Assessment of Interjudge Reliability in the Open-Ended Questions Coding Process

In the process of coding open-ended questions, the evaluation of interjudge reliability is a critical issue. In this paper, using real data, the behavior of three coefficients of reliability among coders, Cohen’s K, Krippendorff’s α and Perreault and Leigh’s I _r are patterned, in terms of the number of judges involved and the categories of answer defined. The outcome underlines the importance of both variables in the valuations of interjudge reliability, as well as the higher adequacy of Perreault and Leigh’s I _r and Krippendorff’s α for marketing and opinion research.     

An Estimated Stochastic General Equilibrium Model with Partial Dollarization: A Bayesian Approach

In this paper, we develop and estimate a dynamic stochastic, general-equilibrium New Keynesian model with partial dollarization. Bayesian techniques and Peruvian data are used to evaluate two forms of dollarization: currency substitution (CS) and price dollarization (PD). The empirical results are as follow: first, it is noted that the two forms of partial dollarization are important in explaining the significance of the Peruvian data. Second, models with both forms of dollarization dominate models without dollarization. Third, a counterfactual exercise shows that by eliminating both forms of partial dollarization, the response of both output and consumption to a monetary policy shock doubles, making the interest rate channel of monetary policy more effective. Fourth, based on the variance decomposition of the preferred model (with CS and PD), it is found that demand type shocks explain almost all the fluctuation in CPI inflation, the monetary shock being the most important (39%). Remarkably, foreign disturbances account for 34% of the output fluctuations.     

Historical Significance of Labor’s Increased Precariousness in Germany,the United Kingdom,and Spain

This article addresses the historical significance of the increasing precariousness of labor, even in the most advanced economies. Given the sterility of the mainstream approach, based on methodological individualism, we start from a Marxist critique of political economy, focusing on the laws that govern the process of capitalist accumulation and its contradictions. Within the framework of these laws, we analyze the tendency of labor exploitation to increase in a capitalist economy, linked to the exigencies of profitability due to the increasing difficulties of the valorization of capital. The precariousness of labor is studied around some of the main forms it adopts in three European economies: mini‐jobs in Germany, “zero‐hours contracts” in the United Kingdom, and false self‐employment, together with internship and training contracts, in Spain. Based on theoretical and empirical analysis, several conclusions are proposed to understand the extension and deepening of labor precariousness, built on the notions of overexploitation and destruction of productive forces, linked to current demands of capitalist accumulation.     

Credit in Times of Stress: Lessons from Latin America during the Global Financial Crisis

The 2008–2009 global financial crisis disrupted the provision of credit in Latin America less than in previous crises. This paper tests whether specific characteristics at both the bank and country levels at the onset of the global crisis contributed to the behavior of real credit growth in this region during the crisis. As shown, financial soundness characteristics of Latin American banks, such as capitalization, liquidity, and bank efficiency in the pre‐crisis period, played a role in explaining the dynamics of real credit during the crisis. We also found that foreign banks and banks that had expanded credit growth more before the crisis were also those that cut credit the most. Among country‐specific characteristics, we found evidence that balance sheet measures such as the economy's overall currency mismatches and external debt ratios (measuring either total debt or short‐term debt) were key variables in explaining credit growth resilience.     

The Debate on Pension Systems: The Paradigmatic Cases of Chile and Spain

This article is focused on pension systems in the light of two case studies that are antagonistic within the capitalist economy. On the one hand, the Spanish pension scheme, based on the principle of intergenerational solidarity, was achieved by the working‐class after decades of struggle. It constitutes the backbone of the Spanish social security system, thanks to the creation and development of indirect and deferred wages. On the other hand, the Chilean pension scheme, first imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship, is based on a funded system and private management. It rejects the principle of solidarity and, therefore, it makes impossible the construction of a decent pension structure. The comparison of the Spanish and the Chilean pension systems can be expressed in just one revealing fact: while the average pension in Spain is 79 percent of the last salary earned, benefits in Chile barely reach 33 percent for male workers and 25 percent for female workers. The analysis of both cases is framed in terms of the critique of political economy, in direct opposition to the current mainstream in economics. Instead of assuming methodological individualism and a harmonious view of human societies, as orthodoxy does, the critical paradigm conceives of capitalist economy as a dialectical process determined by the existence of social classes with different and opposed interests.     

On Norms and Coordination Games: A Rent–Seeking Approach

The aim of this paper is to extend the rent–seeking literature to the equilibrium selection problem in competitive coordination games, i.e., games in which more than one equilibrium exists, and individuals' preferences are opposed. We analyze alternative correlated equilibria: contractual agreements and legally enforced equilibria. The latter are to be understood as the outcome of rents–seeking contests in which players invest resources in order to set a norm. The contest is analyzed in its basic two–person setting and later generalized to the two–populations case. There we show that the outcomes depend on the relative payoff structure of the game, the technological properties of the contest, and the population distribution. Finally, the efficiency analysis focuses not only on the extent of the rent dissipation, but also on the comparative analysis of the inefficiencies that arise in the market (not coordinated) equilibrium.     

The effect of competition on product removal

Marketing Letters - The relationship between innovation and competition has been vastly studied over the past fifty years. However, one piece of the puzzle that has not been studied in...