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Previous studies have associated initiation practices, also known as hazing, with conformity, fear, apprehension, anxiety, submission, coercion, desire for group integration, and acceptance. Therefore, students undergo several types of influences or pressures. We argue that the social environment surrounding the hazing in Portuguese universities has all the conditions to raise a spiral of silence. We tested and confirmed Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann's Spiral of Silence theory. Our empirical analysis is based on questionnaires to a sample of 350 students from two Portuguese institutions. We addressed several additional relevant variables, namely ones derived from the Theory of Planned Behaviour, and Communication Apprehension. Our results show that students who are against hazing and perceive a majority opinion in favour are less likely to express their opinions. We were also able to identify some identifying features of the avant-gardes: the minority that challenges the status quo. These are students who show a willingness to communicate, pay attention to the media, and come from families with higher educational backgrounds. We argue that top-down public policies about hazing are likely to fail. It will be better, in a bottom-up approach, to identify and support the avant-gardes

This research note investigates how different sources of economic information affected citizens' approval of the government in Portugal from 2001 to 2018. It compares the predictive power of the revised and most accurate data on GDP growth with other economic indicators that were available to the public at the time, such as the first estimates of recent growth and the forecasts of future growth. It finds that approval is best predicted by information about forecasted growth for the current year. These results provide further indirect evidence that the state of the economy, as it plays out directly in people's lives and experiences, may be less consequential for evaluations of the government than the mediated information about it that is conveyed to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluated the performance of OECD's Composite Leading Indicator using the Continuous Wavelet Transform. We used various wavelet tools ‐ wavelet coherency, wavelet phase and wavelet phase difference ‐ to assess the co‐movement between the Composite Leading Indicator and three macroeconomic variables ‐ Industrial Production Index, unemployment rate, and real GDP Growth ‐ at each frequency and moment. We also explored the lead–lag relationship between each pair of variables across time and frequency. We concluded that OECD's Composite Leading Indicator is a useful leading indicator of the Industrial Production Index and can be suited for forecasting the unemployment rate. However, it exhibited poor performance regarding GDP growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While we can say that there is a global market for crude oil, we cannot say the same for natural gas. There is a strand of literature that argues that, in the last decades, gas markets have become less regional and more global. We use wavelets to test this hypothesis and conclude otherwise: although the European and Japanese gas markets are significantly synchronized, they are much less than the oil markets, which we take as the benchmark. We also show that the North American gas market fluctuations are independent of the other gas markets. Finally, we show that the existing synchronization between gas markets almost vanishes once one filters out the effect of oil price variations, suggesting that it is the global oil market that connects the regional gas markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Government transparency has been discussed both as a way to decrease informational asymmetries between officeholders and citizens and as part of what makes for procedurally fair governance. These two different lines of argument generate predictions about how transparency should change voters' reactions to economic and policy outcomes. First, under high transparency, voters should respond less positively to fiscal expansions. Second, they should become more sensitive to incumbents' ability to deliver outcomes that generate benefits in the long‐run than to current tangible benefits. We test these arguments using municipality level data in Portugal. Controlling for variables that previous research has shown to drive electoral support for incumbents in local elections, only in the least transparent municipalities is support positively related with increases in local current expenditures, budget deficits, and municipal wages. Instead, where transparency is higher, voters are more likely to reward improvements in the quality of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use wavelet analysis to conclude that individual U.S. states' business cycles are very well synchronized. We also find evidence of a strong and significant correlation between business cycle dissimilitudes and the distance between each pair of states, consistent to gravity type mechanisms where distance affects trade. Trade, in turn, increases business cycle synchronization, while a higher degree of industry specialization is associated with a higher dissimilitude of the state cycle with the aggregate economy. Finally, there is evidence that business cycle dissimilitudes have been decreasing with time, consistent with the previous findings coupled with the idea that information and communications technology make distances smaller. