the governance of global value chains unresolved human rights environmental and ethical dilemmas in the apple supply chain the continued advance of global value chains as the mode of production for an increasing number of goods and services has impacted considerably on the economies and societies both of the developed world and the emerging economies although there have been many efforts at reform there is evidence of unresolved dilemmas of human rights environmental issues and ethical dilemmas in the operation of the global value chain this paper focuses on the role and performance of apple inc in the global value chain in asia apple is the most successful corporation on earth measured in financial terms and yet has failed to find a solution to recurrent employment and environmental problems occurring in plants manufacturing apple components this analysis informs the current theoretical debate on the development of the global value chain and the continuing institutional failure that leaves employees vulnerable and the environment neglected

some empirical evidence on the effects of shocks to monetary policy on exchange rates this paper investigates the effects of shocks to u s monetary policy on exchange rates we consider three measures of these shocks orthogonalized shocks to the federal funds rate orthogonalized shocks to the ratio of nonborrowed to total reserves and changes in the romer and romer index of monetary policy in sharp contrast to the literature we find substantial evidence of a link between monetary policy and exchange rates specifically according to our results a contractionary shock to u s monetary policy leads to i persistent significant appreciations in u s nominal and real exchange rates and ii significant persistent deviations from uncovered interest rate parity in favor of u s interest rates

structural breaks in volatility spillovers between international financial markets contagion or mere interdependence abstract this paper conducts an investigation of volatility transmission between stock markets in hong kong europe and the united states covering the time period from 2000 up to 2011 using intra daily data we compute realized volatility time series for the three markets and employ a heterogeneous autoregressive distributed lag model as our baseline econometric specification motivated by the presence of various crisis events contained in our sample we detect time variation and structural breaks in volatility spillovers particularly during the financial crisis of 2007 we find effects consistent with the notion of contagion suggesting strong and sudden increases in the cross market synchronization of chronologically succeeding volatilities investigating the role of mean breaks and conditional heteroskedasticity in the realized volatilities however we find the latter to be the main driver of breaks in volatility spillovers taking the volatility of realized volatilities into account we find no evidence of contagion anymore

long memory versus structural breaks in modeling and forecasting realized volatility we explore the possibility of structural breaks in the daily realized volatility of the deutschemark dollar yen dollar and yen deutschemark spot exchange rates with observed long memory behavior we find that structural breaks in the mean can partly explain the persistence of realized volatility we propose a var rv break model that provides superior predictive ability when the timing of future breaks is known with unknown break dates and sizes we find that a var rv i d long memory model provides a robust forecasting method even when the true financial volatility series are generated by structural breaks

benefit generosity and the income effect on labour supply quasi experimental evidence this study uses an unanticipated exogenous doubling of the legal minimum pension in ukraine as a unique quasi experiment to evaluate the income effect on various aspects of labour supply among the elderly in contrast to previous studies the unusually simple pension eligibility rule allows estimating a pure causal income effect applying reduced form difference in differences and regression discontinuity as well as instrumental variable methods on two nationally representative data sets yields a retirement semi elasticity of 0 1 0 2 men and women respond at different margins of labour supply but with similar overall effect

contagion and banking crisis international evidence for 2007 2009 abstract policy makers aim to avoid banking crises and although they can to some extent control domestic conditions internationally transmitted crises are difficult to tackle this paper identifies international contagion in banking during the 2007 2009 crisis for 54 economies we identify three channels of contagion systematic idiosyncratic and volatility and find evidence for these in 45 countries banking crises are overwhelmingly associated with the presence of both systematic and idiosyncratic contagion the results reveal that crisis shocks transmitted from a foreign jurisdiction via idiosyncratic contagion increase the likelihood of a systemic crisis in the domestic banking system by almost 37 percent whereas increased exposure via systematic contagion does not necessarily destabilize the domestic banking system thus while policy makers and regulatory authorities are rightly concerned with the systematic transmission of banking crises reducing the potential for idiosyncratic contagion can importantly reduce the consequences for the domestic economy

