British union renewal: does salvation really lie beyond the workplace?

The paper examines a union initiative to recruit among migrant workers through the provision of individual services outside of the workplace. While the initiative is shown to have initially generated new members, questions are raised about the viability of such an approach in the absence of mutually supportive access to workplace representation.     

‘Good when they want to be’: migrant workers in the supermarket supply chain

Despite the increased attention paid to the role and effects of migrant labour in the contemporary economy, there has been insufficient attention to the role of employers and the employment relationship. Recent studies have highlighted distinctive labour power characteristics of new labour migrants from Central and Eastern Europe that make them ‘good workers’ in the eyes of employers. Drawing on multiple case studies across the supermarket supply chain, this article explores what kind of human resource migrant labour is perceived to be, particularly by employers, and what happens in practice as the dynamic tensions of the employment relationship unfolds in particular sector contexts. It argues that utilisation is conditioned more by the requirements of temporal flexibility – framed by the dynamics of employment within the supply chain – than any essential features of migrant labour power.     

R&D Subsidies,Spillovers, and Privatization in Mixed Markets

We examine the use of subsidies to research and development (R&D) in a mixed and a private duopoly market. We show that the socially optimal R&D subsidy is increasing in the degree of spillovers, but it is lower in the private duopoly. The optimal R&D subsidy leads to an increase in total R&D and production; however, it does not lead to the equalization of per firm output and therefore to an efficient distribution of production costs. We also find that privatization of the public firm reduces R&D activity and welfare in the duopoly market. This result stands even when optimal R&D subsidies are provided.     

THE IMPACT OF DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN COMPETITION ON SECTORAL GROWTH: A CROSS‐COUNTRY ANALYSIS

This paper examines the impact of competition on the total factor productivity (TFP) of 21 manufacturing sectors in eighteen OECD countries over the period of time 1990–2006. We assume that the source of TFP growth can be either domestic or foreign innovation or technology transfer from the technological frontier. Trade openness, R&D, and human capital can have two effects: a direct effect on TFP (e.g., through innovation) and an indirect effect depending on the productivity gap between a given country and the technological frontier. We find that tougher domestic competition is always associated with higher sectoral productivity. Both import and export penetrations are positively associated with an increase of TFP. However, the channels through which higher TFP is materialized are different: export penetration works through level effect, while import penetration acts mainly when conditional on the level of technological development. The economical magnitude of the effect is not trivial.     

PRODUCTIVE RECESSIONS AND JOBLESS RECOVERIES

We explore international variation in business cycle dynamics to gain insights into the recent pattern of robust productivity growth during downturns (productive recessions) and weak employment growth during recoveries (jobless recoveries) seen in some advanced economies. We find that sectoral change is associated with productive recessions but that labor market rigidity can impede reallocation and reduce the probability of a productive recession. We also find evidence of a link between productive recessions and jobless recoveries and that recessions dominated by reductions to employment, rather than changes in average employee hours, are more likely to be associated with jobless recoveries. (JELF44, E32)     

Covid-19, Economic Growth and South African Fiscal Policy

Following years of fast-rising debt levels, we show that the Covid-19 crisis worsened an already deteriorating fiscal position in South Africa. To restore fiscal sustainability in the aftermath of the crisis some commentators argue that higher government expenditure will grow GDP sufficiently to stabilise the debt/GDP ratio. We reject this, showing that although a real increase in expenditure stimulates economic growth (a short-run, once-off effect), the public expenditure/GDP ratio exceeds the level at which an increase in the ratio positively impacts growth. We then explore the past efforts of government to maintain or restore fiscal sustainability by estimating a fiscal reaction function using a Markov-switching model. Following the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the budget, we subsequently establish the deficit, expenditure and revenue adjustments that the government will have to make to restore fiscal sustainability. Finally, we consider the merits of introducing a debt ceiling.     

英国市场的品牌术——一个专业公关人士的视角

我不打算借本文分析品牌及其价值，因为业界已经有许多权威人士就此论题发表了成千上万的文章。我希望能从另一角度透视品牌化——从我自身出发。这，源于我把职业生涯的每一天都投入了品牌的建立和推广。     

Adolescent injuries in relation to economic status: An international perspective

The primary objective of the study was to examine the relationship between patterns in car-to-car crashes involving young drivers and car and driver characteristics and the research design was a national register-based prospective cohort study. Individual records in a cohort born 1970 – 1972 are linked to road-traffic-crash data (1988 – 2000). Subjects' first police-registered two-car crash leading to severe or fatal injury (n = 4875) are identified. Typical crash patterns are highlighted and associations between pattern and both car and individual socio-demographic characteristics are tested. Four crash patterns are highlighted. Male drivers and those with lower educational attainment are over-represented in all patterns. Pattern-based risk levels vary considerably according to car safety level and driver's age at time of injury and socio-economic status. Crash patterns might be considered in young adult driver education systems, bearing in mind the consistent higher risks of male drivers and of drivers with lower educational attainment.