Russian corporate recovery varies by company profile

Significance Recovery in the corporate sector is unevenly divided between large and smaller companies. More robust global demand and rising commodity prices boosted the profitability of large exporters, whereas the recovery of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) was delayed by pandemic restrictions and falling real disposable incomes. Impacts High metals prices will constrain investment in infrastructure. Rising interest rates will limit capital market borrowing by medium-sized companies. Government price controls threaten to undermine private investment in agriculture, metallurgy and chemical production. A deterioration in banks' corporate portfolio will be adequately offset by high earnings and previous provisioning.

Factors Affecting Consumers’ Purchasing of Suboptimal Foods during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, global food production and transportation have been largely impacted. Meanwhile, consumers have purchased and stockpiled large quantities of foods due to panic in the early stage of the pandemic, which has resulted in a lot of uneaten, expired foods and has reduced the varieties of foods available in the markets. Due to the lower prices, some consumers have chosen to buy those foods with an earlier production time or inferior quality (suboptimal foods), and the purchase rate of suboptimal foods has increased. Therefore, this study investigated consumer behavior during the pandemic as the research focus, explored the main dimensions that affect consumers’ purchasing of suboptimal foods during the COVID-19 pandemic, tested their correlations, and proposed suggestions for improvement. The results of this study showed that the impacts of Perceived Benefits on Attitude Toward Behavior, Perceived Behavioral Control, and Subject Norm rank 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in importance, respectively, which are all higher than the related impact of Environmental Concerns. For consumers, the most important thing is whether suboptimal foods have consumption motivation for them, which is also the most direct way to make consumers feel the value of suboptimal foods. Furthermore, for consumers, while the environmentally friendly attributes of suboptimal foods are less perceptible than the economic motivations, they still have considerable influence on consumers, and this is even more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many families have experienced a shock to their income during the pandemic, and consumers are more sensitive and concerned about commodity prices, which also makes lower-priced and more abundant suboptimal foods more popular. However, in the long term, suboptimal foods can have a positive impact on reducing food waste and protecting the environment. When consumers realize this, they will be more motivated to purchase and try suboptimal foods.

The Other Side of Convertibility

A system for ensuring the convertibility of a currency into specified commodities is also, ipso facto, a system for stabilizing the prices of those commodities in terms of the currency in question. This connection is widely ignored in discussions of these two subjects, but it links the two specialised fields of monetary economics and commodity price stabilization tightly together. Unfortunately, despite much work on the topic spanning many decades, almost all such work is made within a single paradigm – that of establishing an international institution to stabilize commodity prices. However, for a number of reasons, no international agreement can achieve more than a very partial solution to this problem: most importantly it cannot directly stabilize more than a single currency, thereby losing the most fundamental benefit of a true solution for all but one of the participating countries. A different approach is therefore needed.

Discussion of CRD Simulation Results

The results of the simulations shown in Chapter 10 clearly show the consistent pattern of operation of the Grondona system, buying and selling reserves of commodities in response to changes in market prices as reliably as under a gold standard. This has a range of direct and indirect effects which are discussed in this chapter, including the reliably counter-cyclical timing of changes in the quantity of the CRD's reserves, and the parallel changes in the national money supply, the system's contribution to resisting inflationary pressures, and the effect of a CRD's reserves of a commodity falling to zero. Some remaining uncertainties about the system's operation are also discussed, notably about the foreign exchange market's likely response to the system expanding the money supply when commodity prices are falling.

Comparative Analysis of the Effects of False Low-Price Marketing Strategy on Multiple Platforms

In order to make full use of the characteristics of commodity prices, merchants on e-commerce platforms have adopted the low-price marketing strategy. Regular promotional discounts can bring new vitality to the commodity sales market, but extreme discount marketing methods would lead to serious impacts on the sales of competing products, thus affecting the stable development of the online shopping market. The sales data of four electrical products using the false low-price marketing strategy on three e-commerce platforms (Taobao, JD, and Amazon) were used in this study. The sales data from different e-commerce platforms and different time periods were analyzed, and one-way ANOVA was used on the factors affecting the effect of marketing strategy. The results showed that there is a significant difference between the direct marketing of high-priced products and low-priced products on Taobao; the difference between the marketing effects of high-priced products and mid-priced products on JD and Amazon is significant. This analysis would help businesses formulate reasonable marketing strategies and promote the stable development of the online shopping market.

Permanent-Transitory decomposition of cointegrated time series via Dynamic Factor Models, with an application to commodity prices

We propose a cointegration-based Permanent-Transitory decomposition for non-stationary Dynamic Factor Models. Our methodology exploits the cointegration relations among the observable variables and assumes they are driven by a common and an idiosyncratic component. The common component is further split into a long-term non-stationary and a short-term stationary part. A Monte Carlo experiment shows that incorporating the cointegration structure into the DFM leads to a better reconstruction of the space spanned by the factors, compared to the most standard technique of applying a factor model in differenced systems. We apply our procedure to a set of commodity prices to analyse the comovement among different markets and find that commodity prices move together mostly due to long-term common forces; while the trend for the prices of most primary goods is declining, metals and energy exhibit an upward or at least stable pattern since the 2000s.

Business diversification of coal mining companies as a strategy facing coal price volatility

This study aims to determine the effect of business diversification on stock prices by mediating company performance, represented by the variable ROE and EPS in a fluctuating coal price situation. The data used are 16 companies engaged in coal mining in Indonesia and listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) from 2012 to 2019. Using two analysis methods: path analysis to examine direct and indirect relationships between variables and different tests to see differences in the performance of companies that diversify and do not diversify. The results showed that coal commodity prices had a significant positive effect on stock prices and indirectly, through ROE and EPS, had a significant positive impact on stock prices. Business diversification directly has a significant negative impact on stock prices and indirectly through EPS positively affects stock prices. Business diversification provides a substantial difference to EPS and does not provide a significant difference to ROE.

Impact of Population Age Structure on Food Consumption Structure of Residents in Beijing

Based on the Beijing panel data from 1990 to 2019, this paper expands the traditional Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) model by introducing the nutritional needs indicators by age structure and quantitatively analyzes the structure and characteristics of household food consumption in Beijing. The study estimates and compares the income elasticity, price elasticity, nutritional demand elasticity of food consumption structure, and the per capita food consumption in Beijing is predicted. The results show that commodity prices and income are still the key factors affecting consumer demand. The change in the population's age structure also has a corresponding impact on the consumption structure. The consumption structure of Beijing is in the stage of optimization, and relevant departments should formulate relevant policies to increase farmers' income and stabilize prices.