The Mother Of All Toxic Cleanups

No one knows how todealwiththeuntoldtonsoflethalgoop———orwho willpayAs rescueworkerscontinuethegrim searchforbodiesin New Or-leans, environmentalengineersarestrugglingwith what willprobablybecome thebiggestchallengeofKat-rina———themess. A toxicbrew ofoil, chemicals, bacteri,a debri,s andgarbage must be clearedand theground scrubbedbeforethecitycanbe rebuil.tUnfortunatel,ytheexpertshave few new ideasabout how totacklea cleanupofthisscale.“Thereisno silverbulle,t and I would behighlysus…     

Market Structure And The Adoption Of Innovations: The Case Of The Spanish Banking Sector ‡

This paper is an empirical study of the determinants of adoption time for the teleprocess terminal by Spanish commercial and savings banks. The explanatory variables include the characteristics of the adopting firms, size, and in the case of the savings banks, the structure of the market and concentration. The results indicate that the speed of adoption is maximized at intermediate levels of size and market concentration, confirming one theoretical prediction of models of diffusion: namely, that adoption time is minimized at intermediate levels of market concentration.     

Appropriation Of Returns From Technological Assets And The Values Of Patents And R&D In Japanese High-Tech Firms †

This paper investigates the extent that technological assets contribute to the value of the firm, using the sample of 90 Japanese firms in pharmaceutical, chemical, and electrical equipment industries. We use the firm's R&D expenditures and the number of patents (in stock) as the measures of its technological assets and show that the relative usefulness of these two measures varies across industries. Particularly, Tobin's q is positively related to the technological assets most strongly in the pharmaceutical industry. It is also most sensitive in this industry to the level of patent stock, coinciding with the view that drug patents are more effective than other patents as a means of appropriating returns from innovation. The communications equipment industry is also characterized by its q's dependence on patent stock. In addition, this industry's q is particularly sensitive to the level of net R&D investment in the most recent year, presumably because of the rapid technological progress in this industry.     

Technological Expectations And The Diffusion Of ‘Intermediate’ Technologies

The concept of ‘technological expectations’ has established itself as a key one in the smdy of innovation adoption. The article suggests that it may help explaining not just the adopters' timing decisions, but also their decisions regarding the kind of innovation they adopt. Innova tions that set the technological frontier face the competitive diffusion of some ‘intemdiate’ technologies. These may be either old technologies or ‘midrange’ ones. which purposefully lag behind the frontier, in order to impose lower adoption costs to their users.

Taking into account midrange innovations casts new light on the supply side of the diffu sion process. in terms of technological variety and selection effects. Drawing examples from the electronic colour pre-press industry, we highlight the equipment suppliers' anxious quest for the successful midrange innovation, able to hit the right txade-off between proximity to the frontier and adoption costs.     

Haarlem,One of the Most Ancient Cities Of Netherlands

HaarlemisoneoftheNetherlands'mostbeautifulancientcitieswithastunningcityscapethatbeckonsvisitorsfromafar.Itisapleasant,safecity,hometo150,000inhabitantsandsituatedontheriverSpaarne.Theoldcity,repletewithnumerouslistedbuildings,offersahostofsitesofinterest…     

A Coalition-Form Analysis Of The “One Country - One Vote” Rule In The Governing Council Of The European Central Bank *

This paper analyses the “one country—one vote” rule for monetary policy decision

making of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank in a framework of cooperative game theory. The Shapley value is used as a solution concept. In contrast to former papers analysing the allocation of abstract "voting power" in committees of international organisations, preferences for monetary policy are modelled to obtain a prediction about potential transfers implied by an equal allocation of voting rights when countries are of different size. It is shown that if the number of countries participating to a currency union grows and the weight of the largest country within the currency union becomes small, the allocation of voting rights becomes irrelevant in the sense that transfers per country tend in any case to zero. [C71, E5, F02]     

Of Markets And Martyrs: Is It OK To Pay Well For Care?

If caring work were well paid, would it lose some of the special, emotional, interpersonal aspects we want in "real" care relationships? Some fear that the introduction of "market values" would lead to such an outcome. This article seeks to bring to light some logical fallacies and insufficiently expunged gender dualisms that may lie, unexamined, under such concerns. Examining the ways we think and talk about markets, meanings, and motivations, it argues that the foci of feminist concern should instead be the concrete structures of caregiving and the problem of under-demand.     

Positive Analysis Of Income Disparity between Towns＇ Residents and Rural Residents in Hebei Province

With the economic development, the income disparity between towns＇ residents and rural residents in China shows an enlarging trend. This phenomenon becomes a hot issue of the whole society. The income disparity between towns＇ residents and rural residents in Hebei province also shows an enlarging trend. The authors study this problem with the positive analysis method from the situation, the developing trend in the future, the reasons of the income disparity between towns＇ residents and rural residents in Hebei, and put forward proposals about how to reduce the income disparity.     

The Impact Of Information Technology On High-Skilled Labor In Services: Evidence From Firm-Level Panel Data ∗

This paper analyses the link between the high-skilled employment share and the level of investment in information technology (IT) in the service production process. The analysis is based on an unbalanced panel data set for 933 West German firms over the period 1994–1996. To account for firms which do not employ high-skilled labor. proxied by university graduates. fixed and random effects Tobit models are applied. We investigate whether the impoflance of IT varies across subsectors by allowing coefficients to differ across the main service sector industries. The empirical evidence indicates that firms with a higher IT investment to output ratio employ a laier fraction of high-skilled workers. However the size of the IT effect on skill intensity is rather small.     

WHAT DETERMINES THE “LEGAL” QUALITY Of BANK REGULATION AND SUPERVISION?

This article has two contributions. First, using the methodology of Neyapti and Dincer, it provides measures of legal quality of bank regulation and supervision (RS) for a new set of developed and less‐developed countries. Second, it investigates the determinants of RS in view of the hypothesis that the existing institutional environment matters for the quality of formal institutions such as banking laws. The empirical evidence in this article demonstrates that past financial crises and prevailing levels of both financial market development and foreign direct investment inflows affect RS beyond and above the effects of other potential factors, such as macroeconomic performance and good governance. Evidence from transition economies also supports these findings. (JEL E44, G2, K29, O1)     

Bursting Out Of China——TCL''''s deal with Thomson puts it in reach of aglobal electronics market

It’steatimeataphonefactoryinthesouthernChinesecityofHuizhou,andhundredsofemployeesaretakingabreakfromassemblingcellularhandsetsforoneofChina'shottestelectronicscompanies,TCLCorp.Someoftheworkersgathernexttothewindowsandchat.Otherssimplyputdowntheirheadsa…     

The Impact Of New Technologies On Wages: Lessons From Matching Panels On Employees And On Their Firms †

We study the impact on New Technologies (NT) on wages using a panel that matches data on individuals and on their firms. In his article on the same topic, Krueger (1993) did not give a definitive answer to the following question: if workers who use NT are better paid, is it because they are abler or because NT increases their productivity. We try to provide an answer to this question. Comparing cross-section estimates and individual fixed-effect estimates, we show that computer-based new technologies are used by abler workers. These workers learn and become more productive when they get more experienced with these NT. In terns of wage differentials, the introduction of computer-based NT contributes to a small increase. The use of firm-level data does not modify these conclusions.