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In this paper, we compare the dynamics of the growth rates of the original Divisia monetary aggregates, the credit card-augmented Divisia monetary aggregates, and the credit card-augmented Divisia inside monetary aggregates. This analysis is based on the methods of recurrence plots, recurrence quantification analysis, and visual boundary recurrence plots which are phase space methods designed to depict the underlying dynamics of the system under study. We identify the events that affected Divisia money growth and point out the differences among the different Divisia monetary aggregates based on the recurrence and visual boundary recurrence plots. We argue that the broad Divisia monetary aggregates could be used for monetary policy and business cycle analysis as they are exhibiting less fluctuation compared to the narrow Divisia monetary aggregates. They could positively affect policy decisions regarding environmental choices and sustainability. We also point out the changes in the monetary dynamics locating the 2008 global financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses panel data for Canada from 1976 to 2018, across 10 provinces, to reassess the relationship between mortality rates and economic fluctuations. The key contribution of our paper lies in examining the extent to which this relationship is driven by the employment rate (extensive margin) versus average hours worked (intensive margin). We find evidence of procyclical mortality for females at the aggregate level; aggregate male mortality remains largely unaffected by economic fluctuations. Our findings also reveal temporal heterogeneity, as the extensive margin becomes the driving force for female mortality rates during the more recent period (1990 onwards). These findings remain robust when accounting for personal income and pollution. Finally, we find some support for a procyclical relationship for individuals in the working age groups, while mortality exhibits a countercyclical pattern for children (age 0 to 14) and the elderly (age 65 and above). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: For close to two decades, the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) has been preparing to launch a second monetary union within the ECOWAS region. This study aims to determine the impact such a unionised monetary regime will have on financial stability as represented by the nonperforming loan ratios of Ghana in a counterfactual framework. Design/methodology/approach: This study models nonperforming loan ratios as dependent on the monetary policy rate and the business cycle. The study then used historical data to estimate the parameters of the nonperforming loan ratio response function using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach. The estimated parameters are further used to estimate the impact of several counterfactual unionised monetary policy rates on the nonperforming loan ratios and its volatility of Ghana. As robustness check, the Least Absolute Shrinkage Selection Operator (LASSO) regression is also used to estimate the nonperforming loan ratios response function and to predict nonperforming loans under the counterfactual unionised monetary policy rates. Findings: The results of the counterfactual study reveals that the apparent cost of monetary unification is much less than supposed with a monetary union likely to dampen volatility in non-performing loans in Ghana. As such, the WAMZ members should increase the pace towards monetary unification. Originality/value: The paper contributes to the existing literature by explicitly modelling nonperforming loan ratios as dependent on monetary policy and the business cycle. The study also settles the debate on the financial stability cost of a monetary union due to the nonalignment of business cycles and economic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deliberate non-enforcement of the law has been analyzed as a policy tool to redistribute income. I show that it also responds to political incentives for the provision of insurance, resembling two well-known dimensions of social policy design. I analyze data from a large informal program of social insurance in the world: informal access to electricity service. Transmission and distribution losses (TDL) in the electricity sector are counter-cyclical because non-compliance and theft increase during economic crises. By exploiting variation in political institutions, I capture political motivations for the provision of informal insurance. Using a panel of 110 developing countries (1970–2014) and instrumental variables for business cycles and regime type, I show that unlike highly entrenched autocrats, democracies tolerate increases in electricity losses during negative income shocks. This paper expands the literature on "forbearance" showing how the provision of informal insurance varies across the developing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basic Markov-switching model has been extended in various ways ever since the seminal work of Hamilton (1989. "A New Approach to the Economic Analysis of Nonstationary Time Series and the Business Cycle." Econometrica 57: 357–84). However, the estimation of Markov-switching models in the literature has relied upon parametric assumptions on the distribution of the error term. In this paper, we present a Bayesian approach for estimating Markov-switching models with unknown and potentially non-normal error distributions. We approximate the unknown distribution of the error term by the Dirichlet process mixture of normals, in which the number of mixtures is treated as a parameter to estimate. In doing so, we pay special attention to the identification of the model. We then apply the proposed model and MCMC procedure to the growth of the postwar U.S. industrial production index. Our model can effectively control for irregular components that are not related to business conditions. This leads to sharp and accurate inferences on recession probabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highly interconnected global supply chains make countries vulnerable to supply chain disruptions. This paper estimates the macroeconomic effects of global supply chain shocks for the euro area. Our empirical model combines business cycle variables with data from international container trade. Using a novel identification scheme, we augment conventional sign restrictions on the impulse responses