assessing the effects of tariff reform on u s food manufacturing industries the role of imperfect competition and intermediate inputs recent work indicates that the joint effects of intermediate input and final output tariff reforms on equilibrium in the differentiated final products sector are analytically ambiguous this issue is addressed empirically for disaggregate imperfectly competitive u s food manufacturing industries the input tariff effect dominates in most industries leading to increases in the number of u s firms and total industry output as a result of tariff reform this provides evidence that the existing u s tariff profile discriminates against domestic food manufacturers as input tariff effects outweigh the protection offered by output tariffs this conclusion is robust to changes in the degree of interfirm rivalry monopolistic competition or cournot oligopoly

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

long run effects of public sector sponsored training in west germany between 1991 and 1997 west germany spent on average about 3 6 bn euro per year on public sector sponsored training programmes for the unemployed we base our empirical analysis on a new administrative data base that plausibly allows for selectivity correction by microeconometric matching methods we identify the effects of different types of training programmes over a horizon of more than seven years using bias corrected weighted multiple neighbours matching we find that all programmes have negative effects in the short run and positive effects over a horizon of about four years however for substantive training programmes with duration of about two years gains in employment probabilities of more than 10 points appear to be sustainable but come at the price of large negative lock in effects

making sense of the competitiveness debate the debate over national competitiveness is marked by some basic misperceptions with few exceptions those who use the term have a crude essentially mercantilist view of world trade in which competition among nations is just like competition between corporations not only do the authors and readers of reports on national competitiveness usually not understand comparative advantage they are unaware of the most basic adding up constraints economists however find it hard to believe that seemingly well informed people can really be this naive and assume that there must be more sophisticated ideas lying behind what they say the rationales offered by economists in turn offer false comfort to the would be sophisticates who like the term competitiveness they believe that they have transcended conventional economic theory when the fact is that they have failed to comprehend it in short the actual level of discussion is lower than any of the participants imagines copyright 1996 by oxford university press

discrete choice cannot generate demand that is additively separable in own price abstract we show that in a unit demand discrete choice framework with at least three goods demand cannot be additively separable in own price this result sharpens the analogous result of jaffe and weyl 2010 in the case of linear demand and has implications for testing of the discrete choice assumption out of sample prediction and welfare analysis

sophisticated entry in a model of spatial competition we analyze free entry equilibrium in a model of spatial competition in which locations of established firms are fixed and entrants profit expectations are rational our most interesting results concern large economies economies in which the number of firms is arbitrarily large when the average cost function is u shaped free entry equilibrium is unique socially optimal and characterized by zero profit in contract when there are no diseconomies of scale even large economies are stubbornly imperfect firms can earn substantial pure profit and free entry equilibrium is neither unique nor socially optimal

do regions benefit from active labour market policies a macroeconometric evaluation using spatial panel methods dauth w hujer r and wolf k do regions benefit from active labour market policies a macroeconometric evaluation using spatial panel methods regional studies the effect of active labour market policies on all job seekers in a region is assessed using the variation in the participation in these programmes across regions over time the starting point is an augmented regional matching function which is extended by allowing for a heterogeneous search effectiveness parameter for current participants and job seekers who finished a measure recently a spatial dynamic panel data model is estimated by using a quasi ml estimation procedure it is found that job schemes in the non profit sector wage subsidies and advancement of apprenticeships significantly increase the regional number of matches

trade in technology a potential solution to the food security challenges of the 21st century abstract the recent rise in caloric undernutrition in sub saharan africa ssa demonstrates the continued relevance of the malthusian footrace between food availability and population sluggish growth in farm productivity in ssa has brought to the fore the key role of agricultural technology in alleviating future food insecurity we develop a model of technology food security and international trade with three distinct channels for technology reduce food insecurity in ssa the first is via greater domestic r d investment an alternative is to import technologies from other countries with significant knowledge capital the third role for technology to resolve the malthusian dilemma in ssa is that of virtual technology trade i e importing technological investments undertaken elsewhere through cheaper imported food to assess the relative contribution of each channel to food security in africa we employ a partial equilibrium quantitative trade model augmented by a temporal relationship between r d investments knowledge capital and agricultural productivity over the historical period 1991 2011 we find that direct r d investments in ssa have been the dominant vehicle for lowering food prices in africa looking forward to 2050 we find that virtual technology trade will be the most important vehicle for reducing non farm undernutrition in africa

location models as models of product choice abstract markets in which firm choice of product is an economic decision are commonly analyzed using a variant of the location model pioneered by hotelling econ j 39 1929 41 57 this paper develops a framework for formalizing the idea that a set of consumers with preferences defined over an abstract set of commodities can be represented as if they behaved as is typically assumed in the goods as locations models with this framework in place we are able to derive the preference assumptions underlying the two most common versions of these models and also to uncover the foundations of the now well known principle of minimum differentiation

