human capital formation and local economic performance bradley s and taylor j 1996 human capital formation and local economic performance reg studies 30 1 14 this paper is concerned with the interaction between the vocational education and training system vet and local economic performance in britain after briefly discussing the shortcomings of britain s vet system the paper examines the way in which the education and training system and the local economy interact in particular it is argued that the outputs from the local education and training system determine and are determined by the locality s stock of high skill workers these high skill workers in turn help to determine the competitiveness and hence the economic performance of the local economy this has feedback effects on the stock of high skill workers through its effect on the occupational mix of in migrants some empirical tests of the model are provided based on data relating to 107 local education authority areas in england bradley s et taylor j 1996 la formation du capi

universal service obligations in ldcs the effect of uniform pricing on infrastructure access abstract this paper develops a model to analyze the impacts of asymmetric information on optimal universal service policy in the public utilities of developing countries optimal universal service policy is implemented using two regulatory instruments pricing and network investment under discriminatory pricing asymmetric information leads to a higher price and smaller network in the rural area than under full information under uniform pricing the price is also lower but the network is even smaller in addition under both pricing regimes not only the firm but also taxpayers have incentives to collude with the regulator

the organisation of innovation collaboration cooperation and multifunctional groups in uk and german manufacturing marked differences exist between the institutional and social context for innovation in the uk and germany the question addressed here is how these different contexts affect the objectives and organisation of innovation in uk and german manufacturing in particular the paper examines the extent to which uk and german plants engage in inter plant collaboration and cooperation and multifunctional working as part of their innovative activity and explores the reasons for differences in these patterns of involvement the investigation is based on a large scale comparative survey of manufacturing plants in the two countries in germany institutional and social norms are found to encourage collaborative inter plant innovation but aspects of the german skills training and industrial relations systems make the adoption of more flexible internal systems more difficult in the uk by contrast the more adversarial nature of inter firm relations makes it more difficult to establish external collaborations based on mutual trust but less restrictive labour market structures make it easier for uk plants to adopt multifunctional working this is linked to differences in attitudes to the property rights and transaction cost problems inherent in innovation

infrastructure and development a critical appraisal of the macro level literature this survey reviews the existing macro level empirical literature on the link between infrastructure and development outcomes in a critical light after providing a general framework that casts the relevant terms of the controversy on the real effect of infrastructure on growth in the context of an aggregate production function it signals what are the relevant empirical questions to be addressed this guides the systematic review of a number of empirical studies and the discussion of the main econometric challenges to the identification of the effect of infrastructure on output and productivity finally building on related research in particular in contract theory and political economy the paper spells out several promising research avenues

innovation and growth supply and demand factors in the recent us expansion it is widely held that the social economic context of the us characterised by labour market flexibility and deregulation of product and capital markets lies at the basis of the innovative capacity displayed by the country s productive system in the 1990s thus accounting for the growth differential with europe starting from a different interpre tative model of innovation and growth the paper focuses on both supply institutional and technological and demand factors it is argued that when their interaction is taken into account there is no strong evidence that more deregulated labour and product markets are among the factors allowing for us growth in accordance with the view that there is no single road to innovation and growth this leaves room for the exploration and implementation of policies that might reconcile innovation and growth with safeguards such as those provided by europe s social institutions

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

converging or diverging a comparative analysis of trends in contingent employment practice in europe over a decade this paper makes a unique contribution to the hrm convergence divergence debate by examining whether organisations operating in europe over the 10 year time period preceding 2000 are converging in their adoption of contingent employment practice the susceptibility of contingent employment practice to both convergent and divergent pressures acts as a useful analytical lens data are drawn from organisations operating in germany spain sweden the netherlands and the uk in 1991 2918 organisations 1995 2048 organisations and 2000 1555 organisations the results suggest that convergence is limited by the institutional embeddedness of organisations

toward a theory of regulation for developing countries following jean jacques laffont s lead the efficient operation and expansion of infrastructures in developing countries is crucial for growth and poverty reduction however recent reforms aimed at improving the performance of these sectors have had limited success evidence suggests that in many instances this was because the traditional regulatory theory relied on by policymakers was not suitable for the institutional context in developing countries this article surveys more recent theoretical work focusing on problems with regulation in these countries at the heart of the survey is the work of jean jacques laffont who in the last decade of his life set about developing a theoretical framework for regulation in developing countries we consider the implications of his work which focused on the key institutional limitations faced in developing countries we then discuss where experience suggests that there are important omissions from this modeling bringing in extensions and alternative approaches pursued by other authors we conclude by summarizing the key ways in which regulatory policy will be different when institutions are weak overall we find that an understanding of the institutional context and its implications are crucial when designing a regulatory framework for developing countries

