future biodiesel policy designs and consumption patterns in latvia a system dynamics model abstract decarbonisation of transport has become central to european union policy biofuels are expected to represent a substantial part of the overall strategy towards diversifying europe s energy supplies and curbing greenhouse gas emissions in a cost effective way this research deals with the dynamic simulation modeling of a biodiesel market as a part of transportation fuel market and analyses of various policy support instruments on increasing the proportion of biofuel in total transport fuel demand the study is carried out for latvia s road transport sector after it had experienced generous financial support from the government allowing the industry to develop support was abruptly stopped creating stagnation in both biodiesel supply and demand this threatened the national transport policy goals the goal of this research is to find the most effective policy strategies for achieving the national transport policy goals by applying system dynamics modeling to the current market conditions of transport fuels specifically the primary focus of this paper is an attempt to gain insight into the long term dynamic behavior of the biodiesel market in latvia the principal policy tools and mechanisms implemented can be summarized as i state subsidies at different levels and stages i e the biodiesel production sector the agricultural sector and the end consumer sectors ii increasing the excise taxes on fossil fuels iii increasing the share of the biodiesel in the transportation fuel blend the results obtained from model simulations confirm that promoting biofuel acceptance among end users is the primary key issue

welfare benefits and unemployment in affluent democracies the moderating role of the institutional insider outsider divide the effect of generous welfare benefits on unemployment is highly contested the dominant perspective contends that benefits provide disincentive to work whereas others portray benefits as job sea

the interdependence of european russian energy relations abstract the aim of this article is to explore this dynamic interdependent relationship between russia and europe in the field of energy based on the concept of interdependence and perspectives on the political aspects of trade relations we discuss how russia can exercise power based on its energy resources and how the eu can compensate for its lack of power in the energy game with other trade related capabilities in particular we explore the implications of the lack of a full fledged eu foreign energy policy towards russia with the somewhat counter intuitive conclusion that the eu countries on average not necessarily are better off with a common foreign energy policy

marshall s scale economies using panel data this paper estimates plant level production functions for machinery and high tech industries that allow for scale externalities from other plants in the same industry locally and from the scale or diversity of local economic activity outside the own industry the paper finds that the count of other own industry plants representing a count of local information spillover sources has strong productivity effects in high tech but not machinery industries single plant firms both benefit more from and generate greater external benefits than corporate plants given their greater reliance on external environments on dynamic externalities high tech single plant firms benefit also from the scale of past own industry activity i find little evidence of economies from the diversity or scale of local economic activity outside the own industry

left parties poor voters and electoral participation in advanced industrial societies although income inequality is an important normative issue for students of democratic politics little is known about its effects on citizens electoral participation the authors develop a formal

information inequality and mass polarization ideology in advanced democracies growing polarization in the american congress is closely related to rising income inequality yet there has been no corresponding polarization of the u s electorate and across advanced democracies mass polarization is negatively related to income inequality to explain this puzzle we propose a comparative political economy model of mass polarization in which the same institutional factors that generate income inequality also undermine political information we explain why more voters then place themselves in the ideological center hence generating a negative correlation between mass polarization and inequality we confirm these conjectures on individual level data for 20 democracies and we then show that democracies cluster into two types one with high inequality low mass polarization and polarized and right shifted elites e g the united states and the other with low inequality and high mass polarization with left shifted elites e g sweden this division reflects long standing difference

the transition to the knowledge economy labor market institutions and income inequality in advanced democracies the transition from fordism to the knowledge economy in the world s advanced democracies was underpinned by the revolution in information and communications technology ict the introduction and rapid diffusion of ict pushed up wages for college educated workers with complementary skills and allowed top managers and ceos to reap greater rewards for their own talents despite these common pressures income inequality did not rise to the same extent everywhere income in the anglo saxon countries remains particularly unequally distributed to shed new light on this puzzle the authors carry out a panel data analysis of eighteen oecd countries between 1970 and 2007 their analysis stands apart from the existing empirical literature by taking a comparative perspective the article examines the extent to which the relationship between the knowledge economy and income inequality is influenced by national labor market institutions the authors find that the expansion of knowledge employment is positively associated with both the 90 10 wage ratio and the income share of the top 1 percent but that these effects are mitigated by the presence of strong labor market institutions such as coordinated wage bargaining strict employment protection legislation high union density and high collective bargaining coverage the authors provide robust evidence against the argument that industrial relations systems are no longer important safeguards of wage solidarity in the knowledge economy

corporatism and unemployment in the 1980s and 1990s a number of studies have found an association between corporatist institutions and low unemployment in the 1970s and or 1980s three gaps in our understanding of corporatism s labor market effects are addressed here 1 which of the two principal forms of corporatism corporatist wage setting or union participation in economic policymaking or both generates these effects 2 what are the causal mechanisms 3 did these effects continue in the 1990s in the face of globalization restrictive monetary policy growing dissension within labor movements and related developments the impact of corporatism across 16 affluent oecd countries in the 1980s and 1990s is assessed using pooled time series cross section analysis the results suggest that wage coordination was conducive to low unemployment in the 1980s because it fostered moderation in labor costs spurred faster economic growth and encouraged governments to more aggressively pursue policies to reduce unemployment in the 1990s this effect disappeared largely because unemployment outcomes in low wage coordination countries improved rather than because unemployment outcomes in high wage coordination countries deteriorated union participation in economic policymaking was associated with low unemployment throughout the two decades conditional on the presence of leftist government union participation appears to have had this effect mainly via government policy

