computer use and earnings in britain this paper estimates various models of the effect of computer use on earnings using recent ncds data the cross section estimates are large and significant while the standard fixed effects estimates are small or insignificant the panel estimates change considerably once we allow the coefficients to differ across individuals conditional on assumptions about when individuals use computers conventional panel estimates may not identify the crucial parameters and alternative methods are needed we conclude that there was a substantial premium associated with computer use for some individuals in the uk

a bibliometric review on natural resource accounting during 1995 2014 abstract natural resource accounting plays a critical role in sustainable utilization and conservation of natural resources this paper aims to review research progress on natural resource accounting for the period of 1995 2014 the main research methods for this study include bibliometric analysis and social network analysis covering publications performances characteristics of related journals countries institutions authors and keywords the results show that the total amount of publications on natural resource accounting has increased rapidly since 2001 the most productive journal country institution and author are journal of environmental management usa university of california and dr chen respectively all of them have higher academic influence meanwhile natural resources that attract most attentions are water and energy the six main research methods in this field include mathematic modeling emergy exergy ecological footprint ef life cycle assessment lca and material flow analysis mfa reasons for the prominent performance of key countries and institutions are then discussed and uncovered as well as for six methods finally suggestions on how to further promote the development of this research field are raised

an empirical analysis of a regional dutch disease the case of canada while there has been extensive research on the dutch disease dd very little attention if any has been devoted to the regional mechanisms through which it may manifest itself this is the first empirical attempt to research a regional dd by looking at the local and spatial impacts of resource windfalls across canadian provinces and territories we construct a new panel dataset to examine separately the key dd channels namely the spending effect and the resource movement effect our analysis reveals that the standard dd mechanisms are also relevant at the regional level specifically we find that a resource windfalls are associated with higher inflation and a labour capital shift from to non primary tradable sectors b resource windfalls in neighbouring regions are associated with a capital labour shift from to non primary tradable sectors in the source region c the spatial dd explains 51 20 of the adverse effects of resource windfalls in neighbouring regions on region specific non mineral international exports in the source region and does not significantly affect domestic ones

an evaluation of active and passive labour market policy this paper reports results of an empirical study on the effectiveness of labour market policy data from austria france germany great britain sweden and the united states are used to apply a simultaneous equation model with wages and employment being the endogenous variables in order to explain employment the amount of unemployment benefits per unemployed passive labour market policy and payment for wage subsidies and training per employed and unemployed person active labour market policy are used in addition to real wages and output wages and output have their expected impact on total employment it turns out that passive labour market policy has a negative and active labour market measures a positive effect on the number of persons employed

choice at sixteen the proportion of sixteen year olds in britain who stay on at school is low by oecd standards this paper examines the probability of completing education at the minimum legal age using micro data on individuals parameter estimates of a reduced form logit model of the leaving probability are obtained for both boys and girls the rich data set used allows the separate effects of family school and ability to be assessed family background in the form of class and parental education is shown to have a large effect even when ability and school type are controlled for copyright 1989 by the london school of economics and political science

the resource curse a statistical mirage abstract a surprising feature of resource rich economies is slow growth it is often argued that natural resource production impedes development by creating market or institutional failures this paper establishes an alternative explanation a slow growing resource sector a declining resource sector is disproportionately reflected in resource dependent countries additionally there is little evidence that resource dependence impedes growth in non resource sectors more generally this paper illustrates the importance of considering industry composition in cross country growth regressions

the politics of finance how capital sways african central banks abstractwhile there is a large literature on the politics of central banking its insights are difficult to translate to sub saharan africa this article addresses gaps in this literature by considering how the interests of those who control financial resources sway african central banks case studies of kenya nigeria and uganda demonstrate that variation in the sources of capital on which countries rely to finance investment helps to account for the pattern of variation in central bank policy stances the analysis further develops and probes arguments about power derived from the control of capital in the context of developing countries

economies of scale and mechanization in chinese corn and wheat production as the growth in chinese farm productivity slowed down between 2000 and 2010 modernizing agriculture has become a priority of the chinese government given the important role of mechanization and

external shocks and growth prospects the case of brazil 1973 1989 this is a study of the factors underlying the current account deficits experienced by brazil since the mid 1970s it also explores the country s economic prospects through 1989 with the help of a simple macro simulations model the current account deficit is identically equal to the excess of domestic spending over national income provided that net external financing is available this excess may increase for a number of reasons prominent among them is an expansion of real domestic spending associated with increases either of real consumption expenditures or of real domestic capital formation even if domestic absorption is invariant the external deficit may worsen because of inadequate domestic pricing policies these may make it impossible for local firms to compete with cheaper foreign products thus forcing a contraction of national income and employment a temporary reduction of gnp below its potential value may also be caused by domestic supply shocks of a climatic or other nature however other factors can also cause a deterioration of the current account in this context this study investigates the factors underlying the evolution of the external accounts of brazil since the mid 1970s following an approach suggested in the dell report and elaborated by balassa the reasons for a deterioration of the current account are divided into three groups external shocks burden of accumulated debt and domestic policy actions the first group comprises terms of trade international interest rates and world recession the second includes the accumulated effect of past shocks and domestic policy actions finally the third group encompasses the variables supposedly under the control of local policy makers domestic absorption and the economy s tradability

thanks but no thanks a new policy to reduce land conflict abstract land conflicts in developing countries are costly both directly and through increased land degradation an important policy goal is to create respect for borders this often involves mandatory expensive interventions we propose a new policy design which in theory promotes neighborly relations at low cost a salient feature is the option to by pass regulation through consensus the key idea combines the insight that social preferences transform social dilemmas into coordination problems with the logic of forward induction as a first low cost pass at empirical evaluation we conduct an experiment among farmers in the ethiopian highlands a region exhibiting features typical of countries where borders are often disputed