some unsolved problems in data envelopment analysis a survey abstract the present study is a survey of a set of inherent characteristics and unsolved problems in current dea models we will focus on what types of local characteristics the dea estimated technology exhibits in relation to non jointness of a multi output multi input production no indicators are currently available telling the analysts whether or not the structure in data supports the existence of a joint technology if the estimated ccr technology has a sparse facet structure in the sense that few facets are active for output vectors in certain cones of the output space then the multi output multi input ccr technology is possibly locally non joint another important field of research relates to the inclusion of explicit distributional assumptions as part of the dea model specification and to the extension of the dea estimation from an estimation of a deterministic frontier towards an estimation of a stochastic frontier some recent results will be compared finally measures of scale economies from parametric models and dea models will be compared

social skills from mass higher education rethinking the company based initial training paradigm ulis is an essay in the literal sense that it is tentative i wantto argue in it that we need to rethink the relationship in the uk between education initial vocational training and the functioning of labour markets this is because the reality of dra matic recent and on going changes in post 16 education towards sharply increasingpost 16 stay ing on and university participation rates and in skills requirements of companies in the uk towards broad social and organizational skills bears little relation to the focus of labour market policy and of much academic debate on initial training particularly for 16and 17 year old school leavers the basic mistake in uk policy development has been a failure to understand that the uk does not have the underlying socio eco n mic institutions which both germany and japan have and which are needed for an effective system of company based initial training nor for that matter does the us and it is suggested here that we should look closely at america as an economy with similar underlying socio economic institu tions to our own if we are to understand recent changes in uk education and labour maiket pat te ns what the uk has to learn from the us is the

productivity and long term growth potential in the uk economy 1924 1968 this paper examines the long term structural determinants of labour productivity for the uk economy using a panel data set from 1924 to 1968 trade union product market competition and human capital explanations are embedded within the model and compared labour quality or human capital is found to be the most important of the explanations considered

education and economic performance simplistic theories and their policy consequences a largely unquestioned consensus proclaims that educational policy is an effective tool for delivering prosperity and increasing rates of economic growth this consensus rests on far less secure foundations than is commonly supposed international comparisons confirm that as they become richer people seek ever more education for their children but provide no clear cut evidence of economic benefits accruing to countries which are high spending in education terms analyses which extrapolate from the incomes of educated individuals rest on assumptions about how wages are determined and the extent to which rewards are for skills acquired in schooling which are highly questionable moreover an uncritical belief in educational expansion leads to target driven policies with serious negative effects on educational quality a more realistic view of education s economic impact and a move away from centralized planning for economic ends would actually improve the quality of education copyright 2004 oxford university press

co determination and innovation this paper examines the effect of the german co determination law of 1976 mitbestg on the innovative activity of german firms co determination applies to firms with 2 000 employees or more data from 1971 1976 and 1981 1990 on 148 firms are used to compare the number of patents granted to co determined firms before and after the introduction of the law several control variables are applied and in particular in order to avoid a possible bias from specific effects of firm size we compare the co determined firms with others before and after 1976 the results do not support the view that co determination slows down technological progress and reduces innovativity

policy review section in this policy review section gerry stoker of the institute of local government studies presents a critical review of the role of urban development corporations udcs in comparing the experience of the udcs consideration is given to the varying nature of the land and property market in each udc area to the relationship with local authorities and other local bodies and the regeneration strategies pursued by the udcs this is followed by an assessment of the impact of the udcs in economic social and political terms in the second article john britton of the university of toronto examines the theoretical case for interventionist public policies to assist the innovation process in small and medium sized enterprises these arguments are supported by a review of the experience of various national support programmes introduced in the uk in particular the manufacturing advisory service introduced in 1978 and the design advisory service launched in 1982

the failure of training in britain analysis and prescription in the last decade education and training et reform has become a major issue in many of the world s industrial powers one theme which runs throughout these reform initiatives is the need to adapt et systems to the changing economic environment these changes include the increasing integration of world markets the shift in mass manufacturing towards newly developed nations and the rapid development of new technologies most notably information technologies education and training are seen to play a crucial role in restoring or maintaining international competitiveness both on the macro level by easing the transition of the workforce into new industries and at the micro level where firms producing high quality specialized goods and services require a well qualified workforce capable of rapid adjustment in the work process and continual product innovation this paper will highlight the need for policy makers and academics to take account of the two way nature of the relationship between et and the economy

