Rituals of cruise consumption and the 'new' middle class: desiring and 'devouring' maritime cruises

The consumption of maritime cruises is one of the most striking facets of the phenomenon of a new middle class emergence in Brazil. This study investigates the use of maritime cruises by emerging middle-class consumers to enact their new social status. Specifically, the research looks at ritualistic behaviour performed by consumers before, during, and after a cruise. The research uses a multi-method design characterised by a combination of ethnography and group discussions. The study contributes to enlarge McCracken’s typology of consumption rituals, showing how emerging consumers use the cruise as a rite of passage, during which they perform rituals of preparation, production, possession, and divestment. It also sheds light on specific rituals performed by consumers in order to transfer meanings from the cruise to their own selves. Finally, the findings suggest that consumption rituals in the context of social ascent may not have the transformative power of traditional rites.     

Deconstructing credibility: The breaking of monetary policy rules in Brazil

Can political interference deconstruct credibility that was hardly-earned through successful stabilization policy? We analyze the recent switch in the conduct of monetary policy by the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB). Brazil is the largest Emerging Market Economy to formally target inflation, having adopted the Inflation Targeting (IT) regime in 1999. In the early years of IT, the BCB engaged in constructing credibility with price setting agents and succeeded to anchor inflation expectations to its target even under adverse conditions such as exchange rate crises. We argue that this effort to maintain IT rules-based policy ended in 2011, as a new country president and BCB board came to power. We then discuss the consequences of this credibility loss. Our main results can be summarized as follows: (i) we provide strong empirical evidence of the BCB’s shift toward looser, discretionary policy after 2011; (ii) preliminary evidence suggests that this shift has affected agents’ inflation expectations generating social and economic costs.     

International investors’ reactions to cross-border acquisitions by emerging market multinationals

How do international investors react to announcements of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (CM&As) by emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs)? Using a unique and manually-constructed firm-level dataset, this paper examines the stock price reactions to CM&A announcements made over the period 1991–2010 by Chinese MNEs listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the wealth impacts of their corporate governance. Our empirical findings confirm a positive stock price reaction on average, and suggest that international investors react positively to the presence of large shareholders, but negatively to the presence of institutional shareholders. There is a negative impact if the largest shareholder is either the State or the corporate founder. We suggest that this is because the international investors perceive potential principal–principal conflicts in such ownership/control constellations and discount equity prices accordingly. We also find that Board size and independence have positive effects on the price reaction, but that large supervisory boards engender negative reactions.     

How can investors build a better portfolio in small open economies? Evidence from Asia’s Four Little Dragons

This study investigates the role of hedging and portfolio design among stocks, exchange rates, and gold in small open economies (SOEs) from 4 January 2000 to 31 March 2020. We adopt the trivariate dynamic conditional correlation-fractionally integrated asymmetric power ARCH model and unconditional quantile regression model, and our findings show that the hedging role of the U.S. dollar (USD) and gold against stocks differs under regular and extreme market conditions. The USD can act as a powerful hedge asset for stocks in regular market periods. Moreover, during the global financial crisis and COVID-19 outbreak, the safe-haven effect of gold becomes stronger for almost all stocks, whereas the USD can serve as a strong safe haven against stock markets of Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore when stock returns are extremely low. In terms of portfolio designing, we find that adding the USD and gold to portfolios improves their hedging effectiveness, and the optimally weighted stock-USD-gold portfolio is the best portfolio strategy, irrespective of referring to return or risk.     

