a subsector approach to small enterprise promotion and research abstract this paper introduces a diagnostic research methodology designed to help target small enterprise development efforts in less developed countries it argues that research should focus on commodity specific subsectors which include the competing channels and supporting input and output linkages of small firms using this approach analysts can improve their understanding of small enterprise dynamics interventions that may promote them at low cost and policies that constrain small firm growth

the crowding hypothesis and comparable worth although women s pay and occupational distribution have improved during the past few years it is still true that women earn considerably less than men and that their occupational distribution is substantially different because progress has been slow toward equality in the labor market some have called for a comparable worth policy proponents of this approach argue that occupational segregation contributes to the earnings disparity between women and men one theoretical justification for this position is the crowding hypothesis this paper first explains this theory and presents a method used to test its principal hypothesis it then describes an extension of this design for estimating the phenomenon that comparable worth policies address empirical studies conducted in this area are viewed and new findings are presented finally limitations of this analysis are discussed i introduction

formation of buyer seller trade networks in a quality differentiated product market we examine the formation of buyer seller links when exchange can take place only if such a link exists sellers produce products of different qualities and multiple sellers can form a sellers association to pool their customers setting uniform prices buyers form trade links with individual sellers or sellers associations we show which buyer seller links will form and find the set of links that are stable and show how these links influence prices we also show that a trade network mismatch may occur where a high quality good remains unsold even without an economy wide excess supply of goods jel classification d40 d51 d82

the technical efficiency of large bank production abstract significant difficulties in commercial banking in the late 1980s raise questions about bank performance and efficiency with the use of data envelopment analysis dea we consider the relative technical efficiency of 201 large banks from 1984 to 1990 bank technical inefficiency averages just over 5 percent much lower than found in existing estimates larger and more profitable banks have higher levels of technical efficiency at the same time however larger banks are more likely to operate under decreasing returns to scale

how efficiently is capital allocated evidence from the knitted garment industry in tirupur this paper studies the effect of community identity on investment behaviour in the knitted garment industry in the south indian town of tirupur we document very large and systematic differences in both levels of capital stock and the capital intensity of production in firms owned by people from two different community groups we argue that the differences in investment cannot be explained by productivity differences alone we suggest that the most likely explanation is that the two communities differ in their access to capital

of networks and markets the rise and rise of a south indian town the example of tiruppur s cotton knitwear industry abstract tiruppur town is the center of a tightly clustered range of activities related to the cotton knitwear industry the successful and dramatic expansion which has taken place over the last 15 years has meant many more jobs limited technological improvement improved quality in yarn and fabric and an increasingly diverse range of garments for the larger firms in the industry access to export markets has been the driving force to improving their competitiveness wages remain low and working conditions poor however perhaps partly because capital concentration has not on the whole been accompanied by centralized vertically integrated production nevertheless clustering and dense interfirm networks provide advantages for firms of all sizes since process specialization is spatially divisible

inferring the incidence of industry inefficiency from dea estimates abstract data envelopment analysis dea is among the most popular empirical tools for measuring cost and productive efficiency within an industry because dea is a linear programming technique establishing formal statistical properties for outcomes is difficult we model the incidence of inefficiency within a population of decision making units dmus as a latent variable with dea outcomes providing only noisy and generally inaccurate sample based categorizations of inefficiency we then use a bayesian approach to infer an appropriate posterior distribution for the incidence of inefficiency within an industry based on a random sample of dea outcomes and a prior distribution on that incidence the approach applies to the empirically relevant case of a finite number of firms and to sampling dmus without replacement it also accounts for potential mismeasurement in the dea characterization of inefficiency within a coherent bayesian approach to the problem using three different types of specialty physician practices we provide an empirical illustration demonstrating that this approach provides appropriately adjusted inferences regarding the incidence of inefficiency within an industry

