A study of Spanish companies＇ hedging strategies in Latin America

This paper looks at the impact that unanticipated changes in the exchange rate, specifically the currency crises that took place in Latin America between 1998 and 2004, had on the value of Spanish companies in this emerging region. It also studies the strategies, decisions, measures and initiatives that these firms made to improve the effectiveness of their hedging activities. Building upon previous studies in industrialized countries, the study applies a broad perspective as it takes a cross-functional approach by including finance, strategic planning, marketing, and operations management in the analysis. The data was collected from interviews containing structured and open-ended questions with senior managers and directors of the largest Spanish investors in Latin America and then analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative study involves a time series regression to calculate a foreign exchange exposure coefficient. The qualitative analysis uses a systematic approach to develop categories from the data gathered in the interviews. The research results suggest that foreign companies exposed to exchange risks in emerging markets gain resilience when decentralizing the decision-making and implementation of hedging initiatives to subsidiaries to： （1） Elaborate scenarios, （2） assess possible impacts of exchange rate variations, （3） design pre-emptive measures, and （4） set alternative strategies to mitigate potential impacts. This multi-functional and systemic approach to manage risks seems to offer companies higher flexibility and new knowledge that can be shared among subsidiaries working in similar economic and political environments.     

加大改革力度 缓解水资源危机—关于缓解吉林省水资源短缺状况的几点建议

2000年,吉林省遭受了有气象记录以来的罕见旱灾,致使城乡经济蒙受巨大损失。从根本上改变这一状况,政府责无旁贷。在市场经济条件下,政府应在管水用水治水方面加大改革力度,实现水资源的合理配置。国内外实践表明,对城乡防洪、排涝、蓄水、用水、节水、污水处理及回用等涉水事宜进行统一管理,是符合经济社会发展要求的,也有益于经济社会的可持续发展。     

城市饮用水水源污染防治对策

城市饮用水水源污染已成为制约城市经济、社会发展和人民生活正常需要的一个突出问题。文章针对当前我国城市饮用水水源保护中存在的问题 ,探讨如何强化城市饮用水水源污染防治措施 ,切实做好城市饮用水水源保护工作     

Egypt versus Ethiopia: The Conflict over the Nile Metastasizes

Egypt and Ethiopia continue to oppose one another over the allocation of the waters of the Nile River basin, despite a succession of provisional multilateral agreements. Officials in Cairo insist that Egypt be guaranteed its “historic rights” to two-thirds of the river’s flow, while their counterparts in Addis Ababa demand an “equitable” distribution of water among all of the riparian countries. More important, Sudan’s shift in alignment from Egypt to Ethiopia has injected new tension into the dispute, and the sustained involvement of South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and Eritrea heightens the likelihood that periodic crises will escalate into armed confrontations. Consequently, existing studies that offer sanguine assessments of the potential for a compromise settlement fail to address the key dynamics that drive the conflict.     

Exploring the Relationship between Operational and Financial Indicators: The Case of Water and Sewer Utilities

ABSTRACT

There is debate in the literature on whether or not general management principles are applicable to the study and practice of public administration. This research responds by exploring how local officials manage the performance of public services with private good characteristics, where general management principles could be embraced for service delivery. The relationship between operational and financial indicators is explored within the functional areas of water and sewer, with the hypothesis that operational outcomes impact financial outcomes similar to private enterprises. Because the findings do not support this hypothesis, the authors conclude that general management principles may not be applicable to all forms of administration given that public cannot be removed from the management of public services even with private good characteristics.     

Deep finance: sovereign debt crises and the secondary market ‘fix’

Links between ballooning national debts and official aid conditionalities are well understood. Private sovereign debt markets, in contrast, have been largely overlooked outside mainstream economics. Yet, since the 1980s, a ‘secondary market regime’ in sovereign bonds has transformed financial geographies and legal practices, facilitating the build-up of riskier sovereign debts and strengthening specialized distressed debt investors. This secondary market ‘fix’ has enabled the international financial system to muddle through successive crises. Using the recently concluded Argentine debt saga as an example, I show how the secondary market regime’s effects on debtors are intertwined with, but distinct from, those of structural adjustment programmes; in cases of resistance to neoliberalism, ‘deep’ secondary market debt structures serve to push countries (back) into the neoliberal fold.     

How can Public Professional Services be Restored in a Weak State? Options for Animal Health in Congo's South Kivu

How does one deal with a shortcoming in a public service when even a state “pocket of effectiveness” is unlikely to fill it directly? In the Belgian colonial era, South Kivu Province in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo had a vibrant animal production system, which then was shattered by successive wars. The regeneration of Kivu's livestock industry is greatly constrained by the unreliability of the province's state and private animal health services, which have become commercialized and are unable to overcome the asymmetric information problem inherent to the professions and provide the trustworthy effectiveness farmers need to use them effectively. The Congolese state is unlikely to be able to fill this gap itself. Nonetheless, it can be an architect of solutions to the problem. We were able to identify in the local institutional repertoire at least four possible ways policy‐makers could use non‐governmental organizations to provide missing trustworthiness to the market. This conclusion is hopeful for places with development potential that have weak states and imperfect markets. © 2017 International Livestock Research Institute. Public Administration and Development published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

东北地区水资源一体化管理研究

水资源一体化管理是东北地区区域整合的基础之一,也是节水型社会建设的根本要求。东北地区的水资源一体化管理虽有"松辽管理模式"等的发展基础,但在体制与机制、水市场建设、水资源安全等方面仍存在许多问题。借助国内外水资源管理的理论成果,认为东北地区的水资源一体化管理应该主要理顺管理体制和运行机制、进一步完善安全系统、加快水市场建设步伐、协调好区域水资源配置、加快全区域节水型社会建设。     

Forests lost and found in tropical Latin America: the woodland ‘green revolution’

Forest dynamics in the Latin American tropics now take directions that no one would have predicted a decade ago. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has dropped by over 80 percent, a pattern mimicked elsewhere in Amazonia, and is down by more than a third in Central America. Forest resurgence – increasing forest cover in inhabited landscapes or abandoned lands – is also expanding. In Latin America, woodland cover is increasing, at least for now, more than it is being lost. These dramatic shifts suggest quite profound and rapid transformations of agrarian worlds, and imply that previous models of understanding small-farmer dynamics merit significant review centering less on field agriculture and more on emergent forest regimes, and in many ways a new, increasingly globalized economic and policy landscape that emphasizes woodlands.

This paper analyzes changing deforestation drivers and the implications of forest recovery and wooded landscapes emerging through social pressure, social policy, new government agencies, governance, institutions, ideologies, markets, migration and ‘neo-liberalization’ of nature. These changes include an expanded, but still constrained, arena for new social movements and civil society. These point to significant structural changes, changes in tropical natures, and require reframing of the ‘peasant question’ and the functions of rurality in the twenty-first century in light of forest dynamics.     

论水权的优先权

水权优先权具有重要功能 ,是我国水权制度和水市场建立的重要一环。在水权取得方面主要有河岸权原则、先占用原则和所有权绝对原则 ,而在水权优先位序规则的确立上 ,各国因具体情况不同 ,采取的方案也不尽相同。我国在遵循水资源的可持续利用、兼顾公平与效率及遵从习惯、因地制宜三大原则的前提下 ,应确立先占用原则为主的水权取得优先权原则 ,同时承认习惯水权 ,进而构建符合我国实际情况的水权优先位序规则。