Growth and human capital: good data,good results

We present a new data set for years of schooling across countries for the 1960–2000 period. The series are constructed from the OECD database on educational attainment and from surveys published by UNESCO. Two features that improve the quality of our data with respect to other series, particularly for series in first-differences, are the use of surveys based on uniform classification systems of education over time, and an intensified use of information by age groups. As a result of the improvement in quality, these new series can be used as a direct substitute for Barro and Lee’s (2001; Oxford Economic Papers, 3, 541–563) data in empirical research. In standard cross-country growth regressions we find that our series yield significant coefficients for schooling. In panel data estimates our series are also significant even when the regressions account for the accumulation of physical capital. Moreover, the estimated macro return is consistent with those reported in labour studies. These results differ from the typical findings of the earlier literature and are a consequence of the reduction in measurement error in the series.      

Development of internal resources and capabilities as sources of differentiation of SME under increased global competition: A field study in Mexico

This paper draws on the resource-based view of the firm and contributes to our understanding of how the development of internal resources and capabilities in SMEs can provide sources of competitive advantages in the international arena and improve their business performance.This research found statistical evidence to suggest that business performance measured by growth rate, efficiency, productivity and shareholder's financial returns, is positively related with the development of internal capabilities such as soft technology (methods and processes that support the firm) and hard technology (externally acquired equipment, in-house development of machinery and innovation in raw materials) and a strategy of continuous improvement, innovation and change.A number of relevant contributions are proposed in this piece of research that expands our understanding of how SMEs can compete in the international context: (1) firms whose explicit business strategy emphasizes innovation and knowledge creation have been able to successfully participate in global contexts; (2) even though financial resources are important for a firm to leverage performance it was found that development of internal capabilities has been more important than limited financial resources in order to develop competitive advantages to compete with larger and multinational competitors; (3) results of this research support the proposition that from an associational economy perspective the development of a geographical region or country should be an interaction among a number of constituents namely government policies, the firms themselves and universities and research centers among others.     

The riegle-neal act and local banking market concentration

The Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994 greatly transformed the American banking system by allowing the widespread establishment of interstate bank branching networks. This paper examines possible effects on local banking market concentration that resulted from the provision in the Riegle-Neal Act that allowed states to opt-in to the establishment of de novo interstate branches. Regression analysis using data from more than seven hundred cities does not provide any evidence that allowing the establishment of de novo interstate branches caused increases in local banking market concentration. These results may help alleviate some concerns that passage of the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act currently pending in Congress will result in lessened competition in local banking markets. The author would like to thank discussant Janice Breuer and other participants of the International Atlantic Economic Conference, held in Quebec City from October 16–19, 2003 for helpful comments and suggestions. The author would also like to thank Trevor Lyon for his valuable research assistance.     

The unification of Ronald W. Shephard's duality theory

Ronald W. Shephard developed four fundamental duality theorems. They relate the following four pairs of representations of the technology: cost function-input distance function, revenue function-output distance function, indirect cost function-indirect input distance function, and indirect revenue function-indirect output distance function. In this paper we show that all eight of these representations are equivalent. The implication of this equivalence is that there are twenty-four duality theorems and four inverse relationships involving Shephard's eight representations of technology.     

Democracy and the Variability of Economic Performance

Sah (1991) conjectured that more centralized societies should have more volatile economic performances than less centralized ones. We show in this paper that this is true both for cross–country and within–country variability in growth rates. It is also true for some measures of policies. Finally, we show that both the best and worst performers in terms of growth rates are more likely to be autocracies. We argue that the evidence in the paper is consistent with the theoretical implications in Sah and Stiglitz (1991) and Rodrik (1999a).     

Rainfed mechanized farming and deforestation in central Sudan

Sudan is threatened by a serious deforestation problem. Total forested area decreased by about 20 percent over the last two decades, largely as a result of the expansion of rainfed mechanized farming (RMF). To safeguard against the problems of deforestation, the government's Mechanized Farming Corporation requires each farmer to leave at least ten percent of the total farm area under shelterbelts. Few farmers pay attention to this clause. This paper addresses the problem of RMF expansion and analyzes the effects of different factors on the preservation of shelterbelts. Results indicate that the following factors influence the decision to preserve shelterbelts: farmer's belief in the value of shelterbelts, the production of gum arabic, farm size, farmer's wealth, years a farm has been cultivated, and type of farm.     