regional heterogeneity and interregional research spillovers in european innovation modelling and policy implications guastella g and van oort f g regional heterogeneity and interregional research spillovers in european innovation modelling and policy implications regional studies in agglomeration studies the effects of various regional externalities related to knowledge spillovers remain largely unclear to explain innovation clustering scholars emphasize the contribution of localized knowledge spillovers lks and specifically when estimating the knowledge production function kpf of interregional research spillovers however less attention is paid to other causes of spatial heterogeneity in applied works spatial association in data is econometrically related to evidence of research spillovers this paper argues that in a kpf setting omitting spatial heterogeneity might lead to biased estimates of the effect of research spillovers as an empirical test a spatial kpf is estimated using eu 25 regional data including a spatial trend to control for unexplained spatial variation in innovation accounting

political partisanship and welfare state reform in advanced industrial societies in this article we evaluate two claims made in recent studies of the welfare states of advanced industrial societies first that welfare states have remained quite resilient in the face of demands for retrenchment and second that partisan politics have ceased to play a decisive role in their evolution addressing the first claim we present analysis from a new data set on unemployment insurance and sickness benefit replacement rates for 18 countries for the years 1975 99 we find considerably more evidence of welfare retrenchment during the last two decades than do recent cross national studies second we examine the end of partisanship claim by estimating the effects of government partisanship on changes in income replacement rates in sickness and unemployment programs our results suggest that contrary to claims that partisanship has little impact on welfare state commitments traditional partisanship continues to have a considerable effect on welfare state entitlements in the era of retrenchment

equal pay by gender and by nationality a comparative analysis of switzerland s unequal equal pay policy regimes across time what explains the adoption of two different policies on equal pay by gender epg and by nationality epn in switzerland and why is the liberal litigation based equal pay policy regime set up by the gender equality act of 1996 much less effective than the neocorporatist accompanying measures to the bilateral european union switzerland agreement on free movement of persons adopted in 1999 to ensure equal pay for workers of different national origins the formation of two different policy regimes cannot be explained by different levels of political will equally different varieties of capitalism cannot explain the setup of the two different equal pay policy regimes within the very same country instead our qualitative comparative analysis across time suggests that the differences can be best explained by a particular constellation of attributes namely the use of different policy frames that is anti discrimination in the epg and unfair competition in the epn case and the different setting of interest politics epitomised by the opposite stances adopted by switzerland s employer associations in the two cases

inequality and the politics of social policy implementation gender age and chile s 2004 health reforms summary regarding scholarship on the political determinants of inequality little attention has been paid to policy implementation we examine the 2004 chilean health reforms that sought to regulate private insurers and measure their effects on gender and age inequality we find that reforms intended to decrease these inequalities largely failed analysis of this failure demonstrates the importance of the politics of implementation when reforms threaten profits private providers may act to undermine reforms in the implementation process given the widespread emergence of private providers in social policy systems understanding their stakes in implementation is key to more effective equality enhancing reforms

gendering the varieties of capitalism a study of occupational segregation by sex in advanced industrial societies this article explores the unintended gendered consequences of employment protection and vocational training systems it develops a micrologic of skill investment by workers and employers to identify the mechanism by which specific skills become disadvantageous for women the central claim of the article is that institutions that encourage male investment in specific skills exacerbate occupational sex segregation the article finds that coordinated market economies because of their robust institutional protection of male skill investments are generally more sex segregating than are liberal market economies the empirical section provides cross sectional analyses of advanced industrial countries

interdependent international relations and the expansion of ethanol production and consumption the brazilian perspective abstract the global production and consumption of ethanol are expected to increase the growing interdependence of markets and nations producers and consumers of biofuels has led actors to seek and devise mechanisms intended to develop the sector this paper aims to analyze the interdependent international relations between brazil and other ethanol biofuel producer and consumer countries to do so the paper explores the theory of complex interdependence and the game theory a quali quantitative study was conducted involving the application of two questionnaires to experts on biofuels and documentary analysis aided by qda miner software the results show that brazil shares highly interdependent relations with the united states an intermediate degree of interdependence with europe and a low degree of interdependence with china the dimensions of those interdependent relations can be ranked according to importance in the following order first the political then the economic technical and finally the social environmental dimensions a number of actions can be envisaged that could lead ethanol to achieve an increasingly strategic position in the diversification of the energy matrix in different countries technological efforts to improve production efficiency the creation of globally integrated policies designed to provide security and develop the production and consumption infrastructure the reduction of international tariffs on the product and the transformation of ethanol into a global commodity with a large number of countries buying and selling the product this paper faced the challenge of integrating approaches and concepts from two complex theoretical areas complex interdependence theory and game theory the research methodology and the insights gained from the ethanol case contribute to the literature on the applicability of these two theoretical approaches

spend it like beckham inequality and redistribution in the uk 1983 2004 a main activity of the state is to redistribute resources standard political economy models predict that a rise in inequality will lead to more redistribution this paper shows that for the uk in the period 1983 2004 a plausibly exogenous rise in income inequality has not been associated with increased redistribution we explore this example of the paradox of redistribution using attitudinal data we show that standard political economy models of the individual demand for redistribution do have explanatory power but that other attitudes and beliefs are also very important moreover these attitudes and beliefs change quite quickly so are very important in explaining variation in the demand for redistribution

brazilian biofuels and social exclusion established and concentrated ethanol versus emerging and dispersed biodiesel increasing interest in biofuels trade between developed and developing countries has spurred worldwide discussions on issues such as subsidies and the food for fuel crisis one issue missing in recent discourse is the pressure exerted on developing countries to adopt large scale mechanized farming practices to increase economic efficiencies such approaches often exclude small scale farmers from participating in the emerging biofuels market thus exacerbating poverty and social exclusion drawing on both qualitative and technical data we discuss such pressures using brazilian ethanol and biodiesel production pressure from international markets to become more economically efficient may contribute towards the erosion of recent schemes to encourage social benefits for small farmers in biodiesel production we conclude with trade and policy implications

