a managerial perspective on aggregate planning abstract aggregate planning first appeared in the literature nearly 40 years ago and has proven a popular topic for research ever since however industry seems to have ignored repeated claims that there are algorithms available which would yield significant cost savings this paper explores the divergence between theory and practice via an empirical study covering 30 firms most authors have blamed weaknesses in particular methods for the lack of applications the evidence presented here indicates that the aggregate planning model itself is at fault and that the broad characteristics of real production plans follow from other business tactical or operational considerations furthermore a chase option is generally preferred at the outset

balance of payments the harrod foreign trade multiplier and economic growth the european and north american experience 1970 85 1988 balance of payments the harrod foreign trade multiplier and economic growth the european and north american experience 1970 85 applied economics vol 20 no 12 pp 1635 1642

vive la difference social banks and reciprocity in the credit market social banks are financial intermediaries paying attention to non economic i e social ethical and environmental criteria to investigate the behavior of social banks on the credit market this paper proposes both theory and empirics our theoretical model rationalizes the idea that reciprocity can generate better repayment performances based on a unique hand collected dataset released by a french social bank our empirical results are twofold first we show that the bank charges below market interest rates for social projects second regardless of their creditworthiness motivated borrowers respond to advantageous credit terms by significantly lowering their probability of default we interpret this outcome as the first evidence of reciprocity in the credit market

strategy not tactics drives aggregate planning the aggregate planning model supposedly shows how manufacturers cope with seasonally biased sales unfortunately industry has failed to embrace any of the sophisticated algorithms that were developed to solve the corresponding resources allocation problem this paper reveals why such methods have proven so unattractive aggregate planning is a chimera in practice planners construct the master production schedule directly in line with a preferred production strategy a chase plan is the most popular choice when this option proves infeasible management plumps for another predetermined strategy the resultant stockpiling brings certain financial risks however companies take various measures to reduce their exposure

the harrod foreign trade multiplier and economic growth in asian countries the validity of the harrod foreign trade multiplier for 11 asian countries is tested the results obtained generally support thrilwall s specification of the multiplier this suggests in an open economy relevant economic management is the factor that manipulates the income elasticities of exports and imports

growth and the external constraint lessons from the spanish case the present article attempts to determine the role played by the balance of payments constraint on economic growth in spain 1960 94 using cointegration techniques this empirical exercise also serves to reveal some shortcomings in the usual procedures for estimating thirlwall s law in particular the spanish case reveals how important it is to introduce a variable that expresses the competitiveness gains generated by improvements in quality of the goods and services into the export function it also demonstrates the inadequate simplification entailed in an a priori exclusion of relative prices in external equilibrium equation not taking these two aspects into consideration may give rise to an erroneous confirmation of thirlwall s law especially if as in the spanish case both effects offset each other finally if the aim is to analyse long term relationships between variables it would seem advisable to use procedures such as cointegration with variables in levels

correctly analysing the balance of payments constraint on growth the balance of payments constrained growth bpcg model provides an interesting hypothesis regarding economic growth the main implication is that world demand places the dominant constraint to which individual country growth adjusts i discuss this implication and argue that tests of the bpcg model have essentially been tests of the hypothesis that trade is balanced over the long run a plausible hypothesis but one that need not hold mainly through responses to world demand as transmitted via income elasticities i then discuss the role of relative prices and investment point out logical inadequacies in the traditional bpcg framework and suggest an alternative theoretical framework to investigate its robustness our theoretical and empirical explorations suggest that traditional tests of the bpcg model may be misleading including investment as a proxy for the capacity to export and addressing endogeneity issues for example noticeably weakens the influence of world demand the evidence presented contributes to reconciling evidence supporting the bpcg hypothesis with recent work that consistently finds an important role for the level of the real exchange rate and investment independently of world demand

