Labour hoarding in a disequilibrium model of the Dutch labour market

Summary This paper presents a method to integrate labour hoarding into a disequilibrium model of the labour market. Disequilibrium indicators for the labour market that include labour hoarding are constructed. These indicators, being important determinants of policy multipliers with respect to employment, are found to be less volatile than the corresponding disequilibrium indicators for the goods market which are available from business surveys. The lower volatility reflects the role of labour hoarding as a buffer between actual and efficient employment levels. Our results indicate that labour hoarding in Dutch enterprises ranges from a minimum of 0.5 per cent of employment in early 1985 to a maximum of 7.0 per cent in 1975. Furthermore, the paper pays special attention to the modelling of mismatch unemployment and to the simulation results of an empirical disequilibrium macromodel of the Dutch economy.The authors thank M.M.G. Fase and two anonymous referees for their useful comments.     

Is it worth subsidising regional repertory theatre?

Subsidies to the performing arts are usually justified by referenceto externality and public goods arguments that are hard to quantify.We suggest that subsidies to theatres may be appropriate becauseof their inability to engage in spatial price discriminationto capture consumer surplus. For one major theatre, we use audiencedata and the Clawson-Knetsch travel cost method to assess theextent of consumer surplus and find that it exceeds the levelof subsidy received from public sources. On the basis of thisexample, current subsidy levels are justifiable even withoutrecourse to traditional externality/public goods arguments.     

Consumer perspectives on the African sharptooth catfish in rural and urban areas of the Northern Province

This study evaluated consumer behavioural patterns in relation to meat products, with special reference to the African sharptooth catfish, in the Northern Province. Personal interviews were conducted in rural Ga‐Mamphaka and urban Giyani. The major meat type purchased was found to be chicken (71 per cent in the rural and 46 per cent in the urban community). The sharptooth catfish was found to be acceptable to the majority of respondents, both urban (69 per cent) and rural (57 per cent). Most respondents also indicated that they would like to purchase canned catfish. A potential market for catfish would seem to exist at a price competitive with that of chicken.     

政府监管政策变革对出口消费品质量影响

驱动高质量发展为新时代我国重大发展战略。以2011-2017年广东12个行业出口消费品企业的面板数据为样本,利用简单线性回归和双重差分法评估政府监管政策变革对出口消费品质量（出口消费品合格水平、市场感知质量）等两个维度的影响,实证结果表明：政府监管政策变革显著提升出口消费品质量水平,对实验组样本产品合格水平的正向影响作用普遍好于对照组;同时,政府监管政策变革对出口消费品市场感知质量的影响与行业关联,能显著提高部分行业的市场感知质量,如：家电、照明设备、仿真饰品、信息技术设备、纺织品服装、家具等行业。鉴于此,政府质量监管应结合行业发展特点,创新监管模式,进一步推进"管检分离",大力发展第三方检验检测结果采信等,以形成健康可持续的出口消费品质量发展生态环境。     

Quality,experience, and monopoly: the Soviet market for weapons under Stalin1

Monopoly is a particular problem in markets where experience goods are traded, since the consumer cannot respond to bad experiences by switching repeat purchases to another supplier. New evidence shows how the defence ministry as buyer in the Soviet market for military goods responded to this problem by investing in an evaluation of quality prior to purchase, by showing reluctance to buy, and by exploiting the available non‐market means to influence the defence industry as supplier. The effectiveness of these stratagems was limited by the defence industry's counteractions and because the buyer had no choice but to come to a compromise with the supplier.     

Financial analysis of the electrification programme

This article presents results from a financial analysis of the national electrification programme. The study benefitedfrom the inclusion of detailed capital cost modelling and data describing trends in the growth of consumption since the inception of the programme. The analysis calculated nett present value and accumulated debt, and quantified the level of subsidies required to ensure that the programme is financially viable. The effect of these subsidies on existing surpluses, possible price increases, and financial transfers between regions is investigated. Financial results are determined largely by capital costs, which are likely to be higher than estimated in previous studies. Electrification results in large losses, with revenues inadequate to cover even operating costs not related to financing, and the required subsidies are about Rl,6 billion per year, equivalent to an average 8 per cent general tariff increase. It is concluded that important questions relating to the source and distribution of subsidies, as well as the inclusion of off‐grid technologies, will have to be resolved if electrification is to be sustained beyond the year 2000.     

