Economic Notes最新文献

The context had radically changed when Economic Notes entered its third decade of activity. Specifically, the 1990s seemed to carry along a wave of conformity and of endangered pluralism in economic thought behind the mounting neoliberal economics mainstream. This paper reviews how the task of preserving pluralism in economic thought was resolutely pursued at Monte dei Paschi's publishing venture by placing the Journal on impartial grounds and keeping the door open to diversity.

The paper documents that, over the period 1999–2011, Economic Notes made a further step forward in becoming a professional outlet for high-quality academic research by moving under the production and distribution by an international publisher (Blackwell, later on, Wiley). The Journal cultivated research on the challenges posed by an environment of financial innovation and security-market expansion, which posed new economic policy and bank management issues. Accordingly, it refocused on compelling financial, banking and monetary topics, as epitomized by adopting its current subtitle ‘Review of Banking, Finance and Monetary Economics’. On balance, the Journal's long-standing editorial policy of being open to a variety of contributions in the field of economics was retained, but a noticeable shift toward financial themes took shape over the 1999–2011 period. This focus, inspired by the events of the period, helped the Journal to remain relevant to the research interests of many scholars at the time. Notably, the Journal included topics in applied research that had a potential impact on the management of financial institutions, such as risk management and asset pricing, as well as the analysis of financial regulations. Those years proved fertile for both editorial policy and the dissemination of the Journal.

We review the critical phase of Economic Notes focusing on the years from 2012 to 2019 when the Journal suffered from the progressive disengagement by its founder, the Monte dei Paschi di Siena. The main reason for that gradual detachment is identified in the performance difficulties Monte was suffering from. Against the progressive fading away of the support provided by the Bank, the Journal entered a halo of the potential crisis itself. However, soon some measures were taken to allow Economic Notes to develop new and autonomous ways to project its own future. Specifically, we outline how the major changes in the structure of the Editorial Board were conducive to launching a new phase in which the Journal learned to rely more and more on low-cost ways to gain visibility and attract quality submissions. That new strategy materialized through the widespread adoption of repeated Calls for Papers to generate the consequent Special Issues. The topics selected for the Calls for Papers were selected with a view at themes that were policy-relevant and, whenever possible, not too far from the potential interest of Monte dei Paschi. We show that those Special Issues were functional to engineer a recovery in the Journal's performance. It was essentially owing to that resumed good health and recovered resonance that when Monte finally abandoned it Economic Notes was by and large equipped for the new venture.

We set the stage in 1972 when the bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena founded Economic Notes as part of its manifold scheme to reach two main goals: going international and acquiring a stronger position in the public discourse on economics and finance. Then, we highlight how the new Journal aimed at achieving Monte's goals by adopting a specific editorial style. Moreover, through the turmoil of its first dozen years, Economic Notes' bold strategy attracted top international authors and testimonials, selected topical issues, knitted theory and policy, embraced pluralist and forward-looking views, helped the University of Siena to strengthen its international connections. The Journal quickly became a landmark for domestic, European and global debates owing also to favourable contingencies. A special blessing was that, would be Nobel laureate, Bob Mundell had just settled down in a shabby villa in the outskirts of Siena where he organized the Santa Colomba Meetings. Those informal summer workshops brought a free flow of the most authoritative experts on international money and finance exactly at the time the Bretton Woods monetary order collapsed and stagflation risks emerged. That greatly favoured the editorial success of the Journal throughout the 1970s.