foreign exchange market efficiency and common stochastic trends abstract in a recent paper baillie and bollerslev 1989 using daily data from 1980 to 1985 identified six common stochastic trends in a vector of seven nominal exchange rates implying the existence of one cointegrating vector cointegration implies that granger causality must run in at least one direction that is at least one of the exchange rates is predictable using current available information this result has been interpreted as foreign exchange market inefficiency by many another interpretation is suggested if the stationary linear combination of spot rates proxies for a time varying risk premium in some way then these results could be explained in a rational and risk averse market this possibility is eliminated if the time series properties of the risk premium are incompatible with those of the error correction term specifically it is demonstrated that the forward risk premium is non stationary for the exchange rates that comprise the exchange rate cointegration relationship in this paper the existence of common stochastic trends in a vector of nominal exchange rates is tested over the period 1974 to 1991 the efficiency of foreign exchange markets is then tested by examining the implications of stochastic trends in the forward premium and what this means for the time series properties of a time varying forward risk premium jel f31 g14

econometric issues in the analysis of contagion this paper presents a canonical econometric model of contagion and investigates the conditions under which contagion can be distinguished from inter dependence in a two country market set up it is shown that for a range of fundamentals the solution is not unique and for sufficiently large values of the contagion coefficients it has interesting bifurcation properties with bimodal density functions the extension of the model to herding behaviour is also briefly discussed to identify contagion effects in the presence of inter dependencies the equations for the individual markets or countries must contain country market specific forcing variables this sheds doubt on the general validity of the correlation based tests of contagions recently proposed in the literature which do not involve any country market specific fundamentals finally we show that ignoring inter dependence can introduce an upward bias in the estimate of the contagion coefficient and using monte carlo experiments we further show that this bias could be substantial

roughing it up including jump components in the measurement modeling and forecasting of return volatility a rapidly growing literature has documented important improvements in financial return volatility measurement and forecasting via use of realized variation measures constructed from high frequency returns coupled with simple modeling procedures building on recent theoretical results in barndorff nielsen and shephard 2004a 2005 for related bi power variation measures the present paper provides a practical and robust framework for non parametrically measuring the jump component in asset return volatility in an application to the dm exchange rate the s p500 market index and the 30 year u s treasury bond yield we find that jumps are both highly prevalent and distinctly less persistent than the continuous sample path variation process moreover many jumps appear directly associated with specific macroeconomic news announcements separating jump from non jump movements in a simple but sophisticated volatility forecasting model we find that almost all of the predictability in daily weekly and monthly return volatilities comes from the non jump component our results thus set the stage for a number of interesting future econometric developments and important financial applications by separately modeling forecasting and pricing the continuous and jump components of the total return variation process

planning in ambiguous contexts the dilemma of meeting needs for commitment and demands for legitimacy this paper argues that ambiguity of context manifested in pressures for legitimacy and commitment affect planning processes ambiguity arises from multiple conflicting constituencies and the lack of direct control over resources using nonprofit and entrepreneurial organizations as examples of organizations facing ambiguous contexts we examine their planning practices to develop an understanding of the relationship between commitment legitimacy and planning from this analysis we articulate a managerial dilemma the need to use informality and vagueness to gain commitment from diverse interests and the need to demonstrate formalization of managerial practices to acquire legitimacy from critical resource suppliers using elements of this dilemma we present a new planning framework for organizations in ambiguous contexts that recognizes planning as a strategy for resource acquisition rather than a strategy for resource allocation

antipoverty transfers and labour market outcomes regression discontinuity design findings abstractthe article estimates the impact of familias en accion a human development conditional cash transfer programme on adult labour market outcomes in urban areas in colombia relying on a regression discontinuity design and a large panel dataset the article finds significant largely positive but heterogeneous programme effects on labour market outcomes the findings suggest that antipoverty transfers enable a re allocation of household productive resources among participant households

long memory in foreign exchange rates using the geweke porter hudak test we find evidence of long memory in exchange rate data this implies that the empirical evidence of unit roots in exchange rates may not be robust to long memory alternatives fractionally integrated autoregressive moving average arfima models are estimated by both the time domain exact maximum likelihood ml method and the frequency domain approximate ml method impulse response functions and forecasts based on these estimated arfima models are evaluated to gain insight into the long memory characteristics of exchange rates some tentative explanations of the long memory found in the exchange rates are discussed