can training and employment subsidies combat european unemployment active policy evaluation problems methods and results european countries with poorly performing labour markets and labour market institutions conducive to high unemployment also feature considerable expenditures on active labour market policy and such policies are emphasized by the european union s employment strategy however the practice of these programmes evaluation is much less well developed in europe than in the united states we outline key issues facing such evaluation and offer a review and formal assessment of european evaluation studies over the last three decades we find that programme effects are very heterogeneous across types of interventions and target groups that training and job search assistance can be effective and that the young among the unemployed are typically difficult to assist jochen kluve and christoph m schmidt

optimal use of labor market policies the role of job search assistance abstract this paper demonstrates how economic theory can be combined with state of the art empirics to make quantitative statements about optimal policy using a large administrative data set for west germany as well as nonparametric and semiparametric estimation techniques i parameterize the model proposed by pavoni and violante 2005 2007 for the optimal choice of different financial and activation measures for unemployed workers the parameterized model is used to study the role of job search assistance in optimal welfare to work programs and assess the optimality of the west german policy in the period 2000 to 2002

who benefits from job corps a distributional analysis of an active labor market program summary using recently developed econometric techniques to estimate quantile treatment effects qte and experimental data we examine the impact of job corps on earnings distribution our results indicate a great deal of heterogeneity in the effects of job corps the qtes show an increasing pattern along the earnings distribution with much more pronounced differences at the upper quantiles for males whites and ages 20 24 moreover we find the qtes to be very small at quantiles below the median for males ages 16 17 and 18 19 and non resident students we propose strong economic conditions and skill hypotheses to explain the heterogeneity observed over the earnings distribution copyright 2013 john wiley sons ltd

management practices work life balance and productivity a review of some recent evidence increasing product market competition is believed to be a driving force behind higher productivity however even those critics of globalization who accept this argument claim that there is a hard trade off because tougher competition comes at the price of reducing work life balance wlb optimists by contrast argue that competition can spur better wlb practices and therefore higher productivity so there is a win win situation to address this issue we use an innovative survey tool to collect the first international data on management practices and wlb practices surveying 732 medium sized manufacturing firms in the usa france germany and the uk we find that the usa has the best management practices but the worst work life balance when we look within countries however we reject the pessimistic trade off model first wlb outcomes are significantly associated with better management so that well run firms are both more productive and offer better conditions for their employees second tougher competition increases average management quality but does not negatively affect employees working environment as with many other studies better wlb practices are associated with significantly higher productivity this relationship disappears however after controlling for the overall quality of management

state modernization devolution and economic governance an introduction and guide to debate jones m d goodwin m a jones r 2005 state modernization devolution and economic governance an introduction and guide to debate regional studies 39 4 397 403

estimating dynamic localization economies the inadvertent success of the specialization index and the location quotient estimating dynamic localization economies the inadvertent success of the specialization index and the location quotient regional studies after addressing definitional issues on the concepts of c

technology and competitiveness this paper reviews the literature on technology and competitiveness first the concept of the international competitiveness of a country and various theoretical approaches on the relationship between trade and growth are discussed then a number of empirical studies of the impact of technology as evidenced by r d patents etc on exports are examined the final section summarizes the evidence and considers the lessons for policy copyright 1996 by oxford university press

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

which side of the coin the regional governance of science and innovation koschatzky k kroll h 2007 which side of the coin the regional governance of science and innovation regional studies 41 1115 1127 the paper deals with the impact of recent trends in the devolution of political powers in science technology and innovation policies it argues that some problems are associated with this regionalization because the emerging multi level governance structures turn political action into a complex bargaining process between actor groups with partially conflicting interests the paper sketches the theoretical potentials and limitations of science technology and innovation policy designed at the regional level based on regional evidence from the german federal system it demonstrates which policy aspects are suitable for devolution to regional governments and how they can be integrated in multi level governance structures koschatzky k et kroll h 2007 quelle facette du probleme la gouvernance reginale de la science et de l innovation regional studies 41 1115 1127

monopolistic competiton on the pyramid the purpose of this paper is to develop a model of monopolistic competition that has a simple locational interpretation and which allows for multifirm competition one of the major weaknesses of the standard circular road model is the fact that it allows only localized competition this creates problems when one wishes to analyze problems of international trade where one often has to work with firms with different production costs one of the major advantages of the pyramid model presented here is that one can easily compute the firms equilibrium profits even when their production costs differ copyright 1991 by blackwell publishing ltd

a representative consumer theory of the logit model the log it model is usually derived from a discrete choice approach with stoc hastic utilities it is shown here that the logit demand system may also be derived from the maximization of a deterministic entropy type utility the latter may be interpreted as the preference function of a representative consumer with variety seeking behavior this altern ative view suggests a generalization of the standard logit which allo ws total demand to be determined endogenously copyright 1988 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

institutional theory and mnc subsidiary hrm practices evidence from a three country study this study sets out to explore human resource management hrm practices in multinational corporation mnc subsidiaries within an institutional theory framework based on a sample of 158 subsidiaries of mncs operating in the united states russia and finland the paper examines factors hypothesised to influence the hrm practices adapted in us japanese and european mnc subsidiaries located in russia finland and the us the results indicate significant differences in hrm practices used across host countries both the status of the subsidiary human resource department and the degree to which the subsidiary was involved in knowledge transfer with other parts of the mnc had a significant impact on the selection of hrm practices