economic transition policies in chinese resource based cities an overview of government efforts resource based cities in china have made momentous contributions to the development of the national economy for decades however with the depletion of natural resources their sustainable development is challenging and transition is important the chinese government has made great efforts to help resource based cities the purpose of this study is to investigate transition policies and their implementation firstly we reviewed previous studies and summarized the essential elements of some successful resource based cities which are useful experiences for chinese resource based cities secondly we studied the development of resource based cities over the past 10 years with a focus on economic development industrial structure government revenue and environmental conditions we found that resource based cities were less developed compared to other cities the main reasons are the after effects of a planned economy an unreasonable tax system planning mistakes and misguided resources exploitation policies thirdly we analyzed several aspects of the policy responses after the introduction of transition policies including designating 69 resource exhausted cities supporting cities with funds and projects formulating transition plans and evaluating transition performance however there are some deficiencies in the process of policy implementation finally some recommendations were provided to improve transition performance and sustainable development for resource based cities

land consolidation as technical change economic impacts in rural vietnam abstract this paper deepens the economic analysis of the effects of land consolidation reduction of land fragmentation it does this in the context of rural vietnam studying whether land consolidation promotes or hinders the vietnamese government s policy objectives of encouraging agricultural mechanization and stimulating the off farm rural economy the analysis views land consolidation as a form of technical change making it possible to apply the rich insights developed in the economic literature on that subject this treatment reveals that the economic impacts of land consolidation depend partly on its factor bias and partly on the degree to which labor is substitutable in production for other factors at a theoretical level if a technical change is factor neutral it will reduce off farm labor supply and slow rural structural transformation away from agriculture if it is labor augmenting and the elasticity of substitution between factors is low enough the opposite effects are predicted the paper studies these issues empirically for rice production in vietnam focusing on the impact that consolidation of rice land has on rice production machinery use and labor allocation the findings confirm that land consolidation raises both farm productivity and farm income and stimulates increased machinery use it also reduces farm labor supply lowers labor intensity in farming and thereby releases more farm labor to off farm development consistent with government policy objectives based on these findings the paper concludes that land consolidation should be encouraged through development of land ownership rights and the promotion of land rental markets

matching the demand for and supply of training in the school to work transition this empirical paper investigates skill formation in the youth labour market using event history data collected from the administrative records of lancashire careers service we model training preferences formed at school by young people and training destinations ie the occupation of the first job training scheme we also model the duration of the individual s first unemployment spell competing risks models with flexible piece wise linear baseline hazards and unobserved heterogeneity are estimated there is evidence of occupational segregation by gender and an excess demand for general training outcomes are mainly determined by examination performance ethnicity and whether disadvantaged

from school to university the demand for post compulsory education in britain the work reported here was done at the centre for labour economics lse and it is a revision of earlier work done at the national bureau of economic research this revision owes much to the comments and suggestions of richard layard and to the technical expertise of george alogoskoufis thanks are also due to the department of education and science for their comments and help with the data and to the manpower services commission the department of employment and the ford foundation for finance

careers guidance psychometric testing and unemployment amongst young people an empirical analysis for northern ireland psychometric tests continue to form an important part of careers guidance for young people of school leaving age throughout the uk in the existing literature there is little evidence about the impact of testing on subsequent labour market success this paper presents a quantitative analysis of the effect of testing in northern ireland on young people s subsequent experiences of unemployment and long term unemployment between the ages of 16 and 18 on account of the sample selection problem standard single equation estimates of the effects of testing are likely to give biased results and so the bivariate probit model is used in the estimation the results suggest that although testing is not having an adverse impact it is not having a statistically significant positive effect this may be attributable to some aspects of test administration in northern ireland which in many cases seems to fall short of recommended guidelines

completing china s move to the market beginning in late 1978 by luck as much as design china arrived at a strategy for market oriented economic reform that combined substantial reform with rapid growth in gdp and exports the sequencing of reform began with the easy to reform sectors agriculture and foreign trade and then took up the more difficult task of reforming the large state owned enterprises with respect to agriculture small scale industry and foreign investment china found ways of introducing meaningful property rights into the increasingly marketized system a partially unreformed financial system and inadequate autonomy of large state enterprises accounts however for the current stop go nature of chinese development

the demand for post compulsory education in the uk and the effects of educational maintenance allowances in this paper the author develops a model of investment in postcompulsory schoolin g based on human capital theory the model is estimated using data on a sample of sixteen and seventeen year olds derived from the family expenditure survey the results reveal significant differences in the factors influencing enrollment in postcompulsory education between m ales and females mot notably household income is an important deter minant of educational participation for females but not for their ma le counterparts on the basis of these results the author assesses t he effects of the introduction of educational maintenance allowances on participation rates in the united kingdom