longitudinal analysis of relationships between planning and performance in small firms this paper investigates causal relationships between planning and performance utilizing a longitudinal database with responses from the same 2 956 businesses over a four year period results confirm the association between planning activity and performance that is evident in most extant literature they also however cast doubt on the traditional perception of the causal sequence of that association although subject to a number of limitations the results indicate that planning is more likely to be introduced into a small firm after a period of growth rather than before a period of growth these results make an important contribution to understanding the planning performance relationship for two main reasons they overcome the static data and relatively smaller sample size restrictions of many past studies and they provide evidence concerning the sequence of the relationship between planning and performance

correlations in price changes and volatility across international stock markets the short run interdependence of prices and price volatility across three major international stock markets is studied daily opening and closing prices of major stock indexes for the tokyo london and new york stock markets are examined the analysis utilizes the autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic arch family of statistical models to explore these pricing relationships evidence of price volatility spillovers from new york to tokyo london to tokyo and new york to london is observed but no price volatility spillover effects in other directions are found for the pre october 1987 period article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

monetary transfers from children and the labour supply of elderly parents evidence from vietnam in the absence of a broad based pension scheme the elderly in developing countries may rely on monetary transfers made by their children and on their own labour supply this article examines whether monetary transfers from children help to reduce elderly parents need to work taking the possible endogeneity of children s transfers in the parents labour supply into account and using maximum likelihood methods and vietnamese data we find that monetary transfers help the elderly cope with risks associated with old age or illness at the same time however monetary transfers are not sufficient to fully substitute for parents labour supply

long memory and persistence in aggregate output abstract we examine persistence in u s aggregate output by estimating fractionally integrated arima models these models provide better low frequency approximations to the wold representation than previous stochastic specifications and earlier results on the importance of a permanent component emerge as special cases we find evidence of long memory which induces persistence though this long memory need not be associated with a unit root our point estimates indicate that macroeconomic shocks while persistent are distinctly less persistent than many earlier studies suggest however confidence intervals associated with the long run response are quite wide

household income as a determinant of child labor and school enrollment in brazil evidence from a social security reform abstractthis article studies the effects of household income on labor participation and school enrollment of children aged 10 14 in brazil using a social security reform as a source of exogenous variation in household income i find that increased benefits are associated with increases in school enrollment for girls as well as a smaller reduction in their labor participation but i find no effects for boys i also uncover evidence that the gender of the benefit receiver matters for girls labor variables only benefits received by females reduce girls work

cash transfers and labor supply evidence from a large scale program in iran abstract this paper examines the impact of a national cash transfer program on labor supply in iran in 2011 iran started monthly deposits of cash into individual accounts covering more than 70 million people and amounting to 28 of the median per capita household income the payments were compensation for the sudden removal of hefty energy subsidies the program has been heavily criticized for its disincentive for work especially for the poor we use panel data to study the causal effect of the transfers on labor supply using exogenous variation in the time households first started receiving transfers and in the intensity of treatment which we define as the share of net transfers from the program in total per capita household expenditures we find no evidence that cash transfers reduced labor supply in terms of hours worked or labor force participation to the contrary we find positive effects on the labor supply of women and self employed men

the effect of social security on labor supply a cohort analysis of the notch generation this article uses aggregate birth year calendar year level data derived from the current population survey cps to estimate the effect of social security wealth on the labor supply of older men in the 1970s and 1980s the analysis focuses on measuring the impact of the 1977 amendments to the social security act which created a substantial unanticipated reduction in social security wealth for individuals born after 1916 this differential in benefits has become known as the benefit notch results indicate that labor supply continued to decline for the notch babies who received lower social security benefits than earlier cohorts

modeling long run behavior with the fractional arima model abstract when modeling long run behavior fractional arima models can give insights unobtainable with the nonfractional arima models as an application the deterministic trend and unit root with drift models are nested in the fractional arima model this allows testing between the two models based on estimated parameter values this test is applied to postwar us quarterly real gnp the test concludes that gnp is consistent with both models the estimated fractional parameter is significantly smaller than reported in diebold and rudebusch 1989 the difference is explained by bias in the previous estimates relationships with the cumulative impulse response and spectral density at frequency zero are noted

