Capital market integration in a post crisis era: the case of India

Although emerging markets could have been shielded from the vagaries of financial flows that have plagued the developed world since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, rather than decoupling, following that event, the co-dynamics between the Rupee and the India stock exchange index, the Senex, have strengthened. The emerging post financial crisis era has India being drawn in to global capital markets

Baltic states and the Euro: a spectral analysis of the 2007 financial crisis

Purpose To examine whether the banking crisis in the US and Western Europe that began in August 2007 precipitated a change in the relationship between the currencies of the Baltic States and the Euro, such that it could be described as shift contagion. The second aim is to consider whether the ‘hardness’ of the currency peg affects the market reaction to that crisis. Design/Methodology Shift contagion is said to be revealed if there a change in the co-movements of exchange rates after August 2007 compared with before. Change is revealed by coherence and phase shifts. Both are drawn from cross-spectral analysis. Findings Rather than weaken, the bonds between the currency board-managed Kroon and the Litas in a similar way to the Lat in exhibiting greater bonding after the banking crisis began compared with before. The phase values suggest some shift in money flows between the Baltic currencies and the Euro. With the Lat, the delays appear to same but at longer periodicies. The other two appear be subject to a reversal of money flows at various periodicies. Research limitations/implications Spectral analysis reveals that co-movement between currencies of ERMII countries and the Euro intensified, but the structure of money flows changed as a result of the western banking crisis in related geographical and financial markets. The phase switch is a structural change that other techniques could not have revealed. Originality/value Spectral analysis could be more widely used in financial economics to reveal the impact of events on term structures

Carrying Canadian Troops: The Story of RMS \u3cem\u3eOlympic\u3c/em\u3e as a First World War Troopship

In the long adventurous life of Royal Mail Ship (RMS) Olympic, the older sister of the ill-fated RMS Titanic, the time she spent as a troopship ferrying Canadian troops during the First World War is a notable but frequently overlooked part of her career. Olympic was cheered enthusiastically by Canadian troops who sailed aboard her, respected as the “Old Reliable,” praised for services rendered to other ships, and honoured for her own success in attacking an enemy submarine. Carrying more Canadian soldiers than any other troopship, Olympic was an important part of Canada’s war effort. Able to accommodate close to 6000 troops at a time, Olympic made ten round trips from Liverpool to Halifax between March and December 1916. On the return voyages she carried wounded soldiers and civilians back to Canada. For the next two years Olympic continued to ferry Canadian and American troops across the Atlantic, and in 1919, brought the victorious soldiers home. Although she was once a household name in Canada, Olympic’s wartime service has since slipped into obscurity. Most information on Olympic as a troopship is derived from the memoirs of the Olympic’s wartime Captain, Sir Bertram Hayes. Using Hayes’s account as a framework, this article helps to further illuminate Olympic’s wartime history with new material such as diaries, and other sources housed at the National Archives of Canada and at the hitherto largely untapped Archives of the Canadian War Museum. These sources provide interesting details of the experiences of sailing on the vessel and of life on board, including the difficulties of embarkation and disembarkation, the danger from submarines, and the general supply and handling of this large ship in frequently hazardous circumstances

Financial contagion among members of the EU-8: a cointegration and granger causality approach

The aim of this paper is to examine whether the banking crisis in the US and Western Europe that began in August 2007 spilled over to the currencies the EU-8 such that it could be viewed as financial contagion. The currencies of the EU-8 that will be studied are of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia, daily, from 2005 to 2008

The role of the private sector in regional economic recovery: the case of a middling district in Middle England

As the policies of the UK’s new coalition government unfold, it appears that the private sector will take the bulk of the responsibility for sustaining economic recovery. In order to understand the implications for local economies, this paper highlights areas of growth potential and the barriers that business-owners are encountering. Based on a postal survey of businesses in the study area of Newark and Sherwood, a representative rural district in a middling region, research has identified that the majority of firms are still planning to grow despite significant concerns over investment finance and working capital. Furthermore, 17% say that they will definitely recruit new full time staff within 2 years while a further 36% are considering it. This paper expands on these findings and also explores the skills needs and barriers that are preventing growth from being realised. The aim is to provide policy guidance to support the development of local economies emerging from recession and to consider the longer terms implications of the characteristics of local labour markets