基于结构方程模型的集聚农户共生认知及影响因素分析:以重庆市为例

研究目的:探讨对集聚农户共生、集聚区土地利用率提高的影响因素,为提升农户共生的认知水平、优化农户共生关系及促进资源的节约集约利用提供有效路径及理论指导。研究方法:参与式农户调查,结构方程模型。研究结果:(1)户主自身特征、农户家庭特征、集聚共生效益特征及外部环境与政策特征这4类外源潜变量对农户共生认知产生重要影响且影响程度大小不同,其中,集聚共生效益特征的影响最为显著,外部环境与政策特征、户主自身特征和农户家庭特征的影响依次减弱;(2)是否为干部、对原集聚模式的满意度、是否促进农户生产生活条件和政府对集聚区的补贴力度分别对这4类外源潜变量具有较好的解释能力。研究结论:显化农户共生效益、增强"精英"农户及村干部的正向引导、提升农户成员受教育水平、培养农户"共生共荣"理念等是深化农户共生关系,促进和谐乡村人居环境建设的重要路径。     

Does Human Capital Protect Workers against Exogenous Shocks? Evidence from Panel Data on South Africa during the 2008‐2009 Crisis

The financial and economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 took a heavy toll on the South African economy. The economy contracted for the first time since 1998 and entered recession during the fourth quarter of 2008. The gross domestic product contraction was soon transmitted to the labour market. Between the second quarters of 2008 and 2009, employment fell by 3.8%. However, not all individuals were hit with the same intensity. Using panel data from a quarterly labour force survey unique in the African context, we find that human capital (i.e. education as years of schooling and workforce experience) provided a buffer against the shock. After controlling for observable characteristics, education and experience showed the potential to entirely offset the effect of the recession on the likelihood of employment. This has important policy implications, as it strengthens the case for strategic investments in human capital and helps identify the unskilled as having the greatest need for social safety net interventions during a recession.     

中国城市宏观级差地租的形成机制

城市宏观级差地租是我国特殊国情下的创新理论。先梳理了城市宏观级差地租理论的发展和最新成果,在前人研究的基础上,提出一些新的理论观点。之后对城市宏观级差地租的概念进行了新的诠释,然后重点论述了城市宏观级差地租的形成机制,并结合我国实际情况,分别从城市区位级差地租、城市规模级差地租和城市功能级差地租三方面进行深入分析和论述,阐明了城市宏观级差地租形成的原因。最后总结了我国城市宏观级差地租理论创新的意义,指出中央政府对宏观级差地租理论的运用是缩小我国区域经济差距一个新的政策思路。     

How reliable and consistent are subjective measures of welfare in Europe and Central Asia?

This paper analyses the reliability and consistency of subjective well‐being measures, using the Life in Transition Survey. Drawing on two life satisfaction questions with alternative scales, our results do not reveal substantial biases in accounts of life satisfaction due to framing. Subjective individual assessments of household relative income position, on the other hand, do not appear to be reliable predictors of objective poverty or wealth. We find that subjective relative income position is only weakly correlated with objective welfare measures. There are differences in evaluations of the household's relative standing across different household members, and these differences are correlated with respondent characteristics.     

Endogenous ranking and equilibrium Lorenz curve across (ex-ante) identical countries: A generalization

This paper proposes a symmetry-breaking model of trade with a finite number of identical countries and a continuum of tradeable consumption goods, which differ in their dependence on nontradeable intermediate inputs, “producer services”. Productivity of each country is endogenous due to country-specific external economies of scale in its service sector. It is shown that, in any stable equilibrium, the countries sort themselves into specializing in different sets of tradeable goods and that a strict ranking of countries in per capita income, TFP, the service sector share, and the capital–labor ratio emerge endogenously. Furthermore, the distribution of country shares, the Lorenz curve, is unique and analytically solvable in the limit, as the number of countries grows unbounded. Using this limit as an approximation allows us to study what determines the shape of distribution, perform various comparative statics and to evaluate the welfare effects of trade. In doing so, this paper extends the analysis of Matsuyama (Econometrica, 81:5 (September 2013), 2009–2031) for more general and flexible forms of scale economies. It turns out that the technique introduced in Matsuyama (Econometrica, 81:5 (September 2013), 2009–2031) is useful for the equilibrium characterization in this general case as well. Although some results of comparative statics and on welfare inevitably need to be modified, they change in ways that illuminate the underlying mechanism of symmetry-breaking.