An unlikely Phoenix: The recovery of Argentina’s monetary and financial system from its ashes in the 2000s and its lessons

The study discusses the recovery of the Argentine financial system after the crisis of the so called convertibility regime of the 1990s. The Argentine macroeconomic regime established in 1991 and based on the hard peg of the peso to the dollar at a 1 to 1 parity ended in a multiple crisis in 2001–2. Beyond the default on the public debt, the crisis also involved the breakdown of the domestic financial system, and an almost complete isolation of the country from the international financial markets as a consequence of the default. Under such a deep crisis and the consequent uncertainty, the recovery of the solvency of the financial institutions was an almost insurmountable enterprise. However, with a gradualist approach (contrary to the advice of the International Monetary Fund) and a degree of “regulatory forbearance,” the financial and monetary authorities were able to recover the health of the financial system, which became much more resilient to shocks, even if its development has been very slow and, as a consequence, the contribution of domestic credit to the economic expansion of the 2000s can be considered almost negligible.     

Cost Accounting for War: Contracting Procedures and Cost-plus Pricing in WWI Industrial Mobilization in Italy

The aim of this paper is to explore the role played by cost accounting in Italy's Industrial Mobilization system and in the largest firm manufacturing weaponry, Ansaldo of Genoa, during WWI. While in other countries such as the UK and the USA, efficiency in buying and managing war material was an important part of military strategy, in Italy, various factors impeded it. This paper focuses on contracting procedures adopted by the Ministry of War and Ministry of Munitions and looks at the cost accounting practices in Ansaldo to see how costs were determined and how prices were set. We found a paradox. On the one hand, despite knowledge of costing, the government did not impose cost controls on the producers of war material, nor on their profit rates. On the other hand, examining Ansaldo's cost sheets we discover they underestimated their production costs leading the firm to losses despite its favorable political position. This paper contributes to the theoretical debate about the relationships between accounting and war in the Italian context where lobbying, collusion, bribery and private interests dominated the administrative behavior of public and private actors instead of efficiency, accountability and honesty.     

A Coincident Index,Common Factors,and Monthly Real GDP*

The Stock–Watson coincident index and its subsequent extensions assume a static linear one‐factor model for the component indicators. This restrictive assumption is unnecessary if one defines a coincident index as an estimate of monthly real gross domestic products (GDP). This paper estimates Gaussian vector autoregression (VAR) and factor models for latent monthly real GDP and other coincident indicators using the observable mixed‐frequency series. For maximum likelihood estimation of a VAR model, the expectation‐maximization (EM) algorithm helps in finding a good starting value for a quasi‐Newton method. The smoothed estimate of latent monthly real GDP is a natural extension of the Stock–Watson coincident index.     

Optimal Export Taxes, Welfare, Industry Concentration, and Firm Size: A General Equilibrium Analysis

By using an imperfect-competition model, it is shown that an export tax, optimal in partial equilibrium, is upwardly biased and may not be optimal in a general equilibrium setting with free entry/exit. It is shown also that the export tax has an ambiguous impact on firm size. The results of an applied general equilibrium model for the Turkish economy suggest that the export tax estimated with the PE formula is larger by a small factor than the computed export tax. However, the export tax leads to an increase in firm size and, most importantly, to a social welfare loss.     

An introduction to the ontology of anticipation

The paper introduces the idea of anticipatory systems, i.e. of systems that take their decisions in the present according to forecasts about something that may eventually happen. The best-known definition of anticipation is still Rosen's: “An anticipatory system is a system containing a predictive model of itself and/or its environment, which allows it to change state at an instant in accord with the model's predictions pertaining to a later instant.”The most obvious mistake committed by almost everyone when first confronted with the idea of anticipation is to think that anticipation is a feature that we possess because we are such highly complex and wonderfully sophisticated cognitive agents. This is not what the theory of anticipation claims. Indeed, the major surprise embedded in the theory of anticipation is that anticipation is a widespread phenomenon present in and characterizing all types of realities.The paper presents some of Rosen's early works on anticipation and spells out in some details a few of its subtleties.     

