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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of trading volume and open interest on volatility of futures markets. The authors capture the size and change in speculative behaviour in futures markets by examining the role of liquidity variables (trading volume and open interest) in the behaviour of futures prices.

The sample includes daily data covering the period 1996-2014 from 36 international futures markets (including currencies, commodities, stock indices, interest rates and bonds). The authors employ a two-stage estimation methodology: first, the authors employ a E-GARCH model and consider the asymmetric response of volatility to shocks of different sign. Further, the authors consider a regression framework to examine the contemporaneous relationships between volatility, trading volume and open interest. To quantify the percentage of volatility that is caused by liquidity variables, the authors also regress the estimated volatilities on the measures of open interest and trading volume.

The authors find that: market depth has an effect on the volatility of futures markets but the direction of this effect depends on the type of contract, and there is evidence of a positive contemporaneous relationship between trading volume and futures volatility for all futures contracts. Impulse-response functions also show that trading volume has a more relevant role in explaining market volatility than open interest.

These results are recommended to financial managers and analysts dealing with futures markets.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has yet considered a complete database of futures markets to investigate the empirical relation between price changes (volatility), trading volume and open interest in futures markets.

Agee, Philip. White Paper Whitewash: Interviews with Philip Agee on the CIA and El Salvador. Edited by Werner Poelchau. New York: Deep Cover Books (Box 677, New York 10013), 1981. $8.00. Written by a former CIA agent, author of Inside the Company. Critique of Communist Interference in El Salvador, cited below.

Until recently, most North Americans thought of Central America as the land of bananas and exotic vacations. Today, government, media, and public concern are focused on the region's instability and the United States' role in it. This “crisis” in Central America has generated a barrage of publications. Perhaps an appropriate title for this article would have been “Central America: Crisis in the Library.” The growing number of publications on Central America is matched by growing demand for them in both public and academic libraries. This bibliography will help librarians build an adequate and balanced collection on Central America without having to locate and examine each book.

El Salvador’s youth have faced a climate of violence for decades. Schools have been identified as the most cost-effective ways to help students develop the life skills they need to prevent violence. This study examined the potential role of a physical education (PE) program taught by some of the first Salvadoran teachers to be trained to foster life skills through PE within schools.

Fourteen schools that had hired a PE teacher trained in life skills-based PE volunteered to participate in the study. Semi-structured interviews with the school director, PE teacher, and a focus group of students at each school were conducted.

Interviews were content analyzed and potential themes were initially placed into one of three life skills categories using a deductive analysis based upon the World Health Organization’s (WHO) (2002) three categories of life skills: (i) Coping and Self-Management; (ii) Communication and Interpersonal; (iii) Decision Making/Problem Solving. Then, using an inductive analysis, various themes within each life skills category were identified. The findings revealed that participants in the study identified the role that PE provides in developing life skills in each of the three categories and many identified the importance of these life skills to prevent violence both in and out of schools.

Findings from this study highlight the important role that schools play in the development of life skills and the prevention of youth violence. PE in particular offers a promising approach due to its applied nature and opportunity for students to learn through doing and the application of life skills in a safe manner. The findings also support the importance of trained PE teachers to deliver such programs.

Central America has and continues to be a region with high levels of youth violence. Given that PE is a mandatory school subject in Salvadoran schools (and in other Central American countries), shifting the focus toward a life skills-based approach to PE offers educators an opportunity to address the country’s number one public health concern which is youth violence. To our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind in El Salvador to explore the role of PE as it relates to youth violence and can help in future curricular revisions in schools and the development of degree programs at local universities.

The objective of this study is to analyze the influence of the intellectual capital of SMEs on innovation and organizational performance in the context of an emerging country.

The sample consisted of 259 industrial SMEs from the Cordoba, Argentina. The data were analyzed by partial least squares–structural equation modeling (PLS–SEM).

The study provides empirical evidence that the three components of intellectual capital generate positive and significant effects on innovation in processes and products. Structural capital is the component that has the greatest effect on innovation. It also showed a positive and significant relationship between innovation in processes and performance, contributing to the scarce empirical literature in the context of SMEs.

The research exposes limitations that uncover a path for future. First, the work uses as the only source of information, the consultation at the highest level of the company. Second, the study covered only industrial companies. Future studies should focus on other sectors and countries.

The results may have important practical implications for SME owners and managers and offer a vision of the influence of intellectual capital on the innovative capacity of the organization.

The value of work lies in establishing the importance of intellectual capital in the environment of an emerging country such as Argentina, given the low level of knowledge that exists in this area.

The objective of this study is to analyze the influence of the structural capital of SMEs in the capacity of innovation and organizational performance, in the context of an emerging country.

The sample consisted of 259 industrial SMEs from the province of Córdoba Argentina. The data was analyzed by Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS–SEM).

The study provided evidence that acquisition of information and knowledge management, organizational culture and structure, systems and processes have positive and significant effects on the innovation capacity of SMEs. Only the communication and cohesion component did not show positive and significant results on it. It also showed a positive and significant relationship between the capacity for innovation in processes and performance, contributing to the scarce empirical literature in the context of SMEs.

The research exposes some limitations that uncover a path for the development of future lines of research. In the first place, the work focuses on the use of a single source of information, the consultation at the managerial level of the company, without considering other representative variables to measure the capacity for innovation. Second, the study covered only companies in the industrial sector and country. Future studies should focus on other sectors and countries.

The results of the study can have important practical implications for the owners and managers of SMEs. The results offer a vision of the dimensions of structural capital that most influence the innovative capacity of the organization. This is especially useful given that in the context of Argentina there is a low level of knowledge and structural capital is key to being more competitive. The managers of SMEs can thus increase the innovative potential of the company and favor the acquisition of information and knowledge and improve its processes and systems to contribute to the development of innovation capabilities to make SMEs more competitive.

The results obtained can be useful for those responsible for making public policy decisions, since in the knowledge of the economy to maintain a developed state and nation, it is necessary to include as one of the main issues on the national agenda the improvement of intellectual capital of its people to promote the competitiveness of companies.

The research contributes to the development of intellectual capital literature focused on the generation of innovation and performance in the perspective of SMEs in emerging countries.

The chapter draws on historical evidence from Central America to test two of the most influential theories of the development of democracy: (1) structural theories derived from the work of Barrington Moore and (2) theories of the “political economy of democratic transitions.” The Central American evidence confirms Moore's theory in regard to the anti-democratic role of landed elites, but not the democratic role of the bourgeoisie. Contrary to some structural theories, the industrial working class was also not important in the development of democracy in Central America. Nor does the Central American evidence fit the political economy of democratic transitions model of negotiated or imposed “transitions from above.” A new model, termed the route to democracy through socialist revolution from below is proposed to account for the Central American evidence and the implications of the model are explored for the development of democracy generally.

Although it was predicted that bank branches would quickly become obsolete in a computerized society, the reality is that many full‐service branches are not closing but rather evolving to meet changing needs. The role of the branch manager is crucial, and is also changing. In particular, managers are expected to take a lead in marketing activities. A questionnaire study was carried out to examine managers’ changing roles, using two samples of branch managers, one from Canada and one from Spain. Managers were asked to rate 21 function variables on their importance in bank management and in facing new market trends. Differences were found between the two samples, as were similarities: both identified managerial ability, strategic autonomy of the branch and business development through increased marketing ability, as important building blocks for the future role of branches and their managers.