Ein verallgemeinerter Geburten- und Todesprozeß zur Erklärung der Entwicklung des deutschen Volkseinkommens, 1851–1939

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Value-Added Trade and Empirical Distributions of RCA Indices

Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) indices aid in identification of the sectors in which countries reveal comparative advantage or disadvantage. Apart from serving such a dichotomous measure, the RCA indices are frequently employed as cardinal or ordinal measures over time. Application of the indices for comparative analyses calls attention towards the distributions of RCA indices, which must reasonably be stable over time, sectors and countries. Stability of index distributions facilitates the usage of indices as cardinal or ordinal measures over time. The present paper therefore analyses the empirical distributions of RCA indices to determine their suitability. However, such an analysis would be incomplete if the implications for RCA indices due to growing significance of global supply chains are not recognized. Hence apart from analyzing the distributions of gross trade based RCA indices, the distributions of domestic value-added in export based indices are also examined, and the differences are noted. Similar extensive analyses on the distributions of RCA indices are lacking in the literature. In this sense, the present paper makes an important contribution to the existing literature on RCA indices.

     

Nonparametric tests of efficiency of portfolio investment

The author likes to sincerely thank an anonymous referee for most helpful comments and suggestions.     

Managing low‐skill workers: a study of small UK food manufacturing firms

Low‐wage work is of growing significance in the UK. This article tests the model of the low‐skills equilibrium (LSE) through a study of 27 small firms in a sector, food manufacturing, widely identified as being in an LSE. Three hypotheses are tested. (1) There will be a single, fixed equilibrium. We find more variety, reflecting the specific circumstances of firms. (2) An equilibrium is sustained by weak support institutions and a product market dominated by low value‐added goods. The expectation about institutions is supported, but the product market permitted some, albeit weak, opportunities to escape the LSE. (3) Skills will be low, and workplace regimes will be characterised by work intensification. Some firms were developing employee skills. Work intensification was rare, reflecting the absence of Taylorisation and the importance of face‐to‐face relationships. Overall, some firms had the will to escape the LSE, but weak institutional support and a ready supply of labour substantially reduced the incentives to do so.     

Pricing of off‐balance sheet debt: how do bond market participants use the footnote disclosures on operating leases and postretirement benefit plans?

In this study, we examine whether the public debt market prices information on off‐balance sheet debt arising from operating leases and postretirement plans. We find that bond‐rating agencies price off‐balance sheet debt arising from operating leases and the coefficient on off‐balance sheet debt measure of operating leases is similar to that of capital leases on the balance sheet. Regarding postretirement benefit plans, we find that bond‐rating agencies do price postretirement benefit obligations that are reported in balance sheet but do not price such obligations disclosed in footnotes. We find similar results when we examine corporate bond yields on new debt issues.     

Conceptualizing social entrepreneurship in the context of emerging economies: an integrative review of past research from BRIICS

Social entrepreneurship is well practiced and talked about in emerging economies. However, till date, no dedicated review and conceptual framework exists, synthesizing and integrating past social entrepreneurship research in the fast growing emerging economies, commonly known as BRIICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China, and South Africa). The purpose of this article is to bridge that gap by conducting an integrative review of 123 most relevant peer-reviewed scholarly articles, filtered out of 1779 search results in six different research databases. Country-specific conceptual perspectives have been extracted and integrated to formulate a novel social entrepreneurship framework that is inclusive of five key social entrepreneurship dimensions emerging from these economies: (a) Social Welfare, (b) Social Capital, (c) Social Entrepreneur, (d) Economic Value Creation, and (e) Collective Endurance. This exercise was an initiative to facilitate the global community of social entrepreneurship researchers and practitioners in understanding the diversity, meaning, and evolution of the social entrepreneurship phenomenon in the context of emerging economies. They can advance research in this domain with the aid of the proposed framework and the research questions proposed for future research.     

Employee share ownership and performance: golden path or golden handcuffs?

Using matched employer-employee data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, it is suggested that the presence of employee share ownership at a workplace is not significantly associated with employee commitment to the organization. There is evidence of a significant negative relationship between share ownership and workplace turnover, which explains part of the positive share ownership/performance relationship. This calls into question the postulate that share ownership has its main impact upon performance via the closer alignment of employees' and employers' values and interests – the golden path – rather than the lowering of employee turnover – the golden handcuffs.