We review the five different phases lived by Economic Notes during its first 50 years. First, its foundation and early phase—until 1983—received great support from Monte dei Paschi and also benefited from a windfall since Robert A. Mundell attracted to Siena an international network of top economists, policy makers and executives, facilitating high-quality submissions to the Journal. When Mundell's meetings stopped (in 1978), Economic Notes had already secured a good reputation and had become a champion of a pluralist approach, accepting papers from different disciplines and views. In the second phase—from 1984 to the mid-1990s—the Journal, led by a qualified Editorial Board lived continuity but also some new directions emerged. Economic Notes became better connected to the local Faculty of Economics. Also, the drive towards pluralism of the early years was refocused to safeguard access by different economic schools rather than different disciplines. In those years, Monte dei Paschi too transformed from a mostly regional bank into a national and international player, thus demanding less visibility support from the Journal. Those events blurred the initial mission and started distancing the Bank from the Journal. The third phase—from mid-1990s to early 2000s—saw the maximum productivity and visibility of Economic Notes. Monte financed Conferences with great resonance also owing to an exceptional Advisory Board. In the fourth phase—from 2004, when the Conferences became rare, to 2012—the performance worsened. Communication between the Bank and the Journal grew more difficult, complicating any planning for the future. The fifth phase— from 2012 to 2019—aimed to relaunch the Journal without a significant support from the Bank, which had entered a period of difficulties of its own. The planned way out of this situation was to develop a series of Special Issues through dedicated Calls for Papers. As we show, that strategy delivered some results and, in effect, Economic Notes’ performance rebounded. Nevertheless, Monte was progressively disengaging from the Journal, which, eventually, was sold to Wiley, the publishing partner. The sixth and last phase of the Journal—from 2019 to 2021—under the new ownership by Wiley marked a gradual transformation. In the end, it seems that the publishing venture initiated in 1972 is still making progress and providing a pluralist forum for discussion. The journey of Economic Notes is still on!

We assess that the passage of Economic Notes' property from the founding Bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena to Wiley occurred smoothly, and behind formal discontinuities, a real continuity occurred. Over the years 2012–2019, Economic Notes had starved because the difficulties of Monte obstructed the regular flow of financial support. The survival of the Journal was achieved through editorial innovations through attractive Calls for Papers and the ensuing quality submissions to feed Special Issues. These efforts restored the good health of Economic Notes when its ownership switched, and in the final 3 years considered here (2019–2021), the Journal showed no sign of worsening performance. Thus, we may state that the lifesaver passage under Wiley's ownership was not the swan song but the Journal is still alive and well.

Based on monthly data covering the period from 1987 to 2021, we analyse whether cross-sectional moments of stock market returns may provide information about the future position of the German business cycle. We apply in-sample forecasting regressions with and without leading indicators as control variables, pseudo-out-of-sample exercises, autoregressive distributed lag models, and impulse-response functions estimated by local projections. We find in-sample predictive power of the first and third cross-section moments for the future growth of industrial production, even if one controls for well-established leading indicators for the German business cycle. Out-of-sample tests show that these variables reduce the relative mean squared error compared with benchmark models. We do not find a long-run relation between the moment series and industrial production. The dynamic response of industrial production to a shock on the cross-section moments is in line with the other results.

Three highly cited studies with over 6000 citations collectively report a negative relationship between the market value of the firm and leverage. Such empirical findings clearly contradict the hypothesis of leverage adding value to the firm and an optimal capital structure that maximizes firm value—these findings have yet to be resolved. Employing a sample of 3,768 firms consisting of 39,015 observations, a stochastic frontier analysis was used to assess the relationship of leverage among other capital structure factors with firm value. It was found that in general the use of leverage promotes firm value, consistent with the trade-off theory and that the inverse relationship between leverage and firm value was a temporary occurrence and is likely attributable to firms employing tax loss carrybacks in response to the 1986 Tax Reform Act. The estimates of technical efficiency indicate that many firms can do more to increase their value, the sample as a whole improves efficiency (value) over the sample period. The findings reconcile the reports of leverage decreasing firm value as reported in Baker and Wurgler, Fama and French, and Habib and Ljungqvist. The empirical findings suggest prior observation was a due to a decline in the value of the tax shield generated by leverage after the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Specifically, tax carrybacks extended the pre-Tax Reform Act of 1986 tax shield value to 1991 and after 1991 the tax shield value declined.