The α-stable processes and their relationship with the exponent of self-similarity: Exchange rates of USA Dollar,Canadian Dollar,Euro and Yen

This research work analyzes the yields of the exchange rate parities of the American dollar, Canadian dollar, Euro, and Yen; estimates the basic statistics and the α-stables; carries out the Kolmogorov–Smirnov, Anderson–Darling, and Lilliefors goodness of fit tests; estimates the self-similar exponents and carries out the t and F tests, ruling out that the series of parities are multifractal. It also estimates the confidence intervals of the exchange rate parities and concludes that the estimated α-stable distributions are more efficient than the Gaussian distribution to quantify the risks of the market, and that the series are self-similar. Through the ? index, we can infer the risk of the events, indicating that the parities are anti-persistent and thus have short-term memory, mean reversion, and a negative correlation with the high risk in the short and medium term. The estimation and validation of the α-stable distributions and the self-similar exponent are important in the evaluation and creation of innovative investment instruments through financial engineering, risk administration, and the evaluation of derived products.     

Remittance,Institutions and Investment Volatility Interactions: An Intercontinental Analysis

Generating massive investment for growth and development has been one of the main policy goals of most economies around the globe. Countries, most especially developing ones, are highly susceptible to investment volatility owing largely to the fragile nature of their economies as well as weaknesses in terms of dysfunctional institutions. Therefore, sound economic management suggests the need to better understand possible sources for mitigating the adverse effects of investment volatility. Remittances have been identified as important capital flows which do a good job of dousing macroeconomic volatilities. It is on this basis that the study sought to uncover the causal relationship between remittances and investment volatility via the intermediating role of institutions. Using a panel of 70 countries and the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator, three insightful outcomes come to the fore. First, remittances played countercyclical roles across the estimated regressions. Second, institutional quality had no significant role in mitigating investment volatility and lastly, the interactive terms of both remittances and institutions significantly mitigated the negative impacts of investment volatility with the exception of the political component of the institutional architecture. Policy suggestions are drawn based on our results.     

Climatic Factors as Determinants of International Migration

We examine natural disasters and long‐run climatic factors as potential determinants of international migration, implementing a panel dataset of bilateral migration flows from 1960 to 2000. We find no direct effect of long‐run climatic factors on international migration across our entire sample. These results are robust when conditioning on origin‐country characteristics, when considering migrants returning home, and when accounting for the potential endogeneity of migrant networks. Rather, we find evidence of indirect effects of environmental factors operating through wages. We find that epidemics and miscellaneous incidents spur international migration, and there is strong evidence that natural disasters beget greater flows of migrants to urban environs.     

Sex,Race, and Job Satisfaction Among Highly Educated Workers

There has been a considerable amount of work focusing on job satisfaction and sex, generally finding that women are more satisfied than men despite having objectively worse job conditions. But there is little evidence on whether job satisfaction differs by race or ethnicity. We use data from the 2010 National Survey of College Graduates to examine the relation between job satisfaction and race and ethnicity among Asian, black, Hispanic/Latino, and white workers. Overall job satisfaction does not differ by sex among college graduates. Relative to white workers of the same sex, Asian and black workers are far less satisfied. The lower satisfaction of Asian and black workers relative to white workers is not explained by immigrant status, job match, or other individual or job characteristics.     

Economies of Desire: Sexuality and the Sex Industry in the 21st Century

New data from sex surveys confirm that demand for commercial sex is based on permanent disparities between male and female desire, and is therefore ineradicable. Demand and supply are growing, facilitated by economic growth, the Internet, globalisation and changing sexual attitudes. A key objection to the sex industry is that pornography, lap dancing and prostitution promote rape and other kinds of violence against women. However, the evidence contradicts this contention. The commercial sex industry is impervious to prohibitions and cannot be eliminated. Laws which constrain sellers of sexual services or criminalise purchasers are not evidence‐based, and are bound to fail, wasting public resources.     

Too small to be independent? On the influence of ECB monetary policy on interest rates of the EEA countries

Monetary policy independence is regarded as the central argument in favour of floating exchange rates and monetary integration. We evaluate the actual independence of non-euro members of the European Economic Area by using heterogeneous panel cointegration methods that allow cross-dependency. We show that domestic interest rates follow the euro interest rates. These spillovers imply a low monetary independence despite the insulation given by floating exchange rate regimes and inflation-targeting frameworks. We therefore find significant spillover effects of the European Central Bank policy and argue that the costs of monetary integration in Europe may be lower than expected.     

Multilateral trade liberalisation helps promote export product diversification: Trade tensions damage the prospects of the poorest economies

Using a large panel dataset over a 20‐year period, this article explores the effect of multilateral trade liberalisation on export product diversification. Empirical results show that multilateral trade liberalisation is positively associated with export product diversification. However, less‐developed economies experience a greater positive effect than relatively advanced economies. This analysis suggests that if trade tensions reduce cooperation on trade matters among World Trade Organization members, it may hinder export product diversification in developing countries, and the poorest countries might be the most adversely affected.     

World Human Development: 1870–2007

How has wellbeing evolved over time and across regions? How does the West compare to the Rest? What explains their differences? These questions are addressed using a historical index of human development. A sustained improvement in world wellbeing has taken place since 1870. The absolute gap between OECD and the Rest widened over time, but an incomplete catching up—largely explained by education—occurred between 1913 and 1970. As the health transition was achieved in the Rest, the contribution of life expectancy to human development improvement declined and the Rest fell behind in terms of longevity. Meanwhile, in the OECD, as longevity increased, healthy years expanded. A large variance in human development is noticeable in the Rest since 1970, with East Asia, Latin America, and North Africa catching up to the OECD, and Central and Eastern Europe and Sub‐Saharan Africa falling behind.     

Parallel trade,product quality,and welfare

We study the welfare effects of parallel trade (PT) considering investment in quality. We thus revisit the case for PT in research-intensive industries. We find that PT may raise quality, depending on how preferences for quality differ across countries. Conditional on quality, consumer surplus may rise (fall) in the PT-source (PT-recipient) country. While PT reduces ex post welfare, improving quality is a necessary condition for PT to increase welfare ex ante.     

International capital flows under dispersed private information

It is well established that private information is critical to our understanding of asset prices. In this paper we argue that it also affects international capital flows and use a simple two-country DSGE model to illustrate its impact. We show that private information (i) increases the volatility of both net and gross capital flows, (ii) leads to a high correlation between capital inflows and outflows, (iii) leads to a disconnect of capital flows from observed macro fundamentals and (iv) implies that capital flows contain information about the future macro fundamentals. We also show that dispersed information affects capital flows both through asset prices and directly, so that the impact on flows is not just the mirror image of the impact on prices.