by narrative information about three episodes: the Tohoku earthquake ¯ in 2011, the Suez Canal obstruction in 2021, and the Shanghai backlog in 2022. We show that a global supply chain shock causes a drop in euro area real economic activity and a strong increase in consumer prices. Over a horizon of one year, the global supply chain shock explains about 30% of inflation dynamics. We also use regional data on supply chain pressure to isolate shocks originating in China. Our results show that supply chain disruptions originating in China are an important driver for unexpected movements in industrial production, while disruptions originating outside China are an especially important driver for the dynamics of consumer prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, the I European Journal of the History of Economic Thought i (EJHET) and the I European Society for the History of Economic Thought i (ESHET) launched the initiative to publish a special annual issue of EJHET with a selection of papers presented at the ESHET conference of the year before. The 24th annual ESHET conference took place at the University of National and World Economy (UNWE) at Sofia, Bulgaria, from 8 to 10 October 2021. Carret's article is followed by the verbatim records of a roundtable discussion, which took place during the ESHET conference in Sofia, about a highly prominent and controversial attempt to eliminate the divide between microdynamics and macrodynamics. [Extracted from the article]

What are black swans? And why are mainstream economists so often surprised by financial crises? Furthermore, have supply-side responses to crises merely deepened economic inequality and instability? Rather than simply comparing theories and methods – economics' 'ontological turn' posits that what is foremostly required is an audit of prevailing theories' metaphysical commitments. That is, to interrogate what economics presumes there is to observe, interact with, and know. Seeking to garner greater analytical purchase over the 'real-world', the ontological turn has also birthed several multidisciplinary syntheses – namely, Austrian-materialism (Lewis, P., 2005. Boettke, the Austrian school and the reclamation of reality in modern economics. The Review of Austrian Economics, 18 (1), 83–108.) and Keynesian-critical realism (Lawson, T., 2003. Reorienting economics. New York: Routledge.). Alternatively, and in support of the constructivist claim that social dynamics ultimately drive economics, this paper resituates and extends Wesley Widmaier's (2004) vision of a Keynesian-constructivism within the broader ontological turn. Herein, this paper interrogates the concepts of black swans vis-à-vis post-Keynesian understandings of business cycles, demand-side logics, and Modern Money – en route to establishing new analytical frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to study the asset pricing implications for stock and bond markets in a long-run risks (LRR) model with regime shifts. This general equilibrium framework can not only generate sign-switching stock-bond correlations and bond risk premium, but also quantitatively reproduce various other salient empirical features in stock and bond markets, including time-varying equity and bond return premia, regime shifts in real and nominal yield curves, the violation of the expectations hypothesis of bond returns. Design/methodology/approach: The researchers study the joint determinants of stock and bond returns in a LRR model framework with regime shifts in consumption and inflation dynamics. In particular, the means, volatilities, and the correlation structure between consumption growth and inflation are regime-dependent. Findings: The model shows that the term structure of interest rates and stock-bond correlation are intimately related to business cycles, while LRR play a more important role in accounting for high equity premium than do business cycle risks. Originality/value: This paper studies the joint determinants of stock and bond returns in a Bansal and Yaron (2004) type of LRR framework. This rational expectations general equilibrium framework can (1) jointly match the dynamics of consumption, inflation and cash flow; (2) generate time-varying and sign-switching stock and bond correlations, as well as generating sign-switching bond risk premium; and (3) coherently explain another long list of salient empirical features in stock and bond markets, including time-varying equity and bond return premia, regime shifts in real and nominal yield curves, the violation of the expectations hypothesis of bond returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the cycles in corporate investments around national elections in Pakistan from 2000 to 2016. It employed the investment-Q model as the baseline specification with firm fixed effects. Results revealed that during election years, firms tend to reduce investment expenditures as compared to a period having no election after controlling for firm characteristics and economic condition. The study also witnessed pre-election manipulation and the presence of the political business cycle in Pakistan in the period leading up to the national election. This study witnessed variations in the impact of political uncertainty across elections and found more pronounced investment cycle for close contested elections. It also revealed negative changes in investments around national elections for market-friendly and lagged investments; however, results of sensitive industries were insignificant for Pakistan. Furthermore, empirical findings reveal that cashflows levels are consistent with the cautionary effect predicted by the real options theory which proposes that firms hold more cash in the period of high political uncertainty and wait until the uncertainty regarding political uncertainty is resolved. The results of this paper suggest that there should be a consensus between political parties on key economic policies so that even with the change of government; the key policies should remain the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some credit booms result in financial crises. While excessive risk-taking could plausibly explain the boom-to-bust cycle, many investors do not anticipate increasing risk. We show that credit booms may be misunderstood as being driven by high productivity because opaque bank assets disguise risk incentives. Balanced funding relative to productive prospects can sustain prudent lending (good boom), whereas funding imbalances may induce high risk exposure and boost asset prices (bad boom) or lead to asset underpricing and insufficient lending (missed boom). Rational agents drawing inference from prices make mistakes that can amplify the effect of funding imbalances and propagate risk. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix , which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of fluctuations is part of the narrative, especially when there is a slowdown (or worse, a contraction) in economic activity. The presence of long waves with a period of about 50 years as proposed by Kondratieff is one of the most controversial and fascinating theories about economic cycles. This paper analyses both the original Kondratieff data (from which the hypothesis started) and a dataset that includes GDP per capita for several significant countries. By applying the wavelet analysis (WA), the main objective of the paper is to understand whether it is plausible to support the existence of periodic fluctuations consistent with long cycles theory. The outcomes for Kondratieff's original dataset do not show the presence of a coherent periodicity for most cases. The same conclusion can be drawn for all the GDP per capita series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early evidence suggests that COVID-19 caused a sharp decrease in international trade and a widening of current account imbalances. This paper shows that (qualitatively) similar responses have characterized the effects of previous pandemics. Using data from a sample of 170 countries, we find that a pandemic shock is typically followed by a sizable decrease in output and trade volumes, but an uneven current account response: balances improve in developed (or surplus) economies but deteriorate in developing (or deficit) ones. We also explore potential mechanisms for this asymmetry, and our evidence is pointing to national saving and the business cycle phase as the main reasons behind the divergent current account dynamic responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Financial Crisis and the COVID‐19 pandemic have raised concerns about business cycles. In this paper, we examine the dynamics of past business cycles in CAEMC economies to infer the shapes of recessions and subsequent recoveries. We use annual GDP data covering the period 1960–2020 and non‐parametric approach. The main results are fourfold. First, recessions are, on average, long with a positive duration dependence relationship and the strength of recoveries is independent of the duration and the depth of the associated recessions. Second, recessions and recoveries are not all alike, meaning that history cannot be used as a guide for forecasting issue. Third, nearly 45% of the recessions and subsequent recoveries are V‐shaped, and the L, U and W patterns appear when governments are heavily indebted. Fourth, a regional cycle sometimes emerges. The results suggest a strengthening of the capacities of CAEMC states and a resilient supply chain management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper introduces financial intermediation into the New Keynesian model with rare disasters, analyzes the impacts of rare disaster shock on the macro economy, and compares the effects of different economic recovery policies. Based on the numerical analysis, this study finds that: (1) rare disaster risk shock retains a negative relationship with consumption levels, and banks increase their leverage ratios to cause risk accumulation; (2) refinance policy and consumer coupon policy can alleviate economic fluctuations caused by disaster risks from various channels; (3) the consumer coupon policy is conducive to reducing the average social welfare loss caused by disaster risks. It is believed that the establishment of a sustainable economic stimulus mechanism to fundamentally reduce the impact of catastrophic events on the macro economy and achieve economic recovery in a short period are essential issues that should be urgently addressed by countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of the payments from the European Cohesion Policy (ECP) in the business cycle synchronisation of the EU–28 countries in the time period 2000–2016. The emphasis is especially placed on the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, given their status as the biggest ECP recipients; we investigate whether the ECP can serve as an instrument to promote their synchronisation which presents one of the prerequisites for the adoption of common monetary policy in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). By applying a panel instrumental variables estimation, our results suggest that the ECP provides a positive externality regarding increased synchronicity in the EMU, suggesting that the ECP should be further strengthened to foster business synchronicity in the Euro Area. Further analysis reveals that the systematically identified driving forces are the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Cohesion Fund (CF). The current European recovery plan 'Next Generation EU' could, therefore, have a promoting effect on the EMU's monetary policy if it is designed as an additional structural investment fund promoting financial and trade integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the triggers of arrears on debt in a full recourse euro area country. An extensive individual‐level quarterly panel dataset enables quarterly arrears on debt to be tracked while controlling for individual specific heterogeneity. The estimations show that lower income and higher debt service ratios are associated with a higher probability of arrears, confirming the "ability to pay" hypothesis. The results reveal different debt repayment behaviour for housing and consumer loans over a business cycle. Newly taken housing loans exhibit a lower probability of arrears and the same applies to loans granted during the period of easy credit conditions and high real estate prices, indicating that housing credit boom has not contributed to the rise in arrears on debt. Newly taken consumer loans are related to a higher probability of arrears, suggesting that consumer loans have been used to alleviate financial difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sovereign defaults are associated with income and trade reductions and terms-of-trade deterioration. This paper develops a two-country model to study the interactions between income, trade, terms of trade, and