Utilization of fixed capital and Soviet industrial growth

Growth rates of output and factor productivity in Soviet industry fluctuate around a long-term downward trend. These fluctuations can be partially explained by fluctuations in the growth of services of capital. The capacity utilization rate is taken as a proxy for the extent of utilization of capital stock. Variations in the capacity utilization rate explain a significant part of the changes in the rate of growth of total factor productivity between 1970–1983. Declines in the capacity utilization rate are caused by errors in the allocation of investment, which create an imbalance of capacities between raw-materials and manufacturing sectors.Useful suggestions by Emil Bej, Robert Cambell, Richard Harmstone, Kenneth Gray, and Josef Brada are grateful acknowledged     

Global problems,local solutions: unfree labour relations and seafarer employment with crewing agencies in China

This article documents and discusses a local labour control regime employed by Chinese crewing agencies to restrict the mobility of newly graduated officer seafarers. The shipping industry relies on a stable and skilled seafarer workforce on flexible employment, assembled globally with the help of local crewing agencies. A stable workforce and flexible employment do not seem easily compatible. This article examines how Chinese crewing agencies help manage this tension in China through analysing the experience of seafarers. It argues that to cater for the demand of international shipping companies, Chinese crewing agencies adopt a particular local labour control regime that re/produces unfree labour relations. The local control regime is built on existing institutional practices in China, structural weaknesses of seafarers and the disjunctions between the local institutional set‐ups and the global chains of labour supply.     

The evolution of post-Soviet labour processes: a case study of the hollowing out of paternalism in Moldova

During the Soviet era, directors and workers derived mutual benefits from concealing true capacity, hoarding labour and just fulfilling an enterprise's plan. In an environment of labour shortages and guaranteed markets, managers used informal mechanisms to reward and retain good workers given the absence of unemployment and meaningful wage differentials as mechanisms to discipline workers. This cultivated a paternalistic set of relations between enterprise managers and workers, which, it is argued, are being hollowed out in the post-communist era. This is explored in a case study of evolving labour relations in Moldova. Casualization of the workforce has been used as a buffer against greater instability in both the supply of raw materials and demand. Such a strategy has become feasible as enterprises, such as the case-study firm, now have a large pool of external surplus labour on which they can draw. However, paternalism has not been hollowed out completely but rather a split-level realignment is identified.     

The intensification of work in Europe

Across many European countries, the 1990s have witnessed an intensification of labour effort. Using data from The European Survey on Working Conditions (ESWCs), we find that Britain has experienced the fastest rise in work effort, while in western Germany, Denmark and Greece there has been very little effort intensification. Effort is higher in jobs that use computers more frequently, and, with the exception of Britain, higher in private sector than public sector jobs. Effort has increased faster in countries where trade union density has declined the most. However, there remains a significant shift in effort that is not accounted for by available explanatory variables.     

A Springtime Journey to the Soviet Union: Postwar Planning and Policy Mobilities through the Iron Curtain

This article builds upon a relatively small but growing literature in geography, planning and cognate disciplines that seeks to understand the variegated geographies and histories of policy mobilities. The article uses a case study of an exchange trip between town planners in the Soviet Union and the UK between 1957 and 1958. It focuses on the experiences of the British planners in the Soviet Union and sets the tour within the wider context of a fluctuating and sometimes turbulent history of Anglo‐Soviet politics, travels and connections. In doing this, the article makes three arguments: first, there is much to be gained by bringing together the geography‐dominated policy mobilities literature with that on exchanges and visits by architects, engineers and planners. Secondly, the greater sensitivity to the histories of policy mobilities allows contemporary studies to be contextualized in the longer history of organized learning between different urban professions. Thirdly, despite the long history of policy mobilities, what differentiates the current era from previous eras is the prominent ‘knowledge intermediary’ roles now played by consultancies and think tanks. As the article will demonstrate, it was branches of government and professional bodies, rather than consultancies and think tanks, that tended to dominate such roles previously.     

Optimal capacity with stochastic demand

A model focusing on the choice of capacity in an environment with stochastic demand is presented. The paper establishes the conditions under which bias in traditional econometric measures of capacity utilization may occur. As illustration, the model is applied to the Norwegian vessel-building industry. The results from traditional econometric studies in this industry are adjusted using the results from the model presented. The analysis indicates an upward bias in the traditional capacity utilization index; the excess capacity in the analyzed industry, as determined by deviation from the optimal, stochastically-adjusted level of capacity, is higher than that determined by traditional econometric measures. However, the author is reluctant to draw definitive conclusions from the empirical part of the paper due to uncertainty regarding data and assumptions made. The empirical implementation is primarily illustrative and should be interpreted as such.     

