The new exchange rate policy in the Asian emerging economies – goodbye trouble,hello comfort?

In this paper, we discuss new aspects of exchange rate policy that can be observed in the Asian emerging economies. In the first place, we show the alternative regimes they may choose and their respective pros and cons. Secondly, we concentrate on the recent strategy of systematic undervaluation of one's currency – figuring prominently among ‘big’ Asian players such as China and India – and the most likely implications of such a strategy for domestic allocation, distribution and stabilization goals. With the background of Germany's experiences in 1969, almost on the eve of the Bretton Woods' system collapse, we model a speculative attack on an undervalued currency in the vein of the Flood–Garber seminal paper from 1984. Now, however, the country in concern (just like India and China) possesses strong rather than weak fundamentals. The continuous accumulation of international reserves, in addition, leads to the question of an ‘optimal management’ of foreign exchange reserves in Asian emerging economies with regard to size and composition. We finally propose a sequence of reforms/policies that should be implemented in those Asian emerging economies on their still long journey to a regime featured by autonomous monetary policy, flexible exchange rate and capital mobility. A brief summary and an outlook for future research close the paper.     

Malaysia's Response to the Asian Financial Crisis

Summary

Tourism is a fragile industry and the damage caused by a crisis may have serious implications for a national economy. Crisis management is the means by which the impact of a crisis may be minimised and recovery assisted. This paper analyses the Malaysian response to the Asian financial crisis in the context of tourism and considers whether there is the potential for crisis management at a sectoral level, and if so how it should be developed and implemented. It concludes that although both the public and private sector recognise the need for such a measure, issues such as funding and the identification of appropriate indicators need to be resolved.     

When an NGO Takes on Public Participation: Preparing a Plan for a Neighborhood in East Jerusalem

It is often non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) that promote empowered participation processes, and assume active roles in leading them. However, the ability of NGOs to take on such processes is under‐theorized. In many cases empowered participation involving NGOs takes place without political support from above (or with limited or conditional support). Our goal in this article is to use a case study of participatory planning in East Jerusalem to theorize processes of empowerment in an oppositional political environment. We argue that it is useful to analyze such processes of empowered participation through the concept of power. We describe the process of empowerment as a speculative process in which the NGO has to hedge two mediums of power: it has to build the power of the community to discuss its own goals; and it has to simultaneously manage the transfer of decision‐making power from government bodies to the community.     

The impact of SARS on China's human resources: implications for the labour market and level of unemployment in the service sector in Beijing,Guangzhou and Shanghai

In this paper, we examine the effects of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) on China's human resources, its labour-market and its level of employment and unemployment, looking specifically at what was one of its economically most vulnerable points, the hotel industry. The paper hypothesizes that the greatest impact would be on human resources in the service-industries and on particular sub-sectors, such as employment in hotels, located in three main cities in the PRC, in Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, catering to both overseas as well as domestic tourism. It tentatively concludes that the almost dramatic demand and supply ‘shocks’ may have directly affected both the demand for and the supply of labour in the sub-sector, with discernable employment consequences.     

BLACK–SCHOLES REPRESENTATION FOR ASIAN OPTIONS

Asian options are securities with a payoff that depends on the average of the underlying stock price over a certain time interval. We identify three natural assets that appear in pricing of the Asian options, namely a stock S, a zero coupon bond B^T with maturity T, and an abstract asset A (an “average asset”) that pays off a weighted average of the stock price number of units of a dollar at time T. It turns out that each of these assets has its own martingale measure, allowing us to obtain Black–Scholes type formulas for the fixed strike and the floating strike Asian options. The model independent formulas are analogous to the Black–Scholes formula for the plain vanilla options; they are expressed in terms of probabilities under the corresponding martingale measures that the Asian option will end up in the money. Computation of these probabilities is relevant for hedging. In contrast to the plain vanilla options, the probabilities for the Asian options do not admit a simple closed form solution. However, we show that it is possible to obtain the numerical values in the geometric Brownian motion model efficiently, either by solving a partial differential equation numerically, or by computing the Laplace transform. Models with stochastic volatility or pure jump models can be also priced within the Black–Scholes framework for the Asian options.     

ASYMPTOTIC BEHAVIOR OF DISTRIBUTION DENSITIES IN MODELS WITH STOCHASTIC VOLATILITY. I

We study the asymptotic behavior of distribution densities arising in stock price models with stochastic volatility. The main objects of our interest in the present paper are the density of time averages of a geometric Brownian motion and the density of the stock price process in the Hull–White model. We find explicit formulas for leading terms in asymptotic expansions of these densities and give error estimates. As an application of our results, sharp asymptotic formulas for the price of an Asian option are obtained.     

SWOT分析法研究济南市商品出口中亚市场的潜力及物流成本最小的路径选择

通过分析济南市商品和中亚市场的互补性,找出济南市商品在中亚市场比较有发展潜力的商品,运用SWOT分析法对中亚市场进行潜在分析发现了中亚市场的潜在市场,通过调查发现中亚国家将对其电网改造的相关产品的需求会增加。运用比较的方法确定了济南市出口商品运输到中亚市场的物流成本最小的路经。在新疆办厂再出口到中亚国家也是一个较佳的选择。     

新疆与中亚五国经济贸易发展研究

中国新疆与中亚五国的对外经济贸易对于加强国际经济合作,促进边疆地区的经济和社会发展,以及推动新疆跨越式发展均有重要意义。本文对2002-2011年中国新疆与中亚五国对外贸易情况进行了实证分析,揭示新疆与中亚五国经济贸易发展中需要关注的问题:贸易发展不平衡,质量和效益不高;俄白哈关税同盟带来挑战;边境贸易占主导,加工贸易较薄弱;贸易结算方式亟待改进。对于这些问题,本文提出了相关建议,以推动新疆外贸发展。     

Call for papers: Special Issue of International Journal of HRM

Though women remain under-represented among expatriate managers due to a range of organisational and cultural barriers in selection and individual relocation concerns, they have begun to pursue alternative routes towards a global career such as frequent travel and undertaking domestic positions with international development and community development responsibilities. In this paper, we explore the perceptions that Middle Eastern and North American women have of traditional and new trajectories in global work and careers and conclude that increased flexibility allows women to pursue global development opportunities differently throughout their lifetime careers, permitting them to adapt to work–life circumstances. Thus, our research provides new insights into the nature and dynamic of the nature of women's global work and careers.