what drives deregulation economics and politics of the relaxation of bank branching restrictions this paper investigates private interest public interest and political institutional theories of regulatory change to analyze state level deregulation of bank branching restrictions using a hazard model we find that interest group factors related to the relative strength of potential winners large banks and small bank dependent firms and losers small banks and the rival insurance firms can explain the timing of branching deregulation across states during the last quarter century the same factors also explain congressional voting on interstate branching deregulation while we find some support for each theory the private interest approach provides the most compelling overall explanation of our results

uk labour market policy then and now this article considers the evolution of uk labour market policy during the last 30 years it does this through the lens of the social model the social model encompasses the employment relations system the social welfare system and the education and training system it was changed dramatically by the thatcher and major governments the succeeding labour and coalition governments largely embraced this new model and in some ways increased the pace of change the consequences for labour market performance employment unemployment productivity and inequality are explored

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

the finance growth nexus evidence from bank branch deregulation this paper provides evidence that financial markets can directly affect economic growth by studying the relaxation of bank branch restrictions in the united states we find that the rates of real per capita growth in income and output increase significantly following intrastate branch reform we also argue that the observed changes in growth are the result of changes in the banking system improvements in the quality of bank lending not increased volume of bank lending appear to be responsible for faster growth

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

hrm practices r d expenditure and innovative investment evidence from the uk s 1990 workplace industrial relations survey wirs uk labour flexibility is often portrayed as necessary for an innovative economy using evidence from the uk s 1990 workplace industrial relations survey we investigate the relationships between firms human resource management practices and innovation our results suggest that low road hrm practices short term contracts etc are negatively correlated with investment in r d and new technology high road work practices high commitment organization and other systems are positively correlated with investment in r d and new technology copyright 1999 by oxford university press

the outlook for us oil dependence abstract oil dependence is defined as a dynamic problem of short and long run market power the potential monopoly power of an oil cartel depends on its market share and the elasticities of oil supply and demand while the economic vulnerability of oil consuming states depends most directly on the quantity of oil imported and the oil cost share of gross domestic product gdp of these factors only the market share of the organization of petroleum exporting countries opec cartel and the rate of growth of world oil demand are clearly different than they were 25 years ago opec still holds the majority of world oil and in the future will regain market share a hypothetical 2 year supply reduction in 2005 2006 similar in size to those of 1973 1974 or 1979 1980 illustrates the potential benefits to opec and harm to the us economy of a future oil price shock opec s revenues are estimated to increase by roughly 0 7 trillion while the us economy loses about 0 5 trillion strategic petroleum reserves seem ineffective against a determined multi year supply curtailment increasing the market s price responsiveness by improving the technologies of oil supply and oil demand can greatly reduce the costs of oil dependence each element of this interpretation of the oil dependence problem is well supported by previous studies this paper s contribution is to unite these elements into a coherent explanation and to point out the enormously important implications for energy policy

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

creating trust in piranha infested waters the confluence of buyer supplier and host country contexts research by dyer and chu 2000 suggests that trust in exchange varies significantly across borders and influences the level of trust in cross border exchange dyads however while this is a good start research has yet to develop the concept that not only can the countries of origin of the exchange partners influence the nature and outcomes of dyadic trust but also the country where the exchange dyad is located furthermore such home and host country differences may interact with dyad level differences in trust creation capabilities and influence trust violation and repair we develop a framework and propositions along these lines

the future of the high skill equilibrium in germany is the celebrated german skills system in peril western german employers have cut apprenticeship places since the 1980s while the institutional supports of the high skill equilibrium hse analysed by finegold and soskice oxford review of economic policy 4 3 1988 are threatened the globalization of equity markets menaces the patient capital on which german companies depend lean production techniques have rendered strategies of incremental innovation vulnerable on international markets and german employers and labour face mounting organizational difficulties this article derives implications from the hse model to assess these challenges against existing evidence in fact only the declining capacity of employers associations and unions constitutes an empirically verifiable threat to the german apprenticeship system the magnitude of which depends on questionable assumptions of the hse model of potential future salience though is the growing importance of service sector jobs and the further training system in germany which may eventually undo the political compromise on which the hse has historically rested

complementarities of innovation activities an empirical analysis of the german manufacturing sector abstract innovation strategies in manufacturing often involve internal rd it is based on data from the german part of the community innovation survey cis 3 the results provide evidence for significant complementarities between internal r d and r d cooperation but cast doubt on the complementarity of internal and contracted r d since a productivity effect on firms patenting probability or sales with new products cannot be found