Entrepreneurial Planning in a Regulated Environment: the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission and the Maritime Industry

Entrepreneurs exploit market opportunities and innovate to achieve or maintain strategic advantage over their competitors. In the absence of government regulation, entrepreneurs are free to focus on improving satisfaction of customer wants, for example, by enhancing current goods, supplying new goods, or supplying established goods at lower cost. In a regulated market, entrepreneurs focus on satisfying regulatory authorities, for example, to earn rate increases, subsidies, or tax benefits. Economists normally conceptualize regulation as restricting entrepreneurial choice over prices charged, including general prohibitions against price discrimination, or as imposing additional costs on business enterprises through mandating actions entrepreneurial planners would not otherwise have chosen, or prohibiting actions which would have been freely chosen. This paper examines the role of a specific regulatory agency, the Federal Maritime Commission, and its regulatory oversight of the maritime shipping sector. Business strategy and public policy implications will be developed, as well as implications for the growth and development of the shipping industry. The history and nature of government intervention in the maritime sector will be reviewed. The presence of a regulatory authority at least partly substitutes a kind of bureaucratic sovereignty over the consumer sovereignty of an unregulated market. Regulated firms compete for favors from the regulatory authority, and in a regulated environment strategic advantage is directed away from entrepreneurial planners to political entrepreneurs.

Scrip as private money,monetary monopoly,and the rent‐seeking state in Britain

Scrip—promissory notes payable in goods at company stores—was issued by employers to pay workers, and was an important component of British money during the industrial revolution. As late as the third quarter of the nineteenth century, scrip issued by coal firms, which represented the foregone demand for official currency, was at least 9 to 24 per cent of the value of English country or Scottish banknote issues. In some areas, scrip was 38 per cent of the total wages paid. The state's suppression of this private currency to defend its seigniorage rents was in part the motivation behind the prohibition of the truck system in 1831.     

Labour market discrimination in the North West province of South Africa

This article provides an econometric estimate of labour market discrimination in the North West province of South Africa. Using data obtained from the October 1995 Household Survey, it was found that in 1995 statistically significant gender discrimination exists against women in North West's labour market. The male discriminatory wage advantage of 127 per cent and the female discriminatory disadvantage of 195 per cent were ascribed to the overrewarding and underrewarding of some personal characteristics of males and females, respectively. Productivity differentials of 40 per cent in favour of females and a premium paid to women measuring 71 per cent also exist. Discrimination explains 50 per cent of the wage gap between genders, while productivity differentials and the premium account for 13 and 37 per cent respectively. The study supports 'affirmative action' and suggests policies that aim to alter the occupational distributions, and these may need to target educational decisions made prior to labour market entry.     

我国农村消费品流通体制的演变及其特征

农村消费品流通的便利和通畅对于活跃农村市场,拉动内需具有重要意义。我国农村消费品流通体制改革的基本过程主要分为五个阶段:新中国成立初期的农村消费品自由购销体制、计划经济时期的统购统销体制、改革开放初期的农村消费品流通统购统销体制的放开、计划商品经济向市场经济转变阶段的农村消费品流通市场经济体制的过渡以及完善农村消费品流通的市场体系。文章主要分析了每个阶段的流通体制、流通渠道和流通主体,较为清晰地再现了我国农村消费品流通体制的变化及其特征。     

Models of disequilibrium and shortage in centrally planned economies Christopher Davis and Wojciech Charemza,editors Chapman and Hall,London and New York, 1989, 501 pp.

Portes applied the econometric disequilibrium model of market economies to Centrally Planned Economies (CPEs) to show that the consumer goods sector was in equilibrium. Kornai considered these models inapplicable to CPEs and regarded CPEs as chronic shortage economies. Arguments on both sides of the debate are presented in this book. The conflict between Portes and Kornai lies in their microeconomic view of CPEs. While Portes acknowledges the welfare loss from shortages, Kornai analyzes and emphasizes it. Portes' view implies that changes in relative prices can reestablish equilibrium in CPEs. Kornai disagrees because CPEs do not respond to price changes like market economies. Only total reform, now attempted in many transition economies, can eliminate the imbalances.     

补贴资源性产业的扭曲效应研究——基于开放经济下的经济增长视角

本文在索洛—斯旺模型的基本框架下引入了资源中间品部门和资源中间品的国际贸易,构建了一个开放的经济增长模型。在此基础上进一步分析了补贴资源中间品部门引发的市场扭曲及其福利效应。本文的研究指出,在开放经济中,资源中间品的国际价格水平会影响经济增长的模式。当资源中间品的国际价格低于某一临界值时,经济增长是可持续的,否则经济增长将进入稳定状态。补贴资源中间品部门所产生的扭曲效应会受到资源中间品国际价格水平的影响,资源中间品的国际价格越高,补贴的福利损失越大。     

基于因子分析的中国服务贸易影响因素研究

通过对1985—2010年的相关数据进行因子分析,可以得出影响服务贸易的三个因子：国内消费需求、宏观经济现状及预期、货物贸易及人力资本的拉动。在不同时期,三个因子的重要性不同。我国发展服务贸易,应从市场规模和经济结构两方面入手,让其相互促进、相互配合。     

Consumption-investment trade-off,wage-profit trade-off,and terms of trade

In most modern models of international trade the assumptions made are that goods are produced, consumed and traded internationally according to the dictates of national utility functions. The gains of international trade are also seen to be higher levels of utility.This paper uses an input-output model to determine which country specializes in capital-good manufacture and which in the consumption goods. The criterion determining this in a planned economy uses the property of maximum growth rate of goods produced for a given per capita consumption (or its reverse causation of maximum per capita consumption for a given growth rate). For free market economies the criterion is taken to be in terms of profit-rate maximization for a given real wage or its reverse.Using these criteria the investment-consumption frontiers or wage-profit frontiers are described in this paper by corresponding equations. The changes in terms of trade are then interpreted as various forms of technical progress. The equations are also depicted forthe case of thriftiness of entrepreneurs being less than unity.     