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

the school to work transition a cross national perspective school to work patterns and issues are discussed for seven economies france germany japan the netherlands sweden the united kingdom and the united states the emphasis is placed on differences across countries in the current labor market position of young people and recent trends therein along with the institutions that regulate youth education training and employment the power of public policies including labor market deregulation labor market programs vocationalization of education and apprenticeship to improve youth outcomes is discussed drawing on national evaluation literatures evidence of extensive policy failure points up the need to develop nationally appropriate institutions to improve school to work transitions

unemployment and early school leaving theoretical predictions about the effect of unemployment on school leaving are ambiguous unemployment might affect the decision to leave school in a number of different ways i current youth unemployment a higher probability of current unemployment for those who choose to leave school would tend to discourage early school leaving first by reducing the expected gains from job search a discouraged worker effect and second by reducing the opportunity cost of additional education ii expected future unemployment the theoretical predictions here are less clear cut an increase in the probability of future unemployment that affected both those with and without additional education would tend to reduce the rate of return to education and hence education demand on the other hand those with more education may be less affected by rises in unemployment and this may encourage further schooling these two opposing effects have been formalised as a shift and a tilt in the unemployment probability schooling relationship kodde i988 fig i suggests that in the united kingdom both effects could have accompanied the transition from the late 1970s to the i98o the full effects of uncertainty on education investment in a two period model depend on the correlation between the uncertainty in the two periods levhari and weiss 1974 how current unemployment rates are used to form expectations of future unemployment is clearly an important issue here also some individuals may be able to undertake job search before committing themselves to leave school and whilst affected by the risk of future unemployment may be comparatively unaffected by the risk of current unemployment iii effects ofparental unemployment parents unemployment in general reduces family income their children s educational demand may fall as a consequence for three reasons first the consumption demand for education will be lower second a reduction in the first period income reduces the investment demand for education assuming decreasing absolute risk aversion kodde i 988

investing in skill to stay on or not to stay on there is now a large measure of consensus amongst economists that there is relatively little that governments can do to affect the underlying growth rate of the economy through macroeconomic policy changes the emphasis has changed to supply side measures and one of the most favoured both in the united states and the uk is improvement in education and training in the us the emphasis has been on securing improvements in basic schooling which is seen as the major deficiency chubb and moe 1990 in the uk the main focus has been on our low staying on rates whitfield and wilson 1991 micklewright et al 1989 limited training opportunities prats and wagner 1983 and poor access to higher education des 1991

birth order schooling and earnings birth order effects are posited by many to affect earnings and schooling we show how such effects can be interpreted to shift either the earnings possibility frontier for siblings or parental preferences we find empirical evidence for birth order effects on age adjusted schooling and on earnings for young u s adults though the latter is not robust for all specifications the examination of intrahousehold allocations suggests that these birth order differences occur despite parental preferences or prices by birth order favoring later borns apparently because of stronger endowment effects that favor firstborns

custom hired tractor services and returns to scale in smallholder agriculture a production function approach historically agricultural transformation has often accompanied the increase in the returns to scale little direct evidence exists however on what actually causes such increase despite the knowledge of many factors that are associated with this increase we fill this knowledge gap by testing whether hiring in tractor services has raised returns to scale in agriculture at the household level in nepal terai that has undergone rapid growth in the tractor use through custom hiring services using switching regression and inverse probability weighted generalized method of moments we address two sources of endogeneity involved with the estimation of returns to scale 1 farmers self selection on whether to hire in tractor services and 2 use of inputs in the production function for both cobb douglas and translog production function specifications we find that hiring in tractor services significantly increased the returns to scale in agricultural production by about 0 2 0 3 among farm households not owning tractors for which suitable control groups are found findings are robust under various alternative specifications

the political economy of resource driven growth abstract in recent decades resource poor countries have out performed resource abundant ones a stylised facts model of competitive industrialisation describes the long run development of a resource poor country with a political state that is developmental only minor change is required to adapt the model to trace the development trajectory of a resource abundant country with a similar political state however most resource abundant countries engender a political state that is factional or predatory and distorts the economy in the pursuit of rents a staple trap model describes the development trajectory under these conditions the model predicts a growth collapse from which recovery is protracted especially for small economies that lack a niche trade link with a large economy

spatial structure of agricultural production in china the spatial structure of county level agricultural production in china in 1999 is analysed a convenient simple method that corrects for both spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity in the input output relationships using spatial lag models and an allowance for the response coefficients to vary across relatively homogeneous regions are described empirical results suggest an abundant labour supply and extensive use of agricultural machinery reflected in its declining price although mechanization is relatively new machines have replaced fertilizer in agricultural production in the north northeast northwest and east regions while irrigation and fertilizer are the significantly important inputs in the central and southwest regions

lifetime earnings and the training of young men in britain a model is estimated in which the type of training undertaken is determined by the predicted lifetime earnings for each type of training personal factors and educational attainment lifetime earnings has a positive and significant effect on the allocation of individuals across training types the impact is variable a 10 rise in own lifetime earnings raises the fraction undertaking off the job training by up to 0 059 but the fraction undertaking no training by as little as 0 017 if the government were to pay an annual grant of 3000 to apprentices for 3 years the proportion of apprentices in the sample would increase from 28 to 30

the distribution of school leaver unemployment within scottish cities this paper examines the phenomenon of intra urban unemployment in the context of school leaver unemployment in scottish cities unlike much of the previous work in this area the paper avoids the ecological fallacy by utilising data on individual school leavers from the 1981 scottish school leavers survey in conjunction with detailed small area statistics from the 1981 decennial census probit analysis is employed to avoid certain statistical problems the results indicate that in terms of employment probabilities there is little evidence of any area effects within scottish cities in this sense there is one urban labour market in which personal characteristics matter but where area of residence is of little import these findings were found to hold in aberdeen dundee edinburgh and glasgow within each of these cities the effects of inter city variations in unemployment rates was found to fail disproportionately on the less qualified and less advantaged young job seekers