return and volatility linkages between the us and the german stock market abstract this study investigates the contemporaneous correlation and the spillover effects between the us and the german stock markets around the opening of the two markets it is based on a newly compiled sample of intra day data for the two blue chip indices the dow jones industrial average dow and the deutsche aktienindex dax our main findings are as follows foreign daytime returns can significantly influence the domestic overnight returns this holds for both the us and the german market there is no evidence of spillovers from the previous daytime returns in the us to the dax morning trading short lived mean spillovers especially from the dax noon to 3 30 pm cet segment into the dow can be identified and the uncritical use of the dax opening quote is very likely to produce spurious results due to institutional peculiarities to avoid this problem we propose a proxy for the dax opening that appears satisfactory

old age benefits and retirement decisions of rural elderly in brazil abstract i estimate the impact of social security benefits on retirement decisions of rural workers by studying changes in the rules governing old age benefits for rural workers in brazil i focus on a reform implemented in 1991 which reduced the minimum eligibility age increased benefits and extended the program to non heads of households because those benefits come with no strings attached they are not means or retirement tested any behavioral response is a pure income effect the main finding of the paper is that access to old age benefits is a strong determinant of retirement of rural workers in brazil receiving old age benefits increases the probability of not working by about thirty eight percentage points and reduces total hours per week by 22 h

long memory and structural changes in the forward discount an empirical investigation abstract we analyze the evidence for long memory and structural changes in the five g7 countries forward discount we establish evidence for long memory by estimating the long memory parameter without allowing for structural breaks we also document evidence for multiple structural breaks in the mean of the forward discount we then adjust for structural changes in the forward discount rate and re estimate the long memory parameter after removing the breaks we still find evidence of stationary long memory in each country s forward discount

continuous time models realized volatilities and testable distributional implications for daily stock returns we provide an empirical framework for assessing the distributional properties of daily speculative returns within the context of the continuous time jump diffusion models traditionally used in asset pricing finance our approach builds directly on recently developed realized variation measures and non parametric jump detection statistics constructed from high frequency intra day data a sequence of simple to implement moment based tests involving various transformations of the daily returns speak directly to the importance of different distributional features and may serve as useful diagnostic tools in the specification of empirically more realistic continuous time asset pricing models on applying the tests to the 30 individual stocks in the dow jones industrial average index we find that it is important to allow for both time varying diffusive volatility jumps and leverage effects to satisfactorily describe the daily stock price dynamics copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

the myth of post reform income stagnation evidence from brazil and mexico economic policies are often judged by a handful of statistics some of which may be biased during periods of change we estimate the income growth implied by the evolution of food demand and durable good ownership in post reform brazil and mexico and find that changes in consumption patterns are inconsistent with official estimates of near stagnant incomes that is attributed to biases in the price deflator the estimated unmeasured income gains are higher for poorer households implying marked reductions in real inequality these findings challenge the conventional wisdom that post reform income growth was low and did not benefit the poor

estimating the performance effects of business groups in emerging markets business groups confederations of legally independent firms are ubiquitous in emerging economies yet very little is known about their effects on the performance of affiliated firms we conceive of business groups as responses to market failures and high transaction costs in doing so we develop hypotheses about the effects of group affiliation on firm profitability affiliation could either boost or depress firm profitability and members of a group are likely to earn rates of return similar to other members of the same group using a unique data set compiled largely from local sources we test for these effects in 14 emerging markets argentina brazil chile india indonesia israel mexico peru the philippines south africa south korea taiwan thailand and turkey we find evidence that business groups indeed affect the broad patterns of economic performance in 12 of the markets we examine group affiliation appears to have as profound an effect on profitability as does industry membership yet strategy scholars have a much clearer grasp of industries than of groups moreover membership in a group raises the profitability of the average group member in several of the markets we examine this runs contrary to the wisdom conventional in advanced economies that unrelated diversification depresses profitability overall our findings suggest that the roots of sustained differences in profitability may vary across institutional contexts conclusions drawn in one context may well not apply to another copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