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

explaining growth rate differences in highly indebted countries an extension to thirlwall and hussain in recent years growth rate differences have increased and have elicited numerous explanations among the most controversial interpretations is that postulated by thirlwall 1979 and later extended by thirlwall and hussain 1982 both papers arguing that growth rate differences are best explained by demand constraints found in the balance of payments although the inclusion of capital flows by thirlwall and hussain 1982 is widely viewed as an improvement in the original model still we believe the model to be less than complete because it omitted the effect of debt servicing extending the model to include the effect of debt servicing this paper improves the predictability of the original model as it brought the actual growth rates closer to the predicted growth rates for most of the countries used in the previous research

how could the south respond to secular stagnation in the north developed countries face the risk of a sustained lack of aggregate demand i e secular stagnation demand oriented growth models emphasizing the balance of payments constraint raise concerns about attendant adverse growth impacts on developing countries from reduced export growth these concerns are well founded albeit less serious than the simplest version of these models would imply relaxing their assumptions and emphasizing cumulative causation forces from domestic demand growth and relative price effects indicates how changed policies can maintain rapid growth while reducing the import content of demand crucial is investment that reduces gaps between the composition of domestic production and domestic demand and emphasizes sectors with cumulative causation effects combined with incomes policy and capital account management drawing down excessive foreign exchange reserves and obtaining concessionary loans from development banks can finance required capital goods imports enhanced south south integration may be an important complement for small countries

can mergers ensure the survival of credit unions in the third millennium abstract the survival of small financial institutions in the third millennium depends on their competitiveness against large bank rivals accordingly credit unions in australia and the united states have attempted to increase efficiency through mergers our paper uses the data envelopment analysis methodology to evaluate the post merger gains in technical and scale efficiency achieved by 31 australian credit union mergers in 1993 1994 and 1994 1995 relative to non merging credit unions when compared with the only us study of credit union mergers journal of banking finance 23 1999 367 386 our findings suggests that mergers are not associated with improvements in efficiency superior to those achieved by internal growth

structural change the real exchange rate and the balance of payments in mexico 1960 2012 this paper estimates a structural model of the balance of payments with disaggregated exports manufactures and other and imports final and intermediate and a reduced form model of the trade balance for the mexican economy the analysis identifies structural changes in the composition of mexico s trade and the parameters that affect it across five subperiods marked by statistical breakpoints the results indicate that a tightening of the balance of payments constraint may account for the post liberalization slowdown in mexico s growth only during certain subperiods and that the impact of real exchange rate changes on the trade balance has diminished most likely as a result of the increasing integration of export industries into global supply chains the results also suggest an asymmetry whereby a country cannot sustain growth above the rate consistent with balance of payments equilibrium as expected but it can grow persistently below that rate when other constraints are more binding

how well have social economy financial institutions performed during the crisis period exploring financial and social efficiency in spanish credit unions as social economy financial institutions credit unions have traditionally been considered less efficient than traditional banking entities however like banks and savings banks they have to be as efficient and competitive as possible to survive in today s business environment especially at times of crisis to date there have been very few studies on their efficiency and practically none for the crisis period moreover almost all the existing studies assess only financial efficiency without considering their social function this study examines the levels of both financial and social efficiency in spanish credit unions as well as their main determinants during the recent crisis we apply the two stage double bootstrap data envelopment analysis dea methodology based on panel data corresponding to all the credit unions active in spain between 2008 and 2013 the empirical results indicate that financial and social efficiency achieved an acceptable level although on average the former was slightly greater than the latter we also find that both age and merger and acquisition activity were positively influential on the financial efficiency of credit unions but had a significant negative effect on their social efficiency moreover the regional location of such entities and the financial crisis were also crucial determinants of both types of efficiency our findings are therefore useful for all the stakeholders of credit unions to know if these entities have been efficient according to a double bottom line accounting in the crisis period and hence to maintain successful social management that is compatible with satisfactory financial efficiency

balance of payments constrained growth a rejoinder to professor thirlwall professor thirlwall has argued that the growth rate of a country is constrained by the requirement that the external current account must broadly balance he maintains that a country s growth can be analysed using a dynamic harrod trade multiplier and that a country s long run growth rate y will approximate to the ratio of the rate of growth of exports x to the income elasticity of demand for imports a in a recent article in this journal mcgregor and swales 1985 doubts were expressed about the theoretical and empirical grounds on which thirlwall makes these claims in his reply thirlwall argues that such doubts are unfounded he clarifies his theory on a number of points he argues that his theory was subjected to inappropriate empirical tests and whilst accepting that equation 1 can be derived from a strict neoclassical model he invites the reader to choose between the plausibility of the neoclassical story as against the keynesian alternative

new directions for stochastic open economy models the paper develops a simple stochastic new open economy macroeconomic model based on sticky nominal wages explicit solution of the wage setting problem under uncertainty allows one to analyze the effects of the monetary regime on welfare expected output and the expected terms of trade despite the potential interplay between imperfections due to sticky wages and monopoly the optimal monetary policy rule has a closed form solution to motivate our model we show that observed correlations between terms of trade and exchange rates are more consistent with our traditional assumptions about nominal rigidities than with a popular alternative based on local currency pricing 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