modelling the transition from school and the demand for training in the united kingdom this paper analyses the choices made by school leavers and the demand for training in the youth labour market using a large cross section database on all school leavers in lancashire in 1991 we model using a multinomial logit their first destination six months after the end of compulsory schooling we model six choices outcomes non vocational continuing education vocational continuing education youth training employment with on the job training employment with general skills training and unemployment our results show that the first destination from school is affected by a range of individual school and local labour market variables in addition to academic ability we report three effects that are not well known a young person is more likely to leave school the bigger the school the lower its academic performance and the lower his or her expected lifetime earnings our results might be interpreted as evidence of a segmented youth labour market it is also inappropriate to model the decision to stay on in continuing education as a simple binary choice

competitive industrial policy and macro performance has south korea outperformed taiwan taiwan adopted a competitive industrial policy before south korea but pursued it more cautiously according to orthodox theory taiwan s less interventionist policy should have increased its initial per capita income lead over south korea in fact the income gap narrowed and income distribution improved relatively in south korea casting doubt on the orthodox criticism of south korean industrial policy but some qualification of the south korean success is in order the south korean gains were achieved at the cost of greater consumption fore gone and greater concentration of economic power than in the case of taiwan moreover the crucial post 1985 taiwanese economic slow down was partly due to economic maturation as well as to tardy financial reform and to the opportunities created by the chinese diaspora for taiwanese firms to invest abroad

evaluating the econometric evaluations of training programs with experimental data this paper takes the results of an employment and training program thatwas run as a field experiment in which the participants were randomlyassigned into a treatment or a control group and compares these results to the estimates that might have been produced by an econometrician who evaluated the program using the same econometric procedures that have been used in the program evaluation literature this comparison shows that many of these econometric procedures fail toreplicate the experimentally determined results and suggests that researchers should be aware of the potential for specification errorsin other nonexperimental evaluations copyright 1986 by american economic association

effects of tractor ownership on returns to scale in agriculture evidence from maize in ghana abstract agricultural transformation process around the world has often accompanied the rise in returns to scale rts while tractor ownership is often associated with greater rts in agriculture whether the tractor ownership actually causes such increase in rts has not been formally tested in the literature we bridge this knowledge gap using a unique survey data of tractor owning farm households in ghana we find that owning tractors significantly increases the rts in maize production on the households largest mono cropped plot and weakens inverse relationship between land productivity and farm size this is partly achieved through the rise in the rts in tillage production the amount of tillage conducted rather than the rts in maize production given a fixed amount of tillage produced these sets of evidence are obtained by addressing jointly the multiple sources of endogeneity of tractor ownership tractor values tillage production and other inputs used

does school quality matter returns to education and the characteristics of public schools in the united states this paper estimates the effects of school quality measured by the pupil teacher ratio average term length and relative teacher pay on the rate of return to education for men born between 1920 and 1949 using earnings data from the 1980 census we find that men who were educated in states with higher quality schools have a higher return to additional years of schooling rates of return are also higher for individuals from states with better educated teachers and with a higher fraction of female teachers holding constant school quality measures however we find no evidence that parental income or education affects average state level rates of return

the returns to the quantity and quality of education evidence for men in england and wales until the late 1960s state schooling in england and wales was determined by an ability test of pupils at age 11 which had an effect on both the quantity and quality of education by estimating the relationship between earnings and earlier schooling during a period when school areas changed from selective to non selective education we consider how the returns to the quantity of education are confounded by differences in the quality of schooling and whether the effects of quality are confounded by its correlation with quantity our results confirm recent evidence that returns to education quantity are large and quality effects are small

a model of female labour supply in which supply is dependent upon the chances of finding a job in this paper we extend a model of female labour supply by considering the impact of the local labour market thus in our model a woman supplies her labour if she has both made the decision to participate and found a job this extension is of particular importance in times of high unemployment when discouraged worker effects will be at their strongest we also consider the contribution of such a model to the debate concerning the labour supply of women married to men who are unemployed

effects of technological change and institutional reform on production growth in chinese agriculture recent rapid agricultural production growth in chinese agriculture could be attributed to an increase in inputs technological change and institutional reform an accounting approach was used to separate the relative contribution of these three factors institutional change like the introduction of the household production responsibility system has contributed to past growth in production however technological change is crucial to furthering production growth because of the limited potential for significant increase in the use of conventional inputs in particular land continued institutional change must accompany corresponding technological changes

minerals institutions openness and growth an empirical analysis competing explanations of the resource curse are tested using panel data the data support the existence of a mineral resource curse for developing countries with weak institutions consistent with the hypothesis that owners of mineral resources use weak institutions and openness to trade to stifle the development of human capital to the detriment of growth in other sectors of the economy manufacturing imports substitute for the development of domestic production so openness to trade correlates with lower growth in mineral dependent economies the dutch disease and debt overhang explanations of the resource curse are not supported

the resource curse what have we learned from two decades of intensive research introduction to the special issue there has been increasing interest in the so called resource curse that is the tendency of resource rich countries to underperform in several development outcomes this has generated a mountain of often contradictory evidence leaving many floundering in the flood of information this special issue compiles eight papers from some of the most prominent contributors to this literature combining original research with critical reflection on the current stock of knowledge the studies collectively emphasise the complexities and conditionalities of the curse its presence intensity is largely context specific depending on the type of resources socio political institutions and linkages with the rest of the economy

economic freedom and productivity growth in resource rich economies summary the focus of this paper is to test whether free market institutions that protect property rights and support freedom of choice and voluntary exchange can change the curse of natural resources into a blessing to examine the above question this paper uses the fraser institute s economic freedom index and its five sub indices namely government size property rights access to sound money freedom to trade and setting proper regulations using data from 99 sample countries over the period 1970 2010 the system gmm estimates suggest that the negative growth effects of resource rents may turn positive in countries with greater economic freedom

