Exchange Rate Pass‐through and Currency Invoicing: Implications for Monetary Integration in East Asia

Exporter's price‐setting behaviour and currency invoicing play a key role in the literature on the new open‐economy macroeconomics. This paper estimates exchange rate pass‐through coefficients for the exports of four ASEAN countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. In addition, previous estimates of pass‐through as well as invoicing behaviour in East Asia are discussed in the context of regional integration. The new pass‐through coefficients are estimated under two alternate specifications for up to 34 goods for each of the four ASEAN countries destined for up to 13 major markets. The results suggest: (a) little pass‐through is occurring in Southeast Asia and (b) this lack of pass‐through is more likely attributable to the fact that they are small countries in a relatively integrated market, rather than evidence of pricing to market. The implications for regional monetary integration of this apparently low degree of pass‐through are detailed.     

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.     

Determinants of restaurant's owners/managers selection of wines to be offered on the wine list

The aim of the paper is to better understand wine list design in restaurants in four countries with very different wine cultures. An interview protocol was developed and administered to 286 restaurants across the four countries (France, Australia, USA and China). The interview questionnaire included a Best/Worst methodology to identify the most/least important factors influencing the restaurant's owner/manager's selection of wine for the wine list. One of the most important reasons for selecting wine across most countries is ‘to match wine with the food menu’. There were few major differences between countries, but a latent class analysis found four clusters that differed significantly with membership also differing between countries. The cluster analysis also indicated that while some restaurateurs are more brand-driven, others value local wine or its matching with the food menu.     

From voice to choice: lessons from a regional capacity development initiative to strengthen social and gender analysis in participatory natural resource management research

Doing practical biodiversity and natural resources management research that is socially and gender sensitive remains a challenge. Most of the relevant literature is primarily at the conceptual level. There are few learning programmes that focus on systematic capacity development for gender and social analysis in applied research in this field. Efforts that systematically document and analyse this kind of capacity development process are also hard to find. This paper summarizes the main research and capacity development achievements and challenges of a novel, Asian-regional initiative that aimed to address these gaps. It is suggested that the success of capacity-building strategies for the integration of social and gender analysis can be enhanced by combining a mix of elements, including a ‘learning by doing’ approach, participatory (action) research methodologies, a diverse group of participants, regular peer review, flexible networking and strong personal and organizational commitment. These kinds of strategies will require a long(er) time horizon and sufficient resources.     

法规遵循

CIMA资助的一项研究显示，英国企业遵守法规所承受的日益繁重的负担正在影响它们在全球经济中的竞争力[编者按]     

drupa2008新趋势

和往届一样,drupa2008即将举办,drupa包括了工作流程,通过胶版印刷和数码印刷方式进行的网络到打印服务器,包装产品和印后加工等各种主题。聪明的商家会选择在drupa的同时发布他们的主要产品．毫无疑问这将是“了解所有”以及为自己的商业计划搜集重要情报的最佳时机。然而．即使你将两周漫长时间中的每一个小时都用在德国杜塞尔多夫的众多展厅中．