sex segregation within occupations do the paychecks and career prospects of men and women differ because of rational optimizing decisions made by men and women given their respective skills experiences home responsibilities and intentions regarding future work and family activities the human capital model coherent logical and internally consistent has a certain elegance to it nevertheless empirically it cannot explain the sex composition of jobs in lines of work pursued by both men and women the results reported below are more consistent with the notion that employers statistically discriminate that is they reserve some jobs for men and others for women based on their perceptions of the average traits of the two groups however our results also call into question the assumption that statistical discrimination is merely an optimal decisionmaking strategy under conditions of uncertainty we summarize below our recent research on determinants of the sex composition of jobs in mixed occupations that research is based on data on staffing patterns job requirements and personnel policies collected by the u s employment service in over 400 california establishments between 1959 and 1979 details on sample representativeness procedures of data collection and the like can be found in our 1984 and 1986 papers

of contracts and subcontracts small firms in vertically dis integrated production distribution systems in ldcs abstract the increasing complexity in production and distribution which accompanies development provides opportunities for small firms to participate by undertaking a limited range of activities in vertically dis integrated systems through subcontracting arrangements in addition to reducing costs in particular activities this facilitates the growth of production and distribution systems which are more complex than one integrated firm could manage or finance on its own for this pattern to work though contracting difficulties arising from market imperfections must be overcome alternative ways used by third world firms to solve these coordination problems are identified and policy implications suggested

the agrarian origins of the knitwear industrial cluster in tiruppur india abstract the reorganization of work in tiruppur into small firm networks has propelled it to the center of india s cotton knitwear exports industrial studies explanations remain unresolved in reconciling informalized insecure labor alongside the possibility of an innovative industrial district an analysis of the industrial present reveals that not only are the majority of owners of the agrarian gounder caste but they are also predominantly ex industrial workers this paper investigates the regional and agrarian processes through which gounders of worker peasant origins forged their class mobility through their toil while also remaking the knitwear industrial cluster into dynamic small firm networks

industrial districts old wine in new bottles harrison b 1992 industrial districts old wine in new bottles reg studies 26 469 483 according to the theory of industrial districts a new wave of economic growth is being led in a number of regions in europe north america and east asia by spatially concentrated networks of mostly small and medium sized enterprises often using flexible production technology and characterized by extensive local interfirm linkages does this amount to a re emergence of the dominance of what urban and regional economists call agglomeration economies over the well known pressures on business to spatially disperse its operations neoclassical economic theorizing from marshall to perroux provides one perspective on the contemporary industrial district phenomenon another is afforded by granovetter s more recent elaboration of the ideas of embedding under and over socialization confronting each of these theoretical approaches with the other leads me to conclude that the industrial district prototypes involv

the changing global geography of low technology labor intensive industry clothing footwear and furniture summary a basic approach to the geographic investigation of low technology labor intensive industries is sketched out by invoking notions of industrial organization locational agglomeration and spatial divisions of labor the distribution of the clothing footwear and furniture industries across the contemporary world is described on the basis of detailed published statistics special emphasis is accorded to similarities and contrasts in the geography of production between more developed and less developed countries i show that no matter what the level of development agglomeration tends to be a pervasive though not universal feature of these three industries global trading patterns in the three industries are subjected to extended investigation i examine international flows of finished products as well as production sharing activities involving various kinds of subcontracting arrangements between high wage and low wage countries i then attempt to demonstrate in theory how spatial agglomeration and international commodity flows function as mutually reinforcing phenomena via the play of increasing returns effects the significance of low wage low technology industries for processes of economic development is also stressed in the conclusion i suggest that the global geography of production is tending more and more to assume the form of a far flung mosaic of competing and collaborating agglomerations at various levels of productive capability and development

fixing women s wages the effectiveness of comparable worth policies the author discusses some problems that can prevent comparable worth legislation from achieving meaningful gender wage equity which she defines as the elimination of gender as a factor in wage setting she then tests the comparable worth policies of two canadian provinces against the same set of job content data from a 1988 survey of health care workers whereas manitoba s comparable worth policy she finds would achieve gender wage equity if applied to this set of jobs ontario s would not and would even result in new and capricious instances of inequity she argues that continual scrutiny including comparative analysis of comparable worth policies is needed not only in order to identify the most effective policy designs but also to guard against efforts to undercut legislation through manipulation of implementation procedures

