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This study sets out to investigate whether the Federal Reserve System is able to efficiently manage the communicative challenge of pandering to the different demands of distinct target audiences—households, firms, banks, and the government. The empirical methodology for this analysis builds on the growing literature analyzing central bank communications to better understand the political and financial implications of monetary policy. We hope to contribute to this field of research by (1) creating a new database of over fifty years of speeches (2) devising a new method for analyzing communications that considers different audiences, and (3) providing empirical evidence for the observation that monetary policy is not neutral, i.e., that communications are positively or negatively biased in favor of some economic groups over others. The results of this analysis show that Fed central bankers communicate differently in response to a speaker's audience. The political and financial implications suggest that central bank communications may inspire more confidence and higher efficiency in achieving stable long-term interest rates when communications are targeted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to analyse the impacts of culture on the aid allocation to (dis)investment in the education in terms of boys and girls school dropout probability (SDP) across different kinship systems in Guinea-Bissau. Using a multi-person choice model of culturally rooted decisions, we found that allocating aid to couples facing income shock decreases schoolboys (schoolgirls)' SDP in patrilineal (matrilineal) kinship setting the most, suggesting that aid effects at household level depend on cultural norms existing in each society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edith Penrose is best known for her classic book The Theory of the Growth of the Firm, originally published in 1959, but she also made major contributions in other fields, including patents, the oil industry, and development economics. This special double issue of the International Review of Applied Economics publishes recent research from a range of leading economists and management scholars from across the world, either explicitly analysing Penrose's contribution, or else analysing topics from firms' collaborations with universities through to the practice and consequences of share buy-backs, which demonstrate that a Penrosian perspective helps to illuminate the reality of such processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the persistent inequalities in South Africa, particularly in terms of income, wealth, geography, and human rights, despite the end of apartheid. The authors argue that the actions of corporate elites during the transition from apartheid to the post-apartheid era have contributed to the maintenance of these inequalities. There is a difference in interpretation between the authors and the late Professor Vishnu Padayachee, with the former emphasizing the role of the South African business elite and the latter focusing on global factors and pressures. The article also highlights the negative consequences of the "capitalism unleashed" model of globalisation and calls for more interventionist policies to address pressing issues such as the climate crisis. [Extracted from the article]

Hu, Mizuno, and Song (Applied Economics Letters, 2021) compare the welfare effects of input price discrimination (IPD) and uniform input pricing (UIP) under passive partial ownership (PPO) where one downstream firm holds equity shares of its rival. This paper extends their setup to accommodate passive partial cross ownership (PCO) where each downstream firm holds equity shares of its rival. A common conclusion is that IPD improves welfare if the cost asymmetry is sufficiently low. Interestingly, this finding holds regardless of whether the more efficient firm is also the dominant partial shareholder. Indeed, it is found that the likelihood that IPD is welfare enhancing increases as firms become more asymmetric in terms of equity shares. However, the critical level of cost asymmetry differs under PPO and PCO, meaning that there are cases where IPD performs better in terms of social welfare under PCO but not under PPO, and vice versa. The main conclusion of this paper is that, compared to the PPO structure, PCO reduces the likelihood that IPD results in better welfare outcomes than UIP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of empirical research in applied economics exploits event-study design to show the dynamic effects of policy intervention. This article documents an interesting pattern in these empirical applications: cluster-robust standard errors (CRSE) from event study generally exhibit a decreasing trend over the pre-event periods, while standard errors (SEs) without clustering adjustment take similar values across pre-event periods. This article explores possible explanations for this recurrent issue by documenting the pervasiveness of this pattern across empirical applications and by Monte Carlo simulations. The simulation results show that CRSE generally present a decreasing pattern in pre-event periods and more so when intra-cluster correlation is high. The SEs also exhibit a decreasing trend using wild bootstrap and a more robust statistical inference in the case of few clusters. Overall, my results suggest that within-cluster correlation contributes to explaining the pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This debut work offers a stunning look at real vs nominal prices that consider more than just inflation. The inadequate examination of hospitality price comparison is investigated between two non-neighbouring Adriatic east coast countries – Slovenia and Montenegro – using the euro. Hospitality prices are an essential indicator in hospitality markets, destination marketing and management planning. Using 73 monthly time-series data for the economic crisis period from December 2008 to December 2014, this period covers one shock in a series. One of the key managerial features of cointegrated spatial hospitality price spread was that Montenegro followed Slovenian hospitality prices. Hospitality prices in Montenegro and Slovenia tend to be weakly integrated into the long term and seasonally driven in the short term. In addition, the econometric experimentation has given a theoretical novelty for underpinned and undermined tourism economy modelling in normalities. This state-of-the-art econometric feature is included in a customary vector error correction model (VECM). Robust applied results recognise that hospitality prices in Montenegro are domestic driven and in Slovenia Eurozone driven. This finding is relevant for applied economics on obtaining a normally distributed price model. Its theoretical and managerial implications are vital for hospitality economics, marketing and tourism management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 'The Covid-19 Pandemic Economic Impacts and Government Responses across Welfare Regimes', Jalil Safaei and Andisheh Saliminezhad examine the economic impacts and government responses in selected OECD countries as differentiated by their welfare regimes, finding that the adverse effects on output and employment were worse in the "free market" systems, whilst the social democratic countries fared better. This is the third in a series of special issues of the I International Review of Applied Economics i analysing the economic impact and consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 'An Empirical Investigation of the Economic Impacts of Covid-19: Micro-level Evidence from Europe', using firm level data Ruohan Wu finds that Government support for firms did have an impact, although this varied between high-income and low-income countries. [Extracted from the article]