equilibrium with product differentiation tive consumer formulations is used to examine the properties of single and multiple price equilibria conditions under which decreases in the intensity of consumer preferences reduce price are given it is shown that with certain types of demand curves entry can eliminate price cost markups even given product differentiation if competition is localized it is demonstrated that entry does not affect the markup finally the effect of spurious product differentiation on price is examined

general equilibrium treatment effects a study of tuition policy this paper defines and estimates general equilibrium treatment effects the conventional approach in the literature on treatment effects ignores interactions among individuals induced by the policy interventions being studied focusing on the impact of tuition policy and using estimates from our dynamic overlapping generations general equilibrium model of capital and human capital formation we find that general equilibrium impacts of tuition on college enrollment are an order of magnitude smaller than those reported in the literature on microeconomic treatment effects the assumptions used to justify the late parameter in a partial equilibrium setting do not hold in a general equilibrium setting policy changes induce two way flows we extend the late concept to a general equilibrium setting we present a more comprehensive evaluation to program evaluation by considering both the tax and benefit consequences of the program being evaluated and placing the analysis in a market setting this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

limited information and advertising in the u s personal computer industry traditional discrete choice models assume buyers are aware of all products for sale in markets where products change rapidly the full information assumption is untenable i present a discrete choice model of limited consumer information where advertising influences the set of products from which consumers choose to purchase i apply the model to the u s personal computer market where top firms spend over 2 billion annually on advertising i find estimated markups of 19 over production costs where top firms advertise more than average and earn higher than average markups high markups are explained to a large extent by informational asymmetries across consumers where full information models predict markups of one fourth the magnitude i find that estimated product demand curves are biased toward being too elastic under traditional models i show how to use data on media exposure to improve estimated price elasticities in the absence of micro ad data

governance in the english regions the role of the regional development agencies in the absence of regional government new labour has pursued a process of administrative decentralisation in the english regions outside london including the appointment of regional development agencies rdas charged with stimulating economic modernisation and assisting in reducing regional economic disparities they have acquired a key position as strategic power brokers situated between the agendas of whitehall and the demands of sub national interests rdas operate however within complex competing structures tied to meeting nationally determined targets and too little attention has been given to capturing their overall effectiveness reflecting new labour s rejection of the need for a more even spread of economic activity between regions rdas also lack sufficient resources to make a significant impact on economic disparities treasury led reforms could see the agencies taking responsibility for preparing single regional strategies but there are contradictions between their remit to increase economic growth and deliver social and environmental objectives

outsourcing and offshoring implications for productivity of business services this paper reviews the implications of outsourcing and offshoring for the productivity of business services in the uk official statistics indicate that business service productivity has grown by over 20 per cent in the last 7 years at the same time as employment grew by 20 per cent the paper considers possible factors that account for the simultaneous growth of employment and productivity first we discuss outsourcing and offshoring and their role in enhancing productivity through greater specialization standardization and consolidation of business processes and a shift to higher value added services outsourcing of business services is interpreted as part of corporate restructuring namely as the unbundling of corporate functions as well as vertical disintegration second as some services become more like products both low skilled and high skilled jobs are subjected to productivity growth through standardization and digitization it is argued however that the future of business service productivity is on a knife edge depending on the mix of two sources of productivity enhancement namely greater standardization and capturing value from customized solutions copyright 2006 oxford university press

which demand systems can be generated by discrete choice we provide a simple necessary and sufficient condition for when a multiproduct demand system can be generated from a discrete choice model with unit demands

valuing the characteristics of natural gas vehicles an implicit markets approach this paper estimates the costs of a government mandate to use natural gas vehicles focusing on the less desirable attributes that these vehicles 9 possess a model of producer and consumer behavior in a market for a differentiated product is constructed a hedonic price function is estimated and consumer surplus losses from the substitution of natural gas cars for gasoline cars are calculated these losses are found to be significant the average per car consumer surplus loss ranges from 1100 to 3200 with 20 to nearly 50 of the loss due to changes in vehicle characteristics the costs of such a policy appear to be greater than the environmental benefits but may not be too far out of line with the costs of alternative approaches for reducing vehicular pollution copyright 1996 by mit press

pricing strategies in a dynamic duopoly a differential game model we formulate a differential game model for dynamic pricing in a duopolistic market firms demand functions are derived from utility maximizing behavior of consumers with the demand for a brand given by the logit model preferences for brands are assumed to evolve over time in the market in a manner akin to learning models postulated in the marketing literature we derive the differential equations governing the equilibrium open loop price paths over time and show that in steady state the brand with the higher preference level charges the higher price the formulation is extended to include the effects of consumer heterogeneity and equilibrium steady state prices are compared with those obtained when heterogeneity is ignored a comparison of steady state dynamic prices with myopic prices is provided an empirical example is discussed to show how steady state model predictions may be obtained from actual longitudinal purchase data

