Explaining post-1964 earnings gains by black women: Race or sex?

This article examines the earnings position of black females relative to white males for the post-1964 period. It finds that over 70 percent of the 1965–78 growth in black female relative median earnings remains after controlling for previous trends, education, and cyclical and labor supply changes. For full-time, year-round workers, the post-1964 trend independently implies a growth rate about 50 percent higher than that actually observed. Approximately one-half of the gains are attributable to race and the rest to the interaction of race and sex. The study finds no support for the censoring hypothesis that allocates a substantial portion of the growth to labor supply decreases. While it suggests occupational mobility to be nonextraneous in the earnings equation, the author argues that the black female now faces a mobility constraint more formidable than previously.     

Reliable Inference in Categorical Regression Analysis for Non‐randomly Coarsened Observations

In most surveys, one is confronted with missing or, more generally, coarse data. Traditional methods dealing with these data require strong, untestable and often doubtful assumptions, for example, coarsening at random. But due to the resulting, potentially severe bias, there is a growing interest in approaches that only include tenable knowledge about the coarsening process, leading to imprecise but reliable results. In this spirit, we study regression analysis with a coarse categorical‐dependent variable and precisely observed categorical covariates. Our (profile) likelihood‐based approach can incorporate weak knowledge about the coarsening process and thus offers a synthesis of traditional methods and cautious strategies refraining from any coarsening assumptions. This also allows a discussion of the uncertainty about the coarsening process, besides sampling uncertainty and model uncertainty. Our procedure is illustrated with data of the panel study ‘Labour market and social security' conducted by the Institute for Employment Research, whose questionnaire design produces coarse data.     

Disentangling types of liquidity and testing limits-to-arbitrage theories in the CDS–bond basis

We disentangle asset-specific, market, and funding liquidity in the CDS–bond basis outside and during the 2007–9 global financial crisis. Our findings stress the importance of separating different types of liquidity, since all three measures have independently negative impacts on the basis. Funding liquidity emerges as the economically most important liquidity metric. While asset-specific liquidity is cross-correlated in both the cash and derivative markets, funding and market liquidity only matter for the cash market. We exploit the decomposition of the basis to test predictions of limits-to-arbitrage theories. We find strong evidence in favor of margin-based asset pricing and flight-to-quality effects.     

Tourism competitiveness index of the Asia-Pacific region through consistency analysis

The world’s economy shifts to a more competitive environment as globalization expands and countries have to adjust by making decisions to improve their competitiveness in all sectors. The Travel and Tourism Report, a useful tool facilitating policy-making and business decisions, allows entities to envision their ranking in the face of the travel and tourism through the creation of a competitiveness index. Focusing on Asia and the Pacific, this paper intends to investigate internal consistency of the constructs based on data analysis techniques such as correlation and reliability, essentials to broader acceptance of the index. The results indicate that high linear association between index and pillars leads ultimately to good level of consistency and highlight the lack of relationship between overall consistency and inter-class consistency. It is suggested to pay close attention to unidimensionality of constructs and inter-relation between variables while building an indicator system as it increases its reliability.     

The External Debt‐Servicing Constraint and Public‐Expenditure Composition in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Abstract: In the light of the current global financial and economic crises, how would governments in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) allocate their budgets across sectors in response to a binding debt‐servicing constraint? Within a framework of public‐expenditure choice, the present paper estimates constraint‐consistent debt‐service ratios and employs them in a Seemingly Unrelated Regression involving a five‐year panel for up to 35 African countries over 1975–94, a period preceding the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiatives. While observed debt service is found to be a poor predictor of expenditure allocation, constraining debt servicing shifts spending away from the social sector, with similar impacts on education and health. The implied partial elasticity of the sector's expenditure share with respect to debt is estimated at 1.5, the highest responsiveness by far among all the explanatory variables considered, including external aid. Thus, if the social sector is to be protected, sufficient debt relief for SSA countries should be pursued.     

电子商务和旅游:塞舌尔电子旅游的现状和影响

本论文主要阐述电子商务对当代经济,尤其是对于在服务业的电子旅游方面所产生的冲击和影响。在信息和通信技术的推动下,电子商务改变了全世界商务运行的方式。尽管如此,本调查主要针对于以旅游业为主要外汇来源的发展中的塞舌尔岛。主要从以下几方面论述,第一,旅游业的概况,第二,突出问题所在,第三,目前解决这些问题的方法,最后,对于改善在这个产业中的技术发展的建议。文中的数据自于游客和商业调查并将用基本的评估和回归分析法来进行分析。调查的主要目的在于首先引起公众对于当今经济中电子商务的重要性和含义,其次,为塞舌尔电子商务将来的政策发展提供参考。我希望决策者和一些生意人能以此文为借鉴,帮助他们不仅为塞舌尔的旅游业,并且为塞舌尔经济的其他方面的未来和技术进步铺平道路。     

National governments under the discipline of global forces

Globalisation, in particular the increasing multinationalisation of businesses, has forced government suppliers into direct (in the form of parallel governments) or indirect (in the form of free trade) competition. However, the growth of supranational organisations such as the EU threatens the power of exit which is so vital to competition: overlapping government functions create waste and encourage further the growth of centralisation.     

Do computers improve the drawing of a geometrical figure for 10?year-old children?

Nowadays, computer aided design (CAD) is widely used by designers. Would children learn to draw more easily and more efficiently if they were taught with computerised tools? To answer this question, we made an experiment designed to compare two methods for children to do the same drawing: the classical ‘pen and paper’ method and a CAD method. We asked two groups of 14 children to draw a geometrical figure: the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF). The first group drew it with a pen on a sheet of paper (‘paper’ group) and the second on a computer screen with CAD software (‘computer’ group). Two drawing conditions were studied: ‘Copying’ the figure and drawing from memory. Results showed that the ‘computer’ group was better at copying the figure but that both groups performed equally well when the figure was drawn from memory. These preliminary results suggest that using a CAD tool could help children while they copy a model, but that it does not improve their ability to draw the same figure using their own, internal model.