foreign-debt default risk and default events. Such default risk and events are costly because they adversely affect the demand for a borrower country's intermediate goods exports and its income. Consequently, trade flows change due to the income loss and consumption home bias. The defaulter's terms of trade also deteriorate endogenously, which accelerates its income and trade losses. The model produces procyclical imports, exports, terms of trade, and other empirical features of emerging countries' business cycles and default episodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate the sources of the business cycle fluctuations in Vietnam. To this end, the author develops a small open economy New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (SOE-NK-DSGE) model. Accordingly, this model includes various features, such as habit consumption, staggered price, price indexation, incomplete exchange-rate pass-through (ERPT), the failures of the law of one price (LOOP) and the uncovered interest rate parity. It is then estimated by using the Bayesian technique and Vietnamese data 1999Q1–2017Q1. Based on the estimated model, this paper analyzes the sources of the business cycle fluctuations in this emerging economy. Indeed, this research paper is the first attempt at developing and estimating the SOE-NK-DSGE model with the Bayesian technique for Vietnam. Design/methodology/approach: A SOE-NK-DSGE model—Bayesian estimation. Findings: This paper analyzes the sources of the business cycle fluctuations in Vietnam. Originality/value: This research paper is the first attempt at developing and estimating the SOE-NK-DSGE model with the Bayesian technique for Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty reduction is an important driving force for the global realization of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and the building of a global community with a shared future for mankind. This paper takes the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a quasi-natural experiment. Based on the panel data of 134 countries in the world from 2000 to 2018, this paper uses the difference-in-difference (DID) model to examine the impact of the BRI on poverty reduction in countries along the route and to study its internal mechanism from the dual perspectives of trade openness and investment openness. The results show that (1) the BRI can significantly reduce the incidence of poverty with the impact coefficient stable at −0.26, and the empirical conclusion has passed the parallel test, placebo test, and instrumental variable test; (2) the mediating effect test model shows that the BRI can achieve poverty reduction through the dual openness of trade and investment, and the intermediary effect of trade openness is greater than investment openness; and (3) from the perspective of heterogeneity analysis, geographically, the BRI has a slightly higher role in promoting poverty reduction in landlocked countries than in coastal countries. In terms of economic location, the effect of poverty reduction has a certain "pro-poverty" characteristic, that is, the BRI promotes poverty reduction in low- and middle-income countries far more than other types of income countries. Therefore, we believe that the continuous deepening of the BRI high-quality construction and the strengthening of cooperation among countries along the route will play a key role in promoting the international cycle of trade, investment, and other factors, as well as the cause of poverty reduction in the region and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the spillover dynamics of shocks originating in China during the last two decades. More specifically, the paper compares the effects of a shock to China's GDP and exchange rate using early 2000s trade patterns with those of two decades later. We use a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model as it allows to consider trade interactions as well as financial linkages through interest rates, stock prices, and exchange rates. Our results indicate that the shock spillovers from China have become more pronounced over the past two decades. While the world has become more exposed to China's economy, it has become more susceptible to Chinese economic shocks. This paper contributes to the literature by evaluating the dynamics of China's spillover effects and highlights the structural changes in trade between major global trade players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the existing relations between the management of public bonds on the dynamics of debt, term structure of interest rates and economic cycle, through a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model (DSGE), which was estimated through Bayesian inference techniques using data from Brazil. Design/methodology/approach: The model developed was used to investigate the effects of the public debt average maturity management when the economy faces a monetary policy shock. For this, three management scenarios are evaluated, including Brazilian securities average term. Findings: Contrary to what might be inferred from DSGE models that limited the analysis of the debt term by imposing only one-period bonds, a contractionary monetary policy shock does not necessarily cause public debt to increase significantly. Debt term structure plays a crucial role in this result since the government does not need to roll the debt over at higher costs when the debt term profile is longer, reducing the debt service costs and then the impact on the overall debt. Originality/value: Despite the relevance of this theme and its implications for the dynamics of the economy, there is still a gap to be filled in the literature when using DSGE models, since most part of the work that used this methodology limited the analysis of the debt term by imposing that government issues only one-period bonds. This paper differs from the others insofar as it promotes an investigation focused on the role played by debt maturity management on the performance of the contractionary monetary policy. This approach can generate a better understanding of debt management policy and its interaction with fiscal and monetary policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by the observation that land supplied by the Chinese government is highly counter-cyclical with GDP fluctuations, this paper constructs a DSGE model to study the relationship between China's land supply policy and economic fluctuations, and further evaluate the