human resource management practices in the multinational company a test of system societal and dominance effects does the use of hrm practices by multinational companies mncs reflect their national origins or are practices similar regardless of context to the extent that practices are similar is there any evidence of global best standards the authors use the system societal and dominance framework to address these questions through analysis of 1 100 mnc subsidiaries in canada ireland spain and the united kingdom they argue that this framework offers a richer account than alternatives such as varieties of capitalism the study moves beyond previous research by differentiating between system effects at the global level and dominance effects arising from the diffusion of practices from a dominant economy it shows that both effects are present as are some differences at the societal level results suggest that mncs configure their hrm practices in response to all three forces rather than to some uniform global best practices or to their national institutional contexts

what works a meta analysis of recent active labor market program evaluations we summarize the estimates from over 200 recent studies of active labor market programs we classify the estimates by type of program and participant group and distinguish between three different post program time horizons using regression models for the estimated program effect for studies that model the probability of employment and for the sign and significance of the estimated effect for all the studies in our sample we conclude that 1 average impacts are close to zero in the short run but become more positive 2 3 years after completion of the program 2 the time profile of impacts varies by type of program with larger average gains for programs that emphasize human capital accumulation 3 there is systematic heterogeneity across participant groups with larger impacts for females and participants who enter from long term unemployment 4 active labor market programs are more likely to show positive impacts in a recession

monopolistic competition and preference diversity approach our model is especially attractive because it starts from economic primitives a specification of the set of possible individual preference patterns it shows how specific properties of the distribution of preferences translate into properties of aggregate demand this allows us to understand the relationship between the distribution of preferences and the degree to which the market introduces biases in product selection this paper presents a general model of the demand for differentiated products which has as special cases two of the most popular approaches used to analyse welfare and competition in monopolistically competitive markets the model of spatial competition on the circle and the model of symmetric aggregate demand the circle model is attractive because both demand and costs have a definite and easy to visualize physical foundation and because it is tractable salop 1979 provides an exemplary modem analysis with this model one can analyze the relationship between the optimal amount of product variety and the amount which a monopolistically competitive market will support in many plausible cases competition produces too much variety such a strong conclusion raises questions of robustness almost simultaneously spence 1976 and dixit and stiglitz 1977 developed an alternative approach to monopolistic competition based upon the chamberlinian assumption of symmetry see also shubik 1959 rather than specifying a distribution of preferences and deriving demand through aggregation as did salop and his predecessors these authors started by specifying a symmetric aggregate benefit function indicating how social welfare depends on the amounts of the various products supplied both spence and dixit stiglitz were able to show that the welfare conclusions from the circle model were not robust depending on the functional form of the benefit function equilibrium may entail either excessive or insufficient product variety 1 the assumption of symmetric demand has proven fruitful in the analysis of many economic problems it is therefore natural to ask what distribution of tastes would give

evaluation of swedish youth labor market programs this paper evaluates two swedish active labour market programmes for youth namely youth practice and labour market training a non parametric matching approach is applied to estimate the average p

the role of online platforms for media markets two dimensional spatial competition in a two sided market abstract we analyze the market for online and offline media in a model of two dimensional spatial competition where media outlets sell content and advertising space consumer preferences are distributed along the style and type of news coverage where the distance costs may vary across dimensions for integrated provision of online and offline platforms we show that entering the online market reduces average profits and may even constitute a prisoner s dilemma specialized provision may yield polarization in the style and type dimensions this is in contrast to the maximum minimum differentiation result previously established in the literature on multidimensional horizontal competition we show that maximal differentiation in both dimensions occurs due to the discrete nature of the type dimension and asymmetric advertising markets

measuring product diversity abstract the diversity of a set of products can be defined as a function of the bilateral distances between its elements we show how these bilateral distances can be represented by parameters in a utility function and measured from observable data

do business cycle conditions at the time of labor market entry affect future employment prospects abstract labor market conditions at the time and place of potential entry into the labor market are shown to have a substantial and persistent effect on adult employment prospects individuals who face particularly depressed local labor markets when they graduate from secondary education are other things equal subject to relatively high rates of nonemployment during their whole prime age work career building on a unique combination of micro and macro data from norway we show that these effects are robust with respect to model specification and conditioning variables and that they are not limited to individuals with a particularly disadvantaged background

an evaluation of the swedish system of active labour market programmes in the 1990s we investigate the presence of short and long term effects from joining a swedish labor market program vis a vis more intense job search in open unemployment overall the impact of the program system is found to have been mixed joining a program has increased employment rates among participants a result robust to a misclassification problem in the data on the other hand it has also allowed participants to remain significantly longer on unemployment benefits and more generally in the unemployment system this being particularly the case for those entitled individuals entering a program around the time of their unemployment benefits exhaustion

