Reshaping Louisiana’s Coastal Frontier: Managed Retreat as Colonial Decontextualization

This article describes social encounters produced through climate adaptation policy experimentation focused on managed retreat—a framework increasingly used by academics and planning professionals to describe various kinds of planned relocations from areas exposed to environmental hazards. Building on scholarship that examines the political ecology of resettlement and adaptation (Shearer, 2012; Maldonado, 2014; Marino 2015; Whyte et al. 2019), I draw on five years of ethnographic work conducted alongside Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribal leaders as their longstanding Tribal resettlement planning was transformed by government investment. I found that Louisiana’s Office of Community Development relied on Tribal-led planning to garner federal funds, used those funds to transform the resettlement, and used planning process and documentation to erase the rationales behind and aims of Indigenous-led planning—a process I liken to Dina Gilio-Whitaker (2019)’s notion of decontextualization as a colonial strategy of erasure. I contend that state decontextualization of the resettlement from a struggle for cultural survival to managed retreat policy experimentation reproduced a frontier dynamic whereby colonial and capitalist coastal futures are rested upon the erasure of Indigenous peoples and their lifeways, institutions, and self-determination. Constructions of risk and community and timelines published in planning documentation were particularly important state tools used for decontextualization. Ethnographic accounts of such processes can inform future resistance to eco-colonial schemes within climate adaptation.

Hedging Effectiveness of the VIX ETPs

This study introduces basic concepts about hedging and provides an overview of common hedging practices. This theoretical introduction is followed by an empirical application in which the hedging effectiveness of the VIX ETPs is evaluated. The iPath Series B S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures ETN (VXX) and the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY) are taken for the empirical application. Dynamic conditional correlations between the VXX and SPY are obtained from DCC-GARCH framework. Based on the estimated conditional volatilities of the SPY and the hedged portfolio, a hedging effectiveness index is constructed. Results show that the hedging effectiveness of the VXX increases in turbulent periods such as the last three months of 2018 marked by the plummeting oil prices, increasing uncertainties about the Brexit deal, and rising federal funds rates and the month of March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic became a global concern.

Bank Revolving Credit as a Channel of Monetary Policy Targeting Interest Rates

This paper investigates the implication of bank revolving credit in the form of credit card loans as a channel of monetary policy targeting the federal funds rate since 1980. Credit cards have become increasingly popular and a necessity for many transactions and purchases in the United States. The revolving credit nature of credit card loans makes them an instant tool for consumer loans that can facilitate consumption. Using instrumental variable and two-stage least squares (2SLS) methodology, we analyze the implication of credit card loans to modern monetary policy that targets interest rates.

Russia's falling population cannot meet labour needs

Significance Demographic decline now appears inevitable, leading to a smaller, less productive working-age population. In addition to short-term disruptions caused by pandemic-related restrictions, lasting structural changes in the labour market are becoming evident, prompted by shifts in consumption patterns, rising demand for higher-skilled labour and greater remote working. Impacts Higher long-term unemployment will increase the need for social transfers, putting a further strain on federal funds. The ageing labour force will need retraining to shore up productivity levels. Greater remote working will increase the digital gap between higher- and lower-paid workers.

Macro-Financial Parameters Influencing Bitcoin Prices: Evidence from Symmetric and Asymmetric ARDL Models

Bitcoins are evolving as a modern class of investment assets and it is crucial for investors to manage their investment risk. This paper examines the impact of macroeconomic-financial indicators on Bitcoin price using symmetric and asymmetric version of autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models with structural breaks. The asymmetric long-run association ascertained between Bitcoin prices and the macroeconomic-financial indicators is evident. Our empirical results indicate that the Bitcoin cannot be used to hedge against the inflation, Federal funds rate, stock markets and commodity markets. We further find that Bitcoin can be regarded as a hedging device for the oil prices. Our findings have significant implications for market participants who consider including alternate investment assets in their portfolios.

Transition from the Taylor rule to the zero lower bound

This paper examines the Taylor rule in the context of United States monetary policy since 1965, particularly with respect to the zero-lower-bound era of the federal funds rate from 2009 to 2016. A nonlinear Taylor rule is developed which features smooth transitions in the first two moments of the federal funds rate. This flexible specification is found to usefully capture observed nonlinearity, while accounting for the well-documented structural changes in monetary policy formation at the Federal Reserve in the last 50 years, and especially in the recent zero-lower-bound era.

A Structural Measure of the Shadow Federal Funds Rate

We propose a shadow policy interest rate based on an estimated structural model that accounts for the zero lower bound. The lower bound constraint, if expected to bind, is contractionary and increases the shadow rate compared to an unconstrained systematic policy response. By contrast, forward guidance and other unconventional policies that extend the expected duration of zero-interest-rate policy are expansionary and decrease the shadow rate. By quantifying these distinct effects, our structural shadow federal funds rate better captures the stance of monetary policy given economic conditions than a shadow rate based only on the term structure of interest rates.