Exchange Rates and Monetary Policy

This paper looks at the relation between exchange rates and monetary policy. It focuses in particular on the role of the exchange rate of the euro in the context of the ECB's monetary policy strategy. The objective of monetary policy is to maintain price stability. The euro area is a large and relatively closed economy. Therefore, the exchange rate of the euro is not an intermediate target nor is it an objective. Nevertheless, the ECB's stability–oriented monetary policy strategy does not neglect the exchange rate of the euro. Clearly, exchange rate developments are taken into account both when looking at the transmission mechanism of monetary policy and when assessing the current economic situation and prospects for the euro area.     

Investors’ perspective on portfolio insurance

Portuguese Economic Journal - This study supports the use of behavioural finance to explain the popularity of portfolio insurance. Portfolio insurance strategies are important financial solutions...     

Consumers’ avoidance of information on red meat risks: information exposure effects on attitudes and perceived knowledge

In accordance with cognitive dissonance theory, individuals generally avoid information that is not consistent with their cognitions, to avoid psychological discomfort associated with tensions arising from contradictory beliefs. Information avoidance may thus make risk communication less successful. To address this, we presented information on red meat risks to red meat consumers. To explore information exposure effects, attitudes toward red meat and perceived knowledge of red meat risks were measured before, immediately after, and two weeks after exposure. We expected information avoidance of red meat risks to be: positively related to (1) study discontentment; and (2) positive attitudes toward red meat; and negatively related to (3) information seeking on red meat risks; and (4) systematic and heuristic processing of information. In addition, following exposure to the risk information, we expected that (5) individuals who scored high in avoidance of red meat risks information to change their attitudes and perceived risk knowledge less than individuals who scored low in avoidance. Results were in line with the first three expectations. Support for the fourth was partial insofar as this was only confirmed regarding systematic processing. The final prediction was not confirmed; individuals who scored high in avoidance decreased the positivity of their attitudes and increased their perceived knowledge in a similar fashion to those who scored low in avoidance. These changes stood over the two-week follow-up period. Results are discussed in accordance with cognitive dissonance theory, with the possible use of suppression strategies, and with the corresponding implications for risk communication practice.     

Immanuel Kant and Endogenous Growth Theory

Despite the modern origins of endogenous growth theory, we argue that the ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim’ written by Immanuel Kant in 1784 provides an early and coherent example of such a theory. Kant's endogenous growth mechanism is driven by the inherent rivalry that exists between agents which increases effort and strengthens the accumulation of knowledge, which in turn is carried through generations. In an exercise in ‘rational reconstruction’, we present a mathematical model of Kant's mechanism. We use the model to contribute to the contemporary policy debate as to whether ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ leads to excessive effort.     

Economic and environmental efficiency using a social accounting matrix

This paper aims to show the utility of the so-called Social Accounting Matrix and Environmental Accounts (SAMEA) for economic and environmental efficiency analysis. The article uses the SAMEA for Spain in 2000, applied to water resources and greenhouse gas emissions. This matrix is used as a central core of a multisectorial model of economic and environmental performance, and it calculates the denominated “domestics SAMEA multipliers” and their decomposition into characteristic, direct, indirect and induced effects. These multipliers show some evaluation of economic and environmental efficiency. Also, we present an application of these multipliers that demonstrates that there is no causal interrelation between those sectors with higher economic backward linkages and those with higher environmental deterioration backward linkages.     

Youth and the WFSF: a generational approach

This paper examines the role of generational change in the emergence and continuity of the WFSF, generational change as situated through macro-historical perspectives, generational value shifts and their implications for the WFSF, and asymmetries and potentialities revealed through youth futures literature. It argues that the development of the WFSF in the longer term will require a generational approach that incorporates greater youth and student participation.     

The Prestige disaster: risk or danger?

The sinking of the Prestige off the coast of Galicia in north-west Spain in November 2002 was an enormous environmental disaster and it had an immense media impact both nationally and internationally, lasting weeks as a social and political phenomenon. Five days before the ship sank, the captain had reported to the maritime authorities that the old tanker was damaged and in trouble. During these five days leading up to the shipwreck, a crucial decision had to be made: what should be done with this dangerous oil tanker? Temporality is a property of the hazardous events which, after being noticed, are evaluated as imminent or deferred. This temporality makes a clear difference between a risk and a danger. Whereas the risk has time to anticipate the events, danger has just a very short time or even has no time. At this point, the Prestige disaster turns to be paradigmatic. To tow away this damaged oil tanker was a risk decision which estimated that there was still a time to prevent its running aground what meant to follow the story repeatedly told by the narrative context of risk. However, the Prestige had been spilling out oil all the time and the damage was not a probability but a fait accompli. This accident has not a risk temporality; in fact, it had not temporality at all because it demanded an immediate intervention. My conclusion here is that this crisis was managed in terms of risk when it should have been treated as a danger situation.     

Paradoxical Relationships Between Cultural Norms of Particularism and Attitudes Toward Relational Favoritism: A Cultural Reflectivity Perspective

We examined how the cultural dimension of universalism–particularism influences managers’ attitudes toward relational favoritism (such as favoring friends or relatives in HR decisions). Paradoxically, we found in a survey study that Brazilian and Chinese managers perceived more negative consequences of relational favoritism than did American managers—even though the Brazilians and the Chinese perceived stronger particularistic cultural norms in their countries than Americans did in the United States. We attribute this pattern of results to “cultural reflexivity”—the ability of people from transforming economies to be culturally self-critical during a period of dramatic societal change. This pattern of results also emerged in a scenario study in which we asked these same Brazilian, Chinese, and American participants to assess managerial succession decisions made by a General Manager. We varied the scenarios so that the promoted manager was either a colleague with no pre-existing relation with the GM or a colleague who was a relative, a close friend, from the same town, or from the same school. Consistent with the results of the survey study, we found that perceived cultural norms of particularism were negatively related to perceptions of fairness. In other words, Brazilians and Chinese, even while living in more particularistic cultures, were more harsh in judging relational favoritism. We conclude with a discussion on the implications of these paradoxical relationships.     

Local ownership as private information: Evidence on the monitoring-liquidity trade-off

We investigate how ownership patterns affect the way the firm is monitored, the liquidity of its shares, and its stock price. We show that informed ownership improves governance and induces value-enhancing decisions (less over-investment and fewer but better acquisitions). At the same time, it increases the adverse selection discount required by less informed investors to trade, reducing the firm's liquidity. Both effects are impounded in the stock price. This explains why ownership seems to be unrelated to performance. Informed investors affect prices in opposite directions: monitoring would raise prices, but the lower liquidity induced by their presence would reduce them.