Volumen 63 (2018): Edición 2 (August 2018)

Even more than eight decades since the publication of Keynes’ “General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money” modern macroeconomists disagree on the notion of “underemployment equilibrium” with so-called “involuntary unemployment”. While the majority of macro theorists trace involuntary unemployment back to frictions and rigidities in the adaptation of wages and output prices to market imbalances, a minority position holds that even under perfectly flexible output prices and wage rates involuntary unemployment might occur. Morishima in “Walras’ Economics” and more recently Magnani presume that contrary to the majority view aggregate investment is not perfectly flexible but governed by “animal spirits” of investors. The aim of the present paper is to integrate the Morishima-Magnani approach into a Diamond-type overlapping generations’ (OLG) model with internal public debt subsequently extended by human capital accumulation. It turns out that in spite of perfectly flexible real wage and interest rate involuntary unemployment occurs in intertemporal general equilibrium when aggregate investor sentiments are too pessimistic regarding the rentability of investment in real capital. In the model extended by human capital a higher public debt to output ratio decreases unambiguously involuntary unemployment, if initially the endogenous output growth rate is higher than the real interest rate.

We empirically investigates the factors that affect Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows in five BRICS countries for the period 1990–2015. We address the selection bias and unobserved heterogeneity by estimating a panel Heckman selection method and attempts to account for both selection and endogeneity within the new two-stage method. After addressing the above mentioned econometric issues, the infrastructure and GDP per capita variables under the new two-stage method remain positive and significantly similar to the coefficient of infrastructure and GDP per capita under the panel Heckman selection model. In addition, the inverse Mills ratio maintain its level of statistical significance, confirming the presence of both sample selection bias and endogeneity.

Shoes are probably one of the most difficult products to sell online due to the high need-for-touch (NFT) displayed: people need to experiment the product before buying it, more than in any other item. On another hand, women are more prone than men to buy fashion and apparel products through the web channel. This paper investigates the factors driving women consumers to shop footwear products online. A qualitative research method was used grounded on semi-structured, in-depth interviews that were conducted to corroborate the constructs defined in the proposed conceptual model namely: convenience, recreation, NFT and social e-shopping. The interviews were focused on the demand side to understand the female consumers’ perspective and on the top managers of women’s shoes companies representing the suppliers’ viewpoint. The results show that women highly appreciate the convenience that shopping shoes online provides as well as its recreational nature. The NFT also stands out in the shoe market context mainly due to the particularities related to shoe size. Additionally, social e-shopping was found not be as important for women as anticipated as they see social networks more as a communication platform for brands, and less as a factor that influences their predisposition to shop shoes online. On the suppliers’ side, the interviews revealed that managers believe in bloggers and social media influence and its consideration as part of the overall marketing strategy.

The study builds on previous studies of the consequences of non-performing loans on an economy. Using a seven-by-seven matrix in the impulse response function (IRF) of the structural autoregressive model, we find a long-run impact of an impulse to non-performing loans on the banking system and the macroeconomy in Nigeria. Conversely, non-performing loans also respond to the innovation of all macro-banking variables aside from the exchange rate and the growth rate to GDP. Also, the level of non-performing loans grows in influence in relation to the changes to the exchange rate using the variance decomposition tool of Structural VAR. Hence, a prominent role is assigned to the level of NPLs in linking the friction in the credit market to the susceptibility of both the banking system and the macroeconomy. This study passes the serial correlation tests and the three tests of normality.

This paper provides new evidence to contribute to the current debate on the relative impact of public and private investment on economic growth and the crowding effect between the two components of investment in South Africa. Using annual data from 1970 to 2017, the study applies the recently developed Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL)-bounds testing approach to cointegration. The study finds that private investment has a positive impact on economic growth both in the long run and short run, while public investment has a negative effect on economic growth in the long run. Further, in the long run, gross public investment is found to crowd out private investment, while its infrastructural component is found to crowd in private investment. The results of the study also reveal that both gross public investment and non-infrastructural public investment crowd out private investment in the short run. Overall, the study finds private investment to be more important than public investment in the South African economic growth process and that the importance of infrastructural public investment in stimulating private investment in the long run cannot be over-emphasized.