Intergroup contact and reduction of explicit and implicit prejudice toward immigrants: a study with Italian businessmen owning small and medium enterprises

A field study was conducted to test the effectiveness of intergroup contact (Allport, The nature of prejudice, 1954) as a predictor of explicit and implicit attitudes toward immigrants and to examine the processes driving its effects. Participants were Italian businessmen owning small and medium enterprises in Northern Italy who had daily contact with their immigrant workers. We tested a model in which contact ameliorated explicit attitudes, measured as support for social policies toward immigration, through reduced negative outgroup stereotypes. Furthermore, we predicted that contact would have a direct, unmediated effect on improved implicit attitudes toward immigrants, assessed with an Implicit Association Test (Greenwald et al., J Personal Soc Psychol 74:1464–1480, 1998). The results were fully consistent with predictions, thus providing strong support for the contact hypothesis at both an explicit and at an implicit level. The lack of correlation between explicit and implicit attitudes supports dual-process models, suggesting that the two types of attitudes are formed through different processes. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Macroeconomic adjustment programmes in the euro area: an overall assessment

Since the start of EMU (Economic and Monetary Union), the euro area, and more broadly the global economy, experienced an unprecedented credit boom. The expansion of credit was particularly strong in Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus and all of them subsequently needed official financial support. In each of the four programmes, financial assistance has been provided and promised against the commitment of each country to fulfil certain economic policy conditions contained in the macroeconomic adjustment programme. In general, a macroeconomic adjustment is a process driven by policies but also by changes in private spending behaviour (consumption, imports, investment) and improvement in competitiveness that countries are required to undertake after a large shock. In the case of the four countries, the shock emerged as a consequence of an excessive accumulation of imbalances in different parts of the economy: in the public sector in Greece, in the housing and banking sectors in Ireland, external imbalances in Portugal and in the banking sector in Cyprus. The paper looks at the feasibility of the fiscal adjustment comparing the macroeconomic conditions in the four countries and emphasising the role of the fiscal multipliers in the process. It also assesses the fall in the output in a comparative framework, stressing the role played by the different components of demand either in amplifying the effect of the fiscal consolidation or in offsetting it. In addition, it considers formulation of the programmes as well as their implementation with most attention devoted to reforms aiming at improving competitiveness, growth and employment in the framework of a cross-country approach.     

Government debt management

This paper discusses the principles that justify activism ofgovernments in the management of public debt. It starts froma review of the economics literature, which has produced, especiallyin recent years, a number of important propositions on the desirabilityof government interventionism, either for the purpose of filinginformation gaps or to help solve dynamic inconsistency problems.It then considers a number of practical arguments for governmentactivism, stemming from the development of capital markets,and the need to keep up with them. The paper argues that governmentactivism in debt management is much less warranted than thecurrent economic literature or market practices might lead usto believe. The fundamental reason is that governments are nota private actor in the market, and so their optimization problemis radically different from that of other market participants.     

The deviations from interest rate parity along the term structure of forward exchange rates

Zusammenfassung Die Abweichungen der Terminkurse verschiedener Fristen von der Zinsparit?t. — Der Zweck dieses Aufsatzes besteht darin, die Bedeutung der Zinsarbitrage zu betonen und aufzuzeigen, wie eng die Zinsstruktur verschiedener L?nder über die Zinsparit?t miteinander verbunden ist. Es wurde versucht, für verschiedene Fristen das Verhalten der Zinsparit?t zwischen den nationalen Geldmarkts?tzen der Vereinigten Staaten und dem Vereinigten K?nigreich beziehungsweise der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zu analysieren, da es weitgehend anerkannt ist, daΒ die Zinsparit?t auf den Euro-W?hrungsm?rkten Gültigkeit hat. Die Ergebnisse der empirischen Untersuchung zeigen, daΒ die nationalen Geldmarkts?tze verschiedener Fristen nicht homogen durch die Zinsparit?t verbunden sein dürften. Im Gegenteil, die Tatsache, daΒ die Spekulanten im Fall des Pfund Sterling den kurzfristigen Titeln und im Fall der D-Mark den langfristigen Titeln den Vorzug gaben, deutet darauf hin, daΒ die auf den Pfund-Dollar-Kurs gerichteten Erwartungen in der Untersuchungsperiode st?rker schwankten.

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Résumé Les déviations de la parité de taux d’intérét le long de la structure de terme des taux de change à terme. — Le but de cet article est de souligner l’importance de l’arbitrage d’intérêt qui tend à lier les structures nationales de terme des taux d’intérêt. Il est essayé de tester la conduite de la parité de taux d’intérêt (PTI) le long de la structure de terme sur les marchés monétaires nationaux des Etats Unis, du Royaume Uni et de l’Allemagne car il y a un accord général que la PTI existe sur le marché des euro-monnaies. Les résultats de l’investigation empirique indiquent que les structures nationales de terme des taux sur le marché monétaire ne pouvaient pas être homogènement liées par la PTI. En contraste, un habitat probablement préféré par les spéculateurs dans les maturités basses en cas du sterling et un habitat à long terme par les spéculateurs du D-Mark suggèrent une variabilité plus grande des expectatives de taux de change sterling-dollar dans la période considérée.