social security liquidity and early retirement abstract this paper investigates the effect of social security on retirement decisions it argues that it is important to take realistic account of how recipients evaluate potential benefit flows the paper presents a simple retirement model in which liquidity constraints prompt individuals to use higher than market discount rates in evaluating future pension benefits as a consequence even an apparently actuarially fair early retirement benefit could on average discourage continued work using data on individual retirement decisions i find support for the argument that this phenomenon contributes to some of the observed increase in early retirement

social transfers and growth what do we know what do we need to find out summary the paper examines the extent to which emerging social transfer programs in developing countries can improve the productive capacity of households in poverty and contribute to micro level growth it introduces a basic framework linking transfers to growth mediating processes and productive capacity outcomes this is then used to organize and assess relevant findings from program evaluation studies the paper concludes that social transfer programs can have positive effects on the productive capacity of poor and poorest groups but further research is needed to identify and measure the size and significance of these effects

identifying monetary policy in a small open economy under flexible exchange rates abstract previous empirical study on the effects of monetary policy shocks in small open economies has generated puzzling dynamic responses in various macroeconomic variables this paper argues that these puzzles derive from an identification of monetary policy that is inappropriate for such economies to remedy this it is proposed that a structural model be estimated to explicitly account for the features of the small open economy such a model is applied to canada with tightly estimated results overall the dynamic responses to the identified monetary policy shock are consistent with standard theory and highlight the exchange rate as a transmission mechanism

modeling realized volatility on the spanish intra day electricity market abstract this paper models the realized volatility of the hourly prices from the six sessions of the spanish intra day electricity market for the period 2002 2014 based on the sequential organization of the market a model in which realized volatility depends on its own past and that of the other sessions is specified and then modified in two ways on the one hand total variation is decomposed into jump and non jump components and on the other hand egarch innovations are considered estimation results show significant volatility transmissions between the sessions out of sample forecast criteria select egarch innovations for sessions 1 and 2 while simpler models with no egarch innovations and no jump distinction are preferred for sessions 5 and 6 we argue how results are driven by the market structure the market design and the regulation of renewable generation

hourly volatility spillovers between international equity markets abstract this paper examines the timing of mean and volatility spillovers between new york and london equity markets using an arch model it is found that the evidence of volatility spillovers between these markets is minimal and have a duration which lasts only an hour or so the most significant effects surround the movement of share prices around the new york opening but these results are not strong several new arch models are estimated including an asymmetric or leverage model and a non linear model which allows big shocks to have a different impact from small shocks

estimating quadratic variation using realized variance this paper looks at some recent work on estimating quadratic variation using realised variance rv that is sums of m squared returns this econometrics has been motivated by the advent of the common availability of high frequency financial return data when the underlying process is a semimartingale we recall the fundamental result that rv is a consistent as m estimator of quadratic variation qv we express concern that without additional assumptions it seems difficult to give any measure of uncertainty of the rv in this context the position dramatically changes when we work with a rather general sv model which is a special case of the semimartingale model then qv is integrated variance and we can derive the asymptotic distribution of the rv and its rate of convergence these results do not require us to specify a model for either the drift or volatility functions although we have to impose some weak regularity assumptions we illustrate the use of the limit theory on some exchange rate data and some stock data we show that even with large values of m the rv is sometimes a quite noisy estimator of integrated variance

public policy and extended families evidence from pensions in south africa how are resources allocated within extended families in developing economies this question is investigated using a unique social experiment the south african pension program under that program the elderly receive a cash transfer equal to roughly twice the per capita income of africans in south africa the study examines how this transfer affects the labor supply of prime age individuals living with these elderly in extended families it finds a sharp drop in the working hours of prime age individuals in these households when women turn 60 years old or men turn 65 the ages at which they become eligible for pensions it also finds that the drop in labor supply is much larger when the pensioner is a woman suggesting an imperfect pooling of resources the allocation of resources among prime age individuals depends strongly on their absolute age and gender as well as on their relative age the oldest son in the household reduces his working hours more than any other prime age household member

