Migration,Ethnicity and Solidarity: ‘Multinational Workers’ in the Former Soviet Union

We investigate migrant construction workers’ experiences in the Former Soviet Union, examining their attitudes to other ethno-national groups, unions and collective action. Industrial relations and migration studies view migrant workers’ hypermobility and diversity, under conditions of low union coverage and rising nationalism, as potentially obstructing consciousness-raising and mobilizing. Workers in our study faced union indifference, ethno-national segregation and discrimination. However, managerial abuses, informality and contestation from below led to spontaneous mobilization. Lack of institutional channels to solve these disputes drove workers’ further mobility. Complex mobility trajectories and collective action translated into increased awareness of collective interests and rejection of nationalist ideologies. The outcome is ‘multinational workers’ potentially resistant to nation-state politics and capital's logics but also aware of the value and usefulness of collective solidarities. Thus, previous arguments solely associating exit with individualistic attitudes, and post-socialist legacies with workers’ quiescence present only partial pictures.     

Protection for sale with imperfect rent capturing

Abstract .  Grossman and Helpman (1994) explain tariffs as the outcome of a lobbying process. In most empirical implementations of this framework protection is instead measured using non-tariff barriers. Since tariffs allow the government to fully capture the rents from protection, while non-tariff barriers do not, the existing parameter estimates of the protection for sale model are likely to be biased. To address this problem, we augment the framework by considering instruments that allow partial capturing. Our specification is supported by the data, where we find that only 72–75% of the rent from protection is appropriated by the government.     

The notion of equilibrium in economic theorizing

Presidential Address at the Thirty-First International Atlantic Economic Conference, March 15–22, 1991, Rome.     

Challenges in approximating the Black and Scholes call formula with hyperbolic tangents

Decisions in Economics and Finance - In this paper, we introduce the concept of standardized call function and we obtain a new approximating formula for the Black and Scholes call function through...     

Killing off cohorts: Forecasting mortality of non-extinct cohorts with the penalized composite link model

Mortality forecasting has crucial implications for insurance and pension policies. A large amount of literature has proposed models to forecast mortality using cross-sectional (period) data instead of longitudinal (cohort) data. As a consequence, decisions are generally based on period life tables and summary measures such as period life expectancy, which reflect hypothetical mortality rather than the mortality actually experienced by a cohort. This study introduces a novel method to forecast cohort mortality and the cohort life expectancy of non-extinct cohorts. The intent is to complete the mortality profile of cohorts born up to 1960. The proposed method is based on the penalized composite link model for ungrouping data. The performance of the method is investigated using cohort mortality data retrieved from the Human Mortality Database for England & Wales, Sweden, and Switzerland for male and female populations.     

Multi-stage real option evaluation with double barrier under stochastic volatility and interest rate

Annals of Finance - This paper focuses on valuing R&D projects using a twofold compound real option by including two knock-out barriers. However, the valuation of R&D projects is...     

Financial instability and the real economy

Summary The paper deals with three different areas of the financial sphere: national moneys, exchange rates and financial claims, markets and institutions. For each of them, it tries to identify the main forms of instability which may occur, their causes and consequences for the real economy. Depending on the area concerned, the forms of instability include inflation, fluctuations and misalignments in interest rates, exchange rates and asset prices and finally solvency and liquidity crises of institutions. It is concluded that, over the last fifteen years, significant progress has been made in the policy framework to counteract instabilities in the national and monetary spheres. The conclusion is more mixed with regard to the structure of financial markets.[/p]We are grateful to Julian Alworth, Svein Andresen, Gavin Bingham, Joe Bisignano, Michael Hutchison and Paul van den Bergh for useful comments.     

Towards a Macroprudential Framework for Financial Supervision and Regulation?

Over the last decade or so, addressing financial instabilityhas risen to the top of the policy agenda. This essay arguesthat in order to improve the safeguards against financial instability,it may be desirable to strengthen further the macroprudentialorientation of current prudential frameworks, a process thatis already under way. The essay defines, compares and contraststhe macro- and microprudential dimensions that inevitably coexistin financial regulatory and supervisory arrangements, examinesthe nature of financial instability against this backgroundand draws conclusions about the broad outline of desirable policyefforts.(JEL G2) "Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within" Alfred Lord Tennyson "When I use a word... it just means what I choose it to mean– neither more, nor less" Humpty Dumpty