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This chapter estimates causality properties between real money demand and a number of determinants, that is, real output, the lending rate and the real exchange rate, across 10 Asian economies through linear and nonlinear causality methodologies spanning the period 1990–2012. The results document both bidirectional and unidirectional causality between monetary aggregates (M1 and M2) and their determinants for different country groups. The empirical findings exemplify the role of the demand for money as a policy tool and can provide useful policy recommendations to the Asian monetary authorities in their vision of forming a future monetary union.

One of the most significant changes in monetary economics at the beginning of the twenty-first century has been the virtual disappearance of what was once a dominant focus, the role of money in monetary policy, and parallelly, the disappearance of the liquidity preference-money supply (LM) curve. Economists used to consider monetary policy with the help of the LM curve as part of the analytical framework which captures the demand for money. However, the workhorse model of modern monetary theory and policy, the New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) framework, only comprises the dynamic investment-savings (IS) curve, the New Keynesian (NK) Phillips curve, and a monetary policy rule. The monetary policy rule is generally known as the Taylor rule. It relates the nominal interest rate to the output-gaps and inflation-gaps, but typically not to either the quantity or the growth rate of money. This change in the modern monetary model reflects how the central banks make monetary policy now. This study provides a detailed discussion on the role of money in monetary policy formulation in the context of the NK and the New Monetarist perspectives. The pros and cons of abandonment of money or the LM curve from monetary policy models have been discussed in detail.

This paper uses data from the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth to estimate the changing returns to cognitive and non-cognitive skills with respect to college completion, and quantifies the extent to which gender differences in these skills are driving the college gender gap. The use of two distinct college graduation cohorts allows a dynamic analysis of the widening female advantage in college graduation. I decompose the increase in the college gender gap into three pertinent categories of measurable attributes: family background, cognitive skills, and non-cognitive skills (captured by school suspensions, behavioral problems, and legal infractions). A second decomposition is applied to the change in the gap between the two periods. The results show that roughly half of the observed college graduation gender gap in the NLSY97 is due to female advantages in observable characteristics, and roughly half is “unexplained”: due to gender differences in the coefficients. With respect to the change in the gap, approximately 29% of the difference in differences is the “explained” component, attributed to changes in the relative characteristics of men and women. In particular, declining non-cognitive skills in men are associated with about 14% of the increase in the gender gap.

By adopting relational practice theory on a case study of a Finnish software company, a solution provider for the public healthcare sector, this study examines how the nexus of practices, and their socio-historical premises, enable and constrain intentional strategizing in an organization about to survive the ten-year Death Valley phase. The strategy literature adopting a practice lens has been focused on the rationality of human actions or implicated that all practices are shaped by the historical socio-cultural background of the organization. As a consequence, the practice-based strategy literature tends to overemphasize the rationality of human action or reduces human agency to an extent where the autonomy of actors becomes problematized. These practice-based strategy views circumscribe relational agency as inherent in practice theory treating human agents as acting within a nexus of practices but also consider them as being free to make choices. Findings suggest that even during intentional strategizing, managers are not fully autonomous in their choices as practices constrain possibilities and set boundaries for strategic activities. Prior commitments determine the possible strategic themes to pursue. Within the boundaries of these strategic themes, strategic activities emerge where the strategic activities are shaped by a nexus of practices within and around the organizational boundaries. Depending on the complexity of mutually dependent entertwined strategic activities, they can be perceived as being beyond management control, or considered strategically irrelevant, which influences the strategic direction in the face of uncertainty.

We develop a simple two-country model of international trade that assumes that there is a fixed cost of doing international trade. We show that this leads to multiple equilibria that can be Pareto-ranked. We examine the stability properties of these equilibria.

This paper aims to clarify the meaning of children’s participation in the relationship between children’s individual action and the social treatment and consequences of this action. For this purpose, the paper explores the integration of different theoretical approaches that can shape research on children’s participation, looking at interactions, complex social systems that include interactions, and narratives that are produced in these complex social systems. This integration allows the understanding of the ways in which children actively participate in communication processes, social structures condition children’s active participation, and children’s active participation can enhance structural change in social systems, through the implementation of promotional communication systems. The paper highlights the following paradox: the relevance of children’s action for social change depends on the relevance of adults’ action in promoting children’s actions. This theoretical perspective is exemplified in the case of promotion of children’s active participation in the education system through the empirical analysis of cases of videotaped and transcribed interactions, highlighting facilitation systems of classroom communication. The analyzed data are based on a field research in Italian classrooms regarding a specific methodology of facilitation of communication. The analysis of these data shows the ways in which the facilitation system creates the paradoxical relationship between structures that condition children’s active participation and children’s active participation that enhances structural change. The paper highlights a new way of dealing with children’s participation, based on a social constructionist, systemic, and interactionist approach.