why is productivity so dispersed many papers have documented wide variations in productivity even in narrowly defined industries some have argued that this primarily reflects measurement problems due for example to comparing across different products others argue that this reflects persistent differences in performance due for example to management this paper looks at productivity differences not within an industry but within a firm we use data on productivity of different branches within lines of business of a major uk based wholesaler using these productivity data for comparisons is we argue more likely to compare like with like than comparing between firms we document sustained differences in productivity even between branches within the same line of business we also discuss the extent to which they are correlated with differences in management and find that such differences account for around 40 per cent of the difference in productivity copyright 2006 oxford university press

strategic market coverage in spatial competition abstract we consider in this paper competition through prices and market coverages in a spatial duopoly we characterize and compare the stackelberg equilibria and the bertrand equilibria we show that when the cost of informing the consumers is small duopolists always choose to inform all consumers in the bertrand equilibrium but the leader in the stackelberg equilibrium may choose not to inform everyone when the duopolistic competition is intense enough thereby generating overlapping markets in equilibrium prices may be strategic complements strategic substitutes or be strategically independent considering market coverage as chosen by the firms changes the conventional relationships between differentiation profits and markups

uk regional policy an evaluation introduct ion ities in unemployment during the recession of the early 1990s which bit deeply in the southern regions however the convergence of regional unemployment rates uk regional policy has existed at varying levels of intensity for nearly seven decades throughout its conceals persistent spatial disparities in unemployment at a higher level of disaggregation fig 2 shows that existence the overriding objective has been to provide economic help to the country s most heavily depressed those travel to work areas experiencing the highest unemployment rates in 1985 tend to be the same areas or least well ov areas a wide variety of policy measures have been used to create employment and thereby some 10 years later further table 1 shows that the spatial pattern of unemployment at county level has reduce unemployment in the areas with persistently high unemployment this paper has two primary aims remained remarkably stable broad regional aggregates conceal immense spatial disparities in unemployment rstly to identify the major bene ts of regional policy and secondly to investigate ways in which uk regional within regions and these spatial disparities are persistent over time it is this high unemployment persistence that policy can be made more evective and hence more eycient ultimately justi es spatially discriminating policies such as regional policy as a rst step it needs to be established that the uk actually has a regional problem it is easy to demonstrate the paper is organized as follows the next section identi es the major economic and social bene ts of that spatial disparities in unemployment at a broad level have virtually disappeared during the 1990s the regional policy followed by a review of recent government views on the case for regional policy the fourth north south divide that was so evident in the 1980s has been eroded by a substantial convergence in unsection compares two diverent approaches to solving regional problems the rst is a market based approach employment rates this is vividly illustrated in fig 1 which shows the dramatic narrowing of regional disparwhich aims to make local labour markets more exible

the displacement effect of reemployment bonus programs we develop a partial equilibrium matching model of the labor market in order to examine whether adoption of a reemployment bonus would displace workers not offered the bonus we examine the displacement effect for a unemployment insurance ui eligible workers who are offered but do not find a job in time to qualify for a bonus and b ui ineligible workers who are never offered a bonus the model predicts minimal displacement of the former group but for the latter group the model predicts an increase in unemployment duration of 2 4 week and an increase in unemployment of up to 2 per thousand

evaluating transfer programmes within a general equilibrium framework we develop a general equilibrium model for evaluating domestically financed transfer programmes and derive analytical expressions which provide a framework for combining results from a computable general equilibrium model with disaggregated household data we separate the welfare impact into three components i e redistribution reallocative and distortionary effects we show how these are subsumed within one parameter the cost of public funds using a mexican programme for illustration we show that substantial welfare gains result from a switch from universal food subsidies to targeted transfers reflecting both the improved targeting efficiency of the latter and the relaxation the trade off between equity and efficiency when designing tax systems in an attempt to maximise the welfare impact of government transfers on lowincome households many governments in both developed and developing countries have moved towards better targeted transfer programmes in developed countries these transfers mostly take the form of cash transfers or tax credits whereas in developing countries they take the form of either cash transfers e g in latin america or infra marginal subsidised food rations e g in south asia l when evaluating the economic impact of such transfers it is useful to separate these into direct and indirect income or welfare effects the direct income effects reflect the design of the programme i e the rules for targeting transfers these are often referred to as first round effects and are captured by partial equilibrium approaches to policy evaluation the indirect effects capture the second round income changes brought about by the impact of cash transfers and their financing on the level and composition of demand and supply most evaluations of social safety net programmes focus on the partial equilibrium evaluation of programme targeting outcomes even those that focus on the indirect impacts tend to concentrate on their efficiency implications with only a very limited analysis of income distribution outcomes and with little attempt to combine both the equity and efficiency dimensions this is all the more limiting given that the central objective of these programmes is to improve income distribution in this paper we focus primarily on the indirect income effects in particular we show how the results from a computable general equilibrium model can be combined with the information available in standard household surveys to

