed in this paper in order to analyse the international transmission of monetary and commercial policy disturbances under a flexible exchange rate regime. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of capital mobility, differences in the asset demand functions across countries, and national net-asset positions in determining the effects of these policies on the macroeconomic variables of the two countries. Both the short and the long-run effects are considered with expectations assumed to be formed rationally.     

The model based on the matrix of economic growth

This paper is concerned with some aspects of direct and indirect growth rates of sectors and with the model based on the matrix of economic growth. The purpose of this consideration is to determine through indirect growth rates the growth structure of economy and to construct the model which may be used for the planning goals. In other words, by means of the matrix of growth or the model which is based on it we can estimate the future development of the economy. This can be done under different assumptions no matter whether relations are transfered from the past into the future or whether various relations change in future periods on the basis of streamlined elements of the plan. Hence, it can be determined either from the assumption that past relations will be kept approximately in the same frames, or that they will change in the future. In each case all the changes can be described through direct and indirect growth rates.     

Integrated system of occupational safety and health and fire protection of the fire rescue brigades members

The objective of the conducted research is the identification and determination of requirements of members of fire rescue brigades during operations in the conditions of high risk in order to minimize the possibilities for injury incidence during the intervention. The research is focused on examination, determination and identification of factors affecting the increasing number of occupational injuries of members of fire rescue brigades during interventions. Hypothetical framework of the research problem consists of general hypothesis and six special hypotheses. Results suggest that almost all respondents believe that their skills and abilities are applicable in the intervention phase, but less than a half believe that their skills are applicable in prevention phase. Two-thirds of respondents stated that in their organization they have support for further education and upgrading while a half of respondents stated that they need education concerning identification, assessment and management of risks that can lead to emergency situations.     

Origins of regional divergence: economic growth in socialist Yugoslavia†

Relative to western Europe, we know very little about the determinants of economic growth at the regional level within socialist Europe. This is somewhat unusual, given that socialist policy-makers have put great emphasis on equitable regional development. This article analyses the regional patterns of growth and divergence in socialist Yugoslavia. New estimates of output and inputs are constructed, and an analysis of output growth, factor accumulation, structural modernization, and productivity is provided. Two novel empirical findings are uncovered. The first is that the sources of growth across the regions were fundamentally different. Total factor productivity was a much more important source of growth in the richer regions than it was in the poorer ones. The second finding is that the source of the regional income divergence lies in the failure of the less developed regions to converge towards the employment rates and total factor productivities of the more developed regions. These failures are interpreted, at least partially, as symptoms of the governing objective and the soft budget constraint of the labour-managed firms that operated in Yugoslavia. It is argued that Yugoslavia's development model was less suited to the pre-conditions that prevailed in the less developed parts of the country.     

Sectoral Effects of News Shocks

This paper argues that an aggregate news shock reveals news about technological improvements in the durable goods sector. Better technological prospects translate into large responses of the fundamentals in the durable goods sector; much larger than the responses of the fundamentals in the non‐durable goods sector. These better technological prospects, contrary to common belief, do not induce short‐run comovement among fundamentals within either of the two sectors. The behaviour of inventories, an important margin that durable goods producers can use to buffer news shocks, proves to be crucial for reconciling the effects of news shocks in a two‐sector model with the data.     

Fed funds futures variance futures

We develop a novel contract design, the fed funds futures (FFF) variance futures, which reflects the expected realized basis point variance of an underlying FFF rate. The valuation of short-term FFF variance futures is completely model-independent in a general setting that includes the cases where the underlying FFF rate exhibits jumps and where the realized variance is computed by sampling the FFF rate discretely. The valuation of longer-term FFF variance futures is subject to an approximation error which we quantify and show is negligible. We also provide an illustrative example of the practical valuation and use of the FFF variance futures contract.     

Consumers’ Sensorical Product Evaluation and Perception

The aim of the research was to determine consumer perceptions of meat products regarding their origin and the potential impact of their origin on the sensory evaluation of other meat properties. Data were collected during the experiment. By testing the correlation model with multiple analyses of variance for repeated measures, it was determined that there was a statistically significant correlation between the factors. The important contribution of the research is the surveyed issue and the approach to researching the impact of product origin on scientific field of marketing and field of consumer behavior. The research represents a deeper investigation of impact of country-of-origin (COO) on consumer perceptions. An integrated approach to the research of the impact of meat origin was chosen to form interlinks between meat origin and its other sensorical properties.     

Drivers of productivity in Vietnamese SMEs: the role of management standards and innovation

Using a rich panel dataset of small and medium scale manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) active in the manufacturing sector in Viet Nam, this paper investigates the drivers of firm productivity, focusing on the role played by international management standards certification. We test the hypothesis that, accounting for technological innovation (product and process) and other variables related to technological capabilities, international standards are conducive to higher productivity, through improved management practices and business organization. In line with the requirement of continuous improvement implied by most international standards, the main findings show that the possession of an internationally recognized standard certificate leads to significant productivity premium. We further find that the effect of certification on productivity is particularly strong for firms with technological innovation, located in southern provinces, and operating in more scale-intensive industries.     

Methods of Partial Hedging

In this article we survey methods of dealing with the following problem: A financial agent is trying to hedge a claim C, without having enough initial capital to perform a perfect (super) replication. In particular, we describe results for minimizing the expected loss of hedging the claim C both in complete and incomplete continuous-time financial market models, and for maximizing the probability of perfect hedge in complete markets and markets with partial information. In these cases, the optimal strategy is in the form of a binary option on C, depending on the Radon-Nikodym derivative of the equivalent martingale measure which is optimal for a corresponding dual problem. We also present results on dynamic measures for the risk associated with the liability C, defined as the supremum over different scenarios of the minimal expected loss of hedging C. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Cagan’s paradox and money demand in hyperinflation: Revisited at daily frequency

Using daily data the Cagan money demand is estimated and accepted for the most severe portion of Serbia’s 1992–1993 hyperinflation, i.e. its last 6 months. An implication is that the public adjusted daily throughout this extreme period. Moreover, the obtained semi-elasticity estimates are by far lower than those previously found using monthly data sets. Consequently, the daily estimates reject the longstanding Cagan’s paradox, based on monthly studies, by showing that the economy has been on the correct, increasing side of the Laffer curve almost through the end of hyperinflation. This strongly supports the view that hyperinflation is triggered and driven all way through its end by the government’s hunt for non-decreasing seigniorage. Daily adjustments of public in hyperinflation can account for the difference between the results obtained at daily and monthly frequencies, calling into question the latter. Some evidence is offered that the findings of this paper may hold for other hyperinflations.