successful adjustment in indian industry the case of ludhiana s woolen knitwear cluster abstract this paper examines the case of adjustment in a labor intensive export industry woolen knitwear to understand how traditional sectors in developing regions cope with external crises and rise above them india s woolen knitwear industry concentrated in ludhiana recently survived two crises the collapse of its largest export market the former soviet union and the simultaneous opening up of the domestic market to freer trade after an unusually short downturn the cluster not only recovered rapidly but is increasingly diversifying into more demanding and competitive external markets four factors are key to explaining this surprisingly resilient recovery first the best performing firms had a strong and simultaneous presence in dynamic segments of the domestic market alongside exports this generated key organizational learning and built managerial and production capacities that helped firms adapt quickly to more demanding markets later second an important feature of the learning relationship between first time exporters and their foreign buyers was the small scale nature of contracts and a customization of fit between the producer and the feedback giving intermediary third better performing firms paid equal if not greater attention to making organizational changes in their work practices than to the purchase of new equipment fourth the embedded nature of production networks and the government s past programs to assist local firms have indirectly helped create a dynamic middle tier of locally rooted exporters who appear to be leading the cluster s transformation and modernization

trends in relationship lending and factors affecting relationship lending efficiency abstract this paper investigates the efficiency of relationship managers at the canadian imperial bank of commerce cibc one of canada s largest banks data envelopment analysis dea efficiency scores are analyzed using regression the results demonstrate that managers are less efficient when facing larger numbers of loans or smaller loans m berlin and l j mester on the profitability and cost of relationship lending working paper no 97 43 the wharton school university of pennsylvania 1997 show that credit smoothing is generally suboptimal a more complete explanation is obtained by taking a micro level focus other results indicate that banks may improve profitability by reserving relationship lending for loans of larger size tests of relationships between efficiency and nonperforming loans and of the skimping hypothesis are conducted

heterogeneous preferences compensating wage differentials and comparable worth this paper sets up a general equilibrium model of a world of heterogeneous jobs and heterogeneous tastes and uses the model to i analyze the effects of employer discrimination and ii predict the likely consequences of requiring equal pay for jobs of comparable worth it shows that employment of both women and men is likely to fall as a result of comparable worth it also shows that when individuals tastes are heterogeneous neither comparable worth nor the simple model of compensating differentials on which it is based provides useful insights into wage determination in particular when tastes are heterogeneous there is no reason to expect equal pay for jobs of comparable worth even in the absence of employer discrimination

local input linkages a comparison of foreign owned and domestic manufacturers in georgia and south carolina barkley d l and mcnamara k t 1994 local input linkages a comparison of foreign owned and domestic manufacturers in georgia and south carolina reg studies 28 725 737 input purchasing patterns of foreign owned and domestic manufacturers were compared to determine if local economic impacts varied by country of ownership input purchasing data were obtained from a 1990 survey of south carolina and georgia manufacturers tobit estimation results indicate nonmetro foreign owned firms had significantly higher propensities to purchase inputs in county than domestic branch plants located in nonmetro counties no significant differences existed between the input purchase propensities of metro domestic and foreign owned manufacturers however foreign owned firms were disproportionately represented in industries with relatively weak indirect and induced effects on the local economies relatively strong overall impacts may not be associated with the relatively large initial input purchases of foreign owned

a theory of buyer seller networks this paper introduces a new model of exchange networks rather than markets of buyers and sellers it begins with the empirically motivated premise that a buyer and seller must have a relationship a link to exchange goods networks buyers sellers and the pattern of links connecting them are common exchange environments this paper develops a methodology to study network structures and explains why agents may form networks in a model that captures characteristics of a variety of industries the paper shows that buyers and sellers acting strategically in their own self interests can form the network structures that maximize overall welfare