dynamic demand and optimal opec pricing an empirical investigation abstract the demand for energy and in particular the demand for oil is very sluggish given this dynamic description of demand a monopoly or a dominant cartel may either apply a volatile or a stable price policy in order to maximize profits in particular earlier works of fromholzer and wirl derive that the shape of the equilibrium demand function determines whether a price is stable or volatile more precisely a concave demand relation induces a smooth and a convex relation leads to a volatile strategy this theory is empirically tested for the demand for opec oil

bank geographic diversification and systemic risk exploiting staggered interstate banking deregulation as exogenous shocks to bank geographic expansion we examine the causal effect of geographic diversification on systemic risk using the gravity deregulation approach we find that bank geographic diversification leads to higher systemic risk measured by the change in conditional value at risk delta covar and financial integration logistic r 2 furthermore we document that geographic diversification affects systemic risk via its impact on asset similarity the impact of geographic diversification on systemic risk is stronger in bhcs located in states comoving less with the u s aggregate economy

labor flexibility and innovation in new ventures the study investigates how labor flexibility affects innovation in new ventures more specifically drawing upon a sample of 143 greek ventures less than 8 years old it examines empirically the individual and interactive effects of functional and numerical flexibility on product innovation it also considers how these effects are moderated by the entrepreneur s political skill results suggest that functional flexibility has a positive direct effect on incremental innovation whereas numerical flexibility has a positive direct effect on radical innovation the interactions between numerical and functional flexibility affect both types of innovation the results also suggest that the labor flexibility innovation relationship is positively moderated by the entrepreneur s political skill these findings point toward aspects of knowledge related with flexible labor engagement and entrepreneurial relational capital that affect innovation

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

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

networks of innovators a synthesis of research issues abstract this paper will first summarise some key findings of empirical research in the 1960s on the role of external sources of scientific technical and market information in successful innovation by business firms this work demonstrated unambiguously the vital importance of external information networks and of collaboration with users during the development of new products and processes moreover the dilemmas of cooperative research in competitive industries were recognised and studied long ago 35 62 76 what then is new about the present wave of interest in networks of innovators are there new forms of organisation or new technologies or new policies which justify renewed research efforts since they go beyond those developments already analysed in earlier empirical and theoretical work section 2 reviews the evidence of new developments in the 1980s in industrial networks regional networks and government sponsored innovative activities it shows that there has indeed been a major upsurge of formal and semi formal flexible networks in the 1980s including some new types of network it also shows that some older forms of research cooperation have been modified and transformed the papers at montreal largely concentrated on the role of regional supplier networks which are a good example of such new wine in old bottles this paper attempts to locate the regional network discussion within a wider context of new developments in networking section 3 discusses the causes of these new developments and whether they are likely to remain a characteristic of national and international innovation systems for a long time to come or prove to be a temporary upsurge to be overtaken later by a wave of take overs and vertical integration finally section 4 sums up some of the other key issues which require further research and debate and the implications for social science theory

srisk a conditional capital shortfall measure of systemic risk we introduce srisk to measure the systemic risk contribution of a financial firm srisk measures the capital shortfall of a firm conditional on a severe market decline and is a function of its size leverage and risk we use the measure to study top financial institutions in the recent financial crisis srisk delivers useful rankings of systemic institutions at various stages of the crisis and identifies fannie mae freddie mac morgan stanley bear stearns and lehman brothers as top contributors as early as 2005 q1 moreover aggregate srisk provides early warning signals of distress in indicators of real activity received june 7 2011 accepted april 18 2016 by editor geert bekaert

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

institutional choices and labor market policy a british swedish comparison focusing on employment exchange systems the authors explain how early labor market institutions established by british and swedish governments affected the possibilities for subsequent policy they demonstrate how the way in which labor exchanges were implemented in britain and sweden limited and facilitated respectively active labor market policy after 1945 the absence of institutional legitimacy in the legacy of the british labor exchange system contrasts with the legitimacy achieved by the swedish system the authors identify the reasons for this comparative pattern and analyze its significance

