Corporate governance in family firms,learning and reaction to recession: Evidence from Italy

This paper focuses on the interaction between internal and external factors explaining performance of small and medium-sized family firms. We used framework foresight to suggest how learning and internal factors such as CEO’s origin, tenure and turnover, could affect the firm’s reactions to one particular external factor, economic recession. The paper draws on empirical observations of a large sample of small and medium family firms operating in Italy between 2002 and 2011 to identify the baseline future, an expected future for these firms. This analysis may be of interest to both management scholars and practitioners. We hope to contribute to the debate on how internal and external factors interact to affect firm success, measured as sales growth. The implications for the future viability of an economic system based on family businesses are straightforward, as the turbulence and instability of the economic environment has grown significantly in the last decade, especially in more developed countries. Whether the ability of a company to adapt and survive to negative shocks depends on its governance provides a rationale for exploring alternative perspectives on the competitiveness of the economic system and the ability of different owners to cope with future negative events.     

台湾资产不景气时期物价变动之计量分析

在1990-2002年中国台湾经济处于资产不景气时期,消费者物价呈温和上扬走势。为探讨在这段时期物价的走势与决定因素,本文以物价水准的计量分析,从成本面与需求面上找出最适的解释变权。并对于物价水平有较密切关系的变数,进行pearson相关系数分析,而后进行回归分析以便了解变数间的相关程度。总之,在这段分析期间,消费者物价变动的决定因素与趸售物价不尽相同。进口物价的变动直接冲击着趸售物价,然后再经由趸售物价而传递到消费者物价的变动上,此时,预期心理的因素仍扮演较重的角色。     

Using newspapers for tracking the business cycle: a comparative study for Germany and Switzerland

The use of news-based data for tracking the real economy has gained popularity recently as newspapers archives have become accessible and the need for timely information has soared. In this article, on the basis of keyword searches in newspaper articles we construct several versions of the so-called Recession-word Index (RWI) for Germany and Switzerland and exploit its use for forecasting. Our main findings are the following. First, we show that augmenting benchmark autoregressive models with the RWI leads to improvement in accuracy of one-step-ahead forecasts of GDP growth compared with those obtained by benchmark models. Second, the accuracy of out-of-sample forecasts obtained with models augmented with the RWI is comparable to that of models augmented with established economic indicators, such as the Ifo Business Climate Index and the ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment for Germany, and the KOF Economic Barometer and the Purchasing Managers Index in manufacturing for Switzerland. Our results are robust to changes in estimation/forecast samples, the use of rolling versus expanding estimation windows and the inclusion of a web-based recession indicator from Google Trends. As our indices are timely and simple to construct, they could be replicated in countries or regions where no reliable economic indicators exist or their provision is very costly.     

The Effectiveness of Fiscal Policy Over the Business Cycle: A CEE Perspective

In this article we analyze the effectiveness of fiscal policy—for a group of four Central and Eastern European countries. The recent literature shows that fiscal multipliers in the developed economies are higher during recession than expansion. So far, similar empirical analyses have been lacking for CEE countries. The results presented in this article show that fiscal multipliers in CEE countries differ with respect to the phase of the business cycle. Based on the SVAR methodology in which we allow for deterministic regime switching, we show that the government spending multipliers are significantly higher when the output gap is negative.     

G-3经济“L型”衰退,中国经济“V型”调整

2008年9月以来,随着雷曼兄弟的破产及此后一连串重大金融机构事件的发生,美国次贷危机急剧恶化,并迅速演变为全球性金融危机。各国政府,特别是美国政府采取了一系列紧急救市行动,由于这些政策措施只是暂时稳定了市场信心,未能解决引发危机的根本性问题,因此全球金融危机仍在继续发展,金融市场仍将巨幅波动。金融危机进一步冲击了实体经济增长。基于此次危机的特殊性和严重性,我们认为G-3(美、欧、日,下同)经济体将会陷入"L型"衰退。尽管中国金融体系受到金融危机的直接影响较小,但是危机却通过出口和投资等间接渠道对中国实体经济产生了较大影响。随着中国政府及时出台系列重大应对措施,中国经济有望走出与G-3经济体不同的"V型"调整轨迹。     

The rise in student loan defaults

We examine the rise in student loan defaults in the Great Recession by linking administrative student loan data at the individual borrower level to student loan borrowers’ individual tax records. A Blinder-Oaxaca style decomposition shows that shifts in the composition of student loan borrowers and the massive collapse in home prices during the Great Recession can each account for approximately 30% of the rise in student loan defaults. Falling home prices affect student loan defaults by impairing individuals’ labor earnings, especially for low income jobs. By contrast, when comparing the default sensitivities of homeowners and renters, we find no evidence that falling home prices affect student loan defaults through a home equity-based liquidity channel. The Income Based Repayment (IBR) program introduced by the federal government in the wake of the Great Recession reduced both student loan defaults and their sensitivity to home price fluctuations, thus providing student loan borrowers with valuable insurance against negative shocks.     

我国物流产业的形势和对策浅析

在对物流行业的经济属性的分析基础上．探讨了国际金融危机及实体经济衰退对于物流行业的影响机制．认为金融危机和实体经济衰退既直接冲击了物流产业．更通过衰退的需求在长期内严重影响物流产业的发展。然后分析了中际物流行业的现状。并在此基础上结合国务院《物流业调整和振兴规划》的相关内容,提出在当前背景下我国物流行业的应对策略和建议。     

Out of Recession?

Britain is emerging uncertainly from recession. This essay looks at the character of the recession, the financial crisis that inaugurated it and the key issues that will dominate the recovery phase. In particular, it argues that the underlying and deeply entrenched political conditions which underpinned the crisis, notably bi-partisan encouragement of a ‘property-owning democracy’, show no signs of abating. Without such a change, a recurrence of the crisis appears highly likely.     

Editor's Feature

This study makes a number of observations about the way in which the current crisis in particular, but economic crises more generally, are reported upon by the media. Considering terminology used to describe the financial crisis of 2007/2008 by employing a dataset of 956 articles from The Economist, we study what terms are used, why, and how they evolve. We consider how the frequency of negative emotional terms and the frequency of negative economic terms increase from the period of no-crisis to the period of the crisis. Increasing incidence lowers levels of consumer confidence. We predict that as the crisis evolves the nature of the terminology used to describe it will change, and that the present crisis will receive a special name, like the "Great Depression" of the 1930s. We explore a number of possibilities, and conclude that the preferred name will be the "Credit Crunch."