a study of bank efficiency taking into account risk preferences abstract i use the stochastic cost frontier approach to investigate efficiency of banks operating in the third federal reserve district accounting for the quality and riskiness of bank output in addition to the mean and mode of the conditional distribution of the one sided error term i calculate confidence intervals for the inefficiency measures based on the conditional distribution the results indicate that third district banks are operating at cost efficient output levels and product mixes but are not efficiently using their inputs the second part of the article relates the inefficiency measures to several correlates

financial sustainability and poverty outreach within a network of village banks in cameroon a multi dea approach abstract microfinance institutions face a double bottom line they perform financial tasks by giving microcredits to their customers and support projects aiming at reducing poverty in doing so they have to be financially self sufficient and to target poor people excluded from the traditional financial systems however a trade off may exist between financial sustainability and poverty outreach for these institutions by using a multi dea approach this paper shows that even if a trade off exists for 15 of the mc 2 mutuelles communautaires de croissance in cameroon there is no trade off for 46 of them in order to increase without trade off financial and social performance of inefficient mc 2 a benchmarking approach combing dea and performance indicators has been developed dea is used for identifying best practices and setting benchmarking goals performance indicators are used for characterizing areas needing improvements and following the evolution of mc 2 toward their goals i e for implementing benchmarking complementarity of both approaches provides a tool box for improving financial and social efficiency and reducing the trade off between financial sustainability and poverty outreach of microfinance institutions

stakeholders matter how social enterprises address mission drift this study explores social enterprises strategies for addressing mission drift relying on an inductive comparative case study of two italian social enterprises we show how stakeholder engagement combined with social accounting can successfully support a social venture to re balance its positioning between wealth generation and social value creation indeed stakeholder engagement helps the internal actors of a social enterprise to rationalize and embody pro social values previously abandoned while social accounting reinforces this embodiment process by showing the reintroduced social commitment of the social enterprise to external audiences conversely strategies focused only on social accounting and without significant engagement of external stakeholders prove to be unsuccessful in counterbalancing mission drift because they fail to activate the necessary process of internal re introduction and operationalization of pro social values and objectives

exploring the robustness of the balance of payments constrained growth idea in a multiple good framework this paper derives the balance of payments constrained growth bpcg model as a special case of a three good framework that incorporates exportables importables and non tradables the conditions under which the canonical form of the bpcg rate can be derived are made explicit and the assumptions scrutinized it is shown that the presence of nontradables substitutability between exportables and importables and incomplete specialization in expenditure generally dampen the externallyconstrained growth rate these ndings help explain why empirical estimates tend to overestimate the bpcg rate overall our ndings underscore the observation that tests of the bpcg hypothesis are as much a test of the internal structure of the economy under consideration

social enterprises and the performance advantages of a vincentian marketing orientation this study focuses on the managerial issue of should social enterprises ses become more marketing oriented it adapts the kohli et al j mark res 30 467 477 1993 markor marketing orientation scale to measure the adoption of marketing by ses the items capture vincentian based values to leverage business in service to the poor as a measure of a vincentian marketing orientation vmo a vmo is an organisational wide value driven philosophy of management that focuses a se on meeting its objectives by adopting a more marketing orientated approach to serve the needy and poor in a just and sustainable manner ses that exhibit a vmo seek to understand and respond to both the needs of their beneficiaries and stakeholders they are constantly generating disseminating and responding to environmental beneficiary and stakeholder information and develop their business propositions to more effectively and efficiently meet the needs of the poor while guided by a philosophy of leveraging business for social good this study of ses in australia found that a vmo is strongly and positively correlated with social economic and environmental performance these findings suggest that ses may benefit by leveraging marketing capabilities to better serve their beneficiaries and stakeholders

economic growth and balance of payments constraint in brazil an analysis of the 1995 2013 period abstract the purpose of this work is to analyze the balance of payments constrained growth in brazil considering thirwall s law 1979 to this end we estimate export and import demand functions using two econometric models vector error correction and structural state space model for the period of 1995 2013 our results suggest that the balance of payments is a constraint to the brazilian economic growth given i the ratio between exports and imports income elasticities ii the low sensitivity of exports to changes in the real exchange rate and iii the evidence that exports are more sensitive to alterations in commodities prices than to changes in the real exchange rate