居民家庭耐用消费品变迁中的技术与市场

改革开放以来,中国经济社会各方面发生了重大变化,居民家庭耐用消费品的变化尤为明显。实证研究表明,随着市场化改革的不断深入,城乡居民家庭耐用消费品的种类日益增多,质量和性能不断提高,究其原因,则是耐用消费品中隐含的技术的不断进步。造成技术进步并进一步推动居民家庭耐用消费品种类和性能不断提高的根本原因则是市场经济体制的逐步建立和完善,尽管技术进步收益的城乡步伐并不同步。     

Zombie Firms and Soft Budget Constraints in the Chinese Stock Market*

The growth of zombie firms has caused increasing concern. The present study seeks to understand why zombie firms have been emerging in recent 10 years and to further explore the mechanisms of their formation. Based on a dataset of Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2016 and empirical analysis, the present study ascribes the prevalence of zombie firms to soft budget constraints. After using a modified identification model in the Chinese context, we concluded that zombie firms have access to some external resources such as credit support from banks and governmental subsidies, substantiating soft budget constraints among zombie firms. To explain this phenomenon, further analysis reveals that zombie firms bear a heavier policy burden by hiring excess employees, which will bring them more subsidies and a stronger relationship with government in return. This result indicates that policy burden is the reason for soft budget constraints, which exacerbates the zombie firm problems in China.     

农村消费者权益保护机制研究

由于自身条件和消费环境的影响,农村消费者成为市场中最大的弱势群体。各种假冒伪劣商品、变质商品严重侵害了广大农村消费者的合法权益,因此加强对农村消费者的特别保护已经刻不容缓。基于农村消费者和农村市场的特点,以及我国农村消费者权益保护工作中存在的问题,我们需要从国家保护、社会保护和农村消费者自身保护等三个方面构建农村消费者权益保护机制以创建安全和谐的农村消费环境。     

The Decline of In-kind Wage Payments in Urban China

Chinese collective and state-owned enterprises have tended to over-compensate their employees. Using payments in kind as an example, this paper examines why and how firms engage in such ‘irrational’ behavior. In-kind payments (payments made in terms of consumer goods) used to be an important aspect of urban life in China - 68% of our sample workers received payments in kind in 1988. The ratio declined to only 10% in 1999. In explaining the prevalence of in-kind payment in the 1980s and the subsequent decline in the 1990s, two hypotheses are proposed. The first is the lack of access to consumer goods by individuals. The second is to evade the control on wage bills imposed by the government. Empirical evidence from an urban household survey is consistent with the second hypothesis. The results imply that the introduction of a hard budget constraint is essential to ensure the rational behavior of public enterprises in setting their wage payments.     

Agenda for the Housing Market

The housing market is the theme of the Reports to the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Royal Netherlands Economic Association. Current housing market policies in the Netherlands generate substantial welfare losses. The direct and indirect subsidies on housing distort the housing market, house moving behaviour, the labour market and the asset portfolio of households. The welfare loss is estimated at more than 6 billion euro per year. In addition, physical planning restrictions cost at least 3 billion euro per year, a price which is paid for the conservation of open space and nature, especially in the Green Heart of the Randstad. Developments on the housing market over the last fifteen years and the sizeable welfare losses from current policies are sufficient reason to develop an agenda for reform. The Reports suggest several elements for such an agenda, including a gradual reduction of housing subsidies in the owner–occupier sector as well as in the rental sector, an easier land policy to better meet the qualitative housing needs of the population, and an extension of the social tasks for the housing societies.      

Impacts of the Doha Round on Brazilian,Chinese and Indian agribusiness

The central themes to be addressed during the Doha Round of the world trade negotiations are the reduction of the agricultural production and export subsidies and improved market access for agricultural and non-agricultural goods. The G-20 group wields enough power to press negotiations at the Doha Round toward lower agricultural trade barriers and production and export subsidies. The objective of this study is to determine the impacts of the Doha Round on the economies of Brazil, China, and India. The Global Trade Analysis Project's (GTAP) general equilibrium model and database (version 7) are used. The Doha Round scenarios simulated in this paper consider the WTO agricultural production and export subsidy reduction requirement, and the application of the Harbinson approach, and Swiss formula to reduce import tariffs. Brazil and China present the highest GDP growth rate varying from 0.4 % to 1.4%. India shows a negative GDP growth rate in all scenarios, except in that which replicates the Uruguay Round. The welfare gains are positive, but small, for Brazil, China and India. The GDP loss observed in the economies of the EU25 and the US may make it difficult to reach a trade agreement at the Doha Round.