the triple c approach to local industrial policy abstract in both developed and developing countries there is mounting evidence that clustering and networking help small and medium sized manufacturers to raise their competitiveness the role of public policy in this process is less clear the european experience suggests that local and regional government can play an important role equally if not more interesting experiences can be found in developing countries their analysis constitutes the core of this paper the lessons can be summarized as the triple c which stands for customer oriented collective and cumulative

innovation technical assistance and development the importance of technology users abstract in both industrialized and developing country situations technology users play a key role in generating successful new products and processes both high tech innovation such as the design of the boeing 747 aircraft and ibm computer software and innovative technologies for the rural poor such as vietnamese expeller pumps and bangladeshi hybrid rice strains owe much to the creativity and skill not of research scientist but of local housewives farmers and artisans new approaches to technical assistance which increase the interaction between r d institutions and these technology users are needed in order to tap this important innovation resource the incorporation of such an interactive research strategy into the work of the sudan energy research council led to highly successful initiatives in the fields of charcoal production improved charcoal stoves and agroforestry

malmquist indices of productivity growth during the deregulation of norwegian banking 1980 89 productivity growth during the deregulation of the norwegian banking industry is studied within the framework of data envelopment analysis which explicitly allows for multiple outputs introducing malmquist indices for productivity growth total growth can be decomposed into frontier growth and change in each bank s distance to the frontier both the total growth index and its components can be consistently chained over time we find productivity regress at the average bank prior to the deregulation but rapid growth when deregulation took place deregulation also led to less dispersion of productivity levels within the industry

financial intermediation and delegated monitoring this paper develops a theory of financial intermediation based on minimizing the cost of monitoring information which is useful for resolving incentive problems between borrowers and lenders it presents a characterization of the costs of providing incentives for delegated monitoring by a financial intermediary diversification within an intermediary serves to reduce these costs even in a risk neutral economy the paper presents some more general analysis of the effect of diversification on resolving incentive problems in the environment assumed in the model debt contracts with costly bankruptcy are shown to be optimal the analysis has implications for the portfolio structure and capital structure of intermediaries

virtual incubation in industrial clusters a case study in pakistan abstract in industrial clusters transaction costs are kept low and free riding is discouraged by a community mechanism developed through dense and repeated interactions among entrepreneurs in such environments new entrants without established reputations and connections are put at a distinct disadvantage this negative effect on new entry must be neutralised for an industrial cluster to expand using enterprise level data from pakistan this study finds that personal networks are indeed important for successful enterprise operation which works to the advantage of incumbents but that subcontracting plays the role of virtual incubation in nurturing new enterprises reinforcing the cluster s dynamism

globalisation of knowledge production and regional innovation policy supporting specialized hubs in the bangalore software industry abstract this paper is concerned with the changing role of regional innovation systems and regional policies in supporting the transition of indigenous firms in developing countries from competing on low costs towards becoming knowledge providers in global value chains special attention is paid to policies supporting the emergence and development of the regional innovation system in this transition process regional innovation systems in developing countries have very recently started to be conceptualised as specialized hubs in global innovation and production networks asheim b coenen l vang lauridsen j 2007 face to face buzz and knowledge bases socio spatial implications for learning innovation and innovation policy environment and planning c government and policy 25 5 655 670 chaminade c vang j 2006a innovation policy for small and medium size smes in asia an innovation systems perspective in yeung h ed handbook of research on asian business edward elgar cheltenham maggi c 2007 the salmon farming and processing cluster in southern chile in pietrobello c rabellotti r eds upgrading and governance in clusters and value chains in latin america harvard university press a specialized hub refers to a node in a global value chain that mainly undertakes one or a few of the activities required for the production and development of a given good or service or serves a particular segment of the global market in global value chains firms in developing countries have traditionally been responsible for the lowest added value activities however a few emerging regional innovation systems in developing countries are beginning to challenge this scenario by rapidly upgrading in the value chain there is however still only a poorly developed understanding of how the system of innovation emerges and evolves to support this transition process and what the role of regional innovation policy is in building the regional conditions that support indigenous small and medium size enterprises smes in this transition process this paper aims at reducing this omission by analyzing the co evolution of the strategies of indigenous smes and the regional innovation system of bangalore india