development of the wind power in brazil political social and technical issues abstract this paper aims to present a review of the increasing contribution of wind power to the brazilian electric matrix and an analysis of the main impact on technical political and social aspects this work takes into account the state of art of the wind power technology the wind resource potential and the evolution of installed capacity in the country the institutional programs and the fiscal incentives provided by the brazilian government are also discussed in this paper including its impacts on the society we have reviewed national and international reports and relevant scientific papers to realize this work the analysis shows that electric crisis in 2001 led the brazilian government to develop new energy policies that supported the rapid growth of the wind industry from imported technology later on in the year 2004 the government mandated that the technology be developed within the country it is expected that from 2011 of approximately 1500 mw until 2021 the installed wind capacity would increase by a factor of 600 however the national technology acquisition and development is still incipient it is important to produce locally wind turbine components and is highly desirable to increase collaboration between industries and universities in the country

game theoretic analysis of competitive agri biomass supply chain abstract this research aims to explore the optimal strategies for managing competitive agri biomass supply chain first a game model of a supply chain consisting of one supplier and two buyers is used to develop the optimal strategies for the supplier and buyers as well as the total equilibrium profit then the industrial coexistence conditions are analyzed and the effects of the model parameters on game equilibrium are evaluated finally the methodology is illustrated with a case study in china

analysis of energy embodied in the international trade of uk interest in the role embodied energy plays in international trade and its subsequent impact on energy security has grown as a developed nation the uk s economic structure has changed from that of a primary producer to that of a primary consumer although the uk s energy consumption appears to have peaked it imports a lot of energy embodied in international trade alongside the more obvious direct energy imports the uk has seen increasing dependency on imported fossil energy since the uk became a net energy importer in 2005 in this paper an energy input output model is established to calculate not only the amount of fossil energy embodied in uk s imports and exports but also the sector and country distributions of those embodied fossil energy the research results suggest the following uk s embodied fossil energy imports have exceeded embodied fossil energy exports every year since 1997 uk embodied energy imports through the so called made in china phenomena are the largest accounting for 43 of total net fossil energy imports if net embodied fossil energy imports are considered the gap between energy consumption and production in uk is much larger than commonly perceived with subsequent implications to the uk s energy security

union strength neoliberalism and inequality contingent political analyses of u s income differences since 1950 do historically contingent political accounts help explain the growth in family income inequality in the united states we use time series regressions based on 60 years to detect such relationships

fair inequality attitudes toward pay differentials the united states in comparative perspective are american attitudes toward economic inequality different from those in other countries one tradition in sociology suggests american exceptionalism while another argues for convergence across

distribution and redistribution the shadow of the nineteenth century the authors present an alternative to power resource theory as an approach to the study of distribution and redistribution while they agree that partisanship and union power are important they argue that both are endogenous to more fundamental differences in the organization of capitalist democracies specifically center left governments result from pr consensus political systems as opposed to majoritarian systems while strong unions have their origins in coordinated as opposed to liberal capitalism these differences in political representation and in the organization of production developed jointly in the early twentieth century and explain the cross national pattern of distribution and redistribution the clusters have their origins in two distinct political economic conditions in the second half of the nineteenth century one in which locally coordinated economies were coupled with strong guild traditions and heavy investment in cospecific assets and one in which market based economies were coupled with liberal states and more mobile assets

wage inequality and varieties of capitalism this article draws on a new data set that enables the authors to compare the distribution of income from employment across oecd countries specifically the article conducts a pooled cross sectional time series analysis of the determinants of wage inequality in sixteen countries from 1973 to 1995 the analysis shows that varieties of capitalism matter the authors find that the qualities that distinguish social market economies from liberal market economies shape the way political and institutional variables influence wage inequality of particular interest to political scientists is the finding that the wage distributive effects of government partisanship are contingent on institutional context union density emerges in the analysis as the single most important factor influencing wage inequality in both institutional contexts

import demand for brazilian ethanol a cross country analysis abstract this study presents an empirical analysis of the import demand for brazilian ethanol by its six major foreign buyers the primary objectives of this study were to identify the economic factors affecting the demand for ethanol imports and to derive long run price and income elasticities of import demand these elasticities could be used to analyze the impact of government policies such as mandatory gasoline ethanol blends and import tariffs import demand models were estimated with ordinary least squares ols using quarterly time series data for the 1997 2007 time period the results suggest that the factors influencing the import demand for ethanol vary across countries markets adopting mandatory blends of renewable fuels tend to have less price elastic import demand schedules ethanol imports were found to be price elastic and statistically significant in the caribbean region 1 66 mexico 2 08 japan 1 44 and nigeria 1 38 while import demand was price inelastic and not statistically different from zero in the us 0 76 and europe 0 21 the regression results could not determine the impacts of import tariffs for the united states mexico and nigeria on the quantity of imports because tariffs did not vary during the time period studied results show that mandatory gasoline ethanol blends have been an important determinant of ethanol imports

solidaristic unionism and support for redistribution in contemporary europe using data from the european social survey 2002 14 this article explores the effect of union membership on support for redistribution the authors hypothesize that the wage bargaining practices of unions promote egalitarian distributive norms which lead union members to support redistribution and that this effect is strongest among high wage workers consistent with the authors expectations the empirical analysis shows that the solidarity effect of union membership is strongest when unions encompass a very large share of the labor force or primarily organize low wage workers the authors also show that low wage workers have become a significantly less important union constituency in many european countries over the time period covered by the analysis

do affluent countries face an incomes jobs tradeoff according to an influential view in the united states pay for less skilledworkers is lowand government benefits are stingy but this facilitates the creation of newjobs and encourages such individuals to take those jobs inmuch of westerneurope relative pay levels are higher for those at the bottom and benefits are more generous but this is said to discourage job creation and job seeking this article offers a comparative assessment of this trade off viewbased on pooled timeseries cross section analyses of 14 countries in the 1980s and 1990s the findings suggest that greater pay equality and a higher replacement rate do reduce employment growth in lowproductivity private sector service industries and in the economy as a whole however these effects are relatively weak the results point to a variety of viable options for countries wishing to maintain or move toward a desirable combination of jobs and equality

