Exchange Rate Pass-Through to Consumer Prices: The Increasing Role of Energy Prices

Open Economies Review - A number of researchers have found that the rate of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) to domestic prices has declined substantially over the last few decades. We revisit...     

Climate for conflict management,exposure to workplace bullying and work engagement: a moderated mediation analysis

The present study investigates a potential preventive factor in relation to workplace bullying. Specifically, we examine how climate for conflict management (CCM) may be related to less bullying, increased work engagement, as well as whether CCM is a moderator in the bullying engagement relationship. The study was based on a cross-sectional survey among employees in a transport company (N = 312). Hypotheses were tested simultaneously in a moderated mediation analysis which showed that bullying and job engagement were related (H1), CCM was related to less reports of bullying (H2), CCM was related to work engagement (H3) and that CCM was indirectly related to job engagement through bullying (H4), but only when CCM was weak (H5). That is, CCM moderated the relationship between bullying and work engagement in that this relationship only existed when CCM was low. The present study contributes to theory within this research field by showing that organizational measures may not only prevent bullying, but may also affect how employees react when subjected to bullying. Furthermore, the effect of climate in relation to bullying may be down to the narrow bandwidth facet of CCM. The study informs employers how they may act to prevent bullying while also reducing the potential negative outcomes of those cases of bullying that inevitably will show up from time to time.     

The saving–investment correlation puzzle is still a puzzle

A number of simulation studies claim to have solved the Feldstein–Horioka puzzle by demonstrating that a high time-series correlation between saving and investment naturally arises from business cycle shocks. This paper uses panel data of saving and investment controlled for business cycle shocks to empirically test the significance of cyclical shocks — productivity, fiscal and the terms of trade shocks — in explaining a high saving–investment correlation. The estimation results reveal that conventional aggregate shocks only partially explain the high saving–investment correlation. Moreover, country differences in the size of the GNP and the non-traded sector do not significantly affect the saving–investment correlation. The saving–investment correlation puzzle remains a puzzle after all.     

Incentives and Performance in Real Estate Brokerage

This article has two objectives. One is to offer a theoretical model to study how the difference in commission structures affects the performance of agents at full-commission firms (e.g., RE/MAX agents) relative to other agents. The other is to provide an empirical test of the relative performance of full-commission agents. We predict that in equilibrium the selling price and the expected time it takes to sell a listing through a full-commission agent are the same as they are with a traditional agent. Our theoretical predictions are supported by our empirical results.     

Contagion or Inductance? Crisis 1997 Reconsidered

We provide the simple example of a refinancing game with incomplete information, where the lack of transparency is both necessary and sufficient for the propagation of local financial distress across disjoint financial networks. JEL Classification Number: F4.
And the truth shall make you free. John 8: 32     

Output-inflation tradeoffs in 34 countries

This article examines the responsiveness of real output to the variability of inflation and aggregate demand. In the manner of Lucas (1973), estimates of the output-inflation tradeoff are computed for a large sample of countries. This measure is then correlated with the variances of the inflation rate and the growth rate in nominal income. Because differences in inflation variance (and hence the tradeoff) are viewed as the outcomes of differences in demand variance, correlations between these two variables are also reported. Cross-time and cross-country results provide a good measure of support for Lucas and the notion that attempts to exploit the tradeoff weaken it.     

Public service and competition in the European Union

In recent years, the Treaty of the European Union and the European institutions have had a rapidly increasing impact on the reorganization of commercial public services within the Member States. The trend has been dual—toward liberalization and toward harmonization of standards and national legislations. Progress is reported and analyzed in telecommunications, rail services, and electricity. A general concern is to reconcile legitimate public service obligations with the rules of competition that are prominent in the Treaty. New forms of regulation are tested in various countries preparing for the emergence of a European regulation framework.     

Complexity, Governance and Constitutional Craftsmanship

Economic policy is commonly treated as a vehicle for selecting among possible allocative outcomes within an economy. An economy, however, is a complex network of relationships whose patterns can be understood but whose details can be neither predicted nor controlled. Because of this complexity, allocative outcomes are not direct objects of choice. They are simply emergent consequences of human interaction that takes place within some framework of governing rules and conventions. All economic policy can do is modify some of the rules that govern this interaction. Economic policy is thus constitutive and not allocative in character, being centrally involved in shaping the character of the regime that governs our relationships with each other.     

Land Reform: Taking a Long(er) View

The paper proposes a broad argument that the end of state–led development from the 1970s coincided with (i) the final wave of major redistributive land reform, and its place within transitions to capitalism, that lasted from about 1910 to the 1970s, and (ii) the beginnings of contemporary 'globalization'. Self–styled 'new wave' agrarian reform in the age of neo–liberalism, centred on property rights, is unlikely to deliver much on its claims to both stimulate agricultural productivity and reduce rural poverty. The reasons are grounded in the basic relations and dynamics of capitalism, and how these are intensified and reshaped by and through globalization. Understanding these processes, with all their inevitable unevenness, requires (i) recognizing that the historical conditions of the 'classic' agrarian question no longer apply, and (ii) developing the means to investigate and understand better the changing realities facing different agrarian classes within a general tendency to the concentration of capital and fragmentation of labour, including how the latter may generate new agrarian questions of labour.