Convention, Social Order, and the Two Coordinations

The word coordination has two meanings, and thesemeanings are often conflated. One meaning, associated with ThomasSchelling, is seen in situations like choosing whether to driveon the left or the right; the drivers must coordinate to eachother's behavior. The other meaning, associated with FriedrichHayek, means that a concatenation of activities is arranged soas to produce good results. Along with the Schelling sense ofcoordination comes the notion of convention, such as drivingon the right. Some conventions are consciously designed; othersemerge without design (or are emergent). Along with the Hayeksense of coordination comes the notion of social order. Somesocial orders, such as the skeleton of activities within thefirm or within the hypothetical socialist economy, are consciouslyplanned. Other social orders, such as the catallaxy of the freesociety, function without central planning (or are spontaneous).Distinguishing between the two coordinations (and, in parallelfashion, between convention and social order) clarifies thinkingand resolves some confusions that have arisen in discussionsof coordination and spontaneous order. The key distinctionsare discussed in the context of the thought of, on the one hand,Menger, Schelling, David Lewis, and the recent path-dependencetheorists, and, on the other hand, Smith, Hayek, Polanyi, Coase,and the modern Austrian economists. The paper concludes witha typology that encompasses the several distinctions.     

Leadership in the 21st Century: Understanding Global Terrorism

What should organization leaders (in both business and government, in all countries of the world) know about terrorism? They should know that terrorism has a deep history with instances of terrorist-type activities being recorded in the Bible, presently involving many of the world's countries with all continents but Antarctica recording one or more terrorist attacks in the last year, and has many facets to examine. Those parts include knowing about the perpetrators and their goals, the targets, the weapons, the events, and the effects of those events. Leaders should understandthe background of global terrorism and also how to respond to the negative effects of terrorist events. Presently, the United States is considered the top target in the World and is likely to be for the foreseeable future. Al Qaeda is probably the top Foreign Terrorist Organization aiming at the U.S. with intentions of using more lethal weapons and producing severe damage. The future will probably see a significant reduction in ideological terrorism and increases in single-issue terrorist groups attacking major cities with weapons of mass destruction. Further progress in understanding terrorism and its effects on business should come more from quality academic research in business (rather than from conjecture and opinions as at present) and from further quality academic research in other fields such as history, political science, and psychology.     

Application of sparse matrix techniques to inter-regional input-output analysis

Conclusions Combining the concepts described in this paper makes it possible to solve inter-regional input-output systems (and other types of large, sparse, linear systems) with considerable efficiency in storage and computation. The exact number of operations and corresponding savings in computational time and storage depend on the particular zero-non zero structure of each matrix in the system, but in any case the savings can be enormous. A recommended procedure is summarized below.1. Take the entire inter-regional IO system which includes the representation of each of the regions and of the links among them and express it in the formMx=Bz or, more simply,Mx=b (since bothB andz are known). It may be helpful for this purpose to draw a picture of the large matrixM.2. PartitionM into blocks, exploiting the structure of the particular system. For example, at the very least, the matrix or matrices corresponding to each region will probably be separate blocks. The analysis required for this step may lead to reformulating the matrix representation of the given economic system by, for example, replacing a set of equations with linear combinations of these same equations, particularly for the equations representing the links among regions.3. Identify an appropriate partition of the blocks ofM, and a corresponding partition of the vectorsx andb, for performing a block factorization. This solution algorithm, which solves forx inMx=b (whereM now represents the entire system) is not available as a packaged program and so for the foreseeable future must be written in home-made computer code that assumes a sparse matrix storage scheme compatible with the package to be used (as in 4 below). The algorithm for block factorization in the 2×2 case relevant to our particular inter-regional IO system is given in Section 8 of this paper.4. Some steps of the algorithm require solving smaller systems of the formHu=v foru, given some matrixH and some vectorv. Efficient packaged subroutines can be obtained at low cost in order to solve these systems by finding the block triangular form corresponding to a particularH, then performing theLU factorization of the diagonal blocks only. The home-made code will interact with these subroutines.The idea of applying the sparse matrix techniques described in this paper to input-output models was conceived in 1978 at meetings of the first author and Dietrich Fischer with Fred Gustavson and with Don Goldfarb and Olof Widlund. Both Fred Gustavson and Olof Widlund made valuable suggestions while the work was carried out, and they, Dietrich Fischer, Wassily Leontief and Vu Viet reviewed early drafts of the paper, making many corrections and valuable suggestions. We also thank Alan George for useful discussions.This paper was presented at the Seventh International Conference On Input-Output Techniques at Innsbruck, Austria, 9–13 April 1979. Since then, the design described here has been implemented and the operational World Model has served as a tool for several empirical studies.