Decomposing Gender Wage Differentials Using Quantile Regression: Evidence from the Lebanese Banking Sector

This paper investigates gender pay inequality in the labor market of a developing country. Our empirical investigation uses data derived from a sample of employees in the Lebanese banking sector for the years 2008 and 2014. Using Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, the results reveal that the unexplained component of the gender wage gap, attributed to discrimination, represents a substantial share of the total gap. A surprising result is that the contribution of human capital to the gender wage gap is negative, suggesting that wage discrimination is the main explanation for the gap. Utilizing the Machado-Mata methodology to decompose the wage gap across the entire wage distribution, our findings indicate that the unexplained component of the raw gender wage gap is more pronounced at the low and middle ranges of the distribution. However, the explained component dominates at the top of the distribution, suggesting that earnings gaps are fully explained by observed characteristics.     

技术差距、军用成果转化率与军事工业研发竞争研究

在军民融合深度发展背景下,需要引导民品企业参与军事工业研发,以改进武器装备长期以来高端供给能力不足的问题。当前情况下,民品企业与军工企业间存在着技术差距,同时军用成果转化率不高造成技术溢出不对称。通过建立博弈模型,分析技术差距和军用成果转化率对军工企业、民品企业研发竞争的影响。结果发现,技术差距和军用成果转化率都不同程度影响民品企业研发意愿,阻碍民品企业参与竞争;军民企业间保持适度的技术差距和提高军用成果转化率可以提升社会研发总效率。此外,促使军工企业和民品企业共同研发,可以使社会研发效率帕累托改进效果更好。     

Intra-Industry Gaps in Technology and Investments in Technological Capabilities: Firm-level evidence from Chile

This paper develops a theoretical framework to analyse intra-industry gaps in technology, and tests it with enterprise-level data from a developing country. Following neoclassical theory, the existence of inter-firm technological gaps is explained by factor market segmentation that determines different factor prices and therefore different firms' technological choices. However, intra-industry gaps in technology may also result from the nature of the process of technological development, and from the different level of investments in technological capabilities.The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 338 industrial enterprises from Chile, and shows that it is possible to define technological thresholds, characterised by significant shifts in technology, independently of factor market segmentation. The analysis focuses on five major sectors: food processing, textile and garments, woodworking, metalworking and paper. Firms with different levels of technological complexity coexist within the same industry, and differences in technology are discrete, with different clusters sharing similar characteristics within the same industry. These results also have important policy implications for industrial development, which are drawn in a final section.     

制度落差对跨国技术转移的影响——基于2009—2019年面板数据分析

国家之间制度差异是跨国技术转移的重要影响因素,现有文献缺乏基于制度距离大小和方向对跨国技术转移的探讨。在将制度落差划分为制度逆差和制度顺差的基础上,依据2009—2019年中国技术引进面板数据,探究制度落差对跨国技术转移的影响,并考察技术来源国创新能力在这一影响过程中的调节作用。研究发现,管制逆差和规范逆差对跨国技术转移具有显著促进作用,技术来源国创新能力有助于增强规范逆差对跨国技术转移的促进作用,而对管制逆差影响跨国技术转移的调节作用不显著;管制顺差和规范顺差对跨国技术转移均有显著阻碍作用,且技术来源国创新能力能够削弱其阻碍作用。研究结论证实制度落差对跨国技术转移具有差异化影响,有助于拓展跨国技术转移研究,并为相关部门从制度落差视角指导中国技术引进实践提供参考。     

The process of applied technology forecasting : A study of executive analysis, anticipation, and planning

The objective of this research is a study of technology forecasting not only as a discipline but also as an executive responsibility by applying the information processing theory to this task. A protocol analysis from Ericsson and Simon, modified for this study, was used for the analysis of interview data of top executives from the magnetic resonance imaging industry and their superconducting magnet suppliers, when they had to face a specific technological event. The technological event is the breakthrough discovery of ceramic superconducting materials in 1986, and the fast technological progress that followed between 1987 and 1989. This paper illustrates the processes through which senior executives collect information, process it, and develop plans and predictions in the context of “hard” uncertainty. We use cognitive and strategic decision-making research to develop a normative typology of executive decision making in similar contexts.     

