Financial Integration, Globalization, and Real Activity

Using data for a large number of advanced and emerging market economies during 1982-2009, this paper examines the distinct impact of financial integration and globalization on several dimensions of real activity. We find that: (a) financial integration has progressed significantly worldwide, particularly in emerging markets, as well as within regions; (b) advances in financial integration predict better growth prospects; (c) both advances in financial integration and globalization are associated with higher growth, lower growth volatility, and lower probabilities of severe declines in real activity. Advances in financial integration and globalization indeed foster countries’ growth, and there appears to be no trade-off between these advances and macroeconomic stability.financial integration, globalization, real activity

Financial integration and risk-adjusted growth opportunities: a global perspective

This paper documents the dynamics of financial integration for major advanced and emerging markets economies during the 1994-2009 period, assesses whether advances in integration have had a significant direct positive impact on countries' growth opportunities, and identifies some of the channels through which financial integration may indirectly foster growth. Three main results are obtained. First, financial integration has progressed significantly worldwide and has been fastest in emerging markets. Second, a country's speed of integration predicts its future risk-adjusted growth opportunities, while improved riskadjusted growth opportunities may predict future advances in integration, but not in all cases, suggesting a causal relationship from financial integration to improved real prospects. Third, advances in financial integration foster increased financial openness, financial development, and the liquidity of equity markets, but the reverse does not necessarily hold. Policies aimed at fostering financial integration may be necessary, albeit not sufficient, to allow countries to reap its benefits.International finance ; Financial risk management

Not just another aspect of pleasure: Functionality as a distinct component of emotions

According to Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT, Ellis, 1985; Ellis & DiGiuseppe, 1993) functionality is the central criterion when distinguishing between adaptive and maladaptive emotions. Hereby, adaptive emotions signify appropriate responses to an eliciting event, whereas, maladaptive emotions signify inappropriate reactions. This research examines relevant characteristics of emotions (i.e., pleasure, arousal, duration, influence on life, and typicality) as potential predictors of functionality. In Study 1 (N= 96) using single item measures results indicated that pleasure and arousal had a significant predictive value on functionality, whereas the predictive value of the other dimensions was limited. Study 2 (N= 240) widely confirmed these results by using different psychometrically more reliable scales. In both studies all predictors explained less than 30% of the variance of functionality. Functionality should be regarded as a predominantly independent characteristic of emotions, which is partially associated with pleasure and arousal

The Assessment of the Production Outsourcing Strategy in the Wood Furniture Industry of the Uba Region (Brazil), through the Development of a Dynamic Model

The wood furniture industry of the Uba's region (Brazil) presents a high degree of vertical integration. Outsourcing is cited in the literature as a way of increasing a sector's competitiveness, through higher efficiency. Aiming to test this hypothesis, the research objective was to assess the process of deverticalisation in wood furniture production chains, through the identification of factors related to this process and their effects on the profitability of chosen firms in the Uba region. The research started with the development of a chain profile, through the use of a survey. This stage was followed by the development of a case study, in which the accumulated firm profitability was studied. System dynamics were the tool used in the case study. The firm's results showed that cost and quality were the two main aspects affecting the outsourcing decision. The increase of the firm's production capacity showed to be of secondary importance. When there were no differences in quality among strategies, higher levels of outsourcing showed better results than lower levels. However, if quality differs among strategies, either cost or quality became the important decision variable, depending on the characteristics of each firm studied. Considering that cost and quality are the main variables affecting the deverticalization process in the wood furniture production chains, special attention should be given to the establishment of efficient suppliers (low production costs and quality raw materials) in the chain. This fact may bring benefits to the firms and their chains in terms of profitability and competitiveness.Industrial Organization, Q13,

A Customer Service Design Case Study: Insights on Customer Loyalty in the Brazilian Food Sector

Marketing managers of local and international food companies have realized that what they offer to customers go well beyond the characteristics and attributes of the products their companies manufacture and market. Service has become an integral part of the offer (Grönroos, 1993); a high service quality improves the company competitiveness, builds customer trust, supports the company brand and other product attributes (Berry & Parasuraman, 1991, p. 12). This paper seeks to investigate whether customer care service perceived quality in the food sector is truly relevant to customer satisfaction and loyalty.quality service evaluation, consumer service, loyalty, food industry, Agribusiness, International Relations/Trade,

A Bag-of-Tasks Scheduler Tolerant to Temporal Failures in Clouds

Cloud platforms have emerged as a prominent environment to execute high performance computing (HPC) applications providing on-demand resources as well as scalability. They usually offer different classes of Virtual Machines (VMs) which ensure different guarantees in terms of availability and volatility, provisioning the same resource through multiple pricing models. For instance, in Amazon EC2 cloud, the user pays per hour for on-demand VMs while spot VMs are unused instances available for lower price. Despite the monetary advantages, a spot VM can be terminated, stopped, or hibernated by EC2 at any moment. Using both hibernation-prone spot VMs (for cost sake) and on-demand VMs, we propose in this paper a static scheduling for HPC applications which are composed by independent tasks (bag-of-task) with deadline constraints. However, if a spot VM hibernates and it does not resume within a time which guarantees the application's deadline, a temporal failure takes place. Our scheduling, thus, aims at minimizing monetary costs of bag-of-tasks applications in EC2 cloud, respecting its deadline and avoiding temporal failures. To this end, our algorithm statically creates two scheduling maps: (i) the first one contains, for each task, its starting time and on which VM (i.e., an available spot or on-demand VM with the current lowest price) the task should execute; (ii) the second one contains, for each task allocated on a VM spot in the first map, its starting time and on which on-demand VM it should be executed to meet the application deadline in order to avoid temporal failures. The latter will be used whenever the hibernation period of a spot VM exceeds a time limit. Performance results from simulation with task execution traces, configuration of Amazon EC2 VM classes, and VMs market history confirms the effectiveness of our scheduling and that it tolerates temporal failures

Pavement testing by integrated geophysical methods: Feasibility, resolution and diagnostic potential

This work is focused on the assessment of the diagnostic potential of several geophysical methods when applied to the investigation of a rigid airport pavement. The potential and limit of each technique are evaluated as well as the added value deriving from their integration. Firstly, we reconstruct a high-resolution image of the pavement by a large electromagnetic and georadar screening. An advanced processing of georadar data, implemented through the picking of the arrival times of reflections for each profile, provides a quantitative estimation of the deviation between the design and the as-built thickness of layers. Additionally, electrical tomography has been applied to unequivocally identify the anomalous zones, where higher values of resistivity would be associated to porous zones that are prone to degradation and failure. The seismic tomographic survey had the additional purpose to recover the mechanical properties of the pavement in terms of both P- and S-waves and consequently of elastic constants (Poisson's ratio), whose values were consistent with those recovered in literature. The anomalies detected by each technique are consistent in their indications and they can be correlated to failure phenomena occurring at layer interfaces within the pavement structure or to unexpected variations of the layer thicknesses. The cost-effective geophysical campaign has validated the four-layered system deduced from the original design and has been used to reconstruct a high-resolution map of the pavement in order to discriminate fractures, crack-prone areas or areas where the as-built differs from the original design