Trade with developing countries and employment in the European Community

The opposition to a liberal stance on imports of manufactures from developing countries is growing as certain specific groups of products made in these countries prove increasingly competitive and the industrialized countries suffer from persistent high unemployment. Model computations for the six most important EC countries reveal however that the imports from developing countries have only a small impact on employment in these economies seen as a whole.     

North-South interdependence: The case of the Federal Republic of Germany

This study examines economic relations between West Germany and the developing countries in the fields of trade, capital flows and migration of labour. Activity in most fields has expanded enormously since the mid-1960s; in addition the traffic has become markedly less one-way. For the purposes of analysis the developing countries are differentiated according to their economic capacity; prospects for co-operation with West Germany appear to differ markedly according to their stage of development. So German development policy, for its part, needs to employ a variety of different strategies. The more highly developed the partner country, the more the field can be left to private initiative, supported by a liberal foreign trade regime.     

Identifying relevant and irrelevant variables in sparse factor models

This paper considers factor estimation from heterogeneous data, where some of the variables—the relevant ones—are informative for estimating the factors, and others—the irrelevant ones—are not. We estimate the factor model within a Bayesian framework, specifying a sparse prior distribution for the factor loadings. Based on identified posterior factor loading estimates, we provide alternative methods to identify relevant and irrelevant variables. Simulations show that both types of variables are identified quite accurately. Empirical estimates for a large multi‐country GDP dataset and a disaggregated inflation dataset for the USA show that a considerable share of variables is irrelevant for factor estimation.     

Die Chemotherapie positiv unterstützen

Alternative Angebote – Auch über die medikament?sen Ma?nahmen hinaus gibt es eine Vielzahl an M?glichkeiten, die therapiebedingten Nebenwirkungen einer Chemotherapie zu lindern. Dreh- und Angelpunkt dabei ist die Unterstützung der Selbstheilungskr?fte und des seelischen Gleichgewichts der Patientinnen.     

Two tales on human capital and knowledge spillovers: the case of the US and Brazil

This article uses a quasi-Mincerian approach to verify whether the concentration of college-educated individuals employed in the business support services sector and in the own sector contributes to increased productivity in other sectors of the economy. We estimate the returns to education using data from the 2008 US Current Population Survey (March supplement) and from the 2008 Brazilian household survey. This article finds evidence of a positive and significant human capital sectorial spillover effect, which is consistent with Acemoglu’s (1996) conjecture. The sectorial concentration of highly educated workers contributes to increase wages for all workers. This study also finds evidence of increasing returns to education in Brazil and diminishing returns to education in the United States. This finding may be explained by differences in supply of skilled workers in both economies. In addition, the short supply of highly skilled workers in Brazil likely explains the importance of the spillover effect from the business supporting sector.     

The impact of enlargement on EU environmental governance

Conclusions  Enlargement may affect the three environmental governance regimes which together constitute EU environmental policy in very different ways. The Internal Market regime is based on functional and utilitarian reproductive mechanisms rooted in structures—the institutionalisation of the Internal Market at the core of the Community and the interest of countries with low environmental product standards in harmonisation —that are unlikely to be strongly affected by enlargement. In contrast, it seems possible that enlargement will significantly weaken the environmental regime. If enlargement shifts influence in favour of countries supporting a low level of environmental regulation, this would seriously affect the power and utilitarian mechanisms on which the environmental regime is based. The highly regulated countries could no longer use the environmental regime as an instrument to impose their regulations on the remaining Member States. This would deprive the regime of its most important support base. However, emerging new mechanisms, in particular Enhanced Co-operation, may offer ways for the highly regulated Member States to maintain their superior position and adapt the environmental regime to enlargement. Finally, although the present conditions for environmental policy integration may be even worse in the accession countries than in many present Member States, this might change in the longer run as a result of the particularly good opportunities and potentially large benefits of a shift to sustainable development in these countries. Whether or not this shift will occur appears to depend less on scarce financial resources and administrative capacities of the accession countries than on a firm institutionalisation of the sustainability regime at the Community level. It is up to the highly regulated Member States, which have so far promoted this emerging regime, to achieve this consolidation under relatively favourable conditions before enlargement takes place. An earlier version of this article was presented at the conference “EU Enlargement and Environmental Quality in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond”, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC, March 14, 2002.     

Trade between the EC and the GDR

This two-part study considers East Germany's trade with the member countries of the EC¹. Trade between the GDR and the Federal Republic is only trouched upon, as it is subject to special conditions². Subsequently EC trade policy towards the GDR is analysed. The study shows that the most important precondition for an increase in East Germany exports to the EC is a considerable improvement in its supply of goods. The economic integration of the GDR into the EC, whatever form this may take, will, however, accelerate the necessary restructuring processes.     

Pay‐Level Satisfaction and Employee Outcomes: The Moderating Effect of Employee‐Involvement Climate

The present study examined employee‐involvement climate (i.e., information‐sharing and decision‐making climate) as a moderator of the relationship between pay‐level satisfaction and employee outcomes (i.e., job satisfaction, affective commitment, and turnover intention). Survey data were collected from 22,662 Belgian employees, representing 134 organizations. The hypotheses derived from distributive justice theory and from research on the meaning of pay received partial support. Multilevel analyses revealed that a decision‐making climate buffered the negative effects of low pay‐level satisfaction, and that an information‐sharing climate exacerbated the negative effects of low pay‐level satisfaction. Theoretical and practical implications of this differential moderating effect are discussed.