thirlwall s law and balance of payments constrained growth more on the debate the various criticisms that have levelled against thirlwall s law by mcgregor and swales are examined it is shown that their arguments are untenable the relationship between the necolassical law of one price and thirlwall s law is clarified thirlwall s law is not overwhelmingly rejected by the evidence as mcgregor and swales assert their suppression of the influence of the price term on the estimates used in the test proposed by mccombie is inappropriate their regression analyis is also mid specified and a preferable specification provides no support for their conclusions they repeatedly argue that thirlwall s modele cannot account for changes in market shares and the that the estimated income elasticities of demand for exports and imports cannot capture the effects of non price competition this was shown to be erroneous by mccombie and the reasons advanced are further elaborated mcgregor and swales provide another interpretation of the relationship between thirlwll s law and the harrod foreign tr

sub saharan africa s growth south south trade and the generalised balance of payments constraint using the post keynesian balance of payments constrained growth approach we investigate the recent increase in sub saharan africa ssa growth focussing on the contribution of south south trade the model is estimated by panel co integration on a sample of 20 low and lower middle income ssa countries using annual data from 1990 to 2008 and considering three partner areas ssa itself developing asia and the rest of the world the results show that in the past decade the balance of payments constraint of ssa has been relaxed this shift has occurred through different channels of transmission the other ssa countries contributed through the real growth effect developing asia through the market share effect and the rest of the world through the terms of trade effect these results help reconcile puzzling evidence on the pattern of ssa external indebtedness and provide new insights on the role of asian drivers on ssa growth as well as on the sustainability of ssa growth recovery

thirlwall law and balance of payments constrained growth further comment on the debate this paper reviews the debate that has occurred in applied economics over thirlwall s law mccombie 1989 mcgregor and swales 1985 1986 thirlwall 1986 the empired evidence concering the validity of the law is re assessed using a variety of tests including that suggested by mccombie 1989 and the new data set provided by bairam 1988 the law is overwhelmingly rejected by the evidence contrary to the conclusions of mccombie and bairam the rationale for the assumption of constant relative prices which is required to derive thirlwall s law is reconsidered the original law of one price rationale renders the approach incoherent the more recent rationale of sticky oligopolistic price improves the internal consistency of the model but necessitates consideration of non price competition however neither the theory underlying thirlwall s law nor empirical tests of the law property account for this in principle the law cannot be employed to distinguish between demanding constrained and supply co

differences in income elasticities and trends in real exchange rates abstract one might expect that differences in income elasticities in trade and or differences in growth rates among countries would give rise to strong secular trends in real exchange rates for example fast growing countries might need steady depreciation to get the world to accept their growing exports in fact however income elasticities are systematically related to growth rates by the 45 degree rule under which fast growing countries appear to face high income elasticities of demand for their exports while having low income elasticities of import demand the net effect of this relationship between elasticities and growth rates is that secular trends in real exchange rates are much smaller than one might otherwise have expected relative ppp holds fairly well this paper documents the existence of a 45 degree rule and suggests an explanation in terms of increasing returns and product differentiation

ownership and technical efficiency of microfinance institutions empirical evidence from latin america by using stochastic frontier analysis this article examines the technical efficiency of different types of microfinance institutions in latin america in particular it tests whether differences in technical efficiency both intra and interfirm can be explained by differences in ownership with a focus on non governmental organizations cooperatives and credit unions non bank financial intermediaries and banks the data set contains 1681 observations from a panel of 315 institutions operating in 18 latin american countries the results show that non governmental organizations and cooperatives have much lower interfirm and intrafirm technical efficiencies than non bank financial intermediaries and banks which indicates the importance of ownership type for technical efficiency

overtime vs regular shift planning decisions in packing shops abstract consideration is given to a planning problem arising at the packaging stage of production in several industries i e the packing shop this termed economic manpower shift planning with overtime emsp o seeks the manpower and overtime to be planned at each available workday shift so that production targets are met within a given time horizon at minimum cost starting with a practical planning dilemma on the use of overtime we explore the optimal planning policy together with the performance of two practical policies an ilp model of emsp o is developed and used for determining the optimal policy since the problem is shown to be np hard optimal policies were found using a commercial ilp optimiser the optimal setting of the practical policies was obtained by existing heuristics the results show that effective use of overtime leads to workforce reductions and improved utilisation in many cases an all or nothing property relates overtime and workforce utilisation at optimum finally it is shown that when indiscriminately used practical planning policies may have serious cost consequences