The authors of the letter in the journal "Communications in Statistics: Simulation & Computation" have reported a typographic error and suggested an improvement to the competing risks simulation function of the survsim package. These changes have been implemented and are now available in the current version of the survsim package. The authors note that the results reported in a previous publication are fully reproducible with the new version of the package. The authors are affiliated with various institutions in Spain. [Extracted from the article]

In what we believe is the largest ranking of its kind in economics, this study extends the economics journal ranking literature by examining the impact of papers published in more than 550 economics journals. Based on Google Scholar citations per article to all articles published in the 15-year period from 2001 through 2015, we find that the top five journals are the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Political Economy and Journal of Economic Perspectives. Moreover, three of the American Economic Association's newest journals – American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, and American Economic Journal: Economic Policy – are ranked among the top 30 economics journals. An expanded ranking such as that provided in this study is likely a useful tool for researchers, particularly the new ones, in navigating the field of economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to analyze the economic impacts of infrastructure investment in Africa, focusing on the Guinea-Bissau economy. Through a dynamic CGE model, we find that the natural resource revenues (or aid)-funded infrastructure investments generate externalities that increase factor returns. The private investment improvements propagate externalities effects on GDP and job opportunities outcomes. Household income and consumption were positively impacted, though the poorer benefited the most. The income inequality has reduced. However, funding by the mix of debt and direct taxes produces opposite effects. We suggest a potential pro-poor growth agenda in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This resulted in UNICEF's path-breaking I Adjustment with a Human Face i (1987) and Richard's personal role from the 1980s in enabling UNICEF to lead the UN against the World Bank and IMF's narrowness and the negative impacts of their Structural Adjustment Programmes. In 1982, after ten years as IDS Director, Richard was appointed as UNICEF's Deputy Director (Programmes), where he stayed for fifteen years. Sir Richard Jolly will be remembered as a pioneer development thinker and enabler; both as a distinguished academic and as a practitioner. [Extracted from the article]

Economic theory, practice, and policy - and the prescience of Frank Wilkinson and Vishnu Padayachee The articles in this issue cover various aspects of economic theory, practice, and policy: and the important link between these categories, not least the importance of having realistic and appropriate theory, based on - and able to analyse - actual practice, the better to inform the process of policy making. In "Inflation and FDI in industrialized and developing economies", Komla Agudze and Oyakhilome Ibhagui investigate the effects of inflation on foreign direct investment (FDI) in 74 countries, finding the links to be non-linear, although generally the correlation being between low inflation and FDI. [Extracted from the article]

The Legacies of Malthus and Marx Both Malthus were Marx were giants of political economy. Beyond this, Marx was a brilliant thinker: a visionary; a scholar who read and mastered philosophy, sociology, and economics; a genius of the highest order.[17] Malthus was the arch symbol of the Old Order bitterly opposed to revolutionary ideology. Karl Marx Why Did Malthus Write an Essay on Population? Both Malthus and Marx were right about some things and wrong about others. [Extracted from the article]

On the other hand, in the absence of a balanced budget assumption, a rise in government consumption expenditure has a positive effect in both regimes. In a formal model, Parui incorporates this idea by assuming labour productivity is an increasing function of government investment expenditure. This Special Issue is a Festschrift for Professor Malcolm Sawyer, the Managing Editor of the I International Review of Applied Economics i for thirty years, from its launch in 1987 until his retirement in 2017, when he passed the baton on to Professor Jonathan Michie. In 'UK and other advanced economies productivity and income inequality', Philip Arestis focuses on weak productivity growth - in the UK and other advanced economies - which has been slowing down since around 2000, and on increasing income inequality. [Extracted from the article]

