BENIGN NEGLECT OF COVENANT VIOLATIONS: BLISSFUL BANKING OR IGNORANT MONITORING?

Theoretically, bank's loan monitoring activity hinges critically on its capitalization. To proxy for monitoring intensity, we use changes in borrowers' investment following loan covenant violations, when creditors can intervene in the governance of the firm. Exploiting granular bank‐firm relationships observed in the syndicated loan market, we document substantial heterogeneity in monitoring across banks and through time. Better capitalized banks are more lenient monitors that intervene less with covenant violators. Importantly, this hands‐off approach is associated with improved borrowers' performance. Beyond enhancing financial resilience, regulation that requires banks to hold more capital may thus also mitigate the tightening of credit terms when firms experience shocks. (JEL G21, G32, G33, G34)     

Lot sizing with storage losses under demand uncertainty

We address a variant of the single item lot sizing problem affected by proportional storage (or inventory) losses and uncertainty in the product demand. The problem has applications in, among others, the energy sector, where storage losses (or storage deteriorations) are often unavoidable and, due to the need for planning ahead, the demands can be largely uncertain. We first propose a two-stage robust optimization approach with second-stage storage variables, showing how the arising robust problem can be solved as an instance of the deterministic one. We then consider a two-stage approach where not only the storage but also the production variables are determined in the second stage. After showing that, in the general case, solutions to this problem can suffer from acausality (or anticipativity), we introduce a flexible affine rule approach which, albeit restricting the solution set, allows for causal production plans. A hybrid robust-stochastic approach where the objective function is optimized in expectation, as opposed to in the worst-case, while retaining robust optimization guarantees of feasibility in the worst-case, is also discussed. We conclude with an application to heat production, in the context of which we compare the different approaches via computational experiments on real-world data.     

The Size and Power of Bootstrap and Bartlett-Corrected Tests of Hypotheses on the Cointegrating Vectors

In this paper we compare Bartlett-corrected, bootstrap, and fast double bootstrap tests on maximum likelihood estimates of cointegration parameters. The key result is that both the bootstrap and the Bartlett-corrected tests must be based on the unrestricted estimates of the cointegrating vectors: procedures based on the restricted estimates have almost no power. The small sample size bias of the asymptotic test appears so severe as to advise strongly against its use with the sample sizes commonly available; the fast double bootstrap test minimizes size bias, while the Bartlett-corrected test is somehow more powerful.     

Croissance économique,flexibilité du travail et qualité de l'emploi en Colombie de 2002 à 2011

Entre 2002 et 2011, le marché du travail colombien a connu une nette amélioration des possibilités d'emploi, assortie d'une montée de l'emploi atypique. Les auteurs étudient l'incidence de ces phénomènes sur la qualité de l'emploi au moyen d'un indice synthétique dérivé d'une analyse des correspondances multiples. Ils observent une amélioration, légère mais générale, de cette qualité, associée à l'augmentation des revenus, à l'extension de la protection sociale et au recul du sous‐emploi. Les principales bénéficiaires sont les travailleuses indépendantes. Toutefois, un important déficit qualitatif perdure, qui appelle à consolider les institutions du marché du travail et à stimuler la productivité et l'investissement.     

Measuring Change Over Time in Socio-economic Deprivation and Health in an Urban Context: The Case Study of Genoa

Poverty and disability are interrelated, but data that can disentangle to what extent one causes the other and vice versa is not available. However, data from Vietnam allows us to examine this interrelationship in a way not done previously. Using small area estimation techniques, we uncover three findings not yet found in the literature. First, disability prevalence rates vary significantly within a country even at the district level. Second, the poverty gap between people with and without disabilities also varies at the district level. And most importantly, the size of that gap lessens based on district characteristics that can be affected by policy. Districts with better health care and infrastructure, such as road and health services, show less of a link between disability and poverty, supporting the hypothesis that improvements in infrastructure and rehabilitation service can lessen the impact of disability on families with disabled members.     

Italian Scientists Abroad in Europe's Scientific Research Scenario: High skill migration as a resource for development in Italy

In recent years, the brain drain issue has gained such momentum that it has become necessary to adopt tools and methods to take a picture of a phenomenon that is, by its very nature, dynamic and changeable (Portes, 1976 ; Meyer, 2001 ; Ackers, 2005 Scott, 2015 ). This particular study focuses on clarifying the reasons why Italian scientists choose to look elsewhere for the best place to conduct their scientific research, and in what way their scientific experience abroad shapes the image of the Italian scientific system. A first exploratory analysis involving 83 in‐depth interviews with Italian scientists (mathematicians, engineers and physicists) working in Europe was conducted based on qualitative and quantitative analytical methods, and the content emerging from these interviews was used for a systematic mapping of the situation that provided the foundations for our preparation of a second tool – a questionnaire – that was subsequently used to conduct a much more broad‐based survey that involved 602 respondents. While our findings add complexity to existing theories on the brain drain and brain circulation, they also confirm the potential of highly skilled migration to improve the national development of Italian academic system.     

Chinese travel writing between (print) tradition and (digital) novelty: a transmedial approach to contemporary travel books and blogs

This article advances a transmedial comparison between several contemporary travelogues and travel blogs written by Chinese writers about China. The grounding assumption is that travel books and blogs are two mediated forms that realize the same generic matrix: travel writing. Building on research about classic Chinese travel writing and contemporary Internet Chinese literature, the article proposes a close reading of the texts with the aim, on the one hand, to understand how contemporary travel accounts – in print and online – follow and/or reinvent the genre, and, on the other hand, to bridge the gap between analogue and digital realms beyond their often over-accentuated differences. Findings suggest that contemporary Chinese travel books are much politicized. Contrary to traditional authors, who resorted to the genre in order to celebrate the status quo within the Middle Kingdom, today’s authors write about their travels in order to criticize the current political situation in China. Travel bloggers, instead, largely privilege a contemplative attitude towards their experiences; one that kindles a visually based and depoliticized writing that is very much in the spirit of classic texts.     

After the End of History

Over the last century, the national approach has been the mainstream conception leading superpowers’ foreign policy, while the end of the Cold War brought about the worldwide multiplication of local conflicts. This differs from the past as this extensive international fragmentation urgently requires the adaptation of a new theoretical model to current international relations. This implies the re-consideration of some basic concepts such as national sovereignty, whose traditional fixed borders tend now to blur with a set of overlapping clusters of jurisdictional, economic, political, cultural interests.