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

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

the economics of youth training in germany the german ideal may be termed the long view which must eventually lead the german nation to and maintain it in a foremost place as an industrial world power the british method may be regarded as more philanthropic than patriotic the ideal is admirable but the bulk of the nation s workers are not catered for by this ideal and on the bulk of the workers much of the material prosperity of a nation must depend

interpenetration of organization and market japan s firm and market in comparison with the u s abstract resource allocation mechanisms used in the market and within the firm are quite often a mixture of the pure market principle and the pure organization principle market principles penetrate into the firm s resource allocation and organization principles creep into the market allocation interpenetration occurs to remedy the failure of pure principles other in the market or in the organization after presenting this new perspective we analyze resource allocation mechanisms in japan and the u s one conclusion is that interpenetration patterns are rather different between the two countries due to institutional economic and societal differences we also analyze the ways in which these differences affect japanese and american corporate behavior in such areas as diversification strategy corporate financing and innovation and venture business activity

trust across borders we make the case for fresh approaches to examine the role of trust in international collaborations based on the idea that not only do the levels of trust differ across international borders but also both the nature of trust and the institutional and cultural support for trust can vary across different national contexts collaboration partners from different countries are therefore likely to bring either symmetric or asymmetric conceptions of trust to the business relationship we develop a model and propositions linking symmetry and asymmetry in the institutional and cultural support for trust in international collaborations with the degree of partner interdependence and identify implications for governance and trust building investments we conclude with some suggestions for research that incorporates trust asymmetries between partners

perceived trustworthiness and inter firm governance empirical evidence from the uk printing industry the paper describes six representative theoretical positions regarding the impact of trustworthiness on the organisation of inter firm relations the positions are then assessed on the basis of a survey of 184 buyer supplier relationships in the uk printing industry the widely accepted transaction cost argument for trust as a parameter reducing hierarchy is dismissed instead the so called triadic forces argument based on bradach j l and eccles r g 1989 price authority and trust from ideal types to plural forms annual review of sociology vol 15 96 118 receives the strongest support market hierarchy and trust represent alternative mechanisms that can be combined in a variety of ways this pluralistic model is enriched further by the acknowledgement of variable roles for contracts and a sceptic stance regarding rationality in practice copyright 2002 oxford university press

government and business an introduction this article considers the apparent renewal of interest in interventionist industrial policies among oecd governments asking just what if anything is new with particular reference to the uk it outlines the theoretical justifications for such interventions and discusses issues concerning intangibles innovation and infrastructure it describes the special emphasis placed on re balancing the structure of production the central role accorded to human capital and the salience of spatial aspects of policy it stresses the potential for government and administrative failure just as much as market failure copyright 2013 oxford university press

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

why do oil prices jump or fall this paper discusses theories that can explain the zig zags of oil prices in general and in particular the recent jump more precisely the following explanations are discussed homo oeconomicus pure profit maximization if demand is dynamic and convex price reaction function price increases and respectively declines depend on capacity utilization cartelization contingent on output or revenues of which the latter can lead to backward bending supply segments and multiple equilibria statistical descriptions mean reversion homo politicus i e arguments for price hikes that are rational public choice despite the long run economic loss finally two approaches are presented that emphasize demand uncertainty one extending the above mentioned dynamic demand framework and the other considers a dynamic game of non competitive suppliers with lumpy investments summing up a demand shock seems to be the most suitable explanation of today s high prices indeed a shock given that international energy agency iea and department of energy doe were promising just a couple of years ago that we are going to have lots of oil at low prices while others and in particular politics have surprisingly little or no explanatory power

the nature of opec and oil price changes abstract recent models of the oil market have continued to employ dominant firm monopoly type assumptions regarding opec behaviour other recent studies have highlighted the importance of the internal behaviour of opec the paper attempts to provide a framework within which these approaches are compatible and which provides a significant role for investment needs as a key variable in determining price changes

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

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

rules of the game the place of institutions in regional economic change gertler m s rules of the game the place of institutions in regional economic change regional studies institutions exert a pervasive influence on the evolution and character of regional economies yet this role is poorly understood within recent debates on neoliberalism varieties of capitalism and other approaches to the study of economic change a reconstituted institutional economic geography must accommodate individual agency institutional evolution interscalar relations and comparative methodologies examining recent work on universities in local economies as well as on creativity based strategies and social inclusion polarization it is shown how locally distinctive institutional architectures shape evolutionary trajectories leading to differentiated social and economic outcomes the paper then enunciates some important principles of methodology and theory building in institutional analysis gertler m s les regles du jeu le role des institutions dans le developpement economique region

u s oil dependence 2014 is energy independence in sight abstract the importance of reducing u s oil dependence may have changed in light of developments in the world oil market over the past two decades since 2005 increased domestic production and decreased oil use have cut u s import dependence in half the direct costs of oil dependence to the u s economy are estimated under four u s energy information administration scenarios to 2040 the key premises of the analysis are that the primary oil market failure is the use of market power by opec and that u s economic vulnerability is a result of the quantity of oil consumed the lack of readily available economical substitutes and the quantity of oil imported monte carlo simulations of future oil market conditions indicate that the costs of u s oil dependence are likely to increase in constant dollars but decrease relative to u s gross domestic product unless oil resources are larger than estimated by the u s energy information administration reducing oil dependence therefore remains a valuable goal for u s energy policy and an important co benefit of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions

varieties of capitalism in the twentieth century of the world s multiple national variations on a basically capitalist system the paper compares the century s history of four the british and american the two pioneers whose institutions and economic behaviour patterns most closely confirm to and those of germany and japan whose institutions most significantly deviate from the prescriptions of neoclassical textbooks there is no obvious story of a long and steady process of gradual convergence capitalist rationality slowly washing out the effects of differing cultural traditions all four societies have changed in key respects finance and corporate control structures were arguably more similar in the 1920s than later by the end of the post war golden age there were signs of convergence on similar forms of managerial capitalism the crucial and for us unpredictable question is how far the transition to shareholder capitalism in britain and america over the last two decades will be duplicated in germany and japan copyright 1999 by oxford university press

knowledge stocks knowledge flows and innovation evidence from matched patents and innovation panel data successful innovation depends on knowledge technological strategic and market related in this paper we explore the role and interaction of firms existing knowledge stocks and current knowledge flows in shaping innovation success the paper contributes to our understanding of the determinants of firms innovation outputs and provides new information on the relationship between knowledge stocks as measured by patents and innovation output indicators our analysis uses innovation panel data relating to plants internal knowledge creation external knowledge search and innovation outputs firm level patent data is matched with this plant level innovation panel data to provide a measure of firms knowledge stock two substantive conclusions follow first existing knowledge stocks have weak negative rather than positive impacts on firms innovation outputs reflecting potential core rigidities or negative path dependencies rather than the accumulation of competitive advantages second knowledge flows derived from internal investment and external search dominate the effect of existing knowledge stocks on innovation performance both results emphasize the importance of firms knowledge search strategies our results also re emphasize the potential issues which arise when using patents as a measure of innovation

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

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

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

knowledge capabilities and manufacturing innovation a us europe comparison roper s youtie j shapira p and fernandez ribas a knowledge capabilities and manufacturing innovation a usa europe comparison regional studies this paper presents a comparative analysis of factors contributing to the innovation performance of manufacturing firms in georgia usa wales uk the west midlands uk and catalonia spain enabled by comparable survey data multivariate probit models are developed to estimate how various types of firms innovative activities are influenced by links to external knowledge sources internal resources absorptive capacity and public innovation support the results suggest the potential for mutual learning for the european study regions there are insights about how universities in georgia support innovation for georgia and catalonia there are lessons from uk firms about better capturing potential complementarities between innovation activities additional implications for innovation measurement and knowledge base development are discussed roper s

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

capital shortfall a new approach to ranking and regulating systemic risks the financial crisis of 2007 2009 has given way to the sovereign debt crisis of 2010 2012 yet many of the banking issues remain the same we discuss a method to estimate the capital that a financial firm would need to raise if we have another financial crisis this measure of capital shortfall is based on publicly available information but is conceptually similar to the stress tests conducted by us and european regulators we argue that this measure summarizes the major characteristics of systemic risk and provides a reliable interpretation of the past and current financial crises

inside the black box technology and economics economists have long treated technological phenomena as events transpiring inside a black box and on the whole have adhered rather strictly to a self imposed ordinance not to inquire too seriously into what transpires inside that box the purpose of professor rosenberg s work is to break open and examine the contents of the black box in so doing a number of important economic problems be powerfully illuminated the author clearly shows how specific features of individual technologies have shaped a number of variables of great concern to economists the rate of productivity improvement the nature of learning processes underlying technological change itself the speed of technology transfer and the effectiveness of government policies that are intended to influence technologies in particular ways the separate chapters of this book reflect a primary concern with some of the distinctive aspects of industrial technologies in the twentieth century such as the increasing reliance upon science but also the considerable subtlety and complexity of the dialectic between science and technology other concerns include the rapid growth in the development of costs associated with new technologies as well as the difficulty of predicting the eventual performance characteristics of newly emerging technologies

asset commonality debt maturity and systemic risk we develop a model in which asset commonality and short term debt of banks interact to generate excessive systemic risk banks swap assets to diversify their individual risk two asset structures arise in a clustered structure groups of banks hold common asset portfolios and default together in an unclustered structure defaults are more dispersed portfolio quality of individual banks is opaque but can be inferred by creditors from aggregate signals about bank solvency when bank debt is short term creditors do not roll over in response to adverse signals and all banks are ine ciently liquidated this information contagion is more likely under clustered asset structures in contrast when bank debt is long term welfare is the same under both asset structures

