The Relationship between Interest Rates and Inflation: Examining the Fisher Effect in China

This study revisits the Fisher effect using a different empirical method that considers a potential nonlinear relationship between interest rates (treasury bond rates) and inflation in China. The rising uncertainty and asymmetric information in financial markets between bond holders and bond issuers suggest such a potential nonlinear relationship. To this aim, we apply Shin et al.’s (2014) nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model with asymmetric dynamic multipliers for the sample period 2002M7–2018M4. The empirical findings reveal symmetric and asymmetric partial Fisher effects for all sample bond rates in China. Furthermore, we find that 20-year bond rates experience the lowest partial Fisher effect.     

Factors Influencing Intercultural Sensitivity of Hospitality Employees

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the factors influencing the development of intercultural sensitivity among hospitality employees. The study particularly looks at the relationship between intercultural sensitivity levels of hospitality employees and their previous educational work experiences. Based on a survey (Intercultural Sensitivity Scale) scale with 443 hospitality employees overall means were calculated. Results of the analysis show that exposure to other cultures by participating previously in student exchange programs (e.g. ERASMUS), work and travel programs, and spending long periods of time abroad increased people’s intercultural sensitivity. Interestingly though, the study found that having formal tourism and hospitality education did not have any influence on the level of intercultural sensitivity of hospitality employees.     

Household food consumption in Turkey: a reply

We reply to the Comment by Drichoutis et al. regarding somemethodological and estimation issues arising from our paper.In particular, we compare the elasticities reported in the originalpaper with those obtained using estimation procedures suggestedby Drichoutis et al. We find that the differences are very small.     

Rural families food intake behaviour in relation to livelihood diversification,income differences and family size

The livelihood diversification significantly contributes to the family income having effect on food varieties' consumption in rural families of different sizes. This study investigated the food intake differences among rural families considering different income levels and family sizes. Moreover, barriers faced by the rural families to increase the consumption of food varieties were also analysed. A total of 200 rural families were selected through multistage purposive and random sampling techniques in the Punjab province of Pakistan and were directly interviewed and categorized first into low and high livelihood diversified families. The food groups were derived by assigning individual food to conventional food group taxonomies, and two‐way ANOVA (4 (income groups) × 3 (family size groups) was separately conducted for low and high livelihood diversified families. The income instability, prices of food items, market distance and storage were perceived as barriers for increasing food consumption. The high livelihood diversified families significantly and regularly consumed more food items than low diversified families. The rural households both in low and high livelihood diversified family categories having low income and high family size consumed less expensive food items. The regular consumption of fruits, bakery products, and livestock and dairy items was greatly associated with high income and small family size. One of the most remarkable findings of the multivariate multiple regression model was the households belonging to the lowest income group were significantly lowering the consumption of livestock and dairy food items as the family size increased from small to large family size. The interaction effect was highly associated with per capita income because the consumption of food items increased with the rise in income irrespective of the family size. However, family size groups showed different patterns of food intakes with different income levels. Government agencies should assist rural households to diversify their income portfolios for better nutrition.     

Household food consumption in Turkey

This paper analyses Turkish household food consumption, usingdata from the 2003 Turkish Household Expenditure Survey. A completedemand system is estimated taking into account demographic differencesand zero consumption. The highest expenditure elasticity isfound for the meat and meat products group, suggesting thatits demand will grow faster than the demand for other productsas the economy develops and income increases. Demand is moreprice-responsive for fats and oils and non-alcoholic beveragesthan all other food products. Regional and seasonal differencesand socio-demographic factors are as important as the conventionaleconomic variables in explaining observed differences in thehousehold's food consumption patterns in Turkey.     

Sovereign default, private sector creditors, and the IFIs

The data reveal that emerging market sovereign borrowing from International Financial Institutions (IFIs) is small, intermittent and countercyclical compared to that from private sector creditors. The IFI loan contracts offered to sovereigns differ from the private ones in that they are more enforceable and have conditionality arrangements attached to them. Taking these contractual differences as given, this paper builds a quantitative model of a sovereign borrower and argues that better enforceability of IFI loan contracts is the main institutional feature that explains the size and cyclicality while conditionality accounts for the intermittency of borrowing from the IFIs.     

Government intervention and market integration in Indonesian rice markets

Long-run spatial price relationships in Indonesian rice markets and factors affecting the degree of market integration are evaluated using multivariate cointegration tests with weekly price data for the 1982-1993 period. The analysis includes evaluation of pre-self-sufficiency and post-self-sufficiency periods as well as Cot the entire period. The cointegration tests for entire Indonesian rice market, represented by the nine most relevant price series, indicate that relative to the pre-self-sufficiency period, the post-self-sufficiency period has a smaller degree of market integration. The change of the degree of market integration over time indicates that rationalizing of the Indonesian rice price policy beyond 1984 rice self-sufficiency has resulted in a less integrated market. This suggests that the policy shift has allowed the government to decrease its intervention without significantly decreasing market integration, indicating that the private sector is responding to price signals appropriately. It is possible that further reduction in intervention through widening the band between the floor and ceiling price could be accomplished without greatly affecting market integration. Regression results show that government intervention in terms of rice procurement significantly influenced market integration during the period of post-self-sufficiency (1985-1993) and the entire period of 1982-1993. This indicates that this aspect of government intervention has had positive influences on market integration, in contrast to distribution efforts, which were not found to be statistically significant, Procurement prices may be high, and could perhaps be lowered, reducing program costs. Regional per capita income is also found to be positively related to highei levels of market integration, suggesting that in periods of economic growth, government intervention may be decreased, thereby reducing program costs.     

Emerging market business cycles: Learning about the trend

Emerging market business cycles feature a higher variability of consumption relative to output and a strongly countercyclical trade balance. An equilibrium business cycle model in which agents learn to distinguish between the permanent and transitory components of total factor productivity shocks using the Kalman filter accounts for these features. Calibrated to Mexico, the model accounts for the behavior of consumption and the trade balance for a wide range of variability and persistence of permanent shocks relative to transitory shocks. Estimation for Mexico and Canada suggests more severe informational frictions in emerging markets than in developed economies.