uk competitiveness policy vs japanese industrial policy it is often claimed that japanese industrial policy targeted high growth or high productivity growth sectors see inter alia johnson i982 carliner i986 nester i99i tyson 1992 it is then argued that because both the targeted industries and the japanese economy have prospered it follows that japanese industrial policy must have been successful hence britain and other advanced nations either are justified in emulating or should hasten to follow the japanese example this raises the question of whether the united kingdom s competitiveness policy is the appropriate response or is a completely different animal the purpose of this paper is to explore the main areas in contention but before doing so it is important to be clear about what one means by industrial and competitiveness policies

competition among non life insurers under solvency constraints a game theoretic approach we formulate a noncooperative game to model competition for policyholders among non life insurance companies taking into account market premium solvency level market share and underwriting results we study nash equilibria and stackelberg equilibria for the premium levels and give numerical illustrations

constrained discretion in uk monetary and regional policy mcvittie e and swales j k 2007 constrained discretion in uk monetary and regional policy regional studies 41 h m treasury claims that the notion of constrained discretion which directs the effective operation of uk monetary policy applies equally to other delegated and devolved policies such as the use of regional development agencies in the delivery of english regional policy a transaction cost politics perspective is used to argue that the delegation of responsibility for monetary stabilization raises principal agent issues quite different to those encountered in the delegation of the responsibility for regional regeneration in particular the effectiveness and transparency that characterize present day monetary policy cannot be expected in regional policy further the institutional arrangements that accompany the operation of regional development agencies in england should be critically reviewed mcvittie e et swales j k 2007 la notion de discretion entravee dans les poli

trade democracy and the gravity equation abstract does democracy affect trade there are several channels by which democracy may affect trade with differing implications first democratization in the exporting country can improve product quality and reduce trade costs increasing bilateral trade second democratization in the importing country may increase trade barriers and thus reduce imports in this paper i analyze the effect of democracy on trade by augmenting the gravity equation with democracy using a rich panel data set and controlling for the endogeneity of democracy i find empirical evidence consistent with the hypothesis that democracy fosters trade this finding is robust to various econometric methods and to the use of disaggregated specifications

the assessment international competitiveness the concept of international competitiveness as applied to national economies is a popular one politicians businessmen and economists alike re fer to it in day to day discussion when looking at the external export import market share or trade balance performance of different countries indi cators are produced showing changes in or levels of various countries competitiveness e g the relative price or cost indices regularly published by the imf and the oecd or the absolute measures produced by organizations such as the geneva world economic forum and the lausanne institute for management development governments of ten instigate research on the matter as for instance in the case of the 1993 us competitiveness policy council orthe 1995 eu competitiveness advisory group yet it has recently been argued by paul krugman that competitiveness is a meaningless word when applied to national economies and the obsession with competitiveness is both wrong and dangerous krugman 1994 p 44 apositionkrugman forcefully reaffirms in his contribution to this issue of the oxford review of economic policy

from skills revolution to productivity miracle not as easy as it sounds this article surveys the potential impact of skill on productivity it opens with a review of the utility of productivity as a measure of systemic economic performance and then goes on to explore the oft assumed close and strong relationship between skills and productivity the importance of other factors and types of investment is stressed these complementary elements may be at least as important as skill in boosting performance and their absence may negate the impact of public investment in education and training the ability of economic development policy particularly as it relates to the regional development agencies to address skills and economic development is assessed and questions are raised about what type and level of skill might have the largest impact on economic performance in conclusion we discuss the demands that new policy approaches are making upon the machinery and personnel of government

consumer heterogeneity and strategic quality decisions though recent studies show that quality differentiation is an equilibrium outcome products of similar qualities frequently are observed in the marketplace this inconsistency may be explained by incorporating consumer heterogeneity along unobservable attributes into a model of competition in this paper consumers not only take into account the quality and price of a product but also their heterogeneous tastes along other attributes which are unobservable to firms we investigate the effect of heterogeneity along the unobservable attributes on both quality and price equilibrium in a two stage game framework we show that when consumers are sufficiently heterogeneous along the unobservable attributes the firms offer products of identical qualities in equilibrium under low levels of heterogeneity along the unobservable attributes however our results are consistent with past research which argues for quality differentiation

high performance work systems in foreign subsidiaries of american multinationals an institutional model this study examines the implementation of high performance work systems hpwss in 217 subsidiaries of american based multinational enterprises operating in 14 countries in asia africa and europe specifically this paper explores the effect of host country institutional factors on the extent of hpws implementation in subsidiaries and focuses on strong agency influences and dominance effects the proposed model was more successful in explaining the effect of hpwss on rank and file employees than on managers of particular interest is the strong positive association between host country economic growth and hpws implementation which suggests a possible cyclical sensitivity of subsidiaries regarding human resource management strategy

the assessment knowledge skills and competitiveness the autumn 1988 issue of the oxford review of economic policy considered the uk s deficiencies in vocational education and training vet it was there that finegold and soskice first popularized the notion of the low skills low quality equilibrium this assessment originally introduces a range of articles which discussed developments in the decade that has passed since then in the same journal issue no 1 1999 it argues that despite massive policy initiatives there has been only limited improvement in the uk s relative vet performance considerable progress has been made in analysis of market failures affecting the supply of skills and in analysis of the possible causes and consequences of low employer demand for skills systems failure the recent competitiveness white paper reflects this improved understanding