Bounded governance within extended order: The Confucian advantage of synergy under generalized constitutional rules

A constitutional explanation of the economic dynamism of the East Asian Confucian economies is proposed. The main hypothesis is that the synergy between the extended order of generalized rules, first introduced by Western civilization, and the bounded governance of Confucian societies has produced a comparative cultural and institutional advantage for the five tigers in East Asia. As a pure form, the extended order, represented in Western society by a system of private property rights, a system of impersonal and generalized markets and a formal-rational system of law and administration, is far more efficient than the bounded governance of Confucian societies in the East Asia, which is characterized by the particularistic human relations and familistic, clannish, and other forms of personal ties and connections. Nevertheless, once a linkage to the extended order is established—overcoming the limits of personal exchange—Confucian ethics can support the bounded governance structures of clans, networks, communities, and familistic corporations that are effective in governing those complex tasks in which property rights are difficult to divide and allocate, individual performance is difficult to measure, and complete contract is either difficult to make or hard to enforce.     

中国政府间转移支付制度对改善收入分配效果探析

改革开放解放和发展了中国的生产力,使一部分人先富起来,但中国的贫富差距却被拉大了。作为一个社会主义国家,中央政府应该通过再分配的方式,让全体人民分享市场运作的成果,实现共同富裕这一目标。近年来出台的一系列社会政策显示,1998年后,中央政府既有政治意愿也有财政能力来调节收入再分配,然而,这些政策效果却不明显。本文以山西省1993-2005年县级财政数据为样本,通过分析中央政府转移支付结构和地方政府支出结构,得出中央政府通过对地方政府转移支付这一财政手段并不能有效缩小贫富差距这一结论。     

Capturing the pharmaceutical value of biodiversity in a developing country

The conservation of biodiversity is increasingly being defined as a process made up of three components—saving, studying and sustainably using biodiversity. If the conservation of process is expanded to incorporate the need for both the protection of biodiversity—either in situ or ex situ—and the generation of valuable information about biodiversity, an important issue is the correct balance of investment in these two types of activities. This paper explores this issue by focusing on efforts in a developing country to capture the pharmaceutical potential of biodiversity and species information. A model of biodiversity investment choice is developed, and an analysis of royalty returns to effort in biodiversity protection, taxonomic information and the collection of biotic samples is conducted based on data from Costa Rica. The results suggest that although a country can be adequately compensated for its investment in the generation of taxonomic information, it is unlikely that pharmaceutical prospecting alone will cover the high opportunity costs of biodiversity protection.     

Gesamtwirtschaftliche Auslastungsmaße

Summary The knowledge of utilization measures of economic performance is important for macroeconomic policy purposes. Our objective in this paper is to estimate — for the Austrian economy — aggregate measures of resource utilization, based on dynamic demand functions for factors of production and on the technological conditions of production which underlie factor demands. We present four measures, namely, the utilization rates of labor-optimizing output, capacity (or capital-optimizing) output, full employment output, and potential output.     

The Institutional Prerequisites for Post-Conflict Reconstruction

A successful post-conflict reconstruction is characterized by a self-sustaining liberal political, economic and social order that does not rely on external support. It is argued that the extent of reconstructed orders is constrained by their institutional prerequisites. These prerequisites—a shared ideology and ethic of individual and private property rights, a commitment to markets and the rule of law—are fundamental. Without these preconditions to serve as a foundation, reconstructed liberal orders will fail to be self-sustaining over time. It is argued that the viability of a shared ideology and ethic, and hence success, is directly dependent on the extent of horizontal ties in the post-conflict country. The main conclusion is that societies lacking adequate horizontal ties will require a high level of continual intervention and reconstruction efforts will have a lower probability of success.JEL classification: O20, P11, P16, Z13     

试论构建社会主义和谐社会--贫富差距扩大的消极影响及对策

社会主义和谐社会是一个共同富裕、安定有序的社会。贫富差距扩大一方面是社会不公正的体现，另一方面也潜伏着社会不稳定的因素。因此，在构建社会主义和谐社会时，不仅要正视现阶段贫富差距扩大的现实，而且还必须探索解决贫富差距扩大的对策，以实现社会和谐发展。     

A scenario analysis of energy requirements and energy intensity for China's rapidly developing society in the year 2020

Both energy requirements and energy intensity are crucial to the development of a society. This article uses an input–output model to assess how social and economic changes will affect energy requirements and energy intensity for China's rapidly developing society. According to the proposed input–output model, six scenarios