welfare effects. By way of counterfactual exercises, this paper finds that endogenous land supply policy has "direct effect (production input channel)" and "indirect effect (intermediate goods channel)" on GDP fluctuations, and both tend to dampen economic fluctuations in China's macroeconomy. Specifically, GDP fluctuations increase by 63.35% without the "indirect effect", increase by 66.75% without the "direct effect", and increase by 66.79% without both effects. In addition, endogenous land supply policy can increase social welfare by about 1.38%. Verifying by the stylized facts in China, this paper argues that endogenous land supply is an efficient macro-control policy to smooth the economy and increase social welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines the aggregate effects of global uncertainty using monthly South African data. The empirical analysis is implemented in the context of vector autoregressions (VAR), augmented with various proxies for economic and financial indicators. The evidence shows that global uncertainty shocks are a significant source of economic fluctuations—they are estimated to significantly explain the cyclical downturn and exert negative impact on the financial and stock markets. These results are consistent with the view that uncertainty shocks are an important exogenous source of cyclical fluctuations and the reactions in the financial market play an important role in the impact of uncertainty shocks on the real economy. The evidence shows that uncertainty is important to the inflation dynamics while inflation and output co‐move negatively conditional on uncertainty shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite his striking findings on the link between Burke and the Scottish Enlightenment, Pocock ([28], [29]) failed to address the theoretical aspect of Burke's idea of money. Burke's political economy has drawn the attention of commentators since the nineteenth century, including prominent economists such as J. M. Keynes and F. A. Hayek. Nevertheless, largely owing to their historical memory of 1720, Hume, Burke, and Smith shared a skepticism of paper money, even though Burke's and Smith's views on paper money were more positive than Hume's. Viewed together with Canavan's ([5]) emphasis on the idea of property in Burke, it is now clear that manners, property, and industry played a central role in Burke's idea of political economy, and the first two were the chief elements that enabled the third. [Extracted from the article]

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This paper uses a set of provincial macroeconomic variables and the panel VAR method, which contains cross-sectional dynamic interdepence and time-varying coefficients, to measure the quarterly dynamics of the real economies of Chinese provinces. We find that provincial GDP and industrial value-added series may deliver limited business cycle information and that Chinese provinces have experienced overall divergence and sub-club convergence in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between the gross value added (GVA) of Greece's agricultural sector and the GVAs of the other sectors. The research considers both the relationship between value levels and the cycles of GVAs. Dynamic analysis using ARDL modeling shows that there is no cointegration between agricultural GVA and the other GVAs. However, there is an estimated cointegrating relationship between business cycles of agriculture and those of the rest of the economic sectors, with the cycles of services being the significant variable. Moreover, econometric analysis using NARDL modeling shows that there is a cointegrating relationship between the levels of GVAs as well, when asymmetricity—with respect to GVA changes of the services sector—is introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a simple and tractable equilibrium model, where collateralized credit emerges under limited commitment. We show that even if there is no time variation in fundamentals, credit trade can fluctuate endogenously over time. In our theory, credit fragilities are associated with endogenous fluctuations in trade probabilities, collateral values, and lending volumes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the relationship between health care and the macroeconomy, which has gained increasing attention in recent years. The article highlights the importance of understanding the causes and implications of rising health care expenditures, as well as the impact of health on macroeconomic performance. It also explores various topics related to health and the economy, such as the implications of health risks for consumption and wealth allocation, the role of health as a type of human capital, and the challenges posed by population aging and rising health spending. The article includes six papers that examine different aspects of the macroeconomics of health care and aging in various countries. [Extracted from the article]

This paper constructs a simple dynamic growth model and deducts four theoretical predictions: prediction I, new knowledge creations and research and development expenditures (R&DE) contribute to economic upturns and downturns; prediction II, the R&DE and new knowledge creations upsurge and fall in the economic expansions and contractions periods, respectively; prediction III, the research intensity and frequency of new knowledge creations increase and reduce during boom and recession periods, respectively; prediction IV, positive and negative shocks in R&DE and new knowledge creation are caused by changes in consumption, saving, R&DE, and innovation activities during economic boom and slump periods; and prediction IV, innovation and gross domestic product have a bidirectional causal nexus during trade cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustainability of the coking industry is supported by reasonable production profit and environmental quality requirements. The traditional measures substantially increased the related costs for enterprises to reach standards. This paper aims to develop a comprehensive cost combined environmental impact assessment method that is necessary for the analysis of wastewater treatment systems. Typical three coking wastewater treatment processes in China were evaluated. Results showed that eutrophication dominantly contributed to the overall environmental effect. Improving effluent quality could significantly reduce the total environmental impact. In