Small Business Failure and External Risk Factors

Unlike much of the previous literature, which has generally focused on internal risk factors, this study seeks to explore the impact of macro-economic factors on small business mortality. The results suggest that economic factors appear to be associated with between 30% and 50% of small business failures, depending on the definition of failure used. As expected, failure rates were positively associated with interest rates (where failure was defined as bankruptcy) and the rate of unemployment (where failure was defined as discontinuance of ownership). However, somewhat unexpectedly, failure rates were found to be positively associated with lagged employment rates (where failure was defined as to prevent further losses) and with current and lagged retail sales (where failure was defined as either: failed to "make a go of it"; discontinuance of ownership; or discontinuance of business). This indicates that a strengthening economy may provide the trigger for an increase in voluntary business exits as individual proprietors seek to maximize the returns available to them on both their financial and human capital.     

Measuring National Well‐Being: A UK Perspective

The Measuring National Well‐being program began in the UK in November 2010. Traditional measures of progress such as GDP have long been recognized as an incomplete picture of the state of the nation. Following a six‐month National Debate that elicited 34,000 responses, ONS developed a framework for measuring national well‐being consisting of 10 domains and 40 headline indicators. The indicators include a mixture of both subjective and objective measures. Through supplementing existing economic measures, such as GDP, with measures that reflect social and environmental well‐being, national well‐being looks at the state of the nation through a broader lens. The paper will describe the development of the framework of indicators, including developing subjective well‐being measures, and the dissemination of this information using a range of interactive tools developed for this purpose. This is a long term development program and is still in its early days of measurement. How these data are used to improve policy design, delivery, and evaluation will be important to assess the success of the program. In particular, having a more complete picture of national well‐being will lead to a better understanding of policy impacts on well‐being; better allocation of resources; more informed decisions; assessment of government performance; and international comparisons.     

Communications

The University of California, Berkeley sends more undergraduate students to economics PhD programs than any other public university. While this fact is surely a function of its size, there may be lessons from the Berkeley experience that others could adopt. To investigate why Berkeley generates so many economics PhD students, the author convened and interviewed two groups: economics student services staff and a self-selected focus group of twelve economics undergraduates who plan to apply to PhD programs. Four factors came up repeatedly in these conversations: math preparation, advanced track for theory courses, research opportunities, and availability of information. A fifth factor was implicit in the conversations: peer effects.     

Food and tourism: an effective partnership? A UK-based review

This paper focuses on the role of food tourism in delivering sustainability agendas by examining how the agriculture and tourism sectors have struggled to realise measurable successes because of constraints, conflicting ambitions and low levels of social capital. It focuses on the United Kingdom, which has tasked regional development agencies to adopt food tourism as a means to grow local economies, create jobs and improve natural resources and diversify. In 2009/10, 16 interviews and six workshops were conducted with stakeholders to gauge industry challenges and needs in implementing food tourism. Based on qualitative findings, a model was developed which maps five emergent themes (knowledge exchange, the supply chain, fear of change, regionalisation and marketing) alongside five sustainability principles (strong and just society, good governance, sustainable economy, working within environmental limits and using sound science responsibly). The paper argues that if food tourism is to deliver its purported sustainable benefits, the policy environment must cultivate significant social capital through the cooperation of different industries with varying needs, motivations and challenges through joint marketing schemes, more localised distribution channels and enhanced policy engagement. Scotland and Wales are more successful than England, but overall food and tourism are not yet in effective partnership.     

Why economic growth is slow

This paper presents a general theory of economic progress in the LDCs: that increase in productivity is slow because, even given knowledge of the productive techniques used in the industrialized countries, for techno-economic reasons economic growth can proceed only in stages and requires a high degree of innovational talent, which is scarce in any country. The stages are delineated.It is then suggested that the theory is still more general; that, with consideration of one added factor, it provides a general explanation of variations among countries in the pace of increase in productivity.     

Computer aids for production systems management in iron ore mining

Iron ore is railed to port, crushed to lump and fines, stockpiled and shipped. Product quality requires consistent composition, in iron and other minerals. Decision support systems described here aid daily ore selection, to maintain target composition. The method evolved from a batch system, building each stockpile to target, to a flow process, targeting an exponentially smoothed continuous stockpile. This has decoupled mine, rail and port operations, lessening costly rehandling. A quadratic programming solution guides ore selection. Some ill-defined and cost related constraints require human judgment. The emphasis is on decision-support, not decision-making, in a fruitful example of human/computer interaction.