Canada–US productivity gap: The role of competition intensity differential

The relative lack of competitive pressure in product markets and lower investment in both fundamental and applied innovation are among the potential factors that have been put forward to explain Canada’s weak productivity performance with respect to the US. Since competition is generally seen as the single leading catalyst for fundamental and applied innovation, this paper analyzes the role of product market competition in the Canada–US productivity level gap. We develop an empirical framework in which competition exerts both direct and indirect effects on productivity, with the indirect impact coming through fundamental and applied innovation. We find statistically significant evidence that the competition intensity differential (between Canada and the US) has contributed to the Canada–US productivity level gap directly, as well as indirectly through lower investment in both R&D activities and M&E (including ICT) investment. We also find statistically significant evidence that Canada’s relatively poor performance in both productivity and M&E (including ICT) investment have acted as a self-reinforcing mechanism, which further causes detriment to the country’s productivity.     

Are US macroeconomic series difference stationary or trend-break stationary?

This article tests for the presence of a unit-root in all time series included in the extended Nelson–Plosser data set using the statistics devised by Zivot and Andrews, Perron and Murray and Zivot. It specifies the mixed model characterization of the trend-break stationary alternative that allows for a simultaneous break in both the intercept and slope of the trend-function. It rejects the unit-root null hypothesis for real GNP, nominal GNP, real per capita GNP, industrial production, employment, GNP deflator, nominal wages, interest rate and common stock prices. Use of appropriate critical values to assess the significance of the trend-function coefficients reveals that the slope-break should be included in real GNP, nominal GNP, real per capita GNP, nominal wages, interest rate and common stock prices. The results indicate that there is less evidence against the unit-root hypothesis with the extended Nelson–Plosser data compared to the original Nelson–Plosser data.     

Competition or Comparative Advantage: What Drives Cross Border Mergers and Acquisitions?

The theory of comparative advantage explains the upsurge of cross border mergers and acquisitions (CBMAs) in the era of reform led trade liberalization. This paper tests the theory of comparative advantage for CBMAs by firms belonging to a developing country, viz. India. Using count data the paper also shows that CBMAs have occurred in country and sector specific waves. This implies in developing countries, it is competition rather than comparative advantage which drives CBMAs. However, the paper finds that occurrence of the country specific wave and sector specific wave are negatively affected by favourable outward FDI policy.

     

Addressing leakage in the EU ETS: Border adjustment or output-based allocation?

The EU ETS has been criticised for threatening the competitiveness of European industry and generating carbon leakage, i.e. increasing foreign greenhouse gas emissions. Two main options have been put forward to tackle these concerns: border adjustments and output-based allocation, i.e. allocation of free allowances in proportion to current production. We compare various configurations of these two options, as well as a scenario with full auctioning and no border adjustment. Against this background, we develop a model of the main sectors covered by the EU ETS: electricity, steel, cement and aluminium. We conclude that the most efficient way to tackle leakage is auctioning with border adjustment, which generally induces a negative leakage (a spillover). This holds even if the border adjustment does not include indirect emissions, if it is based on EU (rather than foreign) specific emissions, or (for some values of the parameters) if it covers only imports. Another relatively efficient policy is to combine auctioning in the electricity sector and output-based allocation in exposed industries, especially if free allowances are given both for direct and indirect emissions, i.e. those generated by the generation of the electricity consumed. Although output-based allocation is generally less effective than border adjustment to tackle leakage, it is more effective to mitigate production losses in the sectors affected by the ETS, which may ease climate policy adoption.     

Climate Change and the Polanyian Counter-movement: Carbon Markets or Degrowth?

In the midst of a wave of market expansion, carbon markets have been proposed as the best way to address global climate change. While some argue that carbon markets represent a modern example of a Polanyian counter-movement to the environmental crisis, we adopt a structural interpretation of Polanyi to refute this claim. Carbon markets represent a further expansion of markets that fails to address the underlying contradictions related to the commodification of nature. In addition, they increase risks to society and the domination of economic elites. While carbon markets further subject social and ecological relations to market mechanisms, we examine degrowth as a possible response to climate change that prioritises social and environmental goals over economic growth. While degrowth continues to be dismissed as impractical or impossible, a growing number of scholars, scientists and activists argue it is the only way to address global climate change. In contrast to carbon markets, we argue degrowth could represent a genuine Polanyian counter-movement in response to climate change. In addition, degrowth could help all those disenfranchised by market fundamentalism by addressing the triple crises related to the commodification of land, labour and money.     

Political and social forecasting using conflict analysis — The US presidential race

Political and social situations are usually too complex and poorly defined for most mathematical techniques of analysis. Yet political and social forecasting can be very important to individuals, companies and even nations. Conflict analysis is a quantitative technique which is useful for the modeling and prediction of complex political and social problems. In this paper, the basic components of a conflict model are described. The method of analyzing a conflict model and relating it to the real world situation is also explained. In order to demonstrate the procedure, the 1984 US Presidential election campaign is used as an illustrative example.     