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a comparative analysis of how short-run variations in carbon and energy prices relate to each other in the emerging greenhouse gas market in California (Western Climate Initiative [WCI], and the European Union Emission Trading Scheme [EU ETS]). We characterize the relationship between carbon, gas, coal, electricity and gasoline prices and an indicator for economic activity, and present a first analysis of carbon prices in the WCI. We also provide a comparative analysis of the structures of the two markets. We estimate a vector autoregressive model and the impulse--response functions. Our main findings show a positive impact from a carbon shock toward electricity, in both markets, but larger in the WCI electricity price, indicating more efficiency. We propose that the widening of carbon market sectors, namely fuels transport and electricity imports, may contribute to this result. To conclude, the research shows significant and coherent relations between variables in WCI, which demonstrate some degree of success for a first year in operation. Reversely, the EU ETS should complete its intended market reform, to allow for more impact of the carbon price. Finally, in both markets, there is no evidence of carbon pricing depleting economic activity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A body of work using the continuous wavelet transform has been growing. We provide a self-contained summary on its most relevant theoretical results, describe how such transforms can be implemented in practice, and generalize the concept of simple coherency to partial wavelet coherency and multiple wavelet coherency, moving beyond bivariate analysis. We also describe a family of wavelets, which emerges as an alternative to the popular Morlet wavelet, the generalized Morse wavelets. A user-friendly toolbox, with examples, is attached to this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, wavelet tools and economic sentiment indicators are used to study the similarity and synchronization of economic cycles in the eurozone. The time-varying and frequency-varying patterns of business cycles synchronization are assessed and the impact of the creation of the European monetary union ( EMU) in 1999 is tested. Among several results, it is found that: the EMU is associated with a significant increase in the similarity and synchronization of the economic sentiment in the eurozone; and the hard-peg of its currency to the euro led to a comparable effect on Denmark's economic sentiment after 1999, different from what happened in the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that dependence on foreign energy can increase economic instability by raising the likelihood of equilibrium indeterminacy, hence making it easier for fluctuations driven by self-fulfilling expectations to occur. This is demonstrated in a standard neoclassical growth model. Calibration exercises, based on the estimated share of imported energy in production for several countries, show that the degree of reliance on foreign energy for many countries can easily make an otherwise determinate and stable economy indeterminate and unstable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a plausible explanation for the close link between oil prices and aggregate macroeconomic performance in the 1970s. Although this link has been well documented in the empirical literature, standard economic models are not able to replicate this link when actual oil prices are used to simulate the models. In particular, standard models cannot explain the depth of the recession in 1974–75 and the strong revival in 1976–78 based on the oil price movements in that period. This paper argues that a missing multiplier-accelerator mechanism from standard models may hold the key. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze a simple overlapping-generations model with two capital goods. The dynamical system is defined by savings behavior and short-run perfect-foresight asset-market clearing. Because lifetimes are finite, there is no transversality condition. If there is a bubble in asset pricing, it will burst in finite time: expectations will eventually be frustrated, but this might take several generations. This raises the question of whether (infinite) long-run perfect foresight is a reasonable assumption for overlapping-generations economies and, hence, whether bursting bubbles can occur in equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capital gains play an essential role in the intertemporal allocation of resources, but they can also fuel self-fulfilling bubbles. The simple case of 2 "identical" capitals is analyzed in an overlapping generations model. The only trajectory in which expectations are realized at every date is the one in which blue machines and red machines have the same price. If ever their prices differ, then there is a "bubble" which must burst in finite time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon price is a key variable in management and risk decisions in activities related to the burning of fossil fuels. Different major players in this market, such as polluters, regulators and financial actors, have different time horizons. We use innovative multivariate wavelet analysis tools, including partial wavelet coherence and partial wavelet gain, to study the link between carbon prices and final energy prices in the time and frequency dimensions in California's carbon market, officially known as the California cap-and-trade programme. We find that gasoline prices lead an anti-phase relation with carbon prices. This result is very stable at lower frequencies (close to 1-year period cycles), and it is also present before mid-2015 in the 20-34 weeks frequency band. Regarding electricity, we find that at about a 1-year period, a rise in carbon prices is reflected in higher electricity prices. We conclude that the first 5 years of compliance of the California cap-and-trade programme show that emissions trading is a significant measure for climate change mitigation, with visible rising carbon prices. The quantitative financial analytics we present supports the recent decision to extend the current market to 2030 without the need for complementary carbon pricing schemes.This article is part of the theme issue 'Redundancy rules: the continuous wavelet transform comes of age'., (© 2017 The Author(s).)