creating self sustaining high skill ecosystems geographic clusters of high technology companies are an increasingly important source of wealth and job creation in the advanced industrial countries this article provides a framework for understanding the conditions that give rise to these self sustaining high skill ecosystems hses that is based on the cases of the highly successful biomedical and computer hardware and software firms clustered in northern and southern california the framework identifies four requirements that hses share in common with natural ecosystems a catalyst to trigger the start of their development ongoing nourishment a supportive host environment and a high degree of interdependence among the actors in the system the framework is then applied to the uk identifying those policy options that are necessary for gaining greater returns from the uk s strong research base

economic development strategies and macro and micro level human resource policies the case of india s outsourcing industry this detailed case study of india s outsourcing industry illustrates the challenges in linking macro and micro human resource policies with an economic development strategy based on export oriented services the rapid expansion in the outsourcing of services to india has raised the possibility that this sector will be a key engine of india s economic growth based on extensive field research carried out over a four year period the authors of this study argue that four interrelated human resource policy challenges threaten the outsourcing industry s growth two macro problems current skill shortages and the inability of the country to produce higher levels of skills for the long term growth and sustainability of the industry and two micro problems very high levels of employee turnover and rapidly increasing employee costs the authors evaluate current policy responses and suggest options

estimating most productive scale size using data envelopment analysis abstract the relation between the most productive scale size mpss for paparticular input and output mixes and returns to scale for multiple inputs multiple outputs situations is explicitly developed this relation is then employed to extend the applications of data envelopment analysis dea introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes ccr to the estimation of most productive scale sizes for convex production possibility sets it is then shown that in addition to productive inefficiencies at the actual scale size the ccr efficiency measure also reflects any inefficiencies due to divergence from the most productive scale size two illustrations of the practical applications of these results to the estimation of most productive scale sizes and returns to scale for hospitals and stem electric generation plants are also provided emphasize the advantage of this method in examining specific segments of the efficient production surface

data envelopment analysis on a relaxed set of assumptions data envelopment analysis is a procedure for evaluation of the relative efficiency of units in a production system dea involves construction of composite units as convex combinations of other units inputs and outputs under various conditions related to returns to scale the assumption of convexity is inconsistent with increasing returns to scale and not implied by constant or non increasing returns to scale an alternative dea approach which does not invoke the assumption of a convex production possibility set is developed in this paper it is implemented in two stages stage one is concerned with the spanning of isoquants and stage two with an evaluation of the position of an observed input output combination compared to the isoquants both stages involve linear programming techniques solely

global policy developments towards industrial policy and skills skills for competitiveness and growth there is a rising interest in both skills policy and industrial policy in oecd countries following the economic downturn but how can skills policy best support industrial growth in the uk the coalition government is arguing for an industrial policy which is bottom up supporting networks of employers and helping to build productive local supply chains there is simultaneous investment in a more employer led skills policy in order to better tackle skills shortages and gaps but is an employer led skills policy the best way of boosting industrial growth in all uk regions are there potential market failures in employer led policies of which the public sector should be aware this article warns against taking an overly simplistic approach to skills development arguing that while skills policies should be flexible to the needs of employers there is still justification for investing in a broad educational curriculum at the local level further policy makers may need proactively to help employers to better use skills in some regions in order to boost productivity and growth

low level versus high level equilibrium in public utility services abstract heterogeneity of public utility services is common in developing countries in a high level equilibrium the quality of utility services is high consumer willingness to pay for services is high the utility is well funded and staff well paid in order to induce high quality of performance in a low level equilibrium the opposite is the case which alternative occurs depends on both the quality of utility management and public perceptions about service quality if a utility administration has the potential to offer high quality service and the public is aware of this high quality equilibrium also requires the public s service payments to be high enough to fund the needed pay incentives for the utility staff when the public lacks knowledge about the utility administration s quality the public s initial beliefs about the utility administration s quality will also influence their willingness to pay sufficiently for a high quality equilibrium to be realized this paper shows that with low confidence only a low level equilibrium may exist while with higher initial confidence a high level equilibrium becomes possible intermediate in between the low and high level outcomes can also occur in early periods with high level outcomes later on