are training programs more effective when unemployment is high we estimate short run medium run and long run individual labor market effects of training programs for the unemployed by following program participation on a monthly basis over a 10 year period since analyzing the effectiveness of training over such a long period is impossible with experimental data we use an administrative database compiled for evaluating german training programs based on matching estimation adapted to address the various issues that arise in this particular context we find a clear positive relation between the effectiveness of the programs and the unemployment rate over time

spatial price competition a semiparametric approach we investigate the nature of price competition among firms that produce differentiated products and compete in markets that are limited in extent we propose an instrumental variables series estimator for the matrix of cross price response coefficients demonstrate that our estimator is consistent and derive its asymptotic distribution our semiparametric approach allows us to discriminate among models of global competition in which all products compete with all others and local competition in which products compete only with their neighbors we apply our semiparametric estimator to data from u s wholesale gasoline markets and find that in this market competition is highly localized

a microeconometric evaluation of the active labour market policy in switzerland in the second part of the 1990 s switzerland conducted an ambitious active labour market policy almp encompassing a wide variety of programmes we evaluate the effects of these programmes on the individual employment probability of potential participants our econometric analysis uses unusually informative data origi nating from administrative unemployment and social security records we apply a matching es timator adapted for the case of multiple programmes we find substantial positive effects for one particular programme that is a unique feature of the swiss almp it consists of a wage subsidy for temporary jobs in the regular labour market that would otherwise not be taken up by the unemployed we also find large negative effects for traditional employment programmes oper ated in sheltered labour markets for training courses the results are mixed doi 10 1111 1468 0297 00072 download internet appendix pdf 2 590 kb

financialization of the global economy the instability of the world financial system starkly revealed in the recent debacle is not the only problem it poses its secularly increasing dominance over the real economy is in itself a phenomenon that needs examining the article traces the source of this increasing dominance not just to the increasingly leveraged and increasingly incomprehensible forms of intermediation between savers and those in the real economy who need credit and insurance but also to the increasingly universal doctrine that maximizing shareholder value is the sole raison d etre of the firm and the promotion by governments of an equity culture some of the social consequences of financialization are exacerbating inequalities greater insecurity misdirection of talent and the erosion of trust copyright 2008 oxford university press

regional selective assistance is the spend enough and is it targeting the right places this article examines the uk regional selective assistance scheme and critically appraises on going reforms these reforms have been triggered by the process of redrawing the map of eligible areas within new european commission competition policy guidelines a recent uk government white paper on competitiveness has also led to significant changes being considered it is argued that while the existing reforms have not fundamentally changed the nature of regional selective assistance they may well be harbingers of more threatening challenges particularly after 2006

the industrial policy of competitiveness a review of recent developments in the uk the article reviews the recent developments in uk competitiveness policy and explores its relationship with industrial policy including regional industrial policy it argues that competitiveness is virtually synonymous with productivity growth but that while four competitiveness white papers of the 1990s potentially broadened the scope of uk industrial policy the shift from sectoral to horizontal measures has in fact helped much reduce the content of this policy the article reviews current industrial policy and expenditure distinguishing between the areas of science and technology small firms and regional policy it argues that industrial policy is now a part of competitiveness policy being closely aligned to the efficiency role of government it finds that while policy has converged on a narrower set of measures the traditional boundaries between the science and technology small firm and regional policy components have become much less clear cut

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

human resource management policies and productivity new evidence from an econometric case study first we distinguish various approaches used by economists to assess the impact of human resource management practices on productivity and then we briefly review and illustrate studies that represent different approaches in the main part of the paper we illustrate the econometric case study method by using new data to analyse a case from retail trade and by emulating an approach used in an earlier study consistent with theory we find that when employees have opportunities to participate to receive appropriate information and pertinent rewards a one standard deviation increase of the first principal component score would increase productivity by 1 our findings imply that there are benefits to innovative work practices even in settings where employees do simple tasks and employees are relatively low skilled since our findings are similar to those contained in a previous study our results also indicate the value of replication studies

england s problem region regionalism in the south east england s south east is the most affluent and privileged place in the uk yet it is also the most institutionally weak and geographically divided of all the english regions and while all the english regions are to some extent unnatural artifices the south east is defined mainly in relation to an external space london the new post 1997 regional bodies rdas regional assemblies and expanded government offices have the task of constructing and legitimizing an institutional framework that is unable to incorporate the heart of the regional economy in the capital city there is as a result little popular support in the south east for regional government and limited pan regional cohesion among elites which tend to have a fragmented local focus incentives for a fuller regional mobilization may though emerge as a defensive strategy to prevent the migration of resources to more coherent and economically disadvantaged northern regions le sud est d angleterre est la region la plus riche et la plus fa