social construction and physical nihilation of the keystone xl pipeline lessons from international relations theory abstract if a prime goal of energy policy is to achieve energy security why is there a controversy over the proposed keystone xl pipeline designed to deliver new supplies of oil from within north america this viewpoint seeks answers in the debate over the underlying purposes of energy policy how does one answers the question what do we want from energy policy perceptions of feasible answers and policy options change over time as witnessed in the 1970s analogous shifts in opinion are changing today s policy debates and widening the contradictions in policy purposes attention to the existence of these contradictions without illusions is necessary to meet the policy challenges of the future effectively

time matters postindustrialization new social risks and welfare state adaptation in advanced industrial democracies western welfare states were built during the postwar years with one key objective to protect family male breadwinners against the consequences of losing their ability to extract an income from

mapping the institutional capital of high tech firms a fuzzy set analysis of capitalist variety and export performance we examine how institutional configurations not single institutions provide companies with institutional capital building on the varieties of capitalism approach it is argued that competitive advantage in high tech industries with radical innovation may be supported by combinations of certain institutional conditions lax employment protection weak collective bargaining coverage extensive university training little occupational training and a large stock market furthermore multinational enterprises engage in institutional arbitrage they allocate their activities so as to benefit from available institutional capital these hypotheses are tested on country level data for 19 oecd economies in the period 1990 to 2003 a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis yields several interesting findings a high share of university graduates and a large stock market are complementary institutions leading to strong export performance in high tech employment protection is neither conducive nor harmful to export performance in high tech a high volume of cross border mergers and acquisitions as a form of institutional arbitrage leading to knowledge flows acts as a functional equivalent to institutions that support knowledge production in the home economy implications of these findings for theory policy and the analysis of firm level behavior are developed

knowledge is power a theory of information income and welfare spending no voters cast their votes based on perfect information but better educated and richer voters are on average better informed than others we develop a model where the voting mistakes resulting from low political knowledge reduce the weight of poor voters and cause parties to choose political platforms that are better aligned with the preferences of rich voters in us election survey data we find that income is more important in affecting voting behavior for more informed voters than for less informed voters as predicted by the model further in a panel of us states we fi nd that when there is a strong correlation between income and political information congress representatives vote more conservatively which is also in line with our theory

do friends and relatives really help in getting a good job informal contacts are extensively used by both firms and workers to find jobs and fill vacancies the common wisdom in the economic literature is that jobs created through this channel are of better quality and pay higher wages than jobs created through formal methods this paper explores the empirical evidence for european countries using the european community household panel echp and discovers a large cross country as well as cross industry variation in the wage differentials between jobs found through informal and formal methods across countries and industries wage premiums and wage penalties to finding jobs through personal contacts are equally frequent this paper argues that such variation can be explained by looking at firms recruitment strategies in labour markets where employers invest largely in formal recruitment activities matches created through this channel are likely to be of average better quality than those created through informal networks a simple theoretical model is used to show that employers invest more in recruitment for high productivity jobs and for positions that require considerable training the empirical predictions of the theory are successfully tested using industry level data on recruitment costs

selected works of michael wallerstein centralized bargaining and wage restraint the literature on corporatism has presented much evidence associating highly centralized systems of collective bargaining with wage restraint and relatively successful macroeconomic performance in addition centralized bargaining is associated with relatively small wage differentials this paper presents a model of the impact of centralized wage setting on both real wages and relative wages the central assumption is that the centralization of wage setting at the national level unites unions who are complements in production since a wage increase for one group of workers negatively affects the welfare of other workers who are complements in production centralized wage setters choose wages below the equilibrium of decentralized wage setting it is also shown that if the union confederation maximizes a utilitarian welfare function with equal weights centralized wage setting decreases wage dispersion while low paid workers clearly gain from centralized bargaining high paid workers may prefer that bargaining be decentralized

disentangling patterns of economic technological and innovative specialization of western economies an assessment of the varieties of capitalism theory on comparative institutional advantages it is one of the central arguments of the varieties of capitalism voc literature that national institutions determine comparative advantage while liberal market economies lmes are said to offer comparative institutional advantages to firms that specialize in high tech sectors based on radical innovation coordinated market economies cmes offer advantages to firms specializing in medium high tech sectors characterized by incremental innovation several studies have tested these claims and arrived at contradictory results about specialization in line with institutional advantages we argue that undifferentiated conceptualizations of the notion of specialization contribute to these inconclusive results based on the insights of the innovation literature on comparative advantage we therefore disentangle the concepts of 1 economic specialization 2 technological specialization and 3 innovative specialization our analyses of panel data on exports and patents show that the voc theory is rather weak in explaining patterns of economic specialization but can account for technological specialization furthermore the voc literature can hardly explain patterns of innovative specialization

government partisanship labor organization and macroeconomic performance governments of the left and right have distinct partisan economic policies and objectives that they would prefer to pursue their propensity to do so however is constrained by their desire for reelection we argue that the ability of governments to further their partisan interests and preside over reelectable macroeconomic outcomes simultaneously is dependent on the organization of the domestic economy particularly the labor movement we hypothesize that there are two different paths to desirable macroeconomic performance in countries with densely and centrally organized labor movements leftist governments can promote economic growth and reduce inflation and unemployment conversely in countries with weak labor movements rightist governments can pursue their partisan preferred macroeconomic strategies and achieve similarly beneficial macroeconomic outcomes performance will be poorer in other cases these hypotheses are supported by analysis of pooled annual time series data for 16 advanced industrial democracies between 1967 and 1984

