Macroeconomic Volatility and Sovereign Asset-Liability Management

For most developing countries, the predominant source of sovereign wealth is commodity related export income. However, over-reliance on commodity related income exposes countries to significant terms of trade shocks due to excessive price volatility. The spillovers are pro-cyclical fiscal policies and macroeconomic volatility problems that if not adequately managed, could have catastrophic economic consequences including sovereign bankruptcy. The aim of this study is to explore new ways of solving the problem in an asset-liability management framework for an exporting country like Ghana. Firstly, I develop an unconditional commodity investment strategy in the tactical mean-variance setting for deterministic returns. Secondly, in continuous time, shocks to return moments induce additional hedging demands warranting an extension of the analysis to a dynamic stochastic setting whereby, the optimal commodity investment and fiscal consumption policies are conditioned on the stochastic realisations of commodity prices. Thirdly, I incorporate jumps and stochastic volatility in an incomplete market extension of the conditional model. Finally, I account for partial autocorrelation, significant heteroskedastic disturbances, cointegration and non-linear dependence in the sample data by adopting GARCH-Error Correction and dynamic Copula-GARCH models to enhance the forecasting accuracy of the optimal hedge ratios used for the state-contingent dynamic overlay hedging strategies that guarantee Pareto efficient allocation. The unconditional model increases the Sharpe ratio by a significant margin and noticeably improves the portfolio value-at-risk and maximum drawdown. Meanwhile, the optimal commodities investment decisions are superior in in-sample performance and robust to extreme interest rate changes by up to 10 times the current rate. In the dynamic setting, I show that momentum strategies are outperformed by contrarian policies, fiscal consumption must account for less than 40% of sovereign wealth, while risky investments must not exceed 50% of the residual wealth. Moreover, hedging costs are reduced by as much as 55% while numerically generating state-dependent dynamic futures hedging policies that reveal a predominant portfolio strategy analogous to the unconditional model. The results suggest buying commodity futures contracts when the country’s current exposure in a particular asset is less than the model implied optimal quantity and selling futures contracts when the actual quantity exported exceeds the benchmark.Open Acces

Time for a Nappy Change: controls affecting families’ nappy choices

Lifecycle assessments suggest that modern cloth nappies have fewer environmental impacts than their disposablecounterparts in terms of GHG, plastic and landfill (UNEP 2021). However, despite these apparent environmentalbenefits consumers still use predominantly disposable nappies. This paper will use theories of plannedbehaviour to explore the differences in perceived and actual behaviours between disposable and cloth nappyusers. A self-selecting web-based survey was used to recruit participants with children up to the age of fiveand explore their decision-making in this regard. The findings of the survey reveal that disposable nappy usersare more likely to prioritise convenience and to cite additional laundry loads as the main reasons for not usingcloth nappies. This is despite tending to have the necessary infrastructure (such as disposable income, spaceand washing facilities) to enable them to do so. This indicates that the perceptions of home-laundered clothnappies as inconvenient makes families more likely to opt for disposable nappies. Whilst cloth nappies weregenerally assumed to be more environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing by all parents irrespectiveof their choices, this was not enough to overcome the convenience and ease of use for the majority of participants.This study concludes that many disposable nappy users select disposable nappies with the assumptionthat they are easier and more convenient when this may not be the case. The implication of this study is thatinterventions which improve the convenience of cloth nappies and the perception of ease of use will encouragegreater uptake of cloth nappies.References.UNEP. (2021) Recommendations from Life Cycle Assessments Single-use nappies and their alternatives hostedby. United Nations Environment Programme

Commons in Design

The scarcity of resources, climate change, and the digitalization of everyday life are fuelling the economy of swapping, sharing, and lending—all of which are in some way linked to a culture of commoning. In this context, we understand commons as community-based processes that use, collectively manage, and organize generally accessible resources—referring to both goods and knowledge. Commons in Design explores the meaning and impact of commons—especially knowledge-based peer commons—and acts of commoning in design. It discusses networked, participatory, and open procedures based on the commons and commoning, testing models that negotiate the use of commons within design processes. In doing so, it critically engages with questions regarding designers’ positionings, everyday practices, self-understandings, ways of working, and approaches to education

Hydrohumanities

From drought to deluge, climate extremes are mobilizing humanities scholars to reimagine water discourse, which has until now largely focused on human power over water. This volume unites preeminent and emerging voices across humanistic disciplines to develop a new discourse called the hydrohumanities, dedicated to examining water-human-power relationships.;Organized into three themes in water studies—agency, fluid identities, and cultural currencies—Hydrohumanities exemplifies how interdisciplinary approaches can transform water conversations. Part One explores the properties of water and the ways water challenges human plans for control. Part Two explores how water (or its absence) shapes human collective and individual identities. Part Three engages notions of value and circulation to think about how water has been employed for local, national, and international gains. This volume shows how humanities scholarship has world-changing potential to achieve more just water futures.;“This fascinating essay collection breaks new ground with its interdisciplinary insights into the relations between water and human societies.” MATTHEW GANDY, author of The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination;“Water’s power, purpose, and meaning cannot be contained by any one scholarly discipline. Understanding the value of water in a time of climate catastrophe demands more-than-human humanities, and Hydrohumanities answers this call.” ASTRIDA NIEMANIS, author of Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenolog

The Licit Life of Capitalism

The Licit Life of Capitalism is both an account of a specific capitalist project—U.S. oil companies working off the shores of Equatorial Guinea—and a sweeping theorization of more general forms and processes that facilitate diverse capitalist projects around the world. Hannah Appel draws on extensive fieldwork with managers and rig workers, lawyers and bureaucrats, the expat wives of American oil executives and the Equatoguinean women who work in their homes, to turn conventional critiques of capitalism on their head, arguing that market practices do not merely exacerbate inequality; they are made by it. People and places differentially valued by gender, race, and colonial histories are the terrain on which the rules of capitalist economy are built. Appel shows how the corporate form and the contract, offshore rigs and economic theory are the assemblages of liberalism and race, expertise and gender, technology and domesticity that enable the licit life of capitalism—practices that are legally sanctioned, widely replicated, and ordinary, at the same time as they are messy, contested, and, arguably, indefensible

Hydrohumanities

From drought to deluge, climate extremes are mobilizing humanities scholars to reimagine water discourse, which has until now largely focused on human power over water. This volume unites preeminent and emerging voices across humanistic disciplines to develop a new discourse called the hydrohumanities, dedicated to examining water-human-power relationships.;Organized into three themes in water studies—agency, fluid identities, and cultural currencies—Hydrohumanities exemplifies how interdisciplinary approaches can transform water conversations. Part One explores the properties of water and the ways water challenges human plans for control. Part Two explores how water (or its absence) shapes human collective and individual identities. Part Three engages notions of value and circulation to think about how water has been employed for local, national, and international gains. This volume shows how humanities scholarship has world-changing potential to achieve more just water futures.;“This fascinating essay collection breaks new ground with its interdisciplinary insights into the relations between water and human societies.” MATTHEW GANDY, author of The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination;“Water’s power, purpose, and meaning cannot be contained by any one scholarly discipline. Understanding the value of water in a time of climate catastrophe demands more-than-human humanities, and Hydrohumanities answers this call.” ASTRIDA NIEMANIS, author of Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenolog

Changing Paradigms : Designing for a Sustainable Future

Changing Paradigms: designing for a sustainable future is intended for designers, design students and design educators, who want to understand why and how to integrate Sustainability into design education and practice. It consists of five parts; Part One presents why we must design for a sustainable future, Part Two describes how to design for a sustainable future, Part Three presents student design projects exemplifying sustainable design, Part Four is a glossary of 120 terms and concepts about Sustainability and design, and finally, Part Five includes three appendices: The Cumulus Kyoto Design Declaration, and guidelines on how to green both school campuses and conferences. This book has been edited by Peter Stebbing and Ursula Tischner, who have invited internationally renown experts to contribute chapters. Changing Paradigms offers a comprehensive survey of essential knowledge for designers and other creative professions to shift their focus to the new design paradigm for sustainable production, consumption, and life styles

Allotments and alternative food networks: the case of Plymouth, UK

Alternative food networks (AFNs) are the focus of an ‘explosive growth’ of research in Europe (Goodman 2004), and the term covers a wide range of activities, from food banks, community gardens, and farmers’ markets, to community supported or organic agriculture. However, there is an impasse in differing positions over whether AFNs represent an exclusionary place-based ‘quality turn’ (Ilbery and Kneafsey 2000), or whether they contribute to inclusive local communities, sustainability and food security (Tregear 2011, Kirwan and Maye 2013). This research aimed to clarify these debates, through exploration of UK allotments as a benchmark for AFNs, using the case of Plymouth, SW England. A political ecology perspective of social-ecological systems (Ostrom 2008) was used to investigate the activities, relations and governance involved in allotments and AFNs, organised through the concepts of multidimensional capital assets (Bebbington 1999). This research demonstrates how activities on allotments involve human, social, cultural, natural and political capital assets, encompassing both basic food security and a quality turn towards ‘good food’ (Sage 2003). Taking the long view, it is seen that the relative importance of the different asset dimensions are contingent on wider socio-political settings. Relations on allotments illustrate the building of social capital, which extends to wider communities of interest, practice and place (Harrington et al. 2008), and which involves values of social justice that can be explained as diverse or care economies (Gibson-Graham 2008, Dowler et al. 2010). However, the politics and governance of allotments are largely influenced by neoliberal policies that favour oligopolistic and transnational food systems and restrict urban land allocations for place-based food initiatives. Present-day urban population densities are at levels far higher than envisaged for the original garden cities. Nevertheless, alliances at neighbourhood, city, regional, national and transnational scales are coalescing around the values represented in the original setting up of the UK allotment system: of self-reliance, human-scale settlements and the restorative value of the natural environment. Any realization of the potential contribution of allotments and AFNs to the sustainability and resilience of food supplies for urban populations (Armitage et al. 2008, Folke et al. 2010) ultimately depends on multilevel responses to a large range of challenges. Finally, the thesis contends that, in the present day, evidence is building up around the potential of allotments and many other AFN activities, or place-based food systems, to meet multiple policy objectives through aligned values

Urban Planet

Global urbanization promises better services and stronger economies but also carries risks and unforeseeable consequences. Urban Planet highlights the hopes and hindrances of our journey of urbanization and the need for a parallel evolution of our science and systems to ensure we reap the rewards. This title is also available as Open Access