THE FAILURE TO PREDICT THE GREAT RECESSION—A VIEW THROUGH THE ROLE OF CREDIT

Much has been written about why economists failed to predict the latest crisis. Reading the literature, it seems that this crisis was so obvious that economists must have been blind not to see it coming. We approach this failure by looking at one of the key variables in this analysis, the evolution of credit. We compare the conclusions reached in the recent literature with those that could have been drawn from an ex‐ante analysis. We show that the effect of credit on the business cycle cannot be exploited from a policymaker's point of view.     

From Birth to Death: A Social Monitoring Framework from New Zealand

The paper begins by outlining the development of social indicators work and social monitoring at the national level in New Zealand and comments on how this relates to the international movement. It describes the 'key' indicators/life stage approach developed by the New Zealand Planning Council in the early 1980s. This exercise continues from a university base and the fourth report in the series, entitled Tracking Social Change in New Zealand was published in early 1998. Examples are presented to show how the results can be used to highlight the policy implications of changing social trends.     

Precautionary saving in Spain during the great recession: evidence from a panel of uncertainty indicators

The aim of this paper is to empirically study the effect of uncertainty on private consumption using a sample of Spanish households, and therefore, to test the existence of a precautionary motive for saving. Using data provided by the Spanish Survey of Household Finances and the Labour Force Survey we construct several uncertainty measures that are commonly used in the literature and an additional indicator based on job insecurity data, and we consequently estimate different econometric models under the life-cycle/permanent income hypothesis, including these measures of uncertainty. Our results are twofold: first, we find evidence in favour of the precautionary saving hypothesis. Secondly, we find that, unlike other variables related to the performance of the labour market (such as the unemployment rate) the job insecurity indicator is an appropriate variable to approximate income uncertainty in any macroeconomic context.     

Subjective Quality of Life in Zhuhai City,South China: A Public Survey Using the International Wellbeing Index

The study of subjective quality of life and its connotations in the People’s Republic of China is at a preliminary stage. Although there is an emerging body of literature on this topic, there are few datasets representative of the general public, particularly in Mainland China. This paper reports the findings of a public survey (N = 449) conducted in Zhuhai City, South China using the International Wellbeing Index (IWI). There were four main aims: (1) to judge whether residents were satisfied with their lives; (2) to compare the data with recent findings from Hong Kong and Macau; (3) to investigate the equivalence of the IWI in terms of its psychometric properties; and (4) to determine the applicability of the ‘Theory of Homeostasis Wellbeing’. The data indicated a moderate level of personal (PWI score = 64.4.) and national (NWI score = 57.4) wellbeing, consistent with recent findings from Hong Kong and Macau. The PWI score was within the normative range for non-Western countries, which indicates that the residents were, on the whole, satisfied with their lives. Although previously reported objective measures of quality of life in Zhuhai are lower than in Hong Kong and Macau, this is not reflected in this study’s subjective measures. This finding was interpreted in terms of the ‘Theory of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis’, and the specific situation in Zhuhai, as there seems to be an absence of factors (i.e., no harsh economic or social situation) which could drive subjective wellbeing below normal. Last, that the IWI demonstrated good psychometric performance in terms of its reliability, validity, and sensitivity, and concurred with previous published reports, it seems that the scale’s robustness generalises to Chinese samples.     

Individual Pension Plans in Spain: How Expected Change in Future Income and Liquidity Constraints Shape the Behavior of Households

Understanding the motives that underlie Spaniards’ retirement saving decisions is important because many, if not most, future retirees will need to rely on personal savings to maintain a decent standard of living. The governor of the Bank of Spain has stated recently that the current public pension system will not guarantee an adequate pension to the citizens, advising to save now for retirement. In this debate on public pensions, and the complementary role that private pensions might play in Spain, this article has shed light on the decision of Spanish households to engage in individual pension plans and it has identified which factors determine the total amount saved in such retirement plans. Using micro data from the Bank of Spain (Survey of Household Finances 2011), the analysis has revealed that the expectations of lower future income, along with preferences for the financial risk and education, exert an important influence on the likelihood of enrolling in a private pension plan. University education minimizes the myopic behavior of households in the sense of making them more forward-looking and cautious in the face of their future well-being. Additionally using Heckman’s methodology to correct for the problem of selection bias, our results have revealed that liquidity constraints affect negatively the total amount of money saved for retirement.     

The Determinants of Retail Productivity: A Critical Review of the Evidence

This paper discusses the literature on the established determinants of productivity in the retail sector. It also draws attention to some neglected strands of research which provide useful insights into strategies that could allow productivity enhancements in this area of the economy. To date, very few attempts have been made to integrate different specialisms in order to explain what drives productivity in retail. Here this paper rectifies this omission by putting together studies from economics, geography, knowledge management and employment studies. It is the authors’ view that quantitative studies of retail productivity should focus on total factor productivity in retailing as the result of competition/composition effects, planning regulations, information and communications technology, the multinational operation element and workforce skills. Further, the fact that retail firms possess advantages that are transferable between locations suggests that investment in strategies enhancing the transfer of explicit and tacit knowledge between and within businesses are crucial to achieve productivity gains.     

Women's Accounts of Organizational Politics as a Gendering Process

Organizational politics is implicated in all levels of organizational functioning, from power structures and informal interaction to individual identity. This study argues that organizational politics provides an approach to examining professional women's experiences of organizations as gendered. Women graduates in male‐dominated organizations claimed not to be limited by explicit discrimination, but they construct organizational politics as being masculine in character and as a barrier to their careers. These women represent organizational politics as irrational, aggressive, competitive and instrumental, leading to individual, not organizational, success. Their accounts undermine the stereotypical dichotomy of masculine rationality and feminine emotion by claiming that women behave reasonably and by focusing on emotion in men's political game playing. However, claiming to be rational and rejecting politics, while acknowledging its role in career success, is uncomfortable for ambitious women. They risk sabotaging their own position by appearing too sensitive to engage in the less savoury aspects of organizational life. Organizational political processes are seen as fundamental to gender in organizations, first, because political activity is seen as gendered and masculine and contrary to female identity; secondly, because politics is part of the informal system which constructs organization from which outsiders are excluded; and finally, because political activity is linked to the performance, achievement and maintenance of power.