risks at work the demand and supply sides of government redistribution to comprehend how the welfare state adjusts to economic shocks it is important to get a handle on both the genesis of popular preferences and the institutional incentives for governments to respond to these preferences this paper attempts to do both using a general theoretical framework and detailed data at both the individual and national levels in a first step we focus on how risk exposure and income are related to preferences for redistribution to test our hypotheses we extract detailed risk exposure measures from labour force surveys and marry them to cross national opinion survey data results from analysis of these data attest to the great importance of risks within the labour market in shaping popular preferences for redistributive efforts by governments in a second step we turn our attention to the supply side of government redistribution institutions we argue mediate governments reactions to redistributional demands following economic shocks using time series cross country data we demonstrate how national training systems and electoral institutions as well as partisanship shape government responses copyright 2006 oxford university press

comparing capitalisms understanding institutional diversity and its implications for international business this paper examines the role of institutional analysis within the field of international business ib studies within ib institutions matter but the view of institutions tends to be thin utilizing summary indicators rather than detailed description and thus approaches institutions as unidimensional variables that impact on particular facets of business activity this paper argues that ib research would be usefully advanced by greater attention to comparing the topography of institutional landscapes and understanding their diversity a number of alternative case based approaches are outlined that draw on a growing comparative capitalisms literature in sociology and political science the paper develops a number of empirical examples to show the utility and limits of these approaches for ib scholars

who gives who gains progressivity and preferences the extent to which popular support for the welfare state depends on income varies greatly across nations and policy domains we argue and show formally that these variations largely overlooked yet essential to understanding the politics of redistribution reflect in part the design of tax and transfer policies in terms of progressivity when progressivity is high politics is perceived by income groups as a zero sum game and conflicts over who gets what intensify when progressivity is low and tax contributors and benefit recipients overlap redistributive struggles become politically less salient we test these predictions both across nations and across policy domains within a sample of advanced industrial democracies our findings indicate that the progressivity of the tax and transfer system is a major determinant of the predictive power of income on preferences for redistribution

wage setting measures a survey and assessment wage setting has been one of the most heavily studied institutions in the field of comparative political economy over the past two decades and quantitative measures of wage setting arrangements have played a major role in this research yet the proliferation of such measures in recent years presents researchers with a sizable array from which to choose in addition some scholars are rather skeptical about the validity and or reliability of these measures this article offers a survey and assessment of fifteen wage setting measures it attempts to answer questions about 1 how these indicators differ from one another in conceptualization and measurement strategy 2 which are the most valid and reliable 3 the strengths and weaknesses of measures of wage centralization versus those of wage coordination 4 particular countries or time periods for which there are noteworthy discrepancies in scoring 5 how sensitive empirical findings are to the choice of wage setting measure

politics and inequality in latin america and the caribbean this article presents the first pooled time series analysis of the impact that politics and policy have on inequality in latin america and the caribbean the authors build on models consisting of sociological and economic variables adding the strength of the democratic tradition long term legislative partisan political power distribution and social spending to explain variation in inequality they analyze an unbalanced pooled time series data set for income distribution in 18 latin american and caribbean countries from 1970 to 2000 they show that the political variables add explanatory power a strong record of democracy and a left leaning legislative partisan balance are associated with lower levels of inequality as are social security and welfare spending under democratic regimes thus they replicate some and modify other well established findings from studies of organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries in the very different context of latin america and the caribbean

union organization in advanced industrial democracies i suggest a new explanation of cross national differences in unionization rates the size of the labor force size matters because the gains unions are able to achieve in collective bargaining depend on the proportion of substitutable workers who are organized while the costs of organizing depend in part on the absolute number to be recruited the comparison of the costs and benefits of organizing new workers yields the conclusion that unions in larger labor markets will accept lower levels of unionization statistical analysis of cross national differences in unionization rates among advanced industrial societies in the late 1970s indicates that the size of the labor force and the cumulative participation of leftist parties in government explain most of the variance

the limit of equality projects public sector expansion sectoral conflicts and income inequality in postindustrial economies in this study we investigate how structural economic changes constrain an equality project the public sector expansion strategy first we describe a three stage process in which a growing produc

the public private sector cleavage in north america the political behavior and attitudes of public sector employees this article explores the private public sector cleavage in voting and political attitudes in canada and the united states the authors use public choice theory to hypothesize that the interest of

inequality social insurance and redistribution is the political support for welfare policy higher or lower in less egalitarian societies we answer the question using a model of welfare policy as publicly financed insurance that pays benefits in a redistributive manner when voters have both redistributive and insurance motives for supporting welfare spending the effect of inequality depends on how benefits are targeted greater inequality increases support for welfare expenditures when benefits are targeted to the employed but decreases support when benefits are targeted to those without earnings with endogenous targeting support for benefits to those without earnings declines as inequality increases whereas support for aggregate spending is a v shaped function of inequality statistical analysis of welfare expenditures in advanced industrial societies provides support for key empirical implications of the model

feedstock diversification for biodiesel production in brazil using the policy analysis matrix pam to evaluate the impact of the pnpb and the economic competitiveness of alternative oilseeds abstract while biodiesel feedstock diversification is a main objective of the brazilian national program for the production and use of biodiesel pnpb in portuguese its achievement has remained elusive and biodiesel is predominantly produced from soybean 75 this research uses the policy analysis matrix pam approach to evaluate the pnpb effects and compare the economic efficiency and the competitiveness of biodiesel from three oilseeds soybean rapeseed and sunflower in contrast to papers that present results of experimental biodiesel production initiatives this paper explores the case of representative production chains best available technology and management practices the findings indicate that biodiesel production is competitive from the three oilseeds but the profitability of biodiesel from the soybean is notably higher the tax breaks and subsidies provided by the pnpb have a positive impact on the profitability of biodiesel production chains 7 43 for soybean 3 88 for rapeseed 5 53 for sunflower these results are encouraging and suggest two actions i to review the incentive policies tax reduction and payments to farmers of the different crops pay for oil content instead of crop yield and ii to invest in organizational and managerial approaches in the alternative oilseed agricultural systems to improve their technical and economic efficiency