Speculative bubbles or market fundamentals? An investigation of US regional housing markets

This paper investigates the existence of speculative bubbles in the US national and 21 regional housing markets over three decades (1978–2015). A new method for real-time monitoring exuberance in housing markets is proposed. By taking changes in the macroeconomic conditions (such as interest rate, per-capita income, employment, and population growth) into consideration, the new method provides better control for housing market fundamentals and thereby it is expected to significantly reduce the chance of false positive identification. Compared with the method of Phillips et al. (2015a, 2015b), the new approach finds a dramatic reduction in the number of speculative housing markets and shorter bubble episodes in the US. It locates only one bubble episode in the early-to-mid 2000s over the whole sample period in the national housing market. At the regional level, it identifies two periods of speculation: late 1980s and early-to-mid 2000s. The early-to-mid 2000s bubble episode lasts longer and involves 16 metropolitan statistical areas.     

Regulation or Markets? The Case of Employment Contracts

Regulation of the employment contract is both wide spread anddiverse. The diversity of regulation is surprising because itsuggests that there is little consensus regarding optimal interventioninto the labor market. This paper discusses several economicreasons why it may be efficient for employers and employeesto enter into long term contracts that make employee dismissalexpensive. This analysis suggests that employment contractscan be expected to be complex in practice, and hence can beviewed as part of the technology of exchange. Given that knowledgeof a technology requires skill and know-how, one cannot expectall employee-employer matches to discover and use the most efficientcontract terms possible. It is suggested that the regulationof the employment relationship might be improved with the creationof a market for contracts, similar to the one that currentlyexists in the United States for construction projects.(JEL J300,J410, K310)     

The Labor-Managed Firm: Permanent or Start-Up Subsidies?

We explore a new argument that seeks to explain the near absence of the labor-managed firm or cooperative, despite a range of inefficiencies attributed to the present-day capitalist firm. We derive the crucial condition for the emergence of labor-managed firms and show that it is unduly restrictive from an efficiency point of view. The policy implication is that public intervention to promote labor-managed firms should primarily be in the form of start-up subsidies rather than in providing permanent tax subsidies.     

The shallow or the deep ecological economics movement?

Ecological economics and its policy recommendations have become overwhelmed by economic valuation, shadow pricing, sustainability measures, and squeezing Nature into the commodity boxes of goods, services and capital in order to make it part of mainstream economic, financial and banking discourses. There are deeper concerns which touch upon the understanding of humanity in its various social, psychological, political and ethical facets. The relationship with Nature proposed by the ecological economics movement has the potential to be far reaching. However, this is not the picture portrayed by surveying the amassed body of articles from this journal or by many of those claiming affiliation. A shallow movement, allied to a business as usual politics and economy, has become dominant and imposes its preoccupation with mainstream economic concepts and values. If, instead, ecological economists choose a path deep into the world of interdisciplinary endeavour they will need to be prepared to transform themselves and society. The implications go far beyond the pragmatic use of magic numbers to convince politicians and the public that ecology still has something relevant to say in the 21st century.     

The Oldest Boundary in Europe? A Critical Approach to the Spanish-Portuguese Border: The Raia Between Galicia and Portugal

The boundary between Spain and Portugal is supposed to be one of the most – if not the most – fixed and stable borders in the world, with some authors stating that it has a history of almost a thousand years. However, this paper demonstrates that this is not the case by arguing that it has a mobile nature. After formulating a theoretical framework on borders and border studies, this contribution focuses on the raia between Galicia and Portugal as a specific section of the international Spanish-Portuguese border; several questions elucidating the mobile nature of the raia are answered, embracing historic, geographic, social, cultural, linguistic and economic issues. The paper finishes by considering the effects of the new period of European integration and by providing some concluding remarks.     

Sluggish US employment recovery after the Great Recession: Cyclical or structural factors?

This paper aims at investigating the causes of the observed departure of employment path from the GDP movements occurred in US in the late of 2008 onwards. Starting from a production function approach, and assuming that the TFP growth is explained by variables linked to the business cycle, we are able to formulate an extended version of Okun’s law based on cyclical factors. Out-of-sample forecasting for the period 2008 onward shows that predicted US employment is on average 1.7% above the observed one, meaning that this gap cannot be attributed to identified cyclical factors.     

The PC Industry: New Economy or Early Life-Cycle?

The paper studies the co-evolution of industrial turbulence and financial volatility in the early phase of the life-cycle of an old high-tech industry and a new high-tech industry: the U.S. auto industry from 1899–1929 and the U.S. PC industry from 1974–2000. In both industries, the first three decades were characterized by industrial turbulence: radical technological change, high entry and exit rates, and rapidly falling prices. However, unlike in the auto industry, in the PC industry technological change and new entry did not lead to strong instability of market shares—at the core of the monopoly-destroying effect of Schumpeterian creative destruction—until the 1990s, when the lead of the incumbents from the pre-existing mainframe and minicomputer industries was undermined. In both industries, stock prices were the most volatile and idiosyncratic during those years in which technological change disrupted market shares the most (Autos: 1918–1928; PCs: 1990–2000). Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: L11, 030, G12.     

The new millennium and leadership: evolution or entropy?

Health care in the new millennium will be different. We have a wonderful opportunity to live in a new paradigm of leadership and management that opens up myriad possibilities for innovations in health care and leadership. If leaders stand still and don't quickly adapt to the new demands, they will be killed as leaders in this new millennium. The next 20 years are only for those who can act and adapt quickly.