rethinking an old empirical puzzle econometric evidence on the forward discount anomaly using both semiparametric and parametric estimation methods this paper corroborates earlier findings of fractionally integrated behaviour in the forward premium two new explanations are also proposed to help reconcile earlier conflicting empirical evidence on the time series properties of the forward premium traditional regression approaches used to test the forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis are then evaluated including regression in levels in returns fama s 1984 regression and in error correction format interesting statistical and or interpretive implications are found in all three cases for example the predictions of the appropriate nonstandard limit theory are consistent with many of the standard empirical results reported from fama s regression including the commonly occurring yet puzzling negative correlations between spot returns and the forward premium it is suggested that the principal failure of unbiasedness may be due instead to the difference in persistence between these two series copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

factors affecting equity capital acquisition the demand side abstract this article summarizes a study of 318 private entrepreneurs who have sought equity capital in amounts of 100 000 or more these individuals are normally considered prime clients of venture capitalists entrepreneurs success in acquiring funding is related to four general variable categories 1 characteristics of the entrepreneurs including education experience and age 2 characteristics of the enterprise including stage industry type and location e g rural or urban 3 characteristics of the request including amount business plan and prospective capital source and 4 sources of advice including technology preparation of the business plan and places to seek funding the study is unique because it includes many entrepreneurs who were unsuccessful in acquiring capital thereby reducing the survey bias in fact only 59 of those surveyed actually acquired funding this article provides specific insights into businesses seeking capital for example the entrepreneurs who are most successful in acquiring funding are those who are prepared to surrender a larger percentage of equity and who are very aggressive in going directly to a number of potential equity providers at an early stage contrary to common belief older and more experienced entrepreneurs seem to have more difficulty acquiring financing likewise entrepreneurs attempting to start businesses in rural areas are more apt to have difficulty acquiring equity capital in amounts of 100 000 or more entrepreneurs may experience difficulty in acquiring equity capital for certain business types in specific capital markets firms in the health medical technology and communication fields for example have much more success acquiring funding in minnesota and wisconsin than those in electronics and factory automation it is vital that the entrepreneur get to the proper source of capital wherever it is to be found as quickly as possible this study also indicates that private investors not identified as formal venture capitalists are the primary source of financial assistance the study revealed that the quality of advice provided to entrepreneurs may need improvement entrepreneurs who fail to seek assistance are less successful in acquiring equity capital it is less clear where good advice is to be found attorneys appear to offer positive advice regarding marketing and referrals to non venture capital sources bankers in contrast are more frequently associated with advice that fails to secure capital public agencies and university related organizations are in some cases also associated with a failure to acquire capital it may be that the weakest cases ultimately find their way to these sources of consultation the article provides a number of specific public policy recommendations for those governments interested in improving equity capital market efficiency for example as entrepreneurs seeking equity capital in small amounts seem to have difficulty public governments might choose to facilitate the movement of equity capital in smaller amounts by bundling several small requests together and then selling them to interested investors the public might choose to improve information linkages between entrepreneurs and capitalists by educating intermediaries such as accountants attorneys and bankers regarding sources of equity capital or by developing publicly supported linkage networks to whom entrepreneurs might turn special information programs on sources of equity capital might also be instituted in rural areas or with specific groups experiencing capital access problems private equity capital markets are not apt to serve adequately certain types of businesses there may be some need for providing direct capital subsidization to firms that are expanding or to those with growth potential that for some reason are unattractive to private capitalists e g the entrepreneurs are older the expected growth rate is slow these businesses may have the potential of making a substantial contribution to a regional economy but lack the short term high growth impact that attracts venture capitalists

pensions and retirement evidence from union army veterans i investigate the factors that fostered rising retirement rates prior to social security and most private sector pensions by estimating the income effect of the first major pension program in the united sates that covering union army veterans the elasticity of nonparticipation with respect to union army pension income was 0 73 the findings suggest that secularly rising income explains a substantial part of increased retirement rates comparisons with elasticities of nonparticipation with respect to social security income suggest that the elasticity of labor force nonparticipation may have decreased with time perhaps because of the increasing attractiveness of leisure