risks and redistribution an individual level analysis much of the disagreement in the debate about globalization and its present or absent effects on the welfare state stems from competing assumptions about the individual level determinants of redistributional preferences this article calls for and provides testing of these causal mechanisms at the individual level traditional accounts suggest that risks at the industry level are important determinants of redistributional preferences this article argues that risks at the occupational level should also be considered a comprehensive new data set is used to test whether and what types of risks in the labor market play an important role in shaping preferences statistical analyses of public opinion surveys european social survey show strong evidence for the assumed causal mechanism contrary to much of the literature but in line with this article s claims it is the occupational rather than the industry level that is most important the article lays out implications of these findings

exploring the impact of trade and investment on income inequality a cross national sectoral analysis of the developed countries this article explores the relationship between international integration and domestic inequality in the developed countries in the mid 1980s and early 1990s the analysis examines two major modes of integration trade and direct investment disaggregating each by economic sector and distinguishing between imports and exports and inbound and outbound flows and stocks in measuring income inequality extensive use is made of micro data sets that have recently become available through the luxembourg income study lis which provides much more detailed and comparable data on income inequality than has heretofore been the case in particular lis data can be aggregated at the level of economic sector and permit the comparison of pre and post government income the study finds few significant relationships between either trade or investment and sectoral income distribution the overall conclusion is that economic globalization is not a critically important factor in explaining recent trends in income inequa

editorial geography of innovation new trends and implications for public policy renewal the aim of this special issue is threefold firstly it highlights major recent methodological advances to address the two key issues referred to above improving extended kpf analyses on the one hand and developing strategic approaches using microeconomic data on the other br br two papers are presented using knowldge production functions kpf they offer new methodologies to deal with the issue of regional heterogeneity when estimating kpf at the regional level in europe br br using more microeconomic approaches three papers contribute to the second topic they use micro economic data to show how firms strategies may interact with the local environment and impact upon the determinants of agglomeration dynamics br br secondly this issue draws attention to interesting new results emerging from the application of these new methodologies to the analysis of innovation dynamics in european regions and shows how they can help one to revisit some main tenets of received wisdom concerning the rationale and impact of public policies on the geography of innovation br br finally this special issue also identifies issues that still require further research particularly in relation to the development of new methodologies for the evaluation of public policies integrating the spatial dimension and the interdependencies between public policies implemented at different regional scales which remains no more than an emerging field in the geography of innovation br br the special issue concludes with a paper presenting a new theoretical framework for the analysis and evaluation of local innovation public policies using simulation methodology all these papers have important policy implications

a game theory framework for cooperative management of refillable and disposable bottle lifecycles abstract firms engaged in industrial ecology hope to reduce environmental impacts and costs improve resource efficiency and create symbiotic relationships that reduce transaction costs and enhance information flow however current lca tools do not explain firms incentives to implement the principles of industrial ecology or how an individual or firm can affect the products and processes at other firms game theory on the other hand allows investigation of the willingness of producers and consumers to seek strategies that promote the common interest of the system while not harming their own interests this paper applies game theory to the lifecycle of bottle packaging and presents a framework for analysis of the choice between refillable and disposable bottles although refillable bottles may be more cost effective in the long run bottlers only have incentive to use refillable bottles when they are sure that consumer return rates will be reasonably high it has been found that consumers who keep or dispose of refillable bottles or respond to deposit refund return incentives by reducing their demand may drive costs up and encourage adoption of disposables a simple model is provided which finds the optimal bottler strategy as a function of the bottler s expectations for consumer cooperation

institutions partisanship and inequality in the long run it has been widely suggested by political scientists and economists based on empirical evidence for the period since 1970 that the institution of centralized wage bargaining and the presence of a government of the left are associated with lower levels of income inequality the authors make use of new data on top income shares as well as long run series on wage inequality to examine the effects of partisanship and wage bargaining over a much longer time period nearly the entire twentieth century their empirical results provide little support for the idea that either of these two factors is correlated with income inequality over this period they then show that a closer look at the introduction of centralized wage bargaining in individual countries during the middle part of the twentieth century reveals that in countries that moved to centralize wage bargaining income inequality had already been trending downward well before the institutional change that the move to centralized bargaining did not alter this trend and that these changes in income inequality were also observed in countries that did not adopt centralized wage bargaining at this time the results suggest that there were alternative institutional paths to reduced income inequality during most of the twentieth century this raises the possibility that either structural economic changes or commonly shared economic and political events such as world wars and economic crises may ultimately be more important for understanding the evolution of income inequality than are the institutional or partisan characteristics commonly considered to be decisive by political scientists

the demand for ethanol as a gasoline substitute abstract this paper estimates household preferences for ethanol e85 as a gasoline e10 substitute i develop a theoretical model linking the shape of the ethanol demand curve to the underlying distribution among households of willingness to pay for ethanol i estimate the model using instrumental variables techniques and data from many retail fueling stations i find that a 0 10 per gallon increase in ethanol s price relative to gasoline leads to a 12 16 decrease in the quantity of ethanol demanded my findings imply that preferences for ethanol are heterogeneous and that a substantial fraction of households are willing to pay a premium for the fuel this reduces substantially the simulated efficiency cost of an ethanol content standard since some households choose ethanol without large subsidies mitigating deadweight losses

on the determinants of political polarization in this article we aim to identify the main determinants of political polarization using bayesian model averaging to overcome the problem of model uncertainty we find that the level of trust within a country and the degree of income inequality are the most robust determinants of political polarization