Stochastic search variable selection in vector error correction models with an application to a model of the UK macroeconomy

This paper develops methods for stochastic search variable selection (currently popular with regression and vector autoregressive models) for vector error correction models where there are many possible restrictions on the cointegration space. We show how this allows the researcher to begin with a single unrestricted model and either do model selection or model averaging in an automatic and computationally efficient manner. We apply our methods to a large UK macroeconomic model. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Firms' price and wage adjustment in Europe: Survey evidence on nominal stickiness

This paper presents new evidence on the patterns of price and wage adjustment in European firms and on the extent of nominal rigidities. It uses a unique dataset collected through a firm-level survey conducted in 17 European countries and covering various sectors. Several conclusions are drawn from this evidence. Firms adjust wages less frequently than prices, on average every 15 and 10 months, respectively. Price and, especially, wage adjustment exhibit a substantial degree of time-dependence. In particular, wage changes tend to cluster at a specific time of the year, mostly January in the majority of countries. The results of a multivariate analysis indicate that prices are more flexible when competitive pressures in product markets are strong and when labor costs account for a lower fraction of firms' total costs, whereas wages are more flexible when bargaining is decentralized and when the coverage of collective bargaining and the stringency of employment protection legislation are low. Price rigidities are higher in firms with a larger share of high-skilled/white-collar workers.     

Social Exclusion and Economic Growth: An Empirical Investigation in European Economies

The aims of this article are to propose an overall index of social exclusion and to analyze its relationship with economic growth in European countries. We approach social exclusion as a multidimensional phenomenon by a three‐mode principal components analysis (Tucker3 model). This method is applied to estimate an indicator of social exclusion for 28 European countries between 1995 and 2010. The empirical evidence shows that in the short run: (1) Granger causality runs one way from social exclusion to economic growth and not the other way; (2) countries with a higher level of social exclusion have higher growth rates of real GDP per capita; and (3) social exclusion has a larger effect than income inequality on economic growth. The policy implication of our analysis is that social inclusion is not a source of economic growth in the short term.     

“Made in Italy”: The Italian Contribution to the Development of Business Marketing Discipline and Practices

Purpose: The authors analyze the main contributions of Italian literature in the business-to-business field as it relates to the characteristics of the Italian industrial manufacturing system. Even if not directly labeled as business-to-business marketing, Italian and other scholars who have studied Italian business experiences have largely faced the topic of business marketing management with innovative approaches and distinctive benchmark examples. In particular, the analysis of the Italian contribution to business marketing relies on the specific nature of the Italian industrial structure as recognized by the international literature. In this respect, the authors argue that three main areas of interest progressively arose from the peculiarities of the Italian industrial system: industrial districts, subcontractors/subcontracting relationships, and mid-sized manufacturing companies. These three research topics have been thoroughly investigated by both Italian and international scholars. They analyze the contributions that Italian researchers provided to advance business marketing discipline and practices.

Methodology/approach: The authors reviewed the literature of the main contributions developed in the three individual areas of research that have a strong focus on the Italian experience. The methodology was in three steps. First, the review planning process was guided by the three areas of research that were assumed to have a major contribution to business marketing discipline. Second, the SCOPUS database was used as a primary source for paper identification by using a keywords search method. Third, the dataset was refined by excluding non relevant contributions (not focused on business management and marketing or not specifically dealing with the three areas of interest) and validating/integrating the original dataset by using other complementary sources (e.g., Google Books, Google Scholar). Finally, a set of 268 products were taken into account in the analysis.

Findings: The results of the analysis suggest that the Italian contribution to the field of business marketing is valuable in light of the three chosen areas of research. These three empirical arenas—industrial districts, subcontractors, and mid-sized firms—contribute to providing a better understanding of business market structure and dynamics as well as the improvement of business marketing studies.

Originality/value: The article is an original and first attempt to elaborate and reflect on the contribution of the Italian business experience literature to the advances of business marketing discipline. The authors develop an original comprehensive review of “Made in Italy” business marketing and management research that has not been used in previous studies. The review will increase international knowledge of Italian practices and theoretical frameworks that can contribute to the reinforcement of the business-to-business marketing discipline.