The New Deal for Young People Five Years On*

The New Deal for Young People is the major welfare‐to‐work programme in the UK. It is a mandatory multistage policy targeted at 18‐ to 24‐year‐old unemployed people. This paper investigates the long‐term effectiveness of the programme in terms of enhancing the (re‐)employment probability of participating men. It exploits the eligibility rule to identify a suitable counterfactual relying upon a simple regression discontinuity design. The combination of job‐search assistance, training, wage subsidies and job experience enhances employability by about 4.6 per cent and this effect lasts over different cohorts.     

计算机短期培训教学方法的探讨

利用现代化教学手段可提高计算机短期培训教学水平,激发学员的学习兴趣。在授课中采取任务待居的方式,在练习课中采取达标和互帮互学的形式,是行之有效的教学方法。     

Bank Consolidation, Internationalization, and Conglomeration: Trends and Implications for Financial Risk

This paper documents trends in bank activity, consolidation, internationalization, and financial firm conglomeration with data on more than 100 countries, and explores the extent to which financial firm risk and systemic risk potential in banking are related to consolidation and conglomeration. The relationship between consolidation, conglomeration and financial risk is documented using financial data on the largest 500 financial firms worldwide and on large banks in about 90 countries. We find that (a) large conglomerate firms did not exhibit levels of risk‐taking lower than smaller and specialized firms in 1995, while they exhibited higher levels of risk‐taking in 2000; (b) highly concentrated banking systems exhibited levels of systemic risk potential higher than less concentrated systems during the 1993–2000 period, and this relationship has strengthened during the 1997–2000 period. We outline research directions aimed at explaining why bank consolidation and conglomeration may not necessarily yield either safer financial firms or more resilient banking systems.     

Product market competition, R&D, and welfare

We compare the subgame perfect equilibrium emerging in four regimes of research and development (R&D) competition between duopolists: (i) full competition, (ii) coordination of research strategies, (iii) joint venture with cross licensing of patents, and (iv) full collusion in R&D and the product market. The outcome of the firms' interaction depends on the interplay of the degree of product market competition, the similarity of the research strategies, and the cost of R&D, relatively to market size. Our main result is that each of the four regimes can, for plausible parameter combinations, yield the highest level of welfare. Therefore it is problematic to draw general rules applicable to all proposed research joint ventures.     

The influence of topic involvement on mail‐survey response behavior

In this study the influence of topic involvement on mail‐survey response rate and speed was experimentally investigated. The results show that response rates for topics that are generally considered as high involvement were higher than for topics that are generally considered as low involvement. However, the speed of response did not differ between the two levels of topic involvement. Moreover, in terms of response rates an interesting interaction effect was observed: For the high‐involvement topic, the response rate showed a further positive and significant correlation with the within‐topic level of involvement, but this was not the case for the low‐involvement topic. The implications of these findings to nonresponse bias in mail survey research are discussed. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The economics of convergence: Towards monetary union in Europe

The Economics of Convergence: Towards Monetary Union in Europe. —In this paper, the literature on monetary integration has been surveyed in order to discover the economic rationale of the Maastricht convergence requirements. The traditional theory of optimum currency areas is silent on the need for Maastricht-type convergence requirements. Similarly, the “new” view of monetary integration using credibility concepts cannot easily be used to justify these convergence requirements. It is also argued that the dynamics of the convergence requirements will almost certainly lead to a “Great Divide” of the European Union. The paper concludes that less emphasis should be put on prior convergence conditions and more on strengthening the functioning of the future monetary institutions in the Union.     

A Comparative Simulation Study of Wavelet Shrinkage Estimators for Poisson Counts

Using computer simulations, the finite sample performance of a number of classical and Bayesian wavelet shrinkage estimators for Poisson counts is examined. For the purpose of comparison, a variety of intensity functions, background intensity levels, sample sizes, primary resolution levels, wavelet filters and performance criteria are employed. A demonstration is given of the use of some of the estimators to analyse a data set arising in high-energy astrophysics. Following the philosophy of reproducible research, the M atlab programs and real-life data example used in this study are made freely available.