The effects of education in early-stage agriculture: some evidence from China

The stochastic production frontier approach is used to study the effects of education on agricultural efficiency for a cross-section of 'early-stage' farms from Guanghan County, Sichuan Province, China. Education for farm families in rural China is multifaceted with a combination of formal education, intragenerational transfer of knowledge within the home, and agricultural extension services. Since our survey data span two different years with markedly different policy environments, we are able to examine not only which aspects of education affect agricultural efficiency, but also whether or not the policy environment matters. We find limited evidence that in a policy environment that is conducive to agriculture, formal education provides positive returns in agriculture. Furthermore, general education may provide greater returns than the more targeted extension services.     

The influence of foreign factor prices and international taxation on fixed investment in the UK

This paper examines the influence of foreign factor prices andinternational corporate taxation on fixed investment in theUK manufacturing sector. The evidence suggests that factor pricesaffect fixed investment in the UK through their influence oninternational competitiveness rather than the factor mix decision.There also appears to be a significant effect of tax competitivenesson the rate of investment. Empirical evidence suggests thatpolicy to increase investment be aimed at reducing the averagerate rather than the marginal rate of corporation tax.     

Sources of family income and expenditure on children's private,after‐school education in Korea

This paper examines the relationship between sources of family income and household expenditure on private, after‐school education for children in secondary schools in Korea in the context of educational ‘credentialism’, which values evidence of college education highly. Data from a survey of 514 parents of secondary school students are used. Estimated ordinary least squares coefficients indicate that the wife's income, but not the husband's, was positively associated with the amount of spending on children's education at private, after‐school programmes. This finding suggests that some married women with children in Korea seek employment in order to earn the money needed for their children's private, after‐school education.     

A forecast simulation analysis of the next‐generation DVD market based on consumer preference data

Just as standards wars over formats had characterized VCRs upon introduction to the market, the next‐generation DVD standards war between Blu‐Ray and HD‐DVD lasted 6 years before Blu‐Ray won the contest. Beginning with stated preference data drawn from a structured conjoint survey conducted before Blu‐Ray became the de facto standard of the next‐generation DVD format, we estimate consumer preferences on digital video players. A Bayesian mixed‐logit model is used and market share simulations are conducted under various scenarios based on the estimated parameters from Bayesian mixed‐logit model to surmise the future South Korean digital video‐player market. Results indicate that consumers feel that network size and title availability are more important than hardware‐related facets of the product, such as definition and storage capacity. The level of title availability and price of the Blu‐Ray player for Blu‐Ray's dominance over DVD will dramatically vary by the penetration rate of DVD players.     

Bias Reduction in Dynamic Panel Data Models by Common Recursive Mean Adjustment*

The within‐group estimator (same as the least squares dummy variable estimator) of the dominant root in dynamic panel regression is known to be biased downwards. This article studies recursive mean adjustment (RMA) as a strategy to reduce this bias for AR(p) processes that may exhibit cross‐sectional dependence. Asymptotic properties for N,T→∞ jointly are developed. When ( log ²T)(N/T)→ζ, where ζ is a non‐zero constant, the estimator exhibits nearly negligible inconsistency. Simulation experiments demonstrate that the RMA estimator performs well in terms of reducing bias, variance and mean square error both when error terms are cross‐sectionally independent and when they are not. RMA dominates comparable estimators when T is small and/or when the underlying process is persistent.     

Evaluating Industrial Relations Systems of OECD Countries from 1993 to 2005: A Two‐Dimensional Approach

This article uses both cross‐sectional and longitudinal methods to evaluate the national industrial relations systems of 30 Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries from 1993 to 2005. We adopt a pluralistic view of industrial relations that gives equal weight to efficiency and equity, along with a general systems model consisting of input, process and output. We rank each country in terms of a combined score of efficiency and equity. We find that the 30 OECD countries can be separated into three distinct groups (high on both equity and efficiency; high on efficiency but low on equity; moderate on equity and low on efficiency), and that these groups exhibit considerable stability over time.