globalization and the politics of natural resources much political science scholarship including important work in this journal has explored the implications of natural resource endowments particularly oil and other highly valuable export commodities on political and economic outcomes although the first wave of literature emphasized the negative effects of these resources more recent work emphasizes how domestic institutions can condition the relationship sometimes leading to positive effects in this special issue the authors expand this literature in two important ways first they renew attention on the international dimensions of this relationship exploring how trade migration foreign investment and other global forces influence the effects these resources have on countries second they link the study of the globalization natural resources nexus to broader debates in international and comparative political economy such as how domestic institutions shape the impact of globalization and how economic factors affect the political survival of r

trade matters in the fight against poverty narratives perceptions and lack of evidence in the case of fish trade in africa two opposing views exist in the literature on the potential role that international fish trade plays in economic development while some claim that fish trade has a pro poor effect others denounce the negative effect of fish export on local populations food security and doubt its contributions to the macro economy in this paper we explore this debate in sub saharan africa our analysis did not find any evidence of direct negative impact of fish trade on food security neither did it find evidence that international fish trade generates positive pro poor outcomes this paper discusses the possible reasons for this apparent lack of development impact and highlights the unsupported assumptions underlying the current discourse about international fish trade we suggest that given lack of evidence for the development benefits of fish trade between africa and developed countries fisheries policy could consider support for regional africa to africa trade that meets the growing african demand for lower value fish means of overcoming barriers to intra african trade in fish are discussed

class size education and wages we use micro data for england and wales to examine the effects of class size on the decision to stay on in full time schooling at 16 and on wages later in life we find that class size has a sizeable and significant effect on the decision to stay on this finding is very robust wage equations show the effect of staying on is significantly positive for wages combining this with the effect of class size on the staying on decision reveals that class size significantly affects future wages reduced form models lead to much less accurate and insignificant estimates

staying on in full time education the educational participation rate of 16 year olds this paper presents a time series analysis of the socioeconomic factors influencing the propensity of sixteen year olds to stay on in full time education in england and wales the econometric methodology employed relies on cointegration and general to specific techniques the results suggest that the main factors influencing staying on are the rate of return to education changing social class structure unemployment rates and the introduction of special employment and training measures such as the youth training scheme copyright 1991 by the london school of economics and political science

exporting manufactures human resources natural resources and trade policy whether a country s exports consist mainly of manufactures or mainly of primary products depends fundamentally on the skills of its labour force relative to the extent of its natural resources this proposition derived from a modified version of heckscher ohlin theory is supported by a strong cross country correlation between the manufactured primary export ratio and the skill land ratio cross country variation in trade policies is now only a minor cause of variation in the manufactured primary export ratio

the macro impacts of korea s heavy industry drive re evaluated the korean heavy industry hci drive has been criticised for the misallocation of capital and for negative spillover effects on growth inflation the current account and debt however such criticism places too much blame on hci for the late 1970s economic deterioration and gives hci insufficient credit for the subsequent economic rebound korean hci was a catch up exercise which attracted cheap foreign capital to accelerate structural change nevertheless the mid 1970s decision to pursue hci as a big push was flawed since it did result in project bunching that strained implementation capacity despite the safeguards which korea built into its hci strategy

do recessions keep students in school the impact of youth unemployment on enrolment in post compulsory education in england in this paper i assess the impact of the youth labour market on enrolment in post compulsory education to that end i construct data for a panel of english regions and identify youth labour market effects using variation in youth unemployment rates across regions and over time my estimates suggest that the youth labour market has large enrolment impacts at least twice as large as suggested by uk estimates based on time series data this helps to explain why enrolment growth slowed down from the mid 1990s and suggests that a weakening youth labour market could cause enrolment to increase again

resource rents distribution income inequality and poverty in iran abstract our goal is to examine the income inequality and welfare effects of the direct distribution of resource rents and subsequent taxation in iran we use survey based microdata that covers 140 000 individuals which include more than 36 000 iranian urban and rural households in 2009 we examine how direct distribution of oil and gas rents among all citizens and a subsequent direct income tax differ from distributional impacts of targeted policies on income inequality and poverty in iran our analysis shows that the resource dividend policy with a subsequent direct income tax has a significant decreasing effect on the household gini index while targeted policies are more effective in reducing number of households under the poverty line

the effectiveness of yts as a manpower policy using data from the 1985 and 1986 scottish people s surveys this paper attempts to measure the effectiveness of the youth training scheme by estimating the impact of youth training scheme participation on both the subsequent probability of employment and the subsequent earnings potential the youth training scheme is found to have a positive impact on the probability of employment after allowing for possible sample selection bias owing to participation being nonrandom there are indications that the youth training scheme may have a positive impact on subsequent wages but the estimates are so imprecise that it was not possible to draw any statistically significant conclusions about wage effects copyright 1990 by the london school of economics and political science