the long memory of the forward premium abstract the estimation of arfima models by approximate maximum likelihood estimation methods reveals the forward premia for the currencies of canada germany and the uk vis a vis the us dollar to be well described by a fractionally integrated process these models imply that all the forward premia are mean reverting although their autocorrelations are quite persistent this degree of persistence has led other studies to erroneously conclude that the forward premia contains a unit root jel c22 e31

some contagion some interdependence more pitfalls in tests of financial contagion this paper develops a test of contagion in financial markets based on bivariate correlation analysis which generalizes existing tests and applies it to the international effects of the hong kong stock market crisis of october 1997 contagion is defined as a structural break in the international transmission of financial shocks for plausible values of the variance of country specific shocks in hong kong our test finds evidence of contagion for 5 countries out of a sample of 17 this is in sharp contrast with the findings of recent literature according to which there is no contagion only interdependence we show that this strong result in the literature is due to arbitrary and unrealistic restrictions on the variance of country specific shocks

real and spurious long memory properties of stock market data we test for the presence of long memory in daily stock returns and their squares using a robust semiparametric procedure of lobato and robinson spurious results can be produced by nonstationarity and aggregation we address these problems by analyzing subperiods of returns and using individual stocks the test results show no evidence of long memory in the returns by contrast there is strong evidence in the squared returns

how public pension affects elderly labor supply and well being evidence from india summary i study the effect of a recent expansion in india s national old age pension scheme on elderly well being estimates suggest that public pension has a modestly negative effect on the employment of elderly near elderly men with a primary or lower education but no effect on the employment of similar women pension raised family expenditures lowering poverty and the effect was smaller on families headed by illiterate persons suggesting lower pension coverage of this most disadvantaged group further i find that households spent most of the pension income on medical care and education suggesting possible intra family transfers across generations

patterns of growth competitive technology and financial strategies in young ventures abstract young independent technology based ventures have an increasingly complex array of strategic choices about how they can grow while simultaneously competing on the basis of their technological capacity and skills in their markets given the central importance of these choices to the success of the venture there should be a close integral relationship among them similarly financial strategy choices also enter this relationship growth and competition place tremendous resource demands on the young technology based venture and financial strategy choices therefore must also be factored into the choice taking process the choice taking perspective is basic to this inquiry as other researchers have pointed out young entrepreneurial ventures typically do not utilize highly formalized strategic planning processes robinson and pearce 1983 strategy formation in such firms tends to be informal and episodic strategy may be revealed best through the pattern or set of choices taken at a point in time and over time from a choice taking perspective then the critical questions become the following a are there identifiable patterns of growth technology and financial choices b what factors shape or determine which choices are taken and c are these patterns related to venture performance these questions were explored by using data from a survey of 100 ceos of young independent technology based firms across three industries the results generally support the idea that patterns of choices can be identified several of these patterns are related to the ventures demographic characteristics such as form of ownership and scope of sales importantly stage of development was not related to those patterns nor to the performance of the ventures the highest performing ventures were found to be pursuing internal innovation through r d for product breakthroughs this finding is surprising since young ventures at the stage at which most were found in this sample would traditionally be expected to emphasize product extensions and modifications we need to better understand why young ventures would choose to innovate internally for breakthroughs in their growth stages and how well they are able to do so a major implication of this research is that the ceos of young technology based ventures are being presented with a much larger menu or array of choices at many points in time than conventional stage based models of venture development have postulated one explanation of this possibility is that the firm life cycle is being compressed by relatively new conditions such as the availability of more and earlier capital through joint venturing and alliances and shorter product life cycles indeed a follow up survey a year later with 77 ceos from this sample confirmed that joint ventures and alliances were the number one choice being pursued to gain access to distribution channels and new markets what is troubling about this possibility is that the skills and capacities of these young ventures may be limited in comparison with the richness and complexity of the available choices in the follow up survey the sources of information that were by far the most relied upon for strategic decision making were other internal senior managers and board members outsiders such as lawyers ranking distantly behind the leaders of these ventures need to be fully supported in evaluating negotiating and managing these often highly complex relationships