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

the social regulation of inter firm relations in britain and germany market rules legal norms and technical standards an analysis of institutionalised rule systems particularly of technical standards traces their effects on various aspects of supplier relations in britain and germany and attempts some evaluation of performance outcomes drawing on the insights of new institutionalism in economics and sociology it is shown that the higher degree of stability and consistency in systems of social regulation in germany as compared with britain leads to more predictable and consensual relations between firms the resulting development of greater mutual trust encourages more long term and closer technological collaboration the paper utilises data from a recent comparative study of supplier relations in two traditional industries and supplements them with information from more general studies of the technical regulation of inter firm relations

global market integration an alternative measure and its application global markets seem to be increasingly integrated but there is no well accepted measure of integration we show that the correlation across markets is a poor measure perfectly integrated markets can exhibit weak correlation we derive a new integration measure based on the explanatory power of a multi factor model and use it empirically to investigate recent trends in global integration for most countries there has been a marked increase in measured integration over the past three decades but this is not indicated by correlations among country indexes

effects of cultural ethnicity firm size and firm age on senior executives trust in their overseas business partners evidence from china we investigate trust relationships between senior business executives and their overseas partners drawing on the similarity attraction paradigm social categorization theory and the distinction between cognition and affect based trust we argue that executives trust their overseas partners differently depending on the partners cultural ethnicity in a field survey of 108 chinese senior executives we found that these executives have higher affect based trust in overseas partners of the same cultural ethnicity as themselves cognition based trust is associated with affect based trust differently when overseas partners are of the same or different cultural ethnicity we also examine the role of relative firm size and age in shaping intra and intercultural trust relative firm size has a stronger negative effect on executives cognition based trust if their partners are of a different cultural ethnicity although firm age does not have a negative effect on executives affect based trust as hypothesized we found firm age to be positively associated with affect based trust for partners of the same cultural ethnicity we discuss theoretical and practical implications of this pattern of inter and intra cultural trust on international business and networking guanxi dynamics in china

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

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

a note on the theory and measurement of trust in explaining differences in economic growth this paper takes issue with the trend to attribute differences in economic growth rates to differences in interpersonal trust i discuss the world values survey wvs measure that is used to operationalise trust at the macro level i hypothesise that there is a mismatch between the theoretical argument and the empirical operationalisation of trust instead of measuring trust the wvs measure may instead proxy the well functioning of institutions i provide circumstantial evidence for this thesis by a principal components analysis of trust and institutions and a robustness test of zak and knack s 2001 trust and growth economic journal vol 111 295 321 seminal study on trust and economic growth

unemployment and the demand for retraining an econometric analysis this paper describes and estimates a human capital model of whether unemployed workers seek retraining and the timing of an application in an unemployment spell the authors find that the probability of seeking retraining declines with age after twenty seven years with being attached to noncontracting industries with greater contentment in unemployment compared with last job and with union membership applications are increased by formal qualifications cse o a level and decreased by vocational training relative to no qualifications almost half the unemployed had sought retraining and this was largely complete after nine months below the mean interrupted unemployment duration copyright 1991 by royal economic society

systemic risk and bank consolidation international evidence abstract this paper analyzes the systemic risk effects of bank mergers to test the concentration fragility hypothesis we use the marginal expected shortfall as well as the lower tail dependence between a bank s stock returns and a relevant bank sector index to capture the merger related change in an acquirer s contribution to systemic risk in our empirical analysis of a dataset of international domestic and cross border mergers we find clear evidence for a significant increase in the merging banks the combined banks as well as their competitors contribution to systemic risk following mergers thus confirming the concentration fragility hypothesis

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

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

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

political responses to interdependence what s left for the left heightened economic interdependence in recent years is commonly argued to have generated great pressures for convergence in economic policies across the advanced industrial democracies interdependence has clearly had a great impact on the types of economic policies that governments can pursue they have been unable to pursue independent fiscal and monetary policies since the mid 1970s furthermore all governments have been forced to attempt to promote the competitiveness of national goods and services in world markets and to increase the speed and efficiency with which national producers adjust to changes in global markets there are however different policies consistent with these goals statistical analyses of economic policies since the mid 1970s show that governments of the left and the right continue to be able to enact distinctive supply side policies that promote competitiveness and flexible adjustment and simultaneously further their partisan objectives