terms of an economic perspective, the price of raw materials was the main factor that affected the operating cost of comprehensive treatment. Based on subsystem analysis, the pretreatment stage accounted for the majority of environmental and cost burdens, respectively reaching 64%-78% and 64%-86%. Optimizing the pretreatment process by enhancing the efficiency of high concentration raw material recovery and substituting toxic raw materials for extractant could reduce the environmental impact and economic cost by 43.8% and 57%, respectively, which was an effective way to improve the potential performance of coking wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heritage tourism in Egypt, differentiated by its distinctive ancient wonders and cultural prosperity, has faced numerous challenges through its history, with political unrest, economic fluctuations, and, most recently, the global COVID-19 pandemic. This research paper investigates the dynamic interplay between planned and adopted resilience within the hotel sector in Egyptian heritage sites and their consequential effects on both social and economic sustainability. A quantitative research method was employed to empirically explore these dynamics. A structured questionnaire was distributed to 550 top and middle managers in hotels located in heritage sites, capturing insights into their perspectives on planned and adopted resilience. The collected data underwent rigorous analysis utilizing "partial least squares structural equation modeling" (PLS-SEM), providing a robust foundation for drawing meaningful conclusions. Findings from the research underscore the necessity of aligning planned and adopted resilience to generate sustainable social and economic performance. The synthesis of planned and adopted resilience was revealed to be pivotal in generating sustainable social and economic performance for hotels. This synthesis catalyzes the hotels' ability to mitigate uncertainties, adjust to changing environment, and ensure long-term viability. This research might contribute to the current literature by suggesting industry-specific awareness for the reciprocal relationship between planned and adopted resilience in the hotel businesses and their combined influence on both sides of sustainability (social and economic). The findings provide actionable recommendations for hotel management, policymakers, and industry stakeholders to enhance resilience, foster social cohesion, and ensure the economic sustainability of heritage tourism in an everchanging environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper showcases an organizational life-cycle analysis of corporate offending behavior in small businesses. It analyzes two small food and hospitality firms in China, drawing on deep ethnographic data collected during three years of fieldwork. The paper investigates these two businesses as they go through three phases: pre-existence, existence, and survival. The study shows that organizational life-course analysis is important for understanding the development and root causes of organizational offending. It finds that offending evolves alongside the development of the organization. It shows that an organizational life-cycle analysis should focus not just on changes in the corporation itself, but also on how the regulatory context changes over the course of the organization's development and maturing. Stages in the business cycle coincide with changes in regulatory encounters, and this shapes how corporations view what regulators expect of them and the extent to which they can violate such expectations. This points to a broader form of life-course analysis. It urges the field to moves beyond an analysis of changes in the business to also study the how such changes coincide with changes in the regulatory frameworks that are supposed to monitor and reduce offending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Survey data can offer timely information on the current state of the economy and its short-term outlook. In this paper, we propose a "Swiss Economic Confidence Index" (SEC). This is a monthly indicator based on aggregating a selection of individual survey indicators, which we show to have favorable leading properties. Applying simple criteria, we select those surveys from a set of currently more than 250 sentiment indicators. We show that the SEC index provides useful signals on GDP growth in a number of real-time out-of-sample forecasting exercises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides empirical evidence on predictable time variations in out-of-sample bond return predictability. Bond return predictability is associated with periods of high (low) economic activity (uncertainty), which implies that violations of the expectations hypothesis are state dependent and linked to features of the business cycle. These state dependencies in predictability, established by introducing a new multivariate test for equal conditional predictive ability, can be used in real time to improve out-of-sample bond risk premia estimates and investors' economic utility through a novel dynamic forecast combination scheme that uses predicted forecasting performance to identify the best set of methods to include in the combined forecast. Dynamically combined forecasts exhibit strong countercyclical behavior and peak during recessions. This paper was accepted by Lukas Schmid, finance. Funding: This work was supported by the Danish Council of Independent Research [Grants DFF 7024–00020B and DFF 9033–00003B] and the Danish Finance Institute. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4713. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to economic hurdles, several countries turn to devaluing their national currencies as a way to cope with economic difficulties. Such acts have a variety of effects on many industries, including real estate, which has led to multiple institutional and regulatory reformations aiming at minimising these effects. This paper uses a system thinking methodology that emphasises underpinning relationships among all entangled components to examine how such reforms affect minimising risks associated with currency devaluation on the real estate market. This paper uses this methodology beyond linear cause-effect analyses to consider interactions and interconnectedness in order to give some insights to gain: * The impact of the currency devaluation on the real estate market based on Egyptian recent situation. * The unintended consequences of government reforms on real estate market variables * Solution leverage points where to intervene in the system. * Holistic understanding which enables decision makers to see a wider picture and factors. Egypt has faced severe fluctuations in the economic climate, which has entailed a sharp devaluation of the currency three times between 2016 and 2023 (which could be considered a special aggressive case study between countries due to repetitiveness and effects). The effects of this devaluation have extended to all sectors, and the most important of these effects was severe challenges that faced the real estate market performance. The Real Estate market (REM) recently in Egypt has faced huge recession of transactions of the market. This research focuses on understanding the relations of reforms of the regulations which is designed to give a comprehensive overview of the government reforms of RE business, and how it has been interacting with the ramifications of those currency devaluation impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) on the economic development of the Western Balkans. The basic aim of this agreement was the economic development of the countries of this region. Many firms would benefit from trade and contractual relationships with the European Union (EU). The methodology used is the gravity model, which predicts bilateral trade flows based on the economic sizes and distance between the EU and the Western Balkans. The model has been used in international relations to evaluate the impact of treaties on trade, and it has been used to test the effectiveness of trade agreements on the economy. Statistics of export, import, economic growth, etc. have been provided for a ten-year period 2007-2017. This paper is based on the research of Qorraj (2016), Qorraj and Jusufi (2018), and Leka et al. (2022). The relevance of the paper depends on that, within the ten years, there was no significant increase in the exports of these countries to the EU market. This paper concludes that the SAA has not ensured the export growth of these countries because products originating from this region are not competitive in the EU market, EU exports to this region have increased more than the other way around. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results of previous research suggest that the elasticity of employment with respect to output is not constant within each phase of the business cycle and might depend on the maturity of that phase. Nevertheless, empirical evidence is almost non-existent. Using the unemployment gap as the proxy for the maturity of the business cycle phase, this paper seeks to determine heterogeneous elasticity across different business cycle phases. Furthermore, we aim to evaluate specific elasticities for separate demographic groups, considering gender, age, and educational attainment level, to identify the most vulnerable to jobless growth. Our specification is based on the employment version of Okun's law, and estimates are provided for the whole EU-27 panel covering the period from 2000 to 2022. Our results suggest that elasticity is higher when the unemployment gap is positive and increasing and lower when the gap decreases, regardless of the business cycle phase. Thus, it can be argued that the possibility of growth increasing employment is very limited when the economy operates at its potential level (full employment) for all demographic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to analyze changes and peculiarities of behavior of economic agents with bounded rationality in the New Keynesian model, in which imported equipment and technology are one of the factors of production, and households consume only domestic products. The formation of output gap and inflation expectations by agents is based on stationary values of these variables and on extrapolation of the latest available data on inflation and the output gap. The weight shares of agents applying these rules change endogenously. Histograms of the frequency distribution of the degree of buoyancy and the impulse responses of monetary policy shocks and technology shocks to the variables under study show that a less open economy tends to go through an economic cycle with a smaller amplitude than a more rigid economy. Analyses of the trade-offs between the volatility of inflation and the output gap at different parameter values in the Taylor rule show their non-linear nature (in contrast to standard models with rational expectations). An important result obtained in this analysis is that the rational expectations hypothesis is more consistent with a closed economy than with an open one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic forecasting is crucial since it benefits many different parties, such as governments, businesses, investors, and the general public. This paper presents a novel methodology for forecasting business cycles using an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), a popular linear model in time series forecasting, and a neural network with weighted fuzzy membership functions (NEWFM) as a forecasting model generator. The study used a dataset that included seven components of the leading composite index, which is used to predict positive or negative trends in several economic sectors before the GDP is compiled. The preprocessed time series data comprising the leading composite index using ARIMA were used as input vectors for the NEWFM to predict comprehensive business fluctuations. The prediction capability significantly improved through the duplicated refining process of the dataset using ARIMA and NEWFM. The combined ARIMA and NEWFM techniques exceeded ARIMA in both classification and prediction, yielding an accuracy of 91.61%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between credits and sector-level output dynamics in a sample of 41 advanced and developing countries. The existing literature shows that household credits are associated with boom-bust cycles in aggregate output, whereas business loans do not cause such output dynamics. The present paper expands these findings in terms of advanced versus developing countries and manufacturing versus services sectors. The new findings indicate that the resulting boom-bust cycles in the aggregate output in response to household credits are generally observed in the sample of developing countries, with no similar dynamics in the advanced countries. Another significant