Taut plans, repressed inflation and the supply of effort in centrally planned economies

Conclusions In this paper we have developed a macroeconomic model of a centrally planned economy. In such an economy the use of taut plants to elicit greater supplies of effort from the work force is hampered by the inflationary pressures unleashed by the plan. Consequently the planners cannot, in general, optimize both the supply of effort and the supply of labour but rather must trade off one against the other.Planners may be able to alleviate inflationary pressures if they can impose wage discipline on enterprises or if they are willing to reduce investment. Both of these policies, however, have costs attached to them. Severe credit rationing designed to prevent upward wage drift may in fact reduce the output of enterprises by creating financial bottlenecks. Moreover, while upward wage drift does cause repressed inflation it may also be a way of moving workers from less efficient firms to more efficient ones and thus be useful in an allocational sense. Reductions in the volume of investment also represent a cost to planners since higher current output can be obtained only by sacrificing future output.We have also shown that the key mechanism driving our model, the link between disequilibrium in the market for consumer goods either at the micro-level or in the aggregate does exist. In our sample of East European countries there is a significant inverse relationship between deviations from the normal level of savings and deviations from the trend rate of growth of labour productivity, reflecting, we believe, fluctuations in the supply of effort by households.We are indebted to Zdenek Drabek, Michael Keren, Janos Kornai and J. Michael Montias for helpful comments. We also appreciate comments from the participants in the Ninth International Conference Models and Forecasts '85, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, as well as from anonymous referees. Any errors and all opinions are, of course, entirely our responsibility.The research underlying this paper was supported by National Science Foundation Grant INT76-21084 and by funding from the National Council for Soviet and East European Research.     

环境规制、技术创新与产能过剩

以2010—2015年沪深A股上市公司数据为样本,利用数据包络分析法计算出企业的产能利用率,用来衡量其产能过剩程度,实证分析环境规制对企业技术创新和产能过剩的影响,结果表明：环境规制与技术创新和产能利用率之间均存在“U”型关系,即较低的环境规制会约束企业的技术创新能力、加剧产能过剩,较高的环境规制会提高企业的技术创新能力、缓解产能过剩,技术创新在环境规制与产能利用率的“U”型关系中具有显著的中介效应。     

高效的驻厂质量监造工作浅议

监造是一种中介咨询服务。监理行业性质—服务、脑力劳动为主,主要对产品实现过程的质量、进度、投资实施监督管理。本文主要从委托方、监造方各自的角度出发,重点讨论如何实现高效的驻厂质量监督制造,保证设备质量。     

Human resource strategies,workplace reform and industrial restructuring in Australia and New Zealand

In recent years, Australia and New Zealand have pursued two different routes of labour market reform. New Zealand opted for a radical experiment in the deregulation of industrial relations and other areas. Australia pursued a co-operative and co-ordinated approach to reform within the centralized arbitral system. Both reform initiatives were designed to stimulate improvements in organizational performance and cost competitiveness. In this paper, we argue that there are three main types of strategies that management can use to reduce labour cost and improve performance: productivity-enhancement, costminimization and work-intensification strategies. We argue that the former is a long-term sustainable strategy whereas the latter two are negative short-term strategies that may have deleterious longer-term effects. This paper reports the results of a cross-national survey in New Zealand and Australia into the extent of adoption of these management strategies. The results are presented by industry, employment size, mode of operation and countries as a whole. The research findings indicate that New Zealand's decentralization has encouraged a higher degree of employer experimentation with both positive and negative workplace change strategies, especially in the private sector. Australia's more centralized system limited the use of cost-minimization strategies but not productivity-enhancing strategies in the public and not-for-profit sector. The research found evidence of work intensification in both countries.     

Immigrants’ Wage Growth and Selective Out‐Migration

This paper examines immigrant wage growth taking selective out‐migration into account using administrative data from the Netherlands. Addressing a limitation in the previous literature, we address the potential endogeneity of immigrants’ labour supply and out‐migration decisions on their earning profiles using a correlated competing risk model. We distinguish between labour and family migrants, given their different labour market and out‐migration behaviours. Our findings show that accounting for selective labour supply is as important as accounting for selective out‐migration. Controlling only for out‐migration selectivity would underestimate immigrants’ wage growth, whilst controlling only for labour market selectivity would overestimate their wage growth. This shows that different selections are important for different types of migrants.     

FDI对我国高新技术产业发展的影响

在我国高新技术产业迅猛发展的过程中,FDI发挥着举足轻重的作用。但是,FDI对于高新技术产业中不同行业的贡献差距较大。C-D函数实证检验结果表明,FDI对我国高新技术产业整体发展影响显著。电子计算机及办公设备制造业FDI溢出系数较高;电子及通信设备制造业与整个行业持平;而航空航天器制造业FDI技术溢出系数较低。此外,外资的技术投入、行业开放程度、内外资企业技术差距等因素影响FDI的技术外溢水平。     

Factor Utilization and Adjusted Productivity Estimates for the UK*

This paper derives series for capital utilization, labour effort and total factor productivity (TFP) for the UK from a general equilibrium model with variable utilization and labour adjustment costs. Capital utilization tracks survey‐based measures closely, but persistent movements in total hours worked mean our labour effort series is not as highly correlated with its comparators. Our estimated TFP series is less cyclical than the traditional Solow residual, although a weighted average of capital utilization and labour effort – aggregate factor utilization – and the Solow residual are not closely related.     

Hospital capacity in large urban areas: is there enough in times of need?

Excess capacity can be viewed as wasteful (an unnecessary cost) or as prudential (a ready source of supply). The role of excess capacity is an important issue at the individual firm level as well as at the community level. In this paper we explore hospital capacity for a sample hospitals operating in the 15 largest standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSAs) in the U.S. during 2002. Using Johanson’s (1968, Production Functions and the Concept of Capacity, Namur, Belgium, Recherches Récentes sur le Fonction de Production (Collection, Economie Mathematique et Econometrie no. 2). [Reprinted in Finn R. Førsund (ed) (1987) The Collected Works of Leif Johanson, vol 1. Amsterdam, North-Holland, pp 350–282]) notion of capacity as the maximum rate of output possible from fixed inputs (i.e., without restrictions on variable inputs), we measure capacity in a frontier setting using directional distance functions. Rather than attempt to determine the “optimal” level of hospital capacity, we instead quantify capacity and capacity utilization rates at both the individual hospital and, by aggregating, the SMSA levels. After determining capacity and capacity utilization rates, we then introduce a model that calculates the changes in variable inputs that would be needed to utilize excess capacity. Finally, we introduce a simulation model that is used to examine whether each SMSA has enough “excess” hospital capacity to accommodate the loss of one of its five largest hospitals. The approach developed in this study should be of value to decision makers and planners in a variety of fields.     

The Single European Market and labour mobility

While much has been written about the potential impacts of the European Single Market there is little survey evidence concerning the issue of labour mobility. Based on a large sample of employers in Scotland this article looks to address this subject and comment on what these findings mean for manpower planners and recruiters in the coming years.     

Excess capacity: a permanent characteristic of US airlines?

This paper examines the permanence of excess capacity in the US airline industry. To avoid the problems with the standard engineering measure of capacity utilization, load factor, we define and measure capacity as an economic concept. Two measures of economic capacity utilization are then computed—one, a demand-based measure and the other an output-based measure of capacity utilization. Both measures share little in common with the standard engineering measure (load factor) and reveal some interesting attributes of airline travel demand. This paper also provides interesting new insights into the role of deregulation and the costs of excess capacity during regulation. Specifically, it is found that deregulation with the concomitant rationalization of route structures enabled airlines to move closer to their optimal levels of capacity and facilitated substantial improvements in capacity utilization and cost reductions over the period considered. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

浅析线性规划方法在半导体制造计划中的应用

半导体制造业中产品种类繁多,工序复杂,对设备的利用率要求较高,因而相对于其它制造也来说,生产计划的优化也较为复杂。本文讨论了目前半导体行业中常用的启发算法和基于线性规划的优化方法。     

The gender pay gap in the transition from communism: some empirical evidence

This short paper investigates the gender pay gap in a number of former communist countries of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The main findings are that, in general, the gender pay gap has not exhibited an upward tendency over the transitional period to which available data relate. Most of the gender pay gap is ascribed to the ‘unexplained’ component using conventional decompositions and this may partly be attributable to the proxy measure for labour force experience used in this study. Quantile regression analysis indicates that in all but one country, the ceteris paribus gender pay gap rises as we move up the wage distribution.     

Flexibility,labour subcontracting and HRM in the construction industry in Singapore: can the system be refined?

Labour subcontracting is an important labour-use strategy in the construction industry. In their search for labour-market flexibility, employers in the construction industry in Singapore rely extensively on the Kepala (labour subcontracting) system. The Kepala system offers a 'convenient' way of managing operative (skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled) construction workers. Essentially, this paper discusses the merits and demerits of the Kepala system. It is argued that, although employers in the construction industry derive some strategic benefits from the use of labour subcontracting, on the whole, the system has some adverse consequences for workers, companies, the industry and HRM functions. But, in the absence of any better system that the employers can turn to, it is necessary for the Kepala system to be refined. Thus, it is suggested that the Japanese model of labour subcontracting offers lessons, but will require modifications and adaptations before being applied in Singapore.     

Political exchange in mass party regimes and the transition from socialism

This paper contrasts the east European and the Chinese routes of exit from the Soviet-type economy and argues that a communist regime, if it is to remain in power, cannot renounce state ownership or control of large-scale industry and party control of managerial appointments, careers, and incomes: these two features make up an enforceable, efficient contract for political service in a monopolistic political market. These features were abandoned in the European route and preserved in the Chinese route because of the average versus modal character of party representation and membership in the two groups of countries, so that the modal nature of the Chinese party is the key to the regime’s survival and success under market reform. The approach also explains the failure of Gorbachev’s attempt to export the Chinese model to the Soviet Union in the form of perestroika.