an assessment of the singapore skills development system does it constitute a viable model for other developing countries abstract in this paper we briefly describe the institutional background of singapore s successful national skills development model we devise a tentative framework to evaluate national level skills development efforts and we use it to assess the singapore model we argue that the model has the potential to move constantly toward higher skills equilibria we question however the long term sustainability of the model and whether it is transferable to other developing countries we conclude with some principles that other countries might use in organizing their own skills development systems

nonparametric analysis of technical and allocative efficiencies in production in this paper we extend varian s 1984 nonparametric production analysis to situations when the set of observed output input and price data is not consistent with profit maximization for at least one firm in such cases varian s results imply that no production possibility set containing all observations can rationalize the observed data we identify each firm whose performance given the prices faced by it may be found consistent with profit maximization relative to some production possibility set containing all observed output input vectors we show that the set 4 of all such firms can itself be weaklv rationalized in the sense that there exists a closed convex and monotone production possibility set that contains all the observations and relative to which the performance of all the firms in the set 8o is consistent with profit maximization given their respective prices by definition firms not included in this largest set d of efficient observations unambiguously deviate from profit maximizing behavior for any production possibility set containing all observations we follow farrell 1957 and analyze these deviations into technical and allocative efficiency measures considering as admissible all closed convex and monotone production possibility sets relative to which the performance of each firm in the set g remains consistent with profit maximization we then describe nonparametric methods for determining the tightest upper and lower bounds on the technical allocative and aggregate efficiency measures evaluated relative to all such admissible production possibility sets it is seen that the tightest upper bound on the technical efficiency measure is the same as the value computed by the nonparametric efficiency evaluation technique known as data envelopment analysis thus establishing a link between this literature in management science operations research and the nonparametric production analysis in economics

employability and earnings returns to qualifications in scotland gasteen a and houston j 2007 employability and earnings returns to qualifications in scotland regional studies 41 443 451 scottish social inclusion and lifelong learning policies emphasize the need for individuals to become qualified through the acquisition of formal qualifications although education policy in scotland is a devolved activity there has been little investigation of the earnings and employment returns in the labour market this paper examines the earnings and employability performance of qualifications using labour force survey data from 1999 2003 school leaving qualifications offer a greater chance of employment and attract significantly superior earnings premia than intermediate school and lower level further education qualifications there is also evidence that individuals who had followed a standard educational route to higher level qualifications may enjoy extra earnings premia gasteen a et houston j 2007 l employabilite et le rendement des diplomes en ecosse regional

continuity and evolution in an old industrial region the labour market dynamics of the rise and fall of northern rock dawley s marshall n pike a pollard j and tomaney j continuity and evolution in an old industrial region the labour market dynamics of the rise and fall of northern rock regional studies the northern rock mortgage bank was a high profile casualty of the credit crunch in 2007 an evolutionary geographical political economy approach demonstrates that northern rock s growth and decline was shaped by its location in an old industrial region and echoes the historical position of the peripheral region in the spatial division of labour a longitudinal investigation focuses on the labour market dynamics of northern rock s rapid growth and decline on the north east of england the northern rock case highlights the enduring occupational structure of the region s labour market and shows how older industrial regions suffer from a process of occupational disadvantage that restricts their ability to adapt to economic change

the dual transformation of social protection and human capital comparing britain and germany britain and germany have been experiencing significant changes in the nature of work and welfare since the 1990s although important differences have remained there have been compelling indication

a complete solution to a class of principal agent problems with an application to the control of a self managed firm this paper considers a class of principal agent problems which have the following features 1 there is adverse selection because the principal ignores the value of one parameter of the agent s true characteristics 2 leaving aside the information parameter the principal s welfare as well as the agent s welfare depend on two types of variables observable to both of them the first ones possibly multidimensional are called action variable s and the second one which is one dimensional has in general the meaning of a money transfer 3 the principal is a stackelberg leader of the two person game he can commit himself to decision rules which are admissible on informational grounds he optimizes within the adequate class taking into account besides the agent s reaction one constraint which has generally the meaning of an individual rationality constraint and sometimes of a feasibility constraint the optimization is limited to the class of non stochastic mechanisms 4 the problem can also receive an alternative interpretation the principal faces a continuum of agents of unknown characteristics the distribution being known however stylized principal agent problems of this type have often been considered in the economic literature in particular the reader will later be able to recognize that the standard income tax model a la mirrlees 1971 the quality or quantity choice model of the monopolist a la mussa and rosen 1978 or maskin and riley 1982 and the model of government regulation of the private monopolist of baron and myerson 1982 all belong to