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

costs and benefits of land fragmentation evidence from rwanda this paper disentangles different aspects of land fragmentation and its impact on the efficiency of resource use the paper uses information on the incidence of crop shocks to assess whether fragmentation provides benefits in reducing risk and parcel coordinates and terrain adjusted travel times between parcels to more precisely account for the associated costs in 2010 11 data from rwanda while fragmentation increases the time required to move between a household s parcels this does not appear to affect overall technical efficiency on the farm fragmentation rather reduces the incidence of crop shocks and increases yields and productive efficiency in rwanda s setting interventions to reduce fragmentation may therefore be ineffective or counterproductive

resource based industry in boom downswing and liberalization mexico abstract mexico s oil windfall was advantageously later and smaller than that of most oil exporters but it was still absorbed too quickly inflation accelerated the exchange rate appreciated and diversification into competitive non oil tradeables like resource based industry rbi was retarded too much rbi investment was channelled through state enterprises whose performance deteriorated it relied heavily on the protected domestic market which fell short of projections excess capacity and inadequate revenues then made rbi vulnerable as mexico rapidly liberalized its economy in the late 1980s

an empirical analysis of the unemployment duration of school leavers unemployment is a waste of vaulable human resources which also imposes various economics medical and psychological costs on the individual these costs are likely to be greater the longer the duration of umemployment this is true for both prime aged workers and the youngest entrants to the labour market that is school leavers using careers service data on 1979 1980 and 1981 leavers the authors seek to shed light on the issue of what factors determine the duration of unemployment for minimum aged school leavers the way in which these factors can be used by the careers service to identify those school leavers who have a higher risk of long term unemployment is discussed and a number of strategies for helping this group are outlined the results show that after allowing for the distorting influence of the youth opportunities programme longer durations of unemployment are associated with an absence of work experience low to intermediate qualifications and other personality traits

value added in further education and vocational training in northern ireland at the age of 16 many young people in the uk decide to leave school and enter vocational education or training either at a further education fe college or on a government training scheme in spite of the size and importance of this group the current debate about education and training standards has tended to focus more on how to improve schools largely neglecting the potential contribution to be made by the fe and vocational training sectors this study seeks to begin to redress this imbalance by examining the extent to which those young people leaving school and entering vocational education or training at 16 obtained further qualifications up to the age of 18 in particular there is an examination of whether the choice between fe and government training schemes at age 16 influences the subsequent success of young people in terms of gaining additional qualifications adopting an ordered probit approach to modelling qualifications levels the results contradict the somewhat pessimistic common pe

regional rates of return to education and training in britain bennett r glennerster h and nevison d 1995 regional rates of return to education and training in britain reg studies 29 279 295 using a structural utility maximizing human capital model of the post 16 education and training decision the paper explores rates of return and lifetime earnings that might influence an individual s decision to participate in post compulsory education and training the paper presents ex ante regional rates of return to post 16 further and higher education using information from the general household survey in britain based on the empirical results implications for education and training policy are drawn the model demonstrates that there are important differences between expected rates of return to the same qualification in different regions these returns are influenced by the regional labour market and are likely to have important influences on the incentives of individuals to pursue education or to train the paper also demonstrates the generally low level of diff

the impact of training on employment assessing a norwegian labour market programme by estimating a censored regression model it is found that unemployed adults taking part in labor market training increase their subsequent employment within a twelve month response period the employment effects vary with the duration of training and from one field of training to another in general short courses five ten weeks and long courses more than thirty weeks perform better than semilong courses using nonexperimental data and single equation estimation methods the question of unobserved heterogeneity and selection bias arises including a variant of heckman s lambda in the model reduces the estimated employment effect of training thus indicating a positive selection to training copyright 1994 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

does the resource curse hold for growth in genuine income as well summary existing studies analyzing the so called resource curse hypothesis regress growth in gross domestic product gdp on some measure of resource intensity this is problematic as gdp counts natural and other capital depreciation as income deducting depreciation from gdp to arrive at genuine income we test whether the curse still holds true we find supporting evidence but the growth disadvantage of resource intensive economies is slightly weaker in terms of genuine income than gdp we suggest that this provides additional but somewhat weak and limited evidence in support of those who argue that the curse is partly due to unsustainable overconsumption

optimal farm size in an uncertain land market the case of kyrgyz republic this article applies a real options model to the problem of land development making use of the 1998 2001 kyrgyz household budget survey we show that when the hypothesis of decreasing return to scale holds the relation between the threshold value of revenue per hectare and the amount of land cultivated is positive in addition the relation between the threshold and the amount of land owned is positive in the case of continuous supply of land and negative when there is discontinuous supply of land the direct consequence is that in the first case smaller farms will be more willing to rent land and exercise the option where in the second case larger farms will exercise first the results suggest three main conclusions i the combination of uncertainty and irreversibility is an important factor in land development decisions ii farmer behavior is consistent with the continuous profit maximization model and iii farming unit revenue tends to be positively related to farm size once uncertainty is properly accounted for

how does land fragmentation affect off farm labor supply panel data evidence from china abstract this article provides a deeper theoretical understanding of the linkages between land fragmentation and off farm labor supply in china andinvestigates this relationship empirically in a more direct way than does the existing literature drawing upon a rural household panel data setcollected in zhejiang hubei and yunnan provinces from 1995 to 2002 we estimate the effects in two steps first we estimate the effect of landfragmentation on labor productivity second we estimate the effect of land fragmentation on off farm labor supply the production function resultsshow that land fragmentation indeed leads to lower agricultural labor productivity implying that land consolidation will make on farm work moreattractive and thus decrease off farm labor supply however the effect of land consolidation on off farm labor supply is not signi cant one likelyexplanation for this result may be the potentially imperfect labor markets jel classi cations j22 q15 q24 r23 keywords

was latin america too rich to prosper structural and political obstacles to export led industrial growth this essay explores the divergence in economic policy and performance between east asia and latin america it offers a typology of explanations from the political economy literature evidence is presented for an explanation focused upon the relative size of the income sacrifice entailed in the competitive export of simple manufactures in the 1960s latin american countries would have faced massive politically unthinkable currency devaluations had they sought to compete with east asia thus latin american dependency in the post war period has been more complex than often supposed the essay ends with thoughts on export led industrialisation in indebted latin america