Dynamic Renormalization Group and Noise Induced Transitions in a Reaction Diffusion Model

We investigate how additive weak noise (correlated as well as uncorrelated) modifies the parameters of the Gray-Scott (GS) reaction diffusion system by performing numerical simulations and applying a Renormalization Group (RG) analysis in the neighborhood of the spatial scale where biochemical reactions take place. One can obtain the same sequence of spatial-temporal patterns by means of two equivalent routes: (i) by increasing only the noise intensity and keeping all other model parameters fixed, or (ii) keeping the noise fixed, and adjusting certain model parameters to their running scale-dependent values as predicted by the RG. This explicit demonstration validates the dynamic RG transformation for finite scales in a two-dimensional stochastic model and provides further physical insight into the coarse-graining analysis proposed by this scheme. Through several study cases we explore the role of noise and its temporal correlation in self-organization and propose a way to drive the system into a new desired state in a controlled way.Comment: 8 pages, 21 figure

Lessons of United States welfare reforms for Australian social policy

Recent developments in policies towards lone parents in Australia have emphasised the role of employment in increasing income and self- sufficiency. The emphasis on employment is also the case in other OECD countries with a general trend towards benefits for lone parents being made dependent on participation in the labour market. The United States of America has undertaken substantial reforms over the 1990s to the ways in which social assistance is provided to lone parents. Following the reforms there has been a dramatic fall in the number of lone-mother families receiving welfare payments and increases in employment rates. This paper reviews the evidence on the impact of the United States welfare reforms on a wide range of outcomes in America and considers the implications for welfare reform in Australia. The importance of differences in Australian institutions, particularly the labour market and income support systems, are highlighted.

Mending Canada's Employment Insurance Quilt: The Case for Restoring Equity

Under the current Employment Insurance (EI) system, long-lasting EI benefits are more easily accessed in regions with high unemployment rates than in regions with low unemployment rates where workers face tighter restrictions to access short-lived benefits. This complicated screening procedure, intended to better support the various circumstances facing unemployed workers across the country, creates a number of undesirable consequences: the most glaring being pockets of high, chronic unemployment. The goals and intentions of the EI regime should be simplified to better address the needs of Canada’s unemployed workers.Social Policy, Canada, employment insurance (EI), EI reforms

Displacement of Older Workers: Re-employment, Hastened Retirement, Disability, or Other Destinations?

The central objective of this study is to investigate the income sources and patterns of prime-age and older workers who suffer a layoff from steady employment. We focus on a set of cohorts who are deemed to have a high degree of attachment to the labour force preceding the event of an involuntary separation. Using a unique data base that merges administrative data marking the job separation, we track all of their sources of income over an interval that spans four years prior to the separation to five years after the separation. Our empirical analysis includes an investigation of the frequency that a laid-off individual will receive income ex post from a given source, a typology analysis of the various configurations of income received, and an econometric analysis of the incidence of certain post-layoff income configurations. We find that in any given year, approximately 2 % of our sample of workers with stable employment histories experience a ‘visible’ layoff. During the first three post-layoff years, 77 % of the group of laid-off workers (aged 45-64 years old) have non-trivial labour market earnings, and 56-65 % of them depend on the labour market for their primary source of income. This group of workers does experience substantial income losses. During the post-layoff period, approximately 14-19 % of them file a subsequent claim for EI benefits, but few of them depend on the EI regime as the primary source of their income. Very few of these individuals draw on other types of social insurance benefits, such as CPP disability, social assistance, and workers’ compensation. The most common destination state for prime-age and older workers who have not yet reached retirement age are early retirement and continued labour market activity, albeit at much lower earnings. It is rare for them to draw on social insurance benefits, and we find little evidence that disability benefits and workers compensation are functioning as disguised unemployment benefits.Post-layoff transitions, incidence of program usage, retirement behaviour, disability benefits, re-employment transitions