Methodological Procedure for Estimating Brazilian Quarterly GDP Series

This paper presents a methodology for estimating the Brazilian GDP quarterly series in the period between 1960–1996. Firstly, an Engle–Granger’s static equation is estimated using GDP yearly data and GDP-related variables. The estimated coefficients from this regression are then used to obtain a first estimation of the quarterly GDP, with unavoidable measurement errors. The subsequent step is entirely based on benchmarking models estimated within a state space framework and consists in improving the preliminary GDP estimation in order to both eliminate as much as possible the measurement error and that the sum of the quarterly values matches the annual GDP.

Political Underdevelopment: What causes ‘bad governance’

The states of the ‘South’, although diverse, tend to be underdeveloped in the political sense: neither authoritative and effective nor legitimate and accountable to citizens. The conventional response of aid donors is institutional transfer : trying to align the institutional configurations of Southern states even more closely with those of Northern polities. This may not be the best approach. The political underdevelopment of much of the South largely results from the ways in which Southern states have been created and political authority shaped through economic and political interactions with the wealthier countries of the North. Political underdevelopment is an outcome of uneven (economic) development. A better appreciation of the nature of these processes could lead to more appropriate policy. History cannot be reversed. But more attention could be paid to the ways in which Northern states currently help sustain political underdevelopment in the South, notably by perpetuating the conditions under which state elites in the South can remain too independent of their own citizens.     

The challenges of global capitalism: unemployment and state workers' reactions and responses in post-reform China

As China enters the twenty-first year of reform, the success of its economic policies has been widely recognized. But what is also true is that economic reforms initiated in the past decades, particularly the restructuring of state-owned enterprises, have inevitably marginalized state workers - the 'masters of socialist China'. Workers in private and non-state sectors might have benefited from the economic reforms but state workers of most state-owned enterprises feel bitterly left behind. The aim of this article is to examine the perception of state workers of the causes of organizational difficulties, their worries in face of redundancy and their coping strategies. Observations made in this study are based on field interviews and questionnaire survey of 649 state workers in Beijing, Shenyang and Zhejiang from 1996 to 1999.     

The impact of changes to the human resources function in Australia

With the rapid development of information technology (IT) in the late twentieth century, a 'real-time' global economy is now taking shape. The social costs of being networked in the global economy vary across nations and regions. Some report job losses and fragmented working conditions, and in general social structure is endangered. The idea of maintaining a nation's social safety net and the traditional concept of the welfare state is now challenged. In this article, we deal with three issues. First, we point out that new social risks are formed by the structural change in the labour market. Second, the interaction of the nation-state and global economy is addressed; in facing new social risks, we argue, the role of nation-state is still important. However, the traditional paradigm of the welfare state needs to be re-conceptualized. Third, with the expanding view of the welfare state, this paper examines the developments of constructive welfare policies and discusses the social transformation processes in Singapore, especially in the face of the new social risks caused by globalization.     

The State in employment: the case of Malaysian electronics

In some discourse concerning the employment system it is often implied that there has been a shift within the power relations between the main actors - State, capital and labour. Capital is now taken as omni-powerful and proactive, while the State and labour have declined and are reactive. Yet this picture is too universalistic, deterministic, static and simplistic. It ignores the shifting positions and divisions within and between these actors and the crucial role of factors such as ethnicity. This paper redresses the balance in this area by detailing an example - Malaysian electronics - where these interactions, at both macro- and micro-levels, can be seen in action.     

RESEARCH ON THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY: STATE OF THE ART AND NEW DIRECTIONS OFF THE BEATEN TRACK AWAY FROM THEATRICAL RELEASE

The motion picture industry has been subject of extensive academic research over the last decades. However, most scholars focused on the U.S. theatrical motion picture market. The number of research activities regarding even more profitable release windows, such as home video or television, has been substantially lower. Although international distribution is essential for a motion picture project to break even, there has been little significant re-search on most other markets. This paper aims at summarizing the current state of research on the motion picture industry, particularly from marketing and management perspective, revealing research gaps, and proposing recommendations for future research endeavors. Therefore, a three-pillar scheme is developed to systemize previous findings: Research on intraorganizational decision making, contractual relationships between national stakeholders, and international market competition are differentiated. Since these insights are mainly derived from U.S. theatrical exhibition, they can hardly be applied to other markets and exhibition windows. Thus, potential research areas are identified to expand knowledge of posttheatrical and international markets.     

Regional unemployment disparities in China

China has larger regional unemployment disparities than any other economy of comparable size. The persistence of the unemployment disparity in China has prevented the aggregate unemployment rate from decreasing even when the country’s GDP was growing at 10 percent per year. Unemployment rates rose and unemployment disparities widened in other transition economies too, but what made China’s disparities wider than those in other transition economies is the existence of a large subsistence sector, where unemployment exists only in a disguised form. This study explains the wide unemployment disparity in China with the geographically uneven distribution of the three sectors: the state sector, which suffers from a steep rise of unemployment during transition; the capitalist sector, which absorbs labor from the subsistence sector and grows rapidly; and the subsistence sector, which supplies its redundant labor to the capitalist sector. The study also presents a case study of Fuxin City, which has experienced an extremely high unemployment rate due to the reform of its main industry. Fuxin’s case is presented as a microcosm of the problems that give rise to unemployment disparities, such as massive layoffs in the state sector, lack of labor mobility in the unemployment-stricken regions, and inadequate development of the capitalist sector.     

Daily news sentiment and monthly surveys: A mixed-frequency dynamic factor model for nowcasting consumer confidence

Policymakers, firms, and investors closely monitor traditional survey-based consumer confidence indicators and treat them as an important piece of economic information. To obtain a daily nowcast of monthly consumer confidence, we introduce a latent factor model for the vector of monthly survey-based consumer confidence and daily sentiment embedded in economic media news articles. The proposed mixed-frequency dynamic factor model uses a Toeplitz correlation matrix to account for the serial correlation in the high-frequency sentiment measurement errors. We find significant accuracy gains in nowcasting survey-based Belgian consumer confidence with economic media news sentiment.     

后金融危机时代国家主权债务危机的负面影响与反思

迪拜主权债务危机的出现,拉开了国家主权债务危机的序幕,此后不久希腊爆发的国家主权债务危机,更加深了世界对美国可能的国家主权债务危机的深深忧虑。迪拜债务危机的负面影响,造成了国家信用的下降,全球股市震荡,影响到国际银行业,延缓了世界经济复苏。为此,需警惕国际经济与政策对资产价格与房地产价格的冲击。经济增长不能脱离实体经济,经济建设需量力而行,外债规模需考虑自身的需要与可偿还能力,房地产市场的健康发展对经济的发展至关重要。迪拜债务危机对我国的警示应引起足够重视。     

Governmental Control of Externalities,or the Prey Eats the Predator

This paper argues that Gunnar Myrdal's theory of the state fruitfully elucidates which set of factors contributed to the transformation of the Welfare State into what James K. Galbraith has described as the modern Predator State. Myrdal employs the circular cumulative causation hypothesis (Berger forthcoming; 2008; Berger and Eisner 2007) to explain the evolution of the state as the result of multiple interrelated factors. Myrdal's evolutionary-institutional analysis of the state is found to be compatible with Galbraith's (2008) recent Veblenian approach in that it highlights the role of corruption (pecuniary considerations) in the relationship between big business (the "organized sector") and government.