training and the time to find a job in israel using high frequency data for israel it is found that trainees exit unemployment at a much faster rate than comparable unemployed who did not receive training it is argued that this powerful training effect is unlikely to be simply the result of positive self selection of trainees the training effect is detected when using nonparametric estimation methods parametric methods fail to pick it up because of a very large exit spike in the hazard function which occurs when the training is completed other findings include the following the duration of unemployment varies directly with the duration of entitlement to unemployment benefit as well as the replacement ratio also the exit hazard from unemployment rises as the benefit entitlement period draws to a close

learning to love the dutch disease evidence from the mineral economies abstract recent literature proposes that a booming minerals sector may not only lead to dutch disease effects it may also be a development curse mineral economy case studies have tentatively confirmed this recourse curse thesis this paper examines the long run economic and development performance of a more general grouping of mineral based economies and finds little corroborating evidence

extending the concept of the resource curse natural resources and public spending on health this paper extends the concept of the resource curse by studying whether and through which transmission channels natural resource wealth affects social spending even though the availability of vast natural capital reserves has commonly been linked to the neglect of human development most of the literature has continued to focus on economic performance this paper is the first to empirically investigate the link between natural resource wealth and public health expenditures in light of the hypothesis that resource wealth as a source of unearned state income enhances state autonomy and increases volatility which leads to policies that fail to prioritize human development using a large panel dataset of world countries covering the period from 1995 to 2009 we find a robust significant inverse relationship between natural resource dependence and even abundance and public health spending over time the effect remains significant after controlling for state autonomy volatility and other factors these findings have implications for national authorities as well as the extractive industry governments should be made accountable for natural resource wealth and correct taxation could provide additional resources earmarked for health the extractive industry could increase their investments in sustainable corporate social responsibility operations specifically in the health sector

back to basics in malaysia and thailand the role of resource based exports in their export led growth abstract malaysia and thailand s remarkable economic growth in recent decades has been widely attributed to rapid growth of their labor intensive manufactured exports this paper demonstrates the important role that resource based products especially simply processed goods have played in their export growth while exports have thus followed their dual static comparative advantage in abundant resources and unskilled labor there has been limited movement into higher end exports a dual strategy of supporting forward linkages into higher value added resource based industries while continuing to encourage the development of backward linkages from the non resource based manufactures is suggested

savings growth and the resource curse hypothesis an important connection between recent attempts to understand the determinants of economic growth and the measurement of sustainability is the finding of a negative and significant relationship between natural resource abundance and economic growth this is the so called resource curse hypothesis using cross country regressions we offer evidence that the curse may itself be a manifestation of the inability of governments to manage large resource revenues sustainably in particular these results offer another perspective on the resource curse hypothesis the countries where growth has lagged are those where the combination of natural resource macroeconomic and public expenditure policies have led to a low rate of genuine saving net saving adjusted for resource depletion

rural reforms and agricultural growth in china this paper employs province level panel data to assess the contributions of decollectivization price adjustments and other reforms to china s agricultural growth in the reform period decollectivization is found to improve total factor productivity and to account for about half of the output growth during 1978 84 the adjustment in state procurement prices also contributed positively to output growth its impact came mainly from the responses in input use the effect of other market related reforms on productivity and output growth was very small reasons for slowdown in agricultural growth after 1984 are also analyzed copyright 1992 by american economic association

resource abundance and economic growth in the united states abstract it is a common assumption that regions within the same country converge to approximately the same steady state income levels the so called absolute convergence hypothesis focuses on initial income levels to account for the variability in income growth among regions empirical data seem to support the absolute convergence hypothesis for us states but the data also show that natural resource abundance is a significant negative determinant of growth we find that natural resource abundance decreases investment schooling openness and r d expenditure and increases corruption and we show that these effects can fully explain the negative effect of natural resource abundance on growth

effects of land fragmentation and returns to scale in the chinese farming sector using household survey data from rural china economies of scale as measured by returns to scale and the effects of land fragmentation on crop outputs are examined while these effects are found to be detrimental statistically significant and substantial existing economies of scale appear to be too small to suggest radical land policy changes in china

an empirical analysis of occupational expectations empirical research on the subject area of occupational choice has generally focused upon outcomes that is in terms of occupational attainment gender and racial segmentation and male female earnings differentials but individual preferences in terms of which occupation to pursue are likely to be of equal importance in considering many of these issues therefore this paper is concerned with an empirical analysis of the occupational expectations of minimum aged school leavers a logit analysis is performed to establish what independent variables are more important in determining which labour queue school leavers join this is followed by the implications of the analysis for policy makers and practitioners concerned with the youth labour market the evidence shows that there are clear differences in the occupational expectations of males and females for instance female school leavers are more likely to seek entry to clerical and other non manual occupations such as retailing and catering males on

an east asian model of economic development japan taiwan and south korea the east asian model of economic development focuses on 5 shared characteristics that seem significant in the contemporary economic development of japan taiwan and korea they are economic characteristics and include 1 high investment ratios 2 small public sectors 3 competitive labor markets 4 export expansion and 5 government intervention in the economy large and efficient investments in human capital and well developed capacities to absorb new technology are 2 other economic features shared by the three one could add overcrowding high man land ratios and scarcity of natural resources though these are handicaps rather than sources of economic strength it is possible however that virtue springs from necessity and that ample arable land or abundant natural resources mainly permit governments to postpone the difficult decisions needed to promote development rather than provide the wherewithal needed to finance development other noneconomic characteristics of the three such as ethnic and linguistic homogeneity relatively compact geography manageable population size and the confucian tradition have not been considered in the model even though they have undoubtedly influenced labor productivity savings behavior and other aspects of economic performance whether the east asian model ought to be followed depends on whether current and foreseeable circumstances are sufficiently like those faced by the three to justify using the same policies that they used applicability of the east asian model should also depend on whether the strategy employed by the three has been responsible for their economic success 2 aspects of the east asian models policy features are noteworthy 1 the policies typically work by influencing rather than replacing private market decisions and 2 the public expects government to intervene to influence economic growth

