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

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

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

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

The Clean Power Plan Puzzle: The Future of Efforts to Control Climate Pollution in the Northeast

In October 2015 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the first national plan to cut climate pollution from power plants. Called the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the effort requires a 32% nation-wide reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the power sector. The CPP also gives states multiple pathways to comply. Now states are on the clock: they must submit their individual compliance plans or signal their intent to submit multi-state plans by September 2016. The nine states participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the first market-based trading platform established to cut climate pollution from power plants in the Northeast, must now decide the future of the effort. This paper explores a few of the key issues for state regulators in the RGGI region with a special focus on New York State. We discuss the need to reset the RGGI cap to ensure progress toward New York’s and other state climate pollution reduction goals. We recommend a change to RGGI’s structure that will ensure compliance with the CPP. We discuss the EPA’s proposed Clean Energy Incentive Program (CEIP), an effort to encourage early state actions to reduce emissions. And we discuss other implementation issues with respect to linking RGGI to other mass-based state compliance plans. In brief, we recommend that the RGGI states adopt a new cap that requires at least a 2.5 percent per year reduction in region-wide GHG emissions

The art and science of priority-setting: assessing the value of Public Health England’s Prioritization Framework

Background Findings are presented from the evaluation of Public Health England’s (PHE) Prioritization Framework (PF) aimed to assist local authority commissioners with their public health investment and disinvestment decisions. The study explored the take up of the PF in three early adopter local authority settings. Methods Semi-structured interviews (n = 30) across three local authorities supplemented by participant observation of workshops. Results Participants acknowledged that the PF provided a systematic means of guiding priority-setting and one that encouraged transparency over investment and disinvestment decisions. The role performed by PHE and its regional teams in facilitating the process was especially welcomed and considered critical to the adoption process. However, uptake of the PF required a significant investment of time and commitment from public health teams at a time when resources were stretched. The impact of the political environment in the local government was a major factor determining the likely uptake of the PF. Ensuring committed leadership and engagement from senior politicians and officers was regarded as critical to success. Conclusions The study assessed the value and impact of PHE’s PF tool in three early adopter local authorities. Further research could explore the value of the tool in aiding investment and disinvestment decisions and its impact on spending

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

The SIS epidemic model with Markovian switching

Population systems are often subject to environmental noise. Motivated by Takeuchi et al. (2006), we will discuss in this paper the effect of telegraph noise on the well-known SIS epidemic model. We establish the explicit solution of the stochastic SIS epidemic model, which is useful in performing computer simulations. We also establish the conditions for extinction and persistence for the stochastic SIS epidemic model and compare these with the corresponding conditions for the deterministic SIS epidemic model. We first prove these results for a two-state Markov chain and then generalise them to a finite state space Markov chain. Computer simulations based on the explicit solution and the Euler--Maruyama scheme are performed to illustrate our theory. We include a more realistic example using appropriate parameter values for the spread of Streptococcus pneumoniae in children

The economic consequences of divorce in six OECD countries

This report presents a cross-national comparison of the short- and medium-term economic effects of divorce. Overview This paper uses longitudinal data to estimate the short- and medium-term economic effects of divorce in the USA, the UK, Switzerland, Korea, Germany and Australia during the first decade of the 21st century. While the data, collected during the 2000s, were generally consistent with the findings from the existing literature, they reveal that the effects of divorce differ between the six countries included in this study