economic efficiency of greek retail smes in a period of high fluctuations in economic activity a dea approach this study aims to analyse the economic efficiency of greek small and medium retail enterprises before and after the crisis that started in 2008 based on the accounting equation we use data envelopment analysis dea to estimate variable returns of scale efficiency scores and to conclude on specific characteristics that efficient companies have for example on capital structure our results from the dea application show a high degree of inefficiency we found that smes on the islands are more efficient than those on the mainland and that smes in the cities are the least efficient size seems to be important more so on the islands and on the mainland than in the cities we conclude that companies should act more conservatively in terms of operating cost when the first signs of a recession appear in addition during a recession period companies that have evidences that their operations will continue positively should strengthen their operations by raising more own capital finally our study clarifies

collective efficiency growth path for small scale industry this study is concerned with the growth of small local industry in developing countries and explores one particular route for understanding and fostering such growth it focuses on the clustering of firms and the competitive advantage which they derive from local external economies and joint action captured in the concept of collective efficiency following a conceptual discussion the article explores the economic and institutional conditions which enhance or hinder collective efficiency this includes a case study which suggests that responding to opportunity and crisis requires shifting from mere reliance on external economies to joint action and from ascribed to earned trust

comparable worth limited coverage and the exacerbation of inequality citing relevant judicial decisions the author argues that any application of the comparable worth remedy for gender discrimination is likely to cover only certain groups of workers most likely to be covered are women who work for governmental or large private employers in female dominated jobs and least likely to be covered are women who work for small private employers the implementation of comparable worth would cause the wages of noncovered workers to fall relative to those of covered workers and they might even fall absolutely an analysis of 1979 current population survey data suggests that the women most likely to gain from comparable worth are fewer in number better paid and subjected to no greater discrimination than the women most likely to lose

the rural non farm sector issues and evidence from developing countries abstract the rural non farm sector has traditionally been viewed as a low productivity sector which produces low quality goods it is often expected to wither away as a country develops recent years have seen a shift away from this position towards recognition that the rural non farm sector can and often does contribute to economic growth rural employment poverty reduction and a more spatially balanced population distribution this paper reviews the literature on the conceptual and empirical underpinnings of this more recent perspective focussing on the experience in developing countries the paper documents the size and heterogeneity of the sector pointing to evidence that in many countries the sector is expanding rather than declining the issues associated with measuring the sector s economic contribution are discussed followed by empirical assessments for several countries and regions the distributional impact of non farm earnings is examined and it is found that a pro poor impact while by no means inevitable can be considerable the sector s trajectory over time in different settings is reviewed and the scope for and experience of various policy interventions is discussed

assessing school efficiency in portugal using fdh and bootstrapping this study explores a new data set that contains information both on inputs and outputs for a sample of portuguese secondary schools an fdh reference technology is used to determine radial technical efficiency scores and slacks although it is known that there is no reason to assume convexity in the study of education efficiency frontiers this is the first study ever to use fdh at the school level effectively relaxing the convexity assumption a two stage approach is used whereby the significant environmental variables that explain fdh efficiency scores and slacks are identified for the purpose of statistical inference the first application of the bootstrapping algorithms suggested by simar and wilson 2003 is conducted the study concludes that the unemployment rate access to health care services adult education and living infrastructures are determinants of school efficiency the differences between the coast and the interior of portugal seem to be more relevant as far as school efficiency is

an experimental study of job evaluation and comparable worth the doctrine of comparable worth rests on an assumption that each job possesses an inherent worth independent of the market forces of supply and demand implementation of comparable worth further requires that inherentjob worth be measured with reasonable accuracy this paper reports the results of an experimental study of comparable worth three commercial job evaluation firms rated the same set of 27 jobs in an actual company statistical analysis of the experimental data indicates that the three evaluators differed in which job trait or constellation of traits they used to evaluate inherent job worth implying that at least one of them failed to measure inherent job worth accurately these results suggest that any attempt to implement comparable worth may be quite sensitive to the evaluator chosen to measure job worth