conclusion is that the boom-bust cycles are generated mostly in the services sector. No equivalent boom-bust dynamics are observed in the manufacturing sector, but the negative medium-run effects of household credits are larger in this sector. These findings indicate that credit mechanisms and consequences can significantly vary across countries and sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper decomposes the Spanish aggregate R&D distribution to disentangle the contributions of R&D public financing, gazelle firms, and financial constraints. Applying the Chernozhukov, Fernández-Val and Melly (2013) distribution regression approach, we estimate the contributions of these components at each point of the distribution. The analysis is carried out for two periods, pre-crisis 2004–2008 and post-crisis 2009–2014. We thereby introduce a comparative perspective that allows us to consider possible business cycle effects. Our findings show that the main explanatory factors of the significant post-crisis drop in Spanish aggregate R&D are changes in the public financing scheme and the decreased contribution of gazelles. Our results provide a rigorous analysis of Spanish R&D, hint at a possible transmission channel for reduced business dynamism, and offer interesting insights for policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on two-country scenarios (entrants vs. incumbents), this paper employs the synthetic control method to quantify the macroeconomic effects of the European Union (EU) enlargement, and examines whether these effects varied before, during, and after economic crises. We find that enlargement effects are very complex, and significantly varied across economic cycles and the country groups. In particular, EU enlargement induced large and positive effects on the entrants which were merely stifled in the wake of the financial crisis and the subsequent euro crisis. In the interim, the 2004 enlargement triggered an instantaneous negative shock on the incumbents which was further exacerbated by the crises. Subsequently, the entrants recovered beyond their pre-crises gains, registering approximately 14 % higher per capita incomes by 2019, with Poland emerging as a clear winner. Meanwhile, incumbents' per capita incomes have, on average, declined by approximately 9 %. While our findings largely support the notion that the entrants are en route to catching up with their incumbent counterparts, a formal β-convergence analysis exploiting the observed and synthetic data intuitively confirms that EU integration reduces the half-life by 50 %. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deeply investigating the relationship between governance, financial development, and outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) is beneficial to formulating effective policies to accelerate Chinese firms' pace of overseas expansion. Based on the theoretical mechanism analysis, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of Asian governance and financial development on China's OFDI using the panel data of 37 Asian countries from 2003 to 2017. The results show that the host country governance has a negative and statistically significant impact on China's direct investment in Asia. The conclusion remains valid even after overcoming the interference of endogenous and economic cycle fluctuations. Moreover, using the mediating effect model, we find that financial development is an important channel through which host country governance affects China's OFDI. In further discussion, the findings suggest that with the scale of OFDI expanding, the role of governance takes an inverted "U" shape, and the "Belt and Road" initiative (BRI) weakens the negative impact of governance quality on China's OFDI. Furthermore, governance has shown more remarkable restraint on China's OFDI in neighboring, coastal, and low-income countries in the heterogeneity test. ​From the perspective of host country governance, this paper provides more specific guidance to formulate China's direct investment policy in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of energy prices on macroeconomic stability is analyzed in this paper. Energy prices represent significant supply-side shocks, which have been leading cyclical fluctuation triggers through economic history. The analysis includes the countries that were the members of the former SFRY, as well as the countries the members of the Višegrad Group. The indicators under observation are presented for the EU27 for the purposes of comparison. In accordance with economic theory, the main conclusion of the paper is that supply-side shocks can be a significant source of cyclical fluctuations and an inflation trigger. Therefore, policymakers have a complex task to minimize the effects of these shocks. Nowadays, when energy prices are reaching historically high levels, the scientific contribution of supply-side shocks can be found in the deep analysis and well-grounded estimations of the role of those shocks in the preservation of macroeconomic stability and the economic policy measures necessary for the minimization of their negative effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing output gap measures for the US economy rely on aggregate data and assume a constant output gap over sectors (see Coibion et al. [(2018) Brookings Papers on Economic Activity , 333–441] and Owyang et al. [(2018) Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review , 297–316]); however, each sector has its cycle, which does not necessarily match the business cycle (Burns and Mitchell [(1946) National Bureau of Economic Research]). By modeling sectoral cycles based on their investment cycles with a nonparametric method, I estimate output gaps of 20 US sectors over 1948–2020. The weighted mean output gap indicates a persistent spare capacity in the last business cycle, pointing to insufficient stabilization policies behind secular stagnation. Phillips curve estimations with the weighted quartiles of sectoral output gaps show that the output gap of bottleneck sectors (weighted Q3) is correlated strongly with inflation over 1950–2020. Policymakers can track bottleneck sectors to mitigate inflationary pressures while supporting the sectors with negative output gaps to stabilize the output at its potential. My findings show that it is possible to produce more output by sector-level demand supporting policies without generating inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]