These include capital controls, which they argue should be introduced to enhance the Central Bank of Brazil's 'autonomy in setting the nominal interest rate to pursue domestic goals, prevent the Brazilian I real i from appreciating and avert financial and exchange crises'. The year 2022 began with a further surge of Covid-19 infections globally, with the Omicron variant proving much more transmissible than the previous strains. There was a belief that this crisis had been caused by the expansionary economic policies pursued previously, and hence fiscal austerity and restrictive monetary policies were advocated. [Extracted from the article]

This study examined the determinants of economic development for the 34 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and analysed efficient uses of economic development resource endowments. The methodology included econometric panel data modelling and stochastic frontier analysis, using the Cobb-Douglas production function and trans-logarithmic functional form to analyse data from 2003 to 2012. Economic growth was measured by the gross domestic product (GDP) of each economy. As a result, the determinants of economic development were presented and a ranking of efficiency was obtained for all OECD economies throughout the period of analysis. It was concluded that countries with higher economic growth levels have higher efficiency rankings. For example, countries with higher efficiency rankings were Luxembourg and the U.S.; Chile and Mexico were ranked lower. Finally, there was a positive relationship between growth levels and technical efficiency levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2021 World Economic Forum pledged a "Great Reset", recognising that the Covid-19 crisis would be compounded by several other crises, actual and threatened, including the climate crisis, financial crises, social and economic inequality, and the threat of further pandemics.[1] This is the second Special Issue of the I International Review of Applied Economics i focussing on the Covid-19 pandemic. The "Great Reset" to tackle Covid-19 and other crises Government responses to the Covid-19 pandemic In 'The Covid-19 pandemic and economic stimulus in India: Has it been a hostage of macroeconomic complications?. [Extracted from the article]

A principal source of interest in behavioral economics has been its advertised contributions to policies aimed at ‘nudging’ people away from allegedly natural but self-defeating behavior toward patterns of response thought more likely to improve their welfare. This has occasioned controversies among economists and philosophers around the normative limits of paternalism, especially by technical policy advisors. One recent suggestion has been that ‘boosting,’ in which interventions aim to enhance people’s general cognitive skills and representational repertoires instead of manipulating their choice environments behind their backs, avoids the main normative challenges. A limitation in most of this literature is that it has focused on relatively sweeping policy recommendations and consequently on strong polar alternatives of general paternalism and strictlaissez faire. We review a real instance, drawn from a consulting project we conducted for an investment bank, of a proposed intervention that is more typical of the kind that economists are more often actually called upon to offer. In this example, the sophistication of current tools for preference attribution, combined with philosophical externalism about the semantics of preferences that makes it less plausible to attribute their literal self-conscious representation to people as propositional attitude content becomes more tightly refined, blocks applicability of the distinction between nudging and boosting. This seems to call for irreducible, context-specific ethical judgment in assessing the appropriateness of the forms of paternalism that economists must actually wrestle with in going about their everyday business. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Textbooks are an important subject for the study of science in general and economics in particular. In this paper, we analyse at the process of the acceptance of human capital theory through its inclusion in economics textbooks by looking at two specialized fields to which this theory became highly influential: labour economics and the economics of education. The analysis will compare the patterns of the dissemination of these new theoretical developments in a more consolidated field and in an emergent field of economics research with a particular focus in the early stages of that dissemination process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, evidence in economics has been seen in the context of theory choice. Much of recent methodological debate on the role of evidence has turned on the recognition that the status and role of evidence is somewhat more involved in economics than the conventional wisdom suggests. Rather than approaching this question in general terms from a starting point of philosophy of science or even science studies, our aim in this introduction to a symposium of articles on evidence in economics is to approach the question from the perspective of applied economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a disciplinary contribution to the Housing, Theory and Society debate on the role of theory in housing studies. The discipline in question is economics, but considered widely across the range of perspectives it offers. A pragmatic case is made for investigating applied economics from across the subject's spectrum provided they meet the criteria of being useful, insightful, interesting or novel and potentially testable. It is argued that this is consistent with a multidisciplinary approach to housing research. The paper also argues that recent trends in economics have contributed positively, particularly through the increasingly mainstream behavioural economics and finance school, an area of practical relevance to housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]