Understanding international commodity price fluctuations

An overview is provided of recent work on commodity prices, focusing on three themes: (i) "financialization" of commodity markets--commodities being considered by financial investors as a distinct asset class, (ii) trends and forecasts of commodity prices, and (iii) fracking—a shorthand for the emergence of new sources of energy supply. Lessons are drawn on the role of fundamentals and expectations in driving the rapidly changing nature of commodity markets.     

Industry and startup experience on entrepreneur forecast performance in new firms

I theoretically develop and empirically investigate the role of industry and startup experience on the forecast performance of 2304 entrepreneurs who have started new businesses. Using the Kauffman Firm Survey I show that industry experience is associated with more accurate and less biased entrepreneur expectations. Further, the benefit of industry experience on entrepreneurial forecast performance is greater in high-technology industries. These findings are consistent with knowledge of the setting informing entrepreneurial decision making, especially in highly uncertain environments. However, in contrast to the prevailing view in the literature, I find no significant evidence that startup experience improves entrepreneurial forecast performance.     

Chinese model for mass adventure tourism

China has evolved a new domestic model for river-based adventure tourism, a form of passive mass tourism characterised by short trips, in small unguided rafts without paddles, on heavily modified watercourses with exclusive control of access, receiving up to 10,000 clients per site per day. This is very different to international models, which expect much greater individual involvement and responsibility for safety. Client satisfaction is moderate and repeat business low, but the Chinese domestic model nonetheless generates a billion-dollar annual turnover nationwide, with participation to date by around one quarter of China's 18–35 year-olds. This domestic model shapes the expectations of Chinese tourists travelling overseas, with implications for practical safety and satisfaction, and theoretical tests of culture-linked expectation disconfirmation.     

谁的通胀预期影响了货币政策

本文建立含有通胀预期的前瞻性货币政策反应函数,基于2001年1季度至2014年4季度居民和专家两组通胀预期调研数据,研究中国人民银行决策信息集中是否包含通胀预期变量,以及谁的通胀预期更能影响货币政策。研究表明:(1)央行对居民预期和专家预期均做出显著反应,但对专家预期反应更强:平均而言,专家预期值提高1%,央行当季会降低货币供应量增长率0.4%,拆借利率则上浮0.1%;(2)在长期,央行遵循“逆预期”操作的相机抉择行为模式,表明预期变量是央行决策信息集的重要组成部分;(3)央行对某些机构的预测数据反应较强,其预测信息集可能与央行信息集重合度较高。     

公众预期、需求冲击与通货膨胀——兼论通胀持久性的地区差异

本文基于具有微观基础的混合式新凯恩斯菲利普斯曲线模型,利用1985-2009年的省际面板数据,分析了预期因素、需求冲击及产出缺口与通货膨胀之间的动态过程及其地区差异。研究发现：总体上,无论是适应性预期还是理性预期对当期通货膨胀都有较强的推动作用;作为需求冲击的居民消费支出、固定资本形成以及产出缺口对通货膨胀都具有正向拉动作用。从通货膨胀持久性的地区差异上看,西部地区的通胀持续性最长,中部最短。     

Endogenous fluctuations in the demand for education

Abstract. Enrollment rates to higher education reveal a quite large variation over time which cannot be explained by productivity shocks alone. We develop a human capital investment model in an overlapping generations framework that features endogenous fluctuations in the demand for education. Agents are heterogeneous in their beliefs about future wage differentials. An evolutionary competition between the heterogeneous beliefs determines the fraction of the newborn generation having a certain belief. Costly access to information on the returns to education induces agents to use potentially destabilizing backward looking prediction rules. Only if previous generations experience regret about their human capital investment decisions, will agents choose a more sophisticated prediction rule that dampens the cycle. Access to information becomes key for stable flows to higher education. RID="*" ID="*"We would like to thank Cars Hommes, Florian Wagener, seminar participants at the University of Amsterdam, participants of the workshop on ‘Skill Needs and Labor Market Dynamics’ at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) for helpful discussions, and an editor of this Journal and three anonymous referees for their comments. Tuinstra's research is supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) under a MaG-Pionier grant. Neugart acknowledges financial support from the German Ministry of Education. Parts of the research were done while Tuinstra was visiting the WZB and when Neugart was visiting CeNDEF. Correspondence to: The research for this paper was done while the first author was affiliated with the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung.     

Dual foreign currency markets and the role of expectations: Evidence from the Pacific Basin countries

This paper analyzes the role of expectations about the government policy in the official foreign currency market in determining the black market premium. We use data for the recent float from six emerging markets of the Pacific Basin where active black markets for foreign currency exist, namely, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. To test the impact of anticipated and unanticipated shocks to the official exchange rate on the black market premium, we employ the two-step procedure of Hoffman et al. [Hoffman, D.L., Low, S.A., Schlagenhauf, D.E., 1984. Tests of rationality, neutrality and market efficiency: a Monte Carlo analysis of alternative test statistics. J. Monet. Econ. 14, 339–363] which provides corrected F-statistics and allows us to draw valid inference in the presence of generated regressors. The main finding of our analysis is that anticipated and unanticipated shocks to the official exchange rate have an impact on the black market premium in all six Pacific Basin countries. These results suggest that portfolio balance models provide the suitable theoretical framework for analyzing the behaviour of the black market premium in the markets for foreign currency in the Pacific Basin countries. Furthermore, this implies that economic agents in these countries are sensitive to expected returns in foreign exchange.     

A market game approach to differential information economies

In this paper we recast a differential information economy as a strategic game in which players propose net trades and prices. Pure strategy Nash equilibria are strong and determine both consumption plans and commodity prices that coincide with the Walrasian Expectations equilibria of the underlying economy. The authors acknowledge support by research grants BEC2003-09067-C04-01 (Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and FEDER), PGIDT04XIC30001PN (Xunta de Galicia) and SA070A05 (Junta de Castilla y León). JP Torres-Martínez is also grateful to CNPq-Brazil and University of Vigo for financial support. We are indebted to N.C. Yannelis for helpful comments and insights.     

The influence of social media in creating expectations. An empirical study for a tourist destination

Social media are transforming the tourism industry from its traditional pattern into an intense informational pattern. Our study aims to investigate the causes underlying the use of user-generated contents (UGC) to receive tourist information and its effect on tourists’ expectations. Our empirical work was analysed by means of a multiple indicators multiple causes model (MIMIC) and a structural equation model (SEM). The main finding showed that when users receive UGC related to tourist destinations, they will create expectations about the destination by placing their trust in the contents received. It is recommended that tourism organizations should maintain the quality level in order to allow more UGC, and then further trust in the contents of social media and expectations will occur.     

The temporal dynamics of technology promises in government and industry partnerships for digital innovation: the case of the Copyright Hub

What is the expectation work required to ensure that technological innovation initially supported by government funding is subsequently taken up by market actors? This paper explores this question by applying a linked ecologies framework to the study of the Copyright Hub, a digital infrastructure for Intellectual Property trading developed in the UK. We draw our analysis from a five year long study, including forty-six interviews and six weeks of participant observation. We found that expectation work in policy-led infrastructural communities entails (1) leveraging technology to reshape the position of actors in the innovation space; (2) exploiting the different temporalities of expectation work in allied ecologies and (3) mobilising ‘slow’ expectations to provide momentum to the newly arranged innovation space. Highlighting difference in temporal dynamics for the various partners involved as a ‘hinging’ factor, our analysis contributes to clarifying the complex temporal alignment of policy and innovation processes in technology projects.