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Resumen Las desviaciones de las tasas de interés de paridad a lo largo de una estructura de términos para las tasas de cambio a futuro. — El propósito de este artículo es recalcar la importancia de la actividad de arbitraje de interés, particularmente como el medio por el cual las estructuras nacionales de términos de tasas de interés se relacionan entre ellas. Se ha hecho un intento para probar el comportamiento de la tasa de interés de paridad (TIP) a lo largo de la estructura de términos de las tasas de interés del mercado monetario nacional de EEUU y el Reino Unido; y de EEUU y Alemania Federal, ya que es ampliamente reconocido que la TIP tiene validez para el mercado de monedas europeas. Los resultados de la investigación empírica indican que las estructuras de términos nacionales de las tasas de mercados monetarios pueden no estar ligadas homogéneamente a la TIP. En contraste, un entorno probablemente preferido por los especuladores en vencimientos de corto plazo en el caso de la libra esterlina, y el entorno de largo plazo de especuladores del marco alemán, sugieren una mayor volatilidad de las expectativas del tipo de cambio libra esterlina/dólar en el periodo considerado.

     

The interest elasticity of savings in developing countries: The existing evidence

This paper presents a critical analysis of some of the most recent empirical work on the interest elasticity of savings in developing economies, supported by a set of empirical results. The paper argues that: (a) the real interest elasticity of savings is not easily detected using the existing empirical models, which generally yield insignificant interest rate parameters in the seventies; (b) the existing models suffer from serious defects that make if very difficult to interpret the estimated parameters.     

Solidarity economy and political mobilisation: Insights from Barcelona

The solidarity economy has been interpreted as being characterised by a political dimension: however, empirical and theoretical analysis supporting this statement is still embryonic. Drawing on a qualitative study in the city of Barcelona, this article analyses the political dimension of the solidarity economy and its transformative character with respect to neoliberalism by engaging with critical approaches related to the social movement studies. The main objectives were to investigate factors enabling the upsurge of solidarity economy organisations and how the opposition of social movement participants to neoliberal rationalities impacts on the way the solidarity economy is conceived and implemented in practice. The results highlight three main dimensions in which the political dimension is reflected, and some general as well as context‐specific factors enabling the upsurge of solidarity economy organisations. Findings show how the compensative rationale that distinguishes most approaches in the field of social entrepreneurship studies is contested by the solidarity economy: its transformative character is reflected in discourses and practices that define the solidarity economy as a prefigurative socio‐economic project.     

‘Rules of the game’ during the International Gold Standard: England and Germany

The paper suggests an alternative framework to test hypotheses about central bank policy rules during the International Gold Standard. This framework is inspired by work of Mundell (1968) on optimal central bank policies, and more recent literature on the theory of economic policy, which stems from Luca's (1976) critique. Empirical tests obtained from this approach are quite different from those appearing in the empirical literature on the Gold Standard.The results of the tests indicate that the Bank of England was not optimally targeting international gold flows. Inthe case of the Rechsbank, the hyphothesis that international gold flows were optimally targeted is not rejected at the 5 per level. Thus the data suggest that the Reichsbank was following the ‘rules of the game’, whereas the Bank of England was not.     

An Alternative Test of the Rational Expectations-Perfect Substitutability Hypothesis: Deutsche Mark and Pound Sterling

This note tests the joint hypothesis of rational expectations and perfect substitutability between assets denominated in US dollars, deutsche marks and pound sterling. The hypothesis implies that the forecast errors from the uncovered interest rate parity condition follow a white noise process. Using a test based on the frequency domain properties of white noise processes, the hypothesis is not rejected on a sample of monthly observations from January 1974 to December 1981.     

Conditional correlations in the returns on oil companies stock prices and their determinants

The identification of the forces that drive stock returns and the dynamics of their associated volatilities is a major concern in empirical economics and finance. This analysis is extremely important for determining optimal hedging strategies. This paper investigates the stock prices’ returns and their financial risk factors for several integrated oil companies, namely Bp (BP), Chevron-Texaco (CVX), Eni (ENI), Exxon-Mobil (XOM), Royal Dutch (RD) and Total-Fina Elf (TFE). We measure the actual co-risk in stock returns and their determinants “within” and “between” the different oil companies, using multivariate cointegration techniques in modelling the conditional mean, as well as multivariate GARCH models for the conditional variances. The distinguishing features of this paper are: (i) focus on the determinants of the market value of each company using the cointegrated VAR/VECM methodology; (ii) specification of the conditional variances of VECM residuals with the Constant Conditional Correlation (CCC) multivariate GARCH model of Bollerslev [(1990) Review of Economics and Statistics 72:498–505] and the Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) multivariate GARCH model of Engle [(2002) Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 20:339–350]; (iii) discussion of the performance of optimal hedge ratios calculated with the DCC estimates. The “within” and “between” DCC indicate time-varying interdependence between stock return volatilities and their determinants. Moreover, DCC models are shown to produce more accurate hedging strategies.