The Catalytic Effect of IMF Lending: Evidence from Sectoral FDI Data

Our study contributes to the search for the elusive catalytic effect of International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending on inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Recent scholarship has found that the catalytic effect is conditional on political regime and program stringency. We contribute to this literature by developing and testing a theory which describes how the catalytic effect also varies by economic sector. This is a departure from existing studies, which have tended to focus on aggregate FDI flows after crises. Our findings corroborate previous research, which finds that in general IMF lending has a substantial and negative effect on FDI. However, we find that the negative effect is concentrated in sectors that are highly dependent on external capital and have low sunk costs in the host country. Our findings are robust to several alternative explanations common in IMF literature, namely the importance of IMF program design and the ability of governments to make credible commitments to reform. Substantively, our findings suggest that investors are more likely to use IMF lending as an escape hatch in countries where FDI is dependent on external capital and has low sunk costs.     

Contested geopolitical messages for tourists at the Okinawa Peace Park and memorials

Abstract

Now marketed as a tropical beach destination, Okinawa's identity is also forever linked with the horrors of war. Okinawa's tumultuous past encompasses the Ryukyu Islands, which had close economic ties to China until being annexed by mainland Japan, were invaded by the US in the Second World War, were occupied until 1972 and, more recently, have become the centre of heated debates over the continued presence of US military bases. The Battle of Okinawa was one of the bloodiest of the Second World War and the inhabitants faced not only the American invasion but also the tactics of the Japanese army, who viewed the islands as expendable in order to slow invading forces from reaching mainland Japan. In the context of the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Battle of Okinawa in 2015, and beyond, it is argued here that these conflicting geopolitical disputes present significant challenges in terms of the messages presented to educational dark tourists visiting the Okinawa Peace Park and Memorials. The Peace Park Story Tellers or kataribe who are the Second World War survivors, have the critical task of mediating the message to both domestic and international tourists, some of whom are not prepared to hear anti-Japan sentiment. Through an examination of the historical and geographic background, and an analysis of the tourist experience at the Peace Park and Memorials, this paper explores the complexity of educational dark tourism where competing messages collide.     

Does fertiliser use improve household welfare? Evidence from Ghana’s cocoa industry

This article analyses welfare impacts of fertiliser adoption using data collected from 838 cocoa farm households in the four key cocoa-producing regions in Ghana. Using propensity score matching (PSM), the study indicates that application of fertiliser leads to significant gains in farm yields, farm income, consumption expenditure, consumption expenditure per capita, and value of productive farm assets. The article concludes that cocoa-specific programmes such as Cocoa High Technology (Cocoa Hi-tech), initiated to intensify the application of improved farm technologies such as fertiliser, should be strengthened through effective and efficient management systems.     

Foreign Terrorist Organization designation,international cooperation,and terrorism

How does branding militant groups as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (FTOs) affect them? Beyond its obvious policy importance, this question speaks to debates about counterterrorism, terrorism financing, and organizational dynamics of subnational violence. This article analyzes FTO designation, a key policy used by the U.S. government since 1997 to impose costs on foreign terrorist groups and those who might support them. Contrary to arguments that sanctions are ineffective and that terrorism is too “cheap” to be affected, it is argued that designation should weaken terrorist groups, reducing their attacks over time. However, the effect is probably conditional. FTO designation should be especially effective against groups operating in U.S.-aligned countries, given the importance of international cooperation in counterterrorism. Global quantitative analyses suggest that FTOs operating in U.S.-aligned countries carry out fewer attacks over time than other groups, taking many other factors into consideration.     

Emotional Coregulation in Mexican-Origin Parent–Adolescent Dyads: Associations with Adolescent Mental Health

Research on the health benefits and consequences of close relationships has suggested the linkage in daily emotions (i.e., coregulation) between close partners is an important relationship dynamic. While the coupling of daily emotions among family members (parent–child and marital dyads) has been widely documented, research examining emotional coregulation among ethnic minority youth during adolescence, a period marked by heightened emotion and risk for psychopathology, remains an important area in need of exploration. This study examined correlates of emotional coregulation in a sample of Mexican-origin adolescents (M_age?=?15.02, SD?=?.83) and their parents (M_age?=?41.93, SD?=?6.70). Dyads reported on daily levels of distress and happiness for 14 consecutive days across two waves of data collection a year apart (n_wave1?=?428 dyads, n_wave2?=?336 dyads). Dyads who reported getting along were more likely to coregulate their daily happiness. Importantly, coregulation of distress was only present in older adolescents who reported above average levels of internalizing symptoms. The results suggest coregulation of distress may shape or be shaped by poor mental health during the later years of adolescence, a time when youth may be establishing a degree of emotional autonomy from parents.

     

Early Adolescent Gender Development: The Differential Effects of Felt Pressure from Parents,Peers, and the Self

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Most empirical research examining youth’s gender development measures felt pressure to conform to gender norms using a composite value of felt pressure from...     

Loring Paul Jones: Life After Foster Care: Improving Outcomes for Former Foster Youth

Journal of Youth and Adolescence -     

Russia’s ministry of ambivalence: the failure of civic nation-building in post-Soviet Russia

This article argues that the sources of official and societal ambivalence towards civic nationhood in today’s Russia are found in the institutional instability and personalist dynamics of hybrid regime politics in the 1990s. Successful civic nation-building should institutionalize inclusive criteria for citizenship as a basis for policymaking, which in turn should create incentives for dominant ethnicities to embrace civic nationhood. While the shifting views of Boris Yel’tsin on nationalities policy and the constant turmoil in the government’s nationalities ministry have received little scholarly attention, they illuminate the endogenous sources of regime instability in relation to civic nation-building. Russia’s experience thus challenges the traditional view of ethnic nationalism as fostering authoritarianism and civic nationalism as fostering democracy: rather, competitive authoritarianism in the 1990s confounded the regime’s own efforts toward civic nation-building and laid the groundwork for the “ethnic turn” in Russian politics under Vladimir Putin.