trust and inter firm relations in developing and transition economies the role of trust in facilitating economic growth has been highlighted in previous contributions to this journal in order to take this debate forward this article argues 1 that more attention needs to be given to the relationship between sanctions and trust and 2 that it is worth distinguishing between the minimal trust for making markets effective and the extended trust required for deeper kinds of inter firm co operation to work the article goes on to ask why minimal trust is lacking and so hard to construct in the republics of the former soviet union it then examines how extended trust grows or can be made to grow in industrial supply chains and clusters in developing countries

firm and group dynamics in the small and medium enterprise sector in indonesia this paper discusses the role of clusters and subcontracting as factors in the evolution of small and medium firms in indonesia during the last quarter century it is argued that a number of such firms have become successful exporters of rattan furniture wood furniture and garments on the strength of subcontracting relationships with foreign investors and buyers as well as agglomeration economies achieved by clustering in selected locations examples are provided to show that clustered enterprises are more likely to be in the exports business and to adopt product and process innovations as compared to more dispersed firms public policy support for fostering subcontracting links and cluster formation is also discussed

technical scale and allocative efficiencies in u s banking an empirical investigation a nonparametric frontier approach is used to calculate the overall technical pure technical allocative and scale efficiencies for a sample of 322 independent banks the sample was drawn from the federal deposit insurance corporation tapes on the reports of condition and reports of income call reports for the year 1986 the results indicated a low level of overall efficiency the main source of inefficiency was technical in nature rather than allocative separate efficiency frontiers were constructed to test the effect of branching however the distributions of efficiency measures for branching and non branching banks were not found to be different

selective spatial closure and local economic development what do we learn from the argentine local currency systems summary this paper discusses local currency systems as an instrument of selective spatial closure to mitigate impacts of externally induced changes and to promote endogenous local economic development drawing on data collected in argentina it was found that local currency systems provided relatively protected economic spaces thus enabling poor households and especially women to launch micro enterprises and diversify income sources they also supported existing enterprises by offering an emergency market outlet and when combined with other measures by building local trading and production networks following recent theory on local economic development the argentine case represents an example of local economic regeneration

the role of large producers in industrial districts a case study of high technology systems houses in southern california scott a j 1992 the role of large producers in industrial districts a case study of high technology systems houses in southern california reg studies 26 265 275 a generalized concept of industrial districts is proposed the concept hinges on the intertwined notions of the social division of labour external economies and locational agglomeration it is argued that large production units often play an important part in sustaining the growth and development of industrial districts and that such districts need not be composed solely of small production units the argument is illustrated by means of a case study of the role of large systems houses within the high technology industrial districts of southern california it is concluded that neither large establishments nor the internationalization of the economy necessarily threaten the continued viability of industrial districts it is also suggested that industrial districts represent a very widely developed phenomenon in time and space scott a j

technique and system the spread of japanese management techniques to developing countries in this paper a distinction is drawn between the isolated use of individual japanese management techniques and their adoption in an integrated package as part of a production system although the use of individual techniques does confer significant benefits to innovating firms it is clear from international experience that the major gains arise from systemic application the central objective of this paper is to explore whether there are obstacles specific to less developed countries ldcs in the systemic application of japanese management techniques the major forces driving the adoption of these new management techniques are reviewed based upon research in latin america india and zimbabwe then three major ldc specific factors affecting systemic adoption are considered human resources interfirm cooperation and management