union wage practices and wage dispersion within establishments this study analyzes establishment level data primarily to examine the effect of unionism on the wage structure within establishments the major finding is that within establishment dispersion of wages is significantly narrower in unionized than in nonunionized establishments a pattern the author attributes in large part to unions wage practices such as single rate or automatic progression modes of wage payment as opposed to merit reviews and individual wage determination the data also show that dispersion in average wages is narrower among organized plants but by more modest amounts than the within establishment differential overall the evidence suggests a major role for explicit union wage policies in explaining the dispersion of wages within firms and in the economy as a whole

wage setting institutions and pay inequality in advanced industrial societies the distribution of pay differs significantly across countries and over time among advanced industrial societies in this paper institutional and political determinants of pay inequality are studied in sixteen countries from 1980 to 1992 the most important factor in explaining pay dispersion is the level of wage setting i e whether wages are set at the level of the individual the plant the industry or the entire private sector the impact of centralization is the same whether centralization occurs via collective bargaining or via government involvement in private sector wage setting the concentration of unions and the share of the labor force covered by collective bargaining agreements also matter after controlling for wage setting institutions other variables such as the governing coalition the size of government international openness and the supply of highly educated workers have little impact economic political and norm based explanations for the association of centralization with egalitarian outcomes are discussed

partisan politics and public finance changes in public spending in the industrialized democracies 1955 1989 this paper evaluates the role that partisan politics plays in altering public spending levels the analysis covers over three decades of data on the developments of the public sectors in 16 oecd countries the results of the analysis lend firm support to the partisan politics model of special note is the distinction between the electorate and the government ideological preferences and the dominant role that the former plays the results also suggest contrary to conventional wisdom that partisan political influences have not been eliminated with the tightening of linkages to the international economy

differences and changes in wage structures preface introduction and summary richard b freeman lawrence f katz 1 a comparison of changes in the structure of wages in four oecd countries lawrence f katz gary w loveman david g blanchflower 2 international differences in executive and managerial compensation john m abowd michael l bognanno 3 the gender earnings gap some international evidence francine d blau lawrence m kahn 4 international wage curves david g blanchflower andrew j oswald 5 the changing structure of male earnings in britain 1974 1988 john schmitt 6 real wages employment and wage dispersion in u s and australian labor markets robert g gregory francis vella 7 labor markets and economic growth lessons from korea s industrialization 1970 1990 dae il kim robert h topel 8 wage differentials in italy market forces institutions and inflation christopher l erickson andrea c ichino 9 the swedish wage structure the rise and fall of solidarity wage policy per anders edin bertil holmlund 10 getting together and breaking apart the decline of centralized collective bargaining richard b freeman robert s gibbons 11 earnings inequality in germany katharine g abraham susan n houseman 12 a comparative analysis of east and west german labor markets before and after unification alan b krueger jorn steffen pischke contributors author index subject index

neorealism and neoliberalism the classic dialectic between realist and liberal theories of international politics as expressed by robert o keohane ed in neorealism and its critics and richard rosecrance the rise of the trading state can be transcended neither paradigm singularly explains international behavior realism is the dominant approach but liberal theories of transnationalism and interdependence help to illuminate how national interests are learned and changed keohane and fellow critics argue that neorealism articulated definitively in kenneth waltz s theory of international politics 1979 elegantly systematizes realism but concentrates on international system structure at the expense of system process focused tightly on the concept of bipolarity waltz s theory tends toward stasis the unit state level unproductively becomes an analytical dumping ground as a neoliberal counterpoint rosecrance s argument does not go far enough in the tradition of commercial liberalism he argues that an open trading system offers states maneuverability through economic growth rather than through military conquest he tempers his argument with realist considerations of prudence but fails to clarify realist liberal links in his theory or to explore fully the connections between power and non power incentives influencing states behavior a synthesis of neorealism and neoliberalism is warranted a systemic theory using the former to analyze at the level of structure the latter more often at the level of process

multilevel approaches and the firm agglomeration ambiguity in economic growth studies empirical studies in spatial economics have shown that agglomeration economies may be a source of the uneven distribution of economic activities and economic growth across cities and regions both localization and urbanization economies are hypothesized to foster agglomeration and growth but recent meta analyses of this burgeoning body of empirical research show that the results are ambiguous recent overviews show that this ambiguity is fuelled by measurement issues and heterogeneity in terms of scale of time and space aggregation growth definitions and the functional form of the models applied alternatively in this paper we argue that ambiguity may be due to a lack of research on firm level performance in agglomerations this research is necessary because the theories that underlie agglomeration economies are microeconomic in nature hierarchical or multilevel modeling which allows micro levels and macro levels to be modeled simultaneously is becoming an increasingly common practice in the social sciences as illustrated by detailed dutch data on firm level productivity employment growth and firm survival we argue that these approaches are also suitable for reducing the ambiguity surrounding the agglomeration firm performance relationship and for addressing spatial sectoral and cross level heterogeneity

governing biofuels in brazil a comparison of ethanol and biodiesel policies over the last decade brazil has implemented a new and ambitious biofuel program the national program of production and use of biodiesel pnpb when launching this program in 2004 the government stated that it wanted to avoid the same kind of geographical concentration single crop focus dominance of agribusiness and exclusion of family farmers that have occurred with bioethanol production through the proalcool policy since 1975 this paper compares the life histories of the bioethanol and the biodiesel policies of brazil by analyzing their substantive policy content the power and politics of actors that struggle for the design and implementation of the policies and the polity in terms the organization and institutionalization of the policies the paper concludes that both policies have become submerged by and dependent on the polity and politics of primarily the energy and agricultural sectors that operate as the two semi autonomous governance fields this submerging has shaped the substantive contents of biofuels policies and explains why the 2004 biodiesel policy pnpb in spite of its objectives for social inclusion and rural development faces similar problems in implementation as its predecessor the 1975 bioethanol policy proalcool

