Are Temporary Help Agencies changing mobility patterns in the Spanish labour market?

This paper examines to what extent the intermediation of Temporary Help Agencies affects workers transitions into and out of employment in the Spanish youth labour market throughout the 1990s. The results obtained show that this type of intermediation presents a positive impact on the likelihood of leaving unemployment, although only for short-term unemployed individuals; at the same time, however, the employment hazard rate is substantially higher for agency workers. We also find that employment hazard rates were substantially affected in the 1990s by the extensive use of fixed-term contracts, although the 1997 labour market reform is found to slightly reduce this hazard rate. Finally, very young workers, women and those with low qualification levels are more likely to be affected by high labour turnover.JEL Classification: J24, J62This work has benefited from financial support by CICYT SEC2002-04471 and SEC 2003-C4028. We would like to express our gratitude to the Spanish Ministry of Labour for providing the database for this research, and to the seminar participants at IV Jornadas de Economía Laboral (Valencia), XXVI Simposio de Análisis Económico (Alicante), U. Santiago, U. Toulouse, U. Pompeu Fabra, the Workshop on Job Stability and Security in European Labor Markets (IZA, Bonn) and the XIV EALE Conference (Paris) for valuable suggestions. The comments from the editor and one referee were very useful to improve the final version of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Task Conflict and Employee Creativity: The Critical Roles of Learning Orientation and Goal Congruence

We add to human resource literature by investigating how the contribution of task conflict to employee creativity depends on employees’ learning orientation and their goal congruence with organizational peers. We postulate a positive relationship between task conflict and employee creativity and predict that this relationship is augmented by learning orientation but attenuated by goal congruence. We also argue that the mitigating effect of goal congruence is more salient among employees who exhibit a low learning orientation. Our results, captured from employees and their supervisors in a large, Mexican‐based organization, confirm these hypotheses. The findings have important implications for human resource managers who seek to foster creativity among employees. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

中国规制政府的崛起:一个供给主导型制度变迁过程

中国的规制政府是在经济转型过程中崛起的。这一特殊历史背景使得关于规制的公共利益理论、公共选择理论、新比较经济学和制度移植论对其崛起逻辑的解释都值得商榷。事实上,中国的规制政府是中央政府考虑不同利益集团约束和外部竞争压力前提下,根据自己的信念和认知能力,对原有治理制度进行边际改进的一个供给主导型过程。该过程的路径依赖特征既是引发规制失灵的根本原因,也为提高规制效率提供了改革思路。     

An endogenous growth model for the evolution of water rights systems

This article presents a model to help explain the transition path from one water management system to another, typically a commons framework to one of tradable permit‐based property rights. Furthermore, drawing from transaction cost literature, the model demonstrates how this takes place when externalities (the strain on water resources) become severe enough to warrant the increased transaction costs inherent with more complex water rights management frameworks.     

低碳经济模式下的西部地区低碳产业发展研究——基于路径依赖理论视角

路径依赖理论是近些年来制度经济学研究范式中广为流传的理论。遵循这一理论,以重庆为例对西部地区工业产业的发展路径进行了系统的梳理,深入揭示西部地区发展低碳经济的主要障碍,并对破除路径依赖,进一步发展低碳产业提出了基本研究思路。     

PREDICTING STOCK RETURNS AND VOLATILITY WITH INVESTOR SENTIMENT INDICES: A RECONSIDERATION USING A NONPARAMETRIC CAUSALITY‐IN‐QUANTILES TEST

Evidence of monthly stock returns predictability based on popular investor sentiment indices, namely S^BW and S^PLS as introduced by Baker and Wurgler (2006, 2007) and Huang et al. (2015) respectively are mixed. While, linear predictive models show that only S^PLS can predict excess stock returns, nonparametric models (which accounts for misspecification of the linear frameworks due to nonlinearity and regime changes) finds no evidence of predictability based on either of these two indices for not only stock returns, but also its volatility. However, in this paper, we show that when we use a more general nonparametric causality‐in‐quantiles model of Balcilar et al., (forthcoming), in fact, both S^BW and S^PLS can predict stock returns and its volatility, with S^PLS being a relatively stronger predictor of excess returns during bear and bull regimes, and S^BW being a relatively powerful predictor of volatility of excess stock returns, barring the median of the conditional distribution.     

Directional time-varying partial correlation with the Gaussian copula–DCC–GARCH model

This article suggests a directional time-varying partial correlation based on the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) method. A recent study proposed the copula DCC based on the vine structure. Due to the arbitrary variable selection, their method can produce unnecessary dependence in the multivariate structure, with extra economic and computational burdens. To overcome this limitation, we incorporate directional dependence by copula to track the causal relationship among multiple variables and then extend the copula bivariate DCC method to a directional time varying partial correlation in the multivariate structure. Our proposed method provides a reasonable and efficient conditional dependence structure, without the trial and error process. We offer an application of our method to the U.S. stock market as an illustrated example.     

Think national,forecast local: a case study of 71 German urban housing markets

In this article, we examine whether the local indicators are able to predict the city-level housing prices and rents better than national indicators. For this purpose, we assess the forecasting ability of 126 indicators and 21 types of forecast combinations using a sample of 71 large German cities. There are several predictors that are especially useful, namely price-to-rent ratios, national-level business confidence, and consumer surveys. We also find that combinations of individual forecasts are among the top forecasting models. On average, the forecast improvements attain about 20%, measured by a reduction in root mean square error, compared to the naive models.     

Spatial dependence in microfinance credit default

Credit scoring model development is very important for the lending decisions of financial institutions. The creditworthiness of borrowers is evaluated by assessing their hard and soft information. However, microfinance borrowers are very sensitive to a local economic downturn and extreme (weather or climate) events. Therefore, this paper is devoted to extending the standard credit scoring models by taking into account the spatial dependence in credit risk. We estimate a credit scoring model with spatial random effects using the distance matrix based on the borrowers’ locations. We find that including the spatial random effects improves the ability to predict defaults and non-defaults of both individual and group loans. Furthermore, we find that several loan characteristics and demographic information are important determinants of individual loan default but not group loans. Our study provides valuable insights for professionals and academics in credit scoring for microfinance and rural finance.     

发展模式变迁的路径依赖及其创新选择

可持续发展观念提出已二十多年,但环境仍在恶化,贫富差距在继续拉大,发展模式仍没有大的改观,我们似乎在传统发展模式的泥潭中越陷越深。分析其深层次原因,主要是在于形成了传统发展模式的路径依赖。本文从发展模式变迁的路径依赖着手,分析了传统发展模式向可持续发展模式转变过程中形成路径依赖的原因,并提出了发展模式的创新对策。