a critical assessment of the evaluation of eu interventions for innovation in the sme sector in wales in this paper the eu structural fund intervention framework is critically assessed in an effort to reflect on the problems faced by policy makers when trying to make sense of the complexity associ

general training by firms apprentice contracts and public policy workers will not pay for general on the job training if contracts are not enforceable firms may if there are mobility frictions private information about worker productivities however prevents workers who quit receiving their marginal products elsewhere their new employers then receive external benefits from their training in this paper training firms increase profits by offering apprenticeships which commit firms to high wages for those trainees retained on completion at these high wages only good workers are retained this signals their productivity and reduces the external benefits if they subsequently quit regulation of apprenticeship length a historically important feature enhances efficiency appropriate subsidies enhance it further

the role of the reference technology in measuring productive efficiency after a twenty year lull the measurement of productive efficiency is enjoying a revival in particular the index of efficiency developed by debreu i95i and later utilised by farrell i957 has received considerable attention these measures have been used fairly extensively in empirical work in both the operations research and economic literature these types of indexes have also appeared in the growing literature on testing for regularity conditions in production e g in afriat i972 diewert and parkan i983 and varian 1984 since the farrell type measure is the focus in this paper a brief review is useful in the farrell framework overall efficiency oe can be decomposed into two multiplicative components allocative efficiency ae and technical efficiency te

cross subsidies and network expansion in developing countries abstract this paper provides a simple model to discuss the financing of network expansion for telecommunications electricity water etc in developing countries it shows how inefficient or corrupt tax systems affect the development of networks and restore partially the relevance of cross subsidies between rich and poor consumers for financing this development

trade unions and training practices in british workplaces the authors use british establishment level data from the 1991 employers manpower and skills practices survey emsps and individual level data from the autumn 1993 quarterly labour force survey qlfs to investigate the links between training provision and workplace unionization both the probability of receiving training and the amount of training received are found to have been substantially higher in unionized than in nonunion workplaces the authors view these results as showing that trade unions can play an important role in developing and boosting skill formation in britain

a comparative application of data envelopment analysis and translog methods an illustrative study of hospital production this paper compares inferences about hospital cost and production correspondences from two different estimation models 1 the econometric modeling of the translog cost function and 2 the application of data envelopment analysis dea while there are numerous examples of the application of each approach to empirical data this paper provides insights into the relative strengths of the estimation methods by applying both models to the same data the translog results suggest that constant reruns are operant whereas the dea results suggest that both increasing and decreasing returns to scale may be observed in different segments of the production correspondence in turn suggesting that the translog model may be averaging diametrically opposite behavior on the other hand by examining the rate of output transformation both models agree that patient days devoted to care of children are more resource intensive than those devoted to adults or to the elderly in addition we compare estimates of technical efficiencies of individual hospitals obtained from the two methods the dea estimates are found to be highly related to the capacity utilization but no such relationship was found for the translog estimates this comparative application of different estimation models to the same data to obtain inferences about the nature of underlying cost and production correspondences sheds interesting light on the strengths of each approach and suggests the need for additional research comparing estimation models using real as well as simulated data

the local low skills equilibrium moving from concept to policy utility it is more than three decades since the publication of finegold and soskice s 1988 influential article the failure of training in britain analysis and prescription this widely cited publicati

e business usage across and within firms in the uk profitability externalities and policy using data from the third uk community innovation survey we model the usage of e business across and within firms in the uk in the year 2000 as a single observation upon an integrated process of inter and intra firm diffusion the intra firm dimension is a significant extension to standard analysis the model estimates indicate that the pattern of e business usage reflects the heterogeneity of firms in terms of size other innovative activity and labour force skills generating differences in the payoffs to use as well as market and non market intermediated externalities the policy implications of the findings are discussed c 2008 elsevier b v all rights reserved

nash equilibrium and welfare optimality if is a set of social alternatives a social choice rule scr assigns a subset of a to each potential profile of individuals preferences over a where the subset is interpreted as the set of welfare optima a game form or mechanism implements the social choice rule if for any potential profile of preferences 1 any welfare optimum can arise as a nash equilibrium of the game form implying in particular that a nash equilibrium exists and 2 all nash equilibria are welfare optimal the main result of this paper establishes that any scr that satisfies two properties monotonicity and no veto power can be implemented by a game form if there are three or more individuals the proof is constructive