Presidential Election 2022: A Euroclash Between a “Liberal” and a “Neo-Nationalist” France Is Coming

Intereconomics - The main question surrounding the re-election of Macron is the uncertain balance of France’s flexilateral policy vis-à-vis the EU in a post-Brexit and COVID-19 context:...     

Effects of Mentoring on the Development of Leadership Self‐Efficacy and Political Skill

This study of 260 business graduate students considered the relationship between mentoring and leadership self‐efficacy, and mentoring and political skill. Comparisons between nonmentored and mentored individuals showed that having a mentor was associated with increased political skill but not with increased leadership self‐efficacy. Among mentees, higher quality mentoring relationships were associated with significantly higher leadership self‐efficacy but not with significantly higher political skill. Results suggest that the presence of a mentor affects protégé development of political skill, but the quality of the relationship is important for protégé development of leadership self‐efficacy.     

Predicting Future Buyer Behavior with Consumers' Confidence and Sentiment Indexes

Knowledge of consumer attitudes and expectations is an indispensable marketing tool and may be useful for predicting changes in consumer spending and saving patterns. However, most empirical research on the value of consumer confidence (sentiment) indexes for forecasting future buyer behavior has focused on the statistical correlation between these indexes and several measures of consumer spending and business activity. As Huth et al. (1994) correctly pointed out, a more appropriate approach is to focus on the direction of Granger-causality between these variables. Prior to testing for Granger-causality, we investigate the stationarity properties of alternative measures of these variables and we employ a flexible lag structure. Our empirical results support the use of these indexes to forecast business activity but not consumer purchases or overall economic activity.     

Money and macroeconomic performance: revisiting divisia money

Recent research suggests that the relation between money and the macroeconomy has sharply weakened in the U.S. after 1980. We reexamine this alleged breakdown by testing for cointegration between the macroeconomy and simple-sum and Divisia monetary aggregates. We check the robustness of our results by modeling multiple key breakpoints around the early 1980s. Unlike the case of simple-sum monetary aggregates, the evidence is overwhelming in its support for cointegration between Divisia money and macroeconomic variables, which persists despite several policy shifts and dramatic financial innovations in the post-1980 period. These results support Divisia money over simple-sum monetary aggregates as a guide in the implementation of monetary policy.