The efficiency of small and medium enterprises in informal metal manufacturing in Zimbabwe: Implications for stakeholders in the agricultural sector

This study uses the structure–conduct–performance framework to examine the structure and efficiency of small and medium enterprises in the informal metal manufacturing sector in Zimbabwe. Small and medium enterprises provide a lifeline to the country's resource-poor farmers, whose numbers increased exponentially after the agrarian reform in 2000. The study utilises nationally representative, enterprise-level data from five major towns (Harare, Chitungwiza, Bulawayo, Mutare and Rusape) in Zimbabwe. Various performance measures are applied at the industry level to assess efficiency, profitability and competitiveness; these include the Herfindahl–Hirschman index, concentration ratios, average yearly profits and Tobin's q ratio. The results indicate that small and medium enterprises in Zimbabwe are modestly efficient, profitable and competitive. These findings highlight the need to integrate informal metal fabrication activities into Zimbabwe's national economic development plans.     

Did working families' tax credit work? The impact of in-work support on labour supply in Great Britain

In-work benefits are promoted as a way to make low-income families better off without introducing adverse work incentives. In 1999, the structure of in-work benefits in the UK changed, and their generosity almost doubled, through the introduction of Working Families' Tax Credit (WFTC). With micro-data from before and after its introduction, a structural model of labour supply and programme participation estimates that, by 2002, WFTC had increased labour supply of lone mothers by around 5.1 percentage points, slightly reduced labour supply of mothers in couples by 0.6 percentage points, and increased the labour supply of fathers in couples by 0.8 percentage points, compared with the programme that preceded it. Other tax and benefit reforms contemporaneous with WFTC acted to reduce the labour supply of parents, though. Without any form of in-work benefit in the UK, labour force participation by lone mothers would be around 45 percent, rather than the 55 per cent we now observe. Participating in family credit, the UK's in-work programme before October 1999, conferred a utility loss as well as a utility gain from the extra income, but this utility cost of participation was lower in the final year of WFTC than under previous programmes for lone mothers, and no different for individuals in couples: this in itself induced more lone mothers to work.     

Stochastic volatility with leverage: Fast and efficient likelihood inference

This paper is concerned with the Bayesian analysis of stochastic volatility (SV) models with leverage. Specifically, the paper shows how the often used Kim et al. [1998. Stochastic volatility: likelihood inference and comparison with ARCH models. Review of Economic Studies 65, 361–393] method that was developed for SV models without leverage can be extended to models with leverage. The approach relies on the novel idea of approximating the joint distribution of the outcome and volatility innovations by a suitably constructed ten-component mixture of bivariate normal distributions. The resulting posterior distribution is summarized by MCMC methods and the small approximation error in working with the mixture approximation is corrected by a reweighting procedure. The overall procedure is fast and highly efficient. We illustrate the ideas on daily returns of the Tokyo Stock Price Index. Finally, extensions of the method are described for superposition models (where the log-volatility is made up of a linear combination of heterogenous and independent autoregressions) and heavy-tailed error distributions (student and log-normal).     

EQUILIBRIUM SEARCH AND TAX CREDIT REFORM

An empirical equilibrium job search model with wage posting is developed to analyze the impact of U.K. tax reforms. The model allows for a rich characterization of the labor market, with hours responses, accurate representations of the tax and transfer system, and both worker and firm heterogeneity. The British Working Families' Tax Credit and contemporaneous reforms are predicted to increase employment, with equilibrium effects found to be relatively modest. The model is used to assess the impact of alternative policies, with equilibrium effects shown to become important as the generosity of tax credits is increased.     

Testing the assumptions behind importance sampling

Importance sampling is used in many areas of modern econometrics to approximate unsolvable integrals. Its reliable use requires the sampler to possess a variance, for this guarantees a square root speed of convergence and asymptotic normality of the estimator of the integral. However, this assumption is seldom checked. In this paper we use extreme value theory to empirically assess the appropriateness of this assumption. Our main application is the stochastic volatility model, where importance sampling is commonly used for maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters of the model.     

Slow fashion movement: Understanding consumer perceptions—An exploratory study

The retail industry currently is dominated by fast-fashion and just-in-time production seeking to increase fashion trends. Yet, due to the economic crisis worldwide, disposable incomes are on the wane and clothes at disposable prices are losing their appeal. There is a growth of a new movement counteracting the demand for fast fashion—the “Slow Fashion” movement. The exploratory study analyzed consumers' perception of purchasing slow fashion garments using focus groups. Four themes emerged (1) Slow fashion defined; (2) Slow Fashion Product Attributes; (3) Slow Fashion as a Lifestyle; (4) Slow Fashion into Retail Mainstream, implications for retailers have been suggested.     

The ACR Model: A Multivariate Dynamic Mixture Autoregression*

This paper proposes and analyses the autoregressive conditional root (ACR) time‐series model. This multivariate dynamic mixture autoregression allows for non‐stationary epochs. It proves to be an appealing alternative to existing nonlinear models, e.g. the threshold autoregressive or Markov switching class of models, which are commonly used to describe nonlinear dynamics as implied by arbitrage in presence of transaction costs. Simple conditions on the parameters of the ACR process and its innovations are shown to imply geometric ergodicity, stationarity and existence of moments. Furthermore, consistency and asymptotic normality of the maximum likelihood estimators are established. An application to real exchange rate data illustrates the analysis.     

Sport policy and development: an introduction

This article argues that the new Norwegian cultural policy, launched in the mid 1970s, strongly emphasizing cultural democracy and administrative decentralization, has had important unintended consequences. Stressing the value of activity as a crucial part of the new ‘comprehensive concept of culture’, the policy has supported exactly those tendencies it was meant to counteract, i.e. cultural standardization, individualism, privatisation and commercialization. The new relativistic and ‘anthropological’ perspective taking as a point of departure that we all ‘have’ culture regardless of social status, geographical setting and ways of life, implies that real planning becomes impossible, because nobody can argue from a cultural perspective that certain types of activities are more important than others. As a result the new local cultural administrations have to a large extent become service institutions for voluntary organizations.