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Structural minerals fluctuations and the macroeconomy
No full textThis paper analyses the structural relationship between minerals fluctuations and the macroeconomy in South Africa. This is achieved by isolating the trend component of output of the aggregate minerals industry, together with output of disaggregated minerals and comparing their fluctuations with the trend component of aggregate, or economy wide, output. The results have shown a statistically significant, and predominantly positive, relationship between aggregate, or economy wide, output and output of Mining, at structural, or long term, periodicities. The results have further shown a positive, or procyclical, relationship between aggregate, or economy wide, output and output of Chromium, Manganese and Quarrying, an acyclical relationship between aggregate output and output of Nickel and Other metals, while they show a negative, or countercyclical, relationship between aggregate output and output of Coal, Iron ore, Copper, PGMs, Gold, Diamonds and Other non metals. The paper recommends a comprehensive determination of the temporal relationship between the minerals industry and macroeconomic indicators to inform targeted policy decision making, where appropriate
Temi di ricerca in Economia dei Beni Culturali: Italia e Moldavia, un confronto possibile?
No full textIntroduzione di Lara Gitto
Rural Tourism Development Trends and Perspectives in the Republic of Moldova di Natalia Antoci
L’UNESCO e le “sette meraviglie” del mondo moderno di Valentina Diaconu
L’overtourism e il caso di Venezia a confronto con la Moldavia di Giorgia Brigandì
Valorizzare una destinazione turistica nell’Italia meridionale: l’esempio di Reggio Calabria e il suo patrimonio culturale di Noemi Arcudi
Differenze e similitudini tra la cultura e le tradizioni culturali moldave e calabresi di Aurora Mariapia Lombardo.
Tradizioni a confronto: Made in Italy e Made in Moldova di Antonella Sauta
Un viaggio tra i vigneti: esplorando le differenze tra i vini italiani e moldavi di Gianna Capitanio
Conclusioni di Lara Gitto e Natalia Antoc
The Perils of Speed: Branch Expansion and Bank Performance
No full textWe explore the limits of organizational expansion in the financial sector, highlighting how branch network growth impacts bank performance. Employing data from small and medium banks in China, we reveal that branch expansion at breakneck speed results in poor performance. We identify agency problems arising from poor governance, hindered information collecting, and heightened moral hazard that can intensify the costs associated with rapid growth. Our findings emphasize the dangers of ambitious expansion, offering critical insights for policymakers and bankers in managing the intertwined challenges of agency costs and the pace of growth, suggesting more balanced future bank branching strategies
Order of Play in Sequential Network Formation
No full textResearch in anthropology and neuroscience has shown that people have a cognitive limit on the number of stable relationships they can maintain. In this spirit, we consider a network formation game in which the cost of link formation is increasing in the agent's degree. In this class of games, as opposed to commonly studied games with a fixed cost of link formation, the order in which agents form the network (order of play) determines its final structure. In particular, we find that only certain orders of play can explain the formation of circle and complete bipartite networks. We also find that there is multiplicity of equilibria only when marginal costs of link formation are intermediate. Our results show as well that some orders of play are better than others for predicting the equilibrium structure when it is not unique, and that playing last is usually harmful
The relationships between political stability, military expenditures, arms imports, and oil exports: a CS-DL approach for six Gulf countries
No full textWe consider the relationships between military expenditures, arms imports, political stability, oil exports, gross domestic product, and greenhouse gas emissions in a panel of six oil-exporting countries of the Gulf region and annual data ranging from 2000 to 2023. Second-generation panel unit root and cointegration tests are used because of the cross-sectional dependence between our considered variables. The cross-sectional distributed lag (CS-DL) methodology is performed to estimate our long-run coefficients. Several novel results are highlighted. In the long-run, arms imports increase political stability and economic growth. While military expenditures increase oil exports, arms imports slightly reduce them. Oil exports increase military expenditures but reduce arms imports. Political stability reduces military expenditures and increases gross domestic product. These oil-exporting Gulf countries are advised to reinforce their military efforts, in particular by planning the production of high-tech weapons, to improve their oil exports and thus their gross domestic product. Economic growth combined with political stability enables them to become producing and exporting renewable energy countries through adequate energy efficiency and renewable energy strategies
Trade Facilitation as a Tool of Economic Diplomacy- Lessons from EU Engagement with SPECA Countries and Developing Economies
No full textThis paper analyses how the European Union (EU) has systematically used trade-facilitation assistance, rule-making, and market-access diplomacy to advance its economic and geopolitical interests vis-à-vis the United Nations Special Programme for the Economies of Central Asia (SPECA) and a broader set of developing economies. Drawing on primary documents (EU-SPECA progress reports 2018-2024, GSP+ monitoring reports), 87 semi-structured interviews with customs officials, private-sector representatives, and EU Delegation staff, and a new panel dataset covering 38 developing countries (2000-2023), we show that trade-facilitation measures have delivered measurable reductions in trade costs, but that their diplomatic value is mediated by four factors: (i) institutional absorptive capacity; (ii) the credibility of EU conditionality; (iii) competing offers from China and the Gulf states; and (iv) domestic political-economy coalitions. The paper concludes with a typology of “facilitation diplomacy” and a set of policy recommendations for the EU’s 2025-2030 external action agenda
