Trends in the Clerical Labour Market, 1971–81: A Statistical Review

For an area of the economy which currently employs one in six of the GB workforce, remarkably little is known of detailed employment trends in the clerical labour market. This article attempts a statistical review of labour demand trends supplemented by information from in-company case studies recently conducted by the author. A review of changes in the level and pattern of employment in clerical and related skills is preceded by discussion on the definitional issue and on sources of appropriate information. The article concludes that our image of the clerical labour market is in need of an overhaul.     

Trade and Labour Market Adjustments: What Role for the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund?

Trade agreements have become a growing source of concern due to the potential job losses that some sectors can incur as a result of increased competition. Although the economic literature shows that the overall results of trade liberalisation are positive, some sectors may be adversely affected, leading to job losses and adjustment costs. In 2006 the European Commission established the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF) to help workers who have lost their jobs due to globalisation. Despite the relevance of the EGF as a trade-adjustment mechanism, the existing evidence suggests that its use is still limited compared to its potential. This paper reviews some of the constraining factors identified in the latest mid-term evaluation by the European Commission and suggests several avenues for further improvement.     

A Practice for Opening up the International Market

The Qingdao Qianshao Precision Machinery Company, an advanced new hi-tech enterprise for implementing the national torch plan, has continually increased its export products in recent years through the energetic opening up of its international market, making its export value more than half its annual sales amount.     

Who Benefits from Workers with General Skills? Countervailing Incentives in Labour Contracts

In a principal–agent model with adverse selection and moral hazard the impact of the agent's transferable human capital on incentives is analysed. It is shown that under asymmetric information the employer (principal) prefers a worker (agent) with general skills to a similarly productive worker with firm‐specific skills although the reservation utility of a worker with general (i.e. marketable) skills is higher. The principal's information costs are lower when workers have general skills than in the case where workers possess only firm‐specific human capital because of countervailing incentives. The optimal contract for workers with general skills differs from the standard screening contract in that it involves pooling.     

Communitarian Capitalism: A ‘Market’ Model for China?

As capitalist regimes of the global triad — American-style ‘individualistic’, European ‘statist’, and Japanese-style ‘communitarian’ — contend for dominance in the emerging world economic order, China is emerging as a critical battleground. This study examines the utility of the communitarian model for China's transition to market socialism. The first section presents salient features of Japanese-style capitalism; the second evaluates the model in terms of political-economic and socio-cultural institutional environments. The conclusion sets out implications for both Chinese leaders and foreign firms.     

China's Capital Market: Could It Be the Best in the World?

"The share-list of China's stock market this year is bound to reach 3000 points," "Before or after the Beijing Olympic Games, another upward fluctuation of the stock market is sure to emerge in China." "The latest statistics show that the total market value of the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock market have surpassed the mark of 10 trillion RMB, surpassing 50% of GDP." "Having successfully completed the reform of China's stock market China has achieved a full revolution."     

Market Cultures,the Middle Classes and Islam: Consuming the Market?

In discussions of Islam and consumer practices, there is a tendency to focus exclusively on the “clash of cultures”, particularly that between Islam and the “west”. In Islamic societies, consumer culture is often portrayed as a threat, harmful to religion as it privileges hedonism, pleasure, individualism and an expressive lifestyle. To counter the influences of the market and “deislamisation”, Islamic fundamentalists and revivalists have posited Islam as an innoculative pill against decadent western values. Such analyses, however, do not add very much to our knowledge of contemporary modernist Islamic societies undergoing rapid social and economic transformation. In examining the case of Malaysia, the paper seeks to shed some light on how the various interpretations of Islam impacts on modern Malaysian Muslims.

The paper starts with an examination of the central concept of Islam as a discursive tradition and its continuing legacy in the Malaysian social and political formation. The paper next examines the role of the state and how its ability to affect a national vision of high‐modernist development and growing affluence has created a new Malay middle class. Increasing wealth and a growing middle class have seen an intensification of new consumption patterns and practices. At the same time, there is a growing Islamisation, and culturally and politically the urban Malay middle classes are split as they are both sympathetic to the Islamic revivalist tradition and are active consumers of middle‐class lifestyle. These contradictions played themselves out in the public sphere and percolate down into everyday life and practice, affecting power structures and discourses. Classes, identities, entrepreneurship, the nature of capitalism, civil society and dissent are consequently all affected. The paper therefore argues that the differing interpretations in Islam enable different understandings of consumption and identity formation and that such analysis can engender richer and greater analytical insights in the context of Islamisation, modernity and consumption.     

A Brand New Cultural Tourism Project in the World History A Celebrity-Themed Park Worth Visiting for Everybody

Profile of Park of"Time-Honored Celebrities"The present Patent is an invention of a theme park on different scales based on geographic position of the world's political areas. 1."Continental areas"will be divided by roads,green fences and road lights.Each coun- try's or region's name,total area,population and languages be clearly marked.Artistic sculp- tures will be used to illustrate its national flag,currency,time zone,religions,ethnic distribu- tion and area code.Main cities,traffic system,major natural and cultural sites,famous places of interests and great historic events will also be marked.The focus will be on the celebrities     

Tourism Gears up for the Olympics

Since China has carried out the stricter visa policy from June.there is a popular saying that it will hold foreign visitor back from traveling in China and affect the related industries largely.Is it true or not?Let's observe this issue from the following aspects. Basic figures     

Does Regulation in Credit,Labour and Business Matter for Bank Performance in the EU-10 Economies?

Cost efficiency scores for banks in ten new EU member countries of Central and Eastern Europe are estimated using a parametric approach (data envelopment analysis) for the period prior to and immediately following their accession (2000–2010). These are then used in both fixed effects and dynamic panels to estimate the impact of regulation on bank specific efficiency in the transition economies of the EU. Using the Fraser Index of Economic Freedom (Gwartney, Hall, and Lawson 2012) we find that, among all the indices of economic freedom, the composite regulation index that includes regulation in credit, labour and business has more importance for the banking sector as results suggest a positive and statistically significant impact on bank efficiency. By decomposing the regulation index into its three components (credit, business and labour regulation) we find that strict labour regulation is associated with lower bank cost efficiency while certain aspects of credit regulation such as foreign ownership and competition as well as private ownership are significantly associated with improved efficiency. The dynamic panel vector autoregression (VAR) results using impulse response functions and variance decomposition further support the validity of these results. These findings are valuable for both academics and policy makers in their attempts to understand the drivers of bank efficiency.     

Trends for the Chinese-made Toothpaste Market

According to statistics from the China Toothpaste Industry Association, there are 40 tooth-paste factories with 12,000 employees. In 1994, the total output of toothpaste was 150,000 tons, equal to 2.3 billion tubes, each weighing 65 grams. In recent years, the annual average increase rate has been 10%. Toothpaste production and consumption in China rank second in the world. In the year 2000, the annual toothpastes output will reach 3.2 billion     

Input Pricing and Market Share Delegation in a Vertically Related Market: Is the Timing Order Relevant?

This paper adds to the literature on the strategic use of managers’ contracts in competition by examining whether market‐share delegation, in which managers receive rewards based on a combination of profits and market share, and the order of moves affect input pricing in a vertically related market. It shows that: (i) input pricing is not affected by delegation form and the order of moves between upstream and downstream firms under quantity competition; (ii) downstream firms obtain the same profit as in the simple Nash equilibrium regardless of delegation forms in a delegation–input price–quantity competition game; and (iii) the upstream monopolist will set input price beforehand regardless of the delegation form. Since the outcomes in our model create higher quantity and lower price in a Cournot product market, it lessens the double‐marginalization problem in such a vertically separated industry.     

Evidence of the Existence of an Internal Labour Market in the Great Eastern Railway Company, 1875–1905

Evidence from promotion ladders and the wage payment system of the GER is evaluated to see if it supports existing claims, primarily based on welfare and pension provision, that by 1900 the railway companies had become the first important adherents in the country to a system of internal labour markets. It is suggested that promotion was internalised and that it was based on merit and seniority, that some form of seniority wage payments system did evolve, and that wage increases were sharpest in the first ten years of employment and were associated with spatial mobility     

Ready for Latin America Market?

Nobody is moving faster in Chile than the Chinese.At last count,14 different brands of Chinese cars,trucks,and commercial vehicles were on sale in Chile—with more expected to arrive by the end of the year.——Alex TaylorⅢ     

Price Transmission in the Swiss Wheat Market: Does Sophisticated Border Protection Make the Difference?

This article discusses horizontal wheat price transmission from international markets to the domestic Swiss market. The Swiss case is peculiar due to the presence of different border policies segmenting the domestic wheat market according to its use: food or feed. Vector Error Correction (VEC) models with structural breaks are estimated. They account for these policy instruments and their adaptation during periods of market exuberance, and acknowledge linkages between the two market segments. Estimation results suggest that the border policy regime isolates the domestic wheat market for feed use, while, in the food case, the domestic price still responds to international markets.     

Initial Exploration of the Prospects for China's Tourist Market in 1998

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Who Will Trigger the Bomb of Price in the Auto Market in 2003 in China?

Despite China's auto market is till immersed in the afterglow of its "great eruption of oil well," as if every model of cars, costing a high price or low price, would all sell well on the market, yet it can be predicted that the year 2003 will, no doubt, be a year of price for China's auto industry. As soon as a big equivalent "bomb of price" would blow off in the beginning of the year, the pricing in China's auto market is sure to go through a sweeping reshuffle, and an effect of the theory of domino is inevitable to follow. No wonder, the market will be shaken by a price downslide of some key model of car produced by a solid-founded enterprise, with a drastic price down of RMB50000 for each car!     

Country of Origin Principle in the EU Market for Audiovisual Media Services: Consumer’s Friend or Foe?

The country of origin principle, the cornerstone of the EU Television Without Frontiers Directive – to become the Audiovisual Media Services Directive – is often criticised as being insensitive to the legitimate national public interest to protect viewers – and consumers – of audiovisual media content. This paper seeks to demystify this pessimistic perception of the country of origin rule from the perspective of the consumer interest. It demonstrates that the possible negative repercussions of the country of origin logic for consumer welfare are mitigated in three ways: by specific derogations possibilities foreseen in the Directive in case of violations of the fundamental rules on protection of minors and of human dignity; through the margin of broadcasting control left to the Member States in the areas beyond those coordinated by the Directive, and by means of a new two-step anti-circumvention procedure introduced by the new Directive.

The Role of Ordinary Evaluations in the Market for Popular Culture: Do Consumers Have “Good Taste”?

If we define “good taste” as that prescribed by professional experts in a particular cultural field and ask whether ordinary consumers (non-experts or members of the mass audience) have “good taste,” the evidence from previous studies suggests that the relationship between expert judgments and popular appeal to ordinary consumers is significantly but only weakly positive and is therefore consistent with a phenomenon of “little taste.” Possible explanations stem from the consideration of a variable that might mediate and thereby weaken the relationship between expert judgments and popular appeal—namely, ordinary evaluations, in which non-expert consumers assess the excellence (rather than the enjoyability) of a cultural offering. An earlier experimental study of musical performances showed that ordinary evaluations did intervene between expert judgments and popular appeal to college students so that, in this sense, ordinary consumers did display aspects of “good taste”. New data on over 200 motion pictures corroborate this finding in another cultural context, with actual audience members, and through the use of real-world as opposed to experimental observations.