In the past 20 years, equity markets have increasingly shown a boom and bust behavior. In such a market settings the ability to forecast bubbles formation and subsequent crashes or the beginning of a market rebound would be of great value. Attempting to forecast the formation, end of bubbles and subsequent changes of regime, Prof. Sornette and co-workers developed a rational expectation bubbles model called Johansen Ledoit-Sornette model (JLS) [6] [7] [8] and based on complex systems physics.
In recent years, the financial services industry has become very inventive around new uses of technology to improve the structure and delivery of retail products. One relatively new type of payment product, stored value cards (SVCs), serves as a cash or check alternative.
The purpose of this paper is to discern the implications of this emerging product. The study will discuss whether SVCs could offer consumers the potential to build assets and improve their credit records and will highlight policy issues related to SVCs. At this point in the industry’s development, many of these cards do not provide a platform for saving, asset-building, or building or repairing credit. However, SVCs could pave the way for individuals to have both transactional services and links to broader financial opportunities, thus more closely mimicking traditional bank accounts.
How do firms establish new export relations and what determines the dynamics of exports at the firm level? Finding convincing answers to these questions is important for trade theorists and policy makers alike. While the former try to assess which trade model adequately describes export dynamics, the latter would like to understand which policies are effective for promoting exports.
The most prominent models of export dynamics rely on sunk fixed cost to enter the export market. Such costs can explain why only few very productive firms export (Melitz (2003)), why firms’ export status is very persistent over time and why the probability that a firm exports is determined primarily by its past export status (see Roberts and Tybout (1997) among others). However, a growing number of micro studies on export dynamics (Eaton, Eslava, Kugler and Tybout (2007), Buono, Fadinger and Berger (2008), Lawless (2009)) has revealed evidence that is at odds with this traditional view.