Regional Inflation Spillovers and Monetary Policy Design: Evidence from Peru's Successful Inflation-Targeting Framework
No full textDespite being an emerging economy, Peru has achieved superior post-pandemic disinflation compared to major developed economies, making its regional inflation dynamics globally instructive for monetary policy design. This study investigates Lima's suitability as Peru's inflation-targeting anchor by analyzing regional spillovers across nine economic regions using monthly CPI data (2002-2024). Employing both Diebold-Yilmaz time-domain and Baruník-Křehlík frequency-domain frameworks, we quantify the direction, magnitude, and persistence of inflation transmission. Results reveal strong regional interdependence (73.60% total spillover index) with Lima as the dominant net transmitter (23.94 percentage points). However, frequency decomposition uncovers striking cyclical heterogeneity: Lima receives short-run shocks from food-producing regions but dominates long-run transmission (44.70% vs. 28.99% frequency spillover index). Rolling-window analysis during COVID-19 shows temporary spillover disruption (connectivity declining from 75% to 68%) followed by recovery during 2022's inflationary surge. Robustness checks across specifications, granular city-level data, and three-band frequency segmentation confirm Lima's structural centrality at lower frequencies. These findings validate the Central Reserve Bank's Lima-centered approach for long-run targeting while revealing asymmetric frequency-dependent spillovers. The presence of short-run regional shocks suggests integrating upstream agricultural signals could enhance near-term forecasting and policy responsiveness
Nonlinear Macroeconomic Granger Causality: An ANN Input Occlusion Approach on MSSA-Denoised Data
No full textThis paper introduced a novel methodology for measuring nonlinear Granger causality in macroeconomic time series by combining Multivariate Singular Spectrum Analysis (MSSA) for data denoising with Artificial Neural Network (ANN) input occlusion for causal inference. We applied this framework to five countries, analyzing key macro-financial variables, including yield curve latent factors, equity indices, exchange rates, inflation, GDP, and policy rates. MSSA enhanced data quality by maximizing signal-to-noise ratios while preserving structural patterns, resulting in more stable ΔMSE values and reduced error variability. ANNs were trained on MSSA-denoised data to predict each target variable using lagged inputs, with input occlusion evaluating the marginal predictive contribution of each input to derive causality p-values. This approach outperformed traditional VAR-based Granger causality tests, identifying 38 significant causal relationships compared to 24 for VAR. Cross-country analysis of variables revealed differences in transmission mechanisms, monetary policy effectiveness, and growth-inflation dynamics. Notably, feature importance rankings showed that policy rates and stock market indices predominantly drove macroeconomic outcomes across countries, underscoring their critical role in economic dynamics. These findings demonstrated that combining MSSA and ANN input occlusion offered a robust framework for analyzing nonlinear causality in complex macroeconomic systems
Can women's literacy and education spending serve as robust pillars of development in Madagascar?
No full textThis study examines the role of women’s literacy and pub
lic education expenditure as drivers of sustainable develop
ment in Madagascar. Despite high female labor force par
ticipation (82.6% in 2024), structural constraints, includ
ing low secondary school completion rates (33.5% for girls in
2023) and predominant engagement in vulnerable employ
ment (88.2%), hinder women’s economic contributions. Em
ploying an econometric framework with three models—time
series analysis for Madagascar (1990–2023) and panel re
gressions (fixed and random effects) across low-income Sub
Saharan African countries—we find that a one-percentage
point increase in female literacy corresponds to an approxi
mate 1.7 USD increase in per capita GDP and a 0.00235
point rise in the Human Development Index (HDI), with
statistically significant coefficients across all models. These
f
indings underscore the critical role of women’s education in
fostering economic growth and human development. How
ever, persistent gender gaps in formal employment, financial
inclusion (only 25.2% of women held financial accounts in
2022), and political representation (16.5% of parliamentary
seats) highlight the need for comprehensive policy interven
tions. We recommend increased investment in girls’ educa
tion, labor market formalization, and enhanced financial and
political inclusion to unlock the full potential of women’s hu
man capital for Madagascar’s sustainable development
The economics and finance of dividend-based labor remuneration and tradable shares in worker cooperatives
No full textThis paper examines the economic and financial implications of implementing a comprehensive system of dividend-based labor compensation for members of worker cooperatives. The economic implications, as presented in the existing literature, are discussed at both the microeconomic and macroeconomic levels, as already presented prominently in the work of James Meade and Martin Weitzman. The financial implications concern the creation of a clear link between dividend-based remuneration and the financial position of worker-members as owners of a cooperative's capital; the alignment of interests between worker-members and non-member financial investors when creating a true cooperative share market; and the decoupling of financial participation of members and non-members from control rights (cooperative shares would be non-voting) to protect the formal and substantive role of the mutualistic ‘one member, one vote’ principle of democratic governance