demand for differentiated products discrete choice models and the characteristics approach we propose a specific characteristics framework in order to construct linkages between alternative conceptual approaches to modelling product differentiation first it is shown that a demand system which satisfies the gross substitutes property imposes specific requirements on the locations of products in particular the dimension of the characteristics space must be larger than or equal to the number of products minus one we then identify a method for casting a given demand system subject to certain restrictions into our characteristics framework this is illustrated for the logit probit and linear probability models of discrete choice theory finally we find a characteristics representation of the ces representative consumer

evaluating the employment impact of a mandatory job search program this paper exploits area based piloting and age related eligibility rules to identify treatment effects of a labor market program the new deal for young people in the u k a central focus is on substitution displacement effects and on equilibrium wage effects the program includes extensive job assistance and wage subsidies to employers we find that the impact of the program significantly raised transitions to employment by about 5 percentage points the impact is robust to a wide variety of nonexperimental estimators however we present some evidence that this effect may not be as large in the longer run jel j18 j23 j38

the impact of vocational training for the unemployed experimental evidence from turkey this brief summarizes the updates from the 2014 paper entitled the impact of vocational training for the unemployed experimental evidence from turkey conducted between between 2010 and 2011 in turkey a randomized experiment is used to evaluate a large scale active labor market policy turkey s vocational training programs for the unemployed a detailed follow up survey of a large sample with low attrition enables precise estimation of treatment impacts and their heterogeneity the average impact of training on employment is positive but close to zero and statistically insignificant which is much lower than either program officials or applicants expected over the first year after training the paper finds that training had statistically significant effects on the quality of employment and that the positive impacts are stronger when training is offered by private providers however longer term administrative data show that after three years these effects have also dissipated

the effects of market economy type and foreign mne subsidiaries on the convergence and divergence of hrm this study explores patterns of human resource management hrm practices across market economies and between indigenous firms and foreign mne subsidiary operations offering a novel perspective on convergence and divergence applying institutional theorizing to improve our understanding of convergence divergence as a process and an outcome data collected from nine countries at three points in time over a decade confirm that convergence and divergence occur to different extents in a nonlinear fashion and vary depending on the area of hrm practice observed patterns of adoption and convergence divergence are explained through the effect of institutional constraints which vary between liberal and coordinated market economies and between indigenous firms and foreign mne subsidiaries specifically we expected and largely found supporting evidence confirming that compensation and wage bargaining level practices show more evidence of being institutionally constrained and hence were less likely to converge than contingent employment training and direct information provision practices the study contributes a more graded conceptualization of convergence divergence from constant no difference through robust convergence non robust convergence non robust divergence and robust divergence to constant difference allowing us to tease out the subtle manifestations of the process that can incorporate the complex dynamic reality of international business

the impact of an adult education voucher program evidence from a randomized field experiment abstract lifelong learning is often promoted in aging societies but little is known about its returns or governments ability to advance it this paper evaluates the effects of a large scale randomized field experiment issuing vouchers for adult education in switzerland we find no significant average effects of the voucher program on earnings employment and subsequent education 1 year after treatment but effects are heterogeneous low educated individuals are most likely to profit from adult education but least likely to use the voucher in addition the public voucher program appears to crowd out firm financed training the findings cast doubt on the effectiveness of untargeted voucher programs in promoting labor market outcomes through adult education

variety and size regulation in discrete choice oligopoly imperfectly competitive markets for a differentiated product may underprovide brand variety when consumer tastes for brands are highly heterogeneous we show that when the brands in question are indivisible in consumption and each consumer buys a customized quantity or size of the preferred brand only a welfare improvement can be obtained by regulating the size of purchase we study neutral size regulation which requires that the size of purchase be set equal to the size that would prevail in the absence of regulation this improves brand variety and consumer surplus provided consumer tastes are sufficiently heterogeneous

improving productivity opening the black box hourly productivity levels in the uk still remain behind those in some competitor countries the government devotes much policy attention to enhancing productivity and continues to emphasise its five drivers investment innovation skills enterprise and competition this article argues that it is investment broadly defined that is the key to sustained productivity improvement the emphasis should be on improving productivity simultaneously with improving the quality of production only thus will the gains be widely shared in achieving these aims there are two prerequisites for policy makers the first is to ensure better coordination of policy than appears to be currently achieved by the present departmental structures in whitehall the second is to recognize fully the long and complex chain of causation that can be triggered by pulling on one policy lever such complexity can only be fully understood by more research on what actually goes on inside the black box of the organization 2006 oxford university press

localized competition multimarket operation and collusive behavior this paper studies collusive behavior in a repeated oligopoly model with localized competition also reinterpreted as a model of multimarket operation private information about the rivals past actions naturally arises from these product market structures the resulting communication problems imply that firms should not adopt strategies with too severe punishments infinite grim punishments may be too severe for large discount factors the standard stick and carrot punishments from the perfect public information model are always too severe for all discount factors modified stick and carrot punishments can still be used though for a smaller range of discount factors than the standard stick and carrot punishments