regional balance of payments problems an interpretation ho l s 1993 regional balance of payments problems an interpretation reg studies 27 457 466 this paper lays out a simple model and an accounting framework for analysing the relationship between different components of regional savings and investment between internal savings and external savings and between government sector savings and private sector savings in general stepping up investment to enhance regional growth must cause a deterioration of the regional trade balance in the short run even though the trade balance is likely to improve in the longer run analyses in recent years often ignore the effect of capital formation on trade as an example the german unification in requiring a rebuilding of capital stock suddenly rendered obsolete by a major change in relative factor prices requires a real appreciation of the dm and a deterioration of the german trade balance given nominal exchange rates this means higher german inflation than its trading partners on the other hand the pape

a synoptic view of regional growth and unemployment ii the post keynesian theory this paper discusses the post keynesian explanation of the causes of disparities in regional growth and unemployment rates it begins by examining the relationship between the real wage rate the level of demand and regional unemployment next it shows how regional growth is primarily determined by the rate of growth of exports a two region model is outlined which demonstrates how regional growth rates are interrelated through interregional trade flows and the regional balance of payments constraint the paper concludes with a discussion of the cumulative causation theory of regional growth

history versus equilibrium and the theory of economic growth a model of cumulative causation is developed and the limits of this model as a characterization of historical rather than equilibrium long run growth outcomes are discussed an extension of the model which postulates that cumulative causation occurs in the context of technological and institutional regimes is proposed outcomes in the extended model are shown to be more influenced by history than those in the original model the extended model also addresses a number of recent criticisms of cumulative causation copyright 1997 by oxford university press

growth theory and economic structure new growth theory endogenises growth but neglects aggregate demand and distributional shifts in output and employment a model incorporating demand and structural change is introduced to assess the effects of greater integration of the ec the analysis shows that i the new growth model overstates the long run implications of integration and ii identical effects on productivity growth can be achieved by reducing unemployment it is argued that the benefits of lower unemployment are more certain of achievement than those expected from reduced barriers to trade and resource movement and that stronger demand is a pre requisite for realization of the latter with the rise of the new growth theory romer 1986 many economists foresee the end of the long dominance of neoclassical growth theory new growth theorists make the general point that within their framework the rates of growth of productivity and per capita income and changes in these growth rates are endogenously explained their main criticism of neoclassical growth theory is that it attributes these growth rates to exogenous determinants and that this is not an explanation new growth theory is to be commended for its efforts to endogenize growth but it none the less retains two shortcomings in common with neoclassical growth theory it neglects the effects of 1 distributional shifts in output and employment and 2 aggregate demand in this paper we argue that these must be included in order to develop a research strategy that permits reasonable measures of the impact of policy on growth rates to support this view we first outline the way in which neoclassical and new growth theory analyse and quantify the effects of increased competition and market size using in illustration the 1992 programme for greater economic integration of the ec we then introduce a model that is free of the defects of both approaches and use it to provide a clearer view of the static and dynamic effects of the 1992 changes these are then compared with the effect of policies to reduce unemployment the results show that 1 the new growth model overstates the long run implications of the 1992 measures and 2 identical effects on productivity growth can be achieved by a programme to reduce unemployment we conclude by arguing that the benefits of lower unemploy ment are more certain of achievement that those expected to flow from reduced barriers to trade and resource movement and that stronger demand is a pre requisite if the latter are to be realized we do not attempt to make quantitative estimates of the economic gains from 1992 or from reduced unemployment whether for the short medium or long run rather our paper can be seen as outlining a research strategy for

a structural economic dynamics approach to balance of payments constrained growth this paper derives a balance of payments equilibrium growth rate analogous to thirlwall s law from a pasinettian multi sector macrodynamic framework the resulting formula which we call the multi sectoral thirlwall s law asserts that a country s growth rate of per capita income is directly proportional to the growth rate of its exports with such a proportionality being inversely directly related to sectoral income elasticities of demand for imports exports these income elasticities are weighted by coefficients that measure the share of each sector in total imports and exports respectively it is shown that several theoretical empirical and policy implications can be drawn from such a structural economic dynamics approach to balance of payments constrained growth