economic globalization domestic politics and income inequality in the developed countries a cross national study this article assesses the impact of economic globalization and domestic political factors on income inequality and state redistribution in the developed countries over the past two decades using household level data from the luxembourg income study that are more detailed accurate and cross nationally comparable than those used in previous empirical work it examines three major modes of international integration trade direct foreign investment and international financial flows as well as four domestic political variables the partisan balance of national cabinets electoral turnout union density and the centralization of wage setting institutions the study finds only scattered relationships between global integration and income distribution or redistribution but reasonably strong positive relationships between several domestic political variables and an egalitarian distribution of income and or extensive state redistribution these findings are consistent with a growing number of studies that emphasize the resilience of domestic political factors in the face of economic globalization

revisiting the role of labor worker solidarity employer opposition and the development of old age pensions in the netherlands and the united kingdom the purpose of this article is to emphasize the importance of the organizational blueprint of labor unions for welfare state outcomes as a result of the tendency of scholars to view labor as a homogenous and disadvantaged class the existing literature has paid little attention to this many scholars have simply taken labor union support for welfare state development for granted and consequently have focused only on labor union strength this article argues rather that labor union support for welfare state development cannot be taken for granted it shows that labor unions support or oppose welfare state development depending on their organizational blueprint this new approach highlights the importance of the labor union movement s organizational structure as opposed to its organizational strength for welfare state outcomes the article also explores how the organizational structure of the labor union movement shapes the stance of employer interest groups toward welfare state development the empirical findings are based on a comparison of british and dutch postwar old age pension development

left government policy and corporatism explaining the influence of partisanship on inequality the author argues that to understand the relationship between partisan government and equality two fundamental things need to be done separate the effects of partisanship on policy and of policy on the economy and assess the influence of government partisanship once the mediating role of corporatism is accounted for the main goal of this article is to explore the relationship between government partisanship policy and inequality at the lower half of the wage distribution the analysis is motivated by a puzzling finding in previous work the absence of government partisanship effects on earnings inequality the author focuses on the role of three different policies government employment the generosity of the welfare state and minimum wages the results show that government employment is a most significant determinant of inequality although it is affected by left government only when corporatism is low they also demonstrate that welfare state generosity does not affect inequality and in turn is not associated with left government finally they reveal that the effect of government partisanship on minimum wages and of minimum wages on inequality is completely conditional on the levels of corporatism these effects are only present when corporatism is low the author explains why specific policies do or do not affect earnings inequality and also why corporatism mitigates or magnifies the influence of government partisanship by explicitly exploring the determinants of policy and earnings inequality the article represents an important contribution to our understanding of how governments can promote redistribution

determinants of relative poverty in advanced capitalist democracies using relative poverty measures based on micro level data from the luxembourg income study in conjunction with pooled time series data for 14 advanced capitalist democracies between 1970 and 1997 the authors analyze separately the rate of pretax transfer poverty and the reduction in poverty achieved by systems of taxes and transfers socioeconomic factors including de industrialization and unemployment largely explain pre tax transfer poverty rates of the working age population in these advanced capitalist democracies the extent of redistribution measured as poverty reduction via taxes and transfers is explained directly by welfare state generosity and constitutional structure number of veto points and the strength of the political left both in unions and in government

earnings inequality and welfare spending a disaggregated analysis the welfare state is generally viewed as either providing redistribution from rich to poor or as providing publicly financed insurance both views are incomplete welfare policies provide both insurance and redistribution in varying amounts depending on the design of the policy the authors explore the political consequences of the mix of redistribution and insurance in the context of studying the impact of income inequality on expenditures in different categories of welfare spending in advanced industrial societies from 1980 to 1995 they find that spending on pensions health care family benefits poverty alleviation and housing subsidies is largely uncorrelated with income inequality but that spending on income replacement programs such as unemployment insurance sickness pay occupational illness and disability are significantly higher in countries with more egalitarian income distributions they show that this pattern is exactly what a theory of political support for redistributive social insurance programs would predict

security independence and sustainability imprecise language and the manipulation of energy policy in the united states abstract this article examines the impact of imprecise terminology on the energy policymaking process in us focusing on the manipulation of discourse by different political economic interests seeking to sway popular opinion using the 2012 us presidential elections as a backdrop the analysis highlights the cooption of the concepts security independence and sustainability in energy debates by different and often opposing interest groups the article s first section traces the malleability of energy terminology to the vagueness of the term energy itself and notes how qualifying words like security independence and sustainability have been selectively exploited to introduce further ambiguity to an already fungible concept the second section notes that while energy is a critical and complex factor of macroeconomic production its main public visibility comes via a few partially representative numbers like gasoline prices this mismatch of broad social importance and piecemeal public understanding enables organized interests to leverage vague terminology in support of particular policy ideas the third section examines three policymaking tools 1 taxation 2 regulation and 3 technology promotion and compares these administrative instruments ultimately the article concludes that loosely defined terminology inhibits energy policy discussion and stifles meaningful public debate over and action on energy issues

opportunities and barriers for international bioenergy trade recently the international trade of various bioenergy commodities has grown rapidly yet this growth is also hampered by some barriers the aim of this paper is to obtain an overview of what market actors currently perceive as major opportunities and barriers for the development of international bioenergy trade the work focuses on three bioenergy commodities bioethanol biodiesel and wood pellets data were collected through an internet based questionnaire the majority of the 141 respondents had an industrial background geographically two thirds were from mainly western europe with other minor contributions from all other continents results show that import tariffs and the implementation of sustainability certification systems are perceived as potentially major barriers for the trade of bioethanol and biodiesel while logistics are seen mainly as an obstacle for wood pellets development of technical standards was deemed more as an opportunity than a barrier for all commodities most important drivers were high fossil fuel prices and climate change mitigation policies concluding to overcome some of the barriers specific actions will be required by market parties and policy makers import tariffs for biofuels could be reduced or abolished linked to multinational trade agreements and harmonization including provisions on technical standards and sustainability requirements