evaluating the cost efficiency of the italian banking system what can be learned from the joint application of parametric and non parametric techniques abstract research on bank efficiency has developed in two separate streams econometric studies and data envelopment analysis a linear programming technique these two branches of literature have developed quickly but separately in this paper these two approaches have been tested on a common panel of 270 italian banks and this has suggested the following i econometric and linear programming results do not differ dramatically when based on the same data and conceptual framework ii when differences arise they can be explained by going back to the intrinsic features of the models moreover some findings on italian banks may be of interest also to the international reader i efficiency scores show a high variance ii the banking system is split in two between northern and southern banks iii there is a direct rather than inverse relationship between productive efficiency and asset quality iv the efficiency of italian banks did not increase over the period 1988 1992

the implementation process of comparable worth winners and losers this paper provides a unique opportunity to observe how a public policy affected the earnings of various interest groups at different stages of implementation specifically we examine how the earnings of women union members and supervisory and professional staff were affected by various proposed and implemented comparable worth pay plans in iowa we find that large relative gains to women in the original proposed plans were reduced as the process evolved as a result some of the original gains to women were redistributed to union members supervisors and professionals

competition cooperation and the neighboring farmer effect abstract in this paper we propose a model that explains how cooperation can emerge spontaneously between firms in a highly competitive market environment the basic idea is that the more competitive is the market the less costly it is for firms to help each other like good neighbors cooperation takes the form of sharing technical know how which speeds up the adoption of new technologies normally developed elsewhere that spur industrial development the model comports with the development history of japan s first example of successful industrial development its cotton spinning industry whose conditions match those of firms in small open economies today

intertemporal efficiency analysis of sales teams of a bank stochastic semi nonparametric approach abstract the primary role of a bank branch is evolving from a service provider towards a sales channel previous branch level studies of sales efficiency consider a static setting of a single time period ignoring the stochastic nature of sales outcomes in this paper we examine efficiency and performance of sales teams in a bank branch network over time taking into account the changing demand and operational conditions as well as random disturbances the intertemporal sales frontier is estimated from the panel of monthly data over the years 2007 2010 using the stochastic semi nonparametric envelopment of data stoned method the efficiency scores of sales teams and the trajectories of performance over time allow managers and the sales force to learn from past events and to develop the managerial and work practices across the network while this study focuses on the case of a specific bank some of the innovative features of our approach are applicable to sales efficiency assessment in other banks and financial institutions as well as other network based sales organizations

growth constraints on small scale manufacturing in developing countries a critical review abstract the question raised in this review is whether small scale producers in developing countries can expand or whether they are up against constraints which stunt their growth most of the literature has been optimistic on this score while internal constraints e g lack of managerial ability or external constraints e g discrimination from government are identified expansion is seen as an open ended process in other contributions this view has been severely criticized some allege that the small producers are exploited through various mechanisms others suggest that their road to expansion is blocked as a result of factors such as the pre existence of very advanced technology the control of large firms over product markets or difficulties in access to raw materials in discussing the arguments put forward in the debate an attempt is made to assess their theoretical bases and examine the extent to which they are supported empirically while most studies express explicitly or implicitly a definite view on the growth potential of small producers such judgement is rarely based on a comprehensive examination of the context which determines this potential

how significant are externalities for development if one man starts a new idea it is taken up by others and combined with suggestions of their own and thus it becomes the source of further new ideas and presently subsidiary trades grow up in the neighbourhood supplying it with implements and materials marshall 1920 p 225

trends in the well being of american women 1970 1995 this paper examines the trends in the well being of american women over the last 25 years a time of significant changes in the relative economic status of women and in the labor market as a whole a broad range of indicators are considered to capture changes in women s well being in the family as well as in the labor market for virtually all age and education groups substantial evidence is obtained of rising gender equality in labor market outcomes notably labor force participation wages and occupational distributions broad evidence is also found of greater gender parity within married couple families as the housework time of husbands increased relative to wives and the relative wages of wives rose compared to their husbands however parallel to the recent evidence of the declining labor market position of lower skilled men there has been a similar deterioration in the economic status of less educated women especially high school dropouts their labor force participation rates and wages have risen at a much slower pace than those of more highly educated women while their incidence of single headship has increased much more rapidly these findings for less educated women serve to underscore the widening gap between more and less skilled americans of both sexes as well as to emphasize its broad dimensions