the effect of competition on the efficiency of secondary schools in england abstract in this paper we calculate the technical efficiencies based upon multiple outputs school exam performance and attendance rates of all secondary schools in england over the period 1993 1998 we then estimate models to examine the determinants of efficiency in a particular year and the determinants of the change in efficiency over the period our results suggest that the greater the degree of competition between schools the more efficient they are the strength of this effect has also increased over time which is consistent with the evolution of the quasi market in secondary education competition is also found to be an important determinant of the change in efficiency over time there is however some evidence of conditional convergence between schools

school leaver unemployment a proactive approach 1990 school leaver unemployment a proactive approach applied economics vol 22 no 4 pp 439 461

industrial policy reform in six large newly industrializing countries the resource curse thesis abstract all six large newly industrializing countries nics in this study favored an autarkic industrial policy aip in the 1950s aip required however the rapid build up of heavy and chemical industry hci which caused foreign exchange shortages if the hci matured slowly this is because the import and subsidy demands of the growing protected hci sector became too burdensome for the competitive primary sector whose rents shrank in relative importance as the economic structure evolved the two least well endowed nics abandoned aip early in favor of a competitive industrial policy cip which relied on labor intensive exports to earn foreign exchange and resulted in rapid economic growth in contrast the resource bonus of the four best endowed nics sustained aip longer but the longer aip lasted the harder it became to reform and the slow maturing hci sector adversely affected economic growth in this way the resource bonus became a curse rather than a blessing

land fragmentation and food insecurity in ethiopia this paper revisits the economic consequences of land fragmentation taking seriously concerns regarding the exogeneity of fragmentation its measurement and the importance of considering impacts in terms of welfare metrics using data that are well suited to addressing these issues the analysis finds that land fragmentation reduces food insecurity this result is robust to how fragmentation is measured and to how exogeneity concerns are addressed further the paper finds that land fragmentation mitigates the adverse effects of low rainfall on food security this is because households with diverse parcel characteristics can grow a greater variety of crop types

education and earnings in the netherlands an empirical analysis abstract in this paper three models which describe the relation between earnings and education are estimated using one single data set one model is a simple dummy regression model in which the educational variables are exogenous both other models take account of the fact that individuals choose their optimal amount of education and is therefore endogenous in all three models i try to specify the equations in the same way as others have done with other data sets it turns out that in each model important conclusions reached in earlier research are not supported by the empirical findings reported here

corruption and the political economy of resource based development a comparison of asia and sub saharan africa we model how the supply and demand for bribes affects resource use by an economy and the reinvestment of resource rents in other assets this requires adjusting the world bank s measure adjusted net savings for any rent dissipation due to corruption the impacts of corruption on long run changes and periodic growth in the adjusted net savings rate are estimated across african and asian economies from 1970 to 2003 corruption rather than resource dependency per se affects negatively the ability of african countries to reinvest resource rents in the short term but for asian countries corruption is less important than point resources corruption influences long run growth in adjusted net savings rates in all countries and is also the pathway through which this growth is affected by patterns of resource use trade and abundance

school quality and black white relative earnings a direct assessment the wage differential between black and white men fell from 40 percent in 1960 to 25 percent in 1980 it has been argued that this convergence reflects improvements in the relative quality of black schools to test this hypothesis we assembled data on pupil teacher ratios annual teacher pay and term length for black and white schools in the eighteen segregated states from 1915 to 1966 these data are linked to estimated returns to education for southern born men from different cohorts and states in 1960 1970 and 1980 improvements in the relative quality of black schools explain 20 percent of the narrowing of the black white earnings gap between 1960 and 1980

does land fragmentation increase the cost of cultivation evidence from india although a large literature discusses the productivity effects of land fragmentation measurement and potential endogeneity issues are often overlooked this paper uses several measures of fragmentation and controls for endogeneity and crop choice by looking at inherited paddy and wheat plots to show that these issues matter empirically while crop choice can mitigate effects fragmentation as measured by the simpson index increases production cost and fosters substitution of labor for machinery especially for small and medium farmers greater distances between fragments have a smaller effect creating opportunities for market based consolidation could be one step to limit fragmentation induced cost increases

oil and democracy endogenous natural resources and the political resource curse by the end of the twentieth century a scholarly consensus emerged around the idea that oil fuels authoritarianism and slow growth the natural abundance once thought to be a blessing was unconditionally and then later only conditionally a curse for political and economic development we re examine the relationship between oil wealth and political regimes challenging the conventional wisdom that such natural resource rents lead to authoritarian outcomes we contend that most efforts to examine the causal linkages between natural resource abundance and political regime have been complicated by the likelihood that both democracy and oil revenue are endogenous to the industrialization processes itself particularly in its developmentalist form our quantitative results based on an analysis of global data from 1970 to 2006 show that both resource endogeneity and several mechanisms of intraregional regime diffusion are powerful determinants of democratic outcomes qualitative evidence from the history of industrialization in latin america yields support for our proposed causal claim oil wealth is not necessarily a curse and may even be a blessing with respect to democratic development