Privatization and European Economic and Monetary Union

To qualify for full membership in the Economic and Monetary Union, member states had to meet strict budget deficit and government debt convergence criteria. This study analyzes whether deficits and indebtedness in the 1990s in Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece were associated with a shift from privatization as a tool of economic restructuring, to privatization as a tool of European monetary convergence. The empirical results suggests that privatization funds accruing from the sale of state-owned enterprises in the Southern European countries might have been used to tackle budget deficits and meet the stringent criteria for monetary integration.Monetary Union; Privatization

Obesity and employment as predictors of diabetes in Mexican Americans: findings from a longitudinal study

This article examines changes in weight loss and employment on the incidence and management of diabetes over an eight-year period. Using data from three panel waves of the Border Epidemiologic Study on Aging, collected between 1995 and 2003, estimation results from a set of logit regression models reveal that obese individuals, who lose weight over an eight-year period, are less likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than those who remain obese in waves two and three. Moreover, employment, an important covariate in all three waves, is associated with the lower likelihood of being diagnosed with diabetes. In all, results confirm findings from cross-sectional data that point to overweight and obesity as important predictors of diabetes and further support public policy efforts that aim at controlling the rising incidence of diabetes through tailored interventions.

Information technology, revenue creation and growth: an international comparison of causality

In this paper, we examine the extent of the relationship between PC installation and revenue creation using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in different economies and by running a series of Granger causality tests. Our findings show that in developed economies the total PC installation and the PC installation in home market Granger cause GDP growth, whereas GDP growth only Granger causes the PC installation in the market for education. However, in developing economies, there appears to be a unidirectional causality in that GDP growth Granger causes total PC installation, PC installation in education and PC installation in business and government markets. We do not find any PC installation variables Granger causing GDP growth, including PC installation in home market. Overall, our results show that developing economies, unlike developed economies, do not gain from investing in Information Technology (IT) in the short run.economic growth; GDP growth; Granger causality; information technology; revenue creation; revenue management; gross domestic product; PC installation; personal computers; developing economies; developing countries.

The impact of rational and irrational sentiments of individual and institutional investors on DJIA and S&P500 index returns

We examine the relative effects of rational and irrational investor sentiments on Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P500 returns. The impact of rational sentiments on stock market returns is found to be greater than that of irrational sentiments. There are immediate positive responses of stock market returns to irrational sentiments corrected by negative responses in the upcoming periods. There are positive effects of past stock market returns on irrational sentiments but not on rational sentiments. The results support the economic fundamentals-based arguments of stock returns. Evidence in favour of irrational sentiments is consistent with the view that investor error is a significant determinant of stock returns.