economic efficiency and frontier techniques abstract most of the literature related to the measurement of economic efficiency has based its analysis either on parametric or on non parametric frontier methods the choice of estimation method has been an issue of debate with some researchers preferring the parametric and others the non parametric approach the aim of this paper is to provide a critical and detailed review of both core frontier methods in our opinion no approach is strictly preferable to any other moreover a careful consideration of their main advantages and disadvantages of the data set utilized and of the intrinsic characteristics of the framework under analysis will help us in the correct implementation of these techniques recent developments in frontier techniques and economic efficiency measurement such as bayesian techniques bootstrapping duality theory and the analysis of sampling asymptotic properties are also considered in this paper

the transition to flexible specialisation in the us film industry external economice the division of labour and the crossing of industrial divides there is increasing evidence that mass production methods are losing their dominance in the advanced industrial economies and that various forms of flexible production organization are on the rise the transition from mass production organization to flexible specialization is analyzed in detail through a case study of the film industry where it is shown that a system of production once based on product standardization high levels of vertical integration and stable oligopolistic market structures has after a period of vertical disintegration given way to a production system based on a deep division of labor between firms and high levels of flexibility in both product design and output levels the transition may be the result of increasing external economies of scale stemming from the development of the industry s social division of labor copyright 1989 by oxford university press

some evidence on the empirical significance of credit rationing this paper examines the credit rationing debate using detailed contract information on over one million commercial bank loans from 1977 to 1988 while commercial loan rates are sticky consistent with rationing this stickiness varies with loan contract terms in ways that are not predicted by equilibrium credit rationing theory in addition the proportion of new loans issued under commitment does not increase significantly when credit markets are tight despite the fact that borrowers without commitments can be rationed whereas commitment borrowers are contractually insulated from rationing overall the data suggest that equilibrium rationing is not a significant macroeconomic phenomenon

what ever happened to poverty alleviation abstract the failure of many programs directed toward alleviating poverty is better understood than the successes this paper identifies the traits that characterize several better performing programs funded by the ford foundation traits that are not commonly found in such programs all focused narrowly on a particular trade or activity in the beginning used credit as an entry point started by brokering loans rather than lending directly and had leadership linked to powerful institutions participants were already engaged in the economic activities supported by the programs marketing channels existed and powerful consumer groups were often in favor of production by beneficiary groups though these findings seem obvious few programs funded by donors display these characteristics suggesting that donors choose programs and organizations more carefully and not limit their funding to the nongovernmental sector

small firms and their helpers lessons on demand abstract small enterprise se programs are currently the rage because of their potential to create employment they are typically supply driven providing standardized training technical assistance credit but most cases of se based growth have involved demand driven support provided by large customers firms traders government agencies state enterprises this article argues that such inherently customized support constitutes a better way to deliver services to ses and is more likely to stimulate sustained se growth with respect to se favoring procurement by government in particular we show that this can be done without running up against the problems of similar attempts in the past and in a way that also reduces the costs of running government we draw for illustration from a successful case of se favoring procurement in the brazilian state of ceara

the costs and returns of agricultural credit delivery borrower level data from 963 agricultural lending relationships are used to examine how several factors influence the costs and returns of extending agricultural credit the results provide estimates of the costs and returns of agricultural lending and the extent to which these costs and returns are influenced by factors such as loan volume lender borrower relationship factors and contract terms the findings indicate that economies of size exist in agricultural credit delivery and that lenders pass most of these benefits on to borrowers through lower interest rates in addition the impacts of lender borrower relationship factors were relatively small

from ascribed to earned trust in exporting clusters abstract this paper is concerned with the role of trust in export manufacturing it asks how trust has developed in two industrial clusters which are located in developing countries and export most of their output to north america and europe the main conclusion is that trust was based initially on socio cultural ties between clustered firms and later on conscious investments in inter firm relationships