The incidence of,and returns to overeducation in the UK

Drawing on German data we look for evidence of a supply-side political business cycle. The hypothesis suggests that centralized trade unions with political interests and some degree of monopoly power may fine-tune their collective wage bargaining strategies so as to help preferred or to harm rejected parties in power. The regression results confirm that between 1960 and 1988 German trade unions exercised additional wage pressure before general elections under a Christian Democratic incumbent drew closer, trade unions pursued a restrictive wage policy to promote the government' chances for re-election.     

The structure and infrastructure of Finnish research literature

The structure and infrastructure of the Finnish research literature is determined. A representative database of technical articles was extracted from the Science Citation Index for the years 2003-2004, with each article containing at least one author with a Finnish address. Document clustering was used to identify the main technical themes (core competencies) of Finnish research. Four of the pervasive technical topics identified from the clustering (Wireless Networks and Mobile Communication, Signal Processing, Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry) were analyzed further using bibliometrics, in order to identify the infrastructure of these research areas. Finally, the citation performance of Finnish research in the four pervasive technical topics above, and in other technical topics obtained by analysis of Abstract phrases, was compared to that of two Scandanavian countries with similar population and GDP, Norway and Denmark.     

The educational and labor market returns to preschool attendance in Austria

Preschool attendance is widely recognized as a key ingredient for later socioeconomic success, mothers’ labor market participation, and leveling the playing field for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, the empirical evidence for these claims is still relatively scarce, particularly in Europe. Using data from the 2011 Austrian European Union Statistics of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), we contribute to this literature by studying the effects of having attended preschool for the adult Austrian population. We find strong and positive effects of preschool attendance on later educational attainment, the probability of working full time, hourly wages, and the probability that the mother is in the labor market. Full time workers at the bottom and the top of the distribution benefit less than those in the middle. Women in particular benefit more in terms of years of schooling and the probability of working full time. Other disadvantaged groups (second generation migrants; people with less educated parents) also often benefit more in terms of education and work.     

The polynomial distributed lag revisited

The circumstances under which the polynomial distributed lag method can be preferred to the ordinary least squares are discussed in this paper and both stochastic and deterministic restrictions are taken into consideration. The polynomial lag is mainly feasible in small sample situations when the error variance of the model is relatively high and the lag function not too peaked. Two recent Monte Carlo studies, one favouring the Almon lag, the other showing the opposite tendency, are reconsidered and their findings discussed in the light of known analytical results.     

The determinants of pharmaceutical research and development expenditures

Since the late 1970s, pharmaceutical R&D has grown at a rapid rate relative to sales and other variables. In this paper, we examine the determinants of pharmaceutical R&D using a pooled data sample of 11 major drug firms over the period 1974 to 1994. We find that expected returns and cash flows are important explanatory variables of firm research intensities during this period. This is consistent with our results for an earlier sample period characterized by very different growth patterns on R&D.     

Increasing returns to savings and wealth inequality

In this paper I present an explanation to the fact that in the data wealth is substantially more concentrated than income. Starting from the observation that the composition of households' portfolios changes towards a larger share of high-yield assets as the level of net worth increases, I first use data on historical asset returns and portfolio composition by wealth level to construct an empirical return function. I then augment an Overlapping Generation version of the standard neoclassical growth model with idiosyncratic labor income risk and missing insurance markets to allow for returns on savings to be increasing in the level of accumulated assets. The quantitative properties of the model are examined and show that an empirically plausible difference between the return faced by poor and wealthy agents is able to generate a substantial increase in wealth inequality compared to the basic model, enough to match the Gini index and all but the top 1 percentile of the US distribution of wealth.     

The impact of technology and trade upon the returns to education and occupation

This paper considers how technological change and globalization has influenced the return to education and occupation in Great Britain over the period 1973 to 1994. A number of papers in the literature have documented increasing demand for individuals who possess higher skill endowments than their peers. Both education and occupation can be interpreted as an individual's observable skills and how technology and trade have actually influenced returns to different educational and occupational levels is something that has not been investigated in Great Britain. For the empirical analysis estimates are based upon pooled cross sections over time and also pseudo panel techniques to control for unobservable heterogeneity.     

我国农产品物流的发展研究

农产品物流是农产品流通的重要组成部分。我国农产品物流与国外发达国家相比还存在着很大差距,应改善我国农产品物流的落后状况,提高我国农产品物流效率,促进其迈向现代化。     

Real-time decentralized information processing and returns to scale

We use a model of real-time decentralized information processing to understand how constraints on human information processing affect the returns to scale of organizations. We identify three informational (dis)economies of scale: diversification of heterogeneous risks (positive), sharing of information and of costs (positive), and crowding out of recent information due to information processing delay (negative). Because decision rules are endogenous, delay does not inexorably lead to decreasing returns to scale. However, returns are more likely to be decreasing when computation constraints, rather than sampling costs, limit the information upon which decisions are conditioned. The results illustrate how information processing constraints together with the requirement of informational integration cause a breakdown of the replication arguments that have been used to establish nondecreasing technological returns to scale. November 24, 1999; revised version: March 14, 2000     

Cultural lag and international communication The Case of Japan

In this special first issue contribution by Dr. Nagai in his capacity of Supervisory Editor of this new Journal, attention is given to the often neglected influence of the cultural lag on communications and its impact on economic policies and international relations.     

Search equilibrium and social and private returns to education

Social and private returns to education are computed using the structural estimates of an extended Burdett-Mortensen search equilibrium model. The extension includes different skill groups linked via a production function with variable degree of homogeneity, allowing thereby for a unimodal earnings density with a decreasing right tail. We find that the decreasing unemployment risk for higher skill groups and the absence of tuition fees in Germany increase private returns and lead to a too large share of high skilled individuals in the workforce, which is suboptimal from the social point of view.     

企业管理模式的理论与发展研究

本文主要探讨企业的管理模式的理论与发展对管理模式进行重新定义和理论分析，提出企业管理模式的概念结构和运作模型；分析和探讨了当前管理模式变革和发展的内容及方向；最后对中国管理模式存在的问题和发展方向进行了探讨。     

商业模式研究现状与未来发展方向探索

首先分析商业模式的学科属性,认为商业模式是经济学、财务管理、战略管理、创新管理等经济管理学科的交叉学科。在此基础上,梳理近些年商业模式研究情况,发现鲜有学者研究商业模式与财务之间的关系。因此,提出研究商业模式与财务、特别是财务战略间关系的重要性,并对未来的研究方向进行展望。     

The determinants of research and development intensity in the UK

The primary purpose of this paper is to discover whether research and development expenditures are related to firm size, market structure and technological influences in the UK. After providing a preliminary analysis of R & D activity, the paper tackles the problem of the rather limited data set. Two approaches are adopted: first, analysing part of the relationship using a broadly based sample, and second, providing data on a more narrowly based sample over three years. The results suggest that firm size and concentration have virtually no influence on R & D intensity in the UK among firms with R & D programmes.     

Constant returns to scale and competitive equilibrium under uncertainty

This paper considers the implications of the assumption of constant returns to scale in expected utility maximizing models of the competitive firm or industry in which markets for risk are absent. Under widely used assumptions about risk preferences it is shown that with constant returns to scale average profits are more than necessary to cover the implicit costs of risk-bearing. When the free entry of identical firms is possible this assumption about technology is shown to be incompatible with the assumption that entrepreneurs are risk averse.