a credit score system for socially responsible lending ethical banking microfinance institutions or certain credit cooperatives among others grant socially responsible loans this paper presents a credit score system for them the model evaluates social and financial aspects of the borrower the financial aspects are evaluated under the conventional banking framework by analysing accounting statements and financial projections the social aspects try to quantify the loan impact on the achievement of millennium development goals such as employment education environment health or community impact the social credit score model should incorporate the lender s know how and should also be coherent with its mission this is done using multi criteria decision making mcdm the paper illustrates a real case a loan application by a social entrepreneur presented to a socially responsible lender the decision support system not only produces a score but also reveals strengths and weaknesses of the application

economy of mutuality merging financial and social sustainability the article posits the concept of economy of mutuality as an intellectual mediation space for shifts in emphasis between market and social structures within economic theory and practice economy of mutuality it is contended provides an alternative frame of reference to the dichotomy of market economy and social economy for inquiry about what business is for and what values it presupposes and creates the article centers around the objective of gaining a broadened understanding of business so as to include not just market economy but social enterprise and social economy in pursuit of this objective a range of various archetypes of business enterprise are considered in light of higher ends of economic life the highest telos of business encompassing all such archetypes it is argued is founded on reciprocity and integral human development the article concludes that compared to market economy per se economy of mutuality provides a better conceptual framework for business in undertaking the challenges of sustainability

structural changes cointegration and the empirics of thirlwall s law thirlwall s law establishes a relation between the long run growth rate the growth of exports and the long run income elasticity of imports the estimation of this parameter requires cointegration techniques which in turn require a large span of data thus exposing the estimates to risks of structural changes while this problem has been recognized in the literature the evidence produced is still partial being concerned with a very limited number of countries and in some respects unsatisfactory in this article we fill this gap by assessing thirlwall s empirical regularity on a sample of 22 organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries using econometric techniques that allow for the presence of a shift of unknown date in the long run parameters the results are generally supportive of thirlwall s hypothesis and allow us to reconcile and qualify the evidence provided in the existing literature

mismanagement or mismeasurement pitfalls and protocols for dea studies in the financial services sector abstract dyson et al dyson r g allen r camanho a s podinovski v v sarrico c s shale e a 2001 pitfalls and protocols in dea european journal of operational research 132 245 259 suggest that the application of dea presents a range of problems and they suggest that the systematic collection and reporting of these problems would significantly enhance dea practice it is widely accepted that dea studies may be compromised by the problem of data heterogeneity while this problem is expected in studies that cross national boundaries it may also arise in studies for a single country there can for example be significant market and regulatory differences between regions within a single country using a sample of australian credit unions this paper demonstrates the pitfalls and protocols of using dea it is intended that the guidelines provided in this study will enhance dea practice in the financial services sector

thirlwall s law and balance of payments constrained growth a comment on the debate 1989 thirlwall s law and balance of payments constrained growth a comment on the debate applied economics vol 21 no 5 pp 611 629

the balance of payments constrained growth rate and the natural rate of growth new empirical evidence this paper implements a panel approach to investigate the empirical relevance of thirlwall s law which states that long run growth must be consistent with balance of payments bop equilibrium and is thus determined on the demand side building on ardl modelling mean group and pooled mean group estimation methods we use annual data over the 1960 2010 years for a panel of 22 oecd countries and find significant support for the law next we also explore empirically the hypothesis that the bop constrained growth rate yb must equal the natural or potential rate of growth yn and find that the data do not reject this hypothesis finally we adopt a new approach based on panel granger causality methods to explore the direction of causality between yb and yn the results indicate the existence of unidirectional long run causality from yb to yn thus reinforcing the view embodied in the law that long run growth is demand determined and constrained by the bop

thirlwall and balance of payments constrained growth this paper outlines the theory which thirlwall uses to determine the growth of domestic income and argues that crucial elements of this theory appear to be very weak the empirical evidence presented by thirlwall to support his argument for balance of payments constrained growth is considered

evaluating the performance of us credit unions credit unions are small cooperative not for profit institutions which distinguishes them from other financial intermediaries in this study we conduct a performance evaluation of credit unions the criteria respect the unique organizational and institutional features of credit unions without losing sight of the fact that they must compete with other financial intermediaries we use nonparametric nonstochastic techniques to measure performance and we use parametric stochastic techniques to attribute performance variation to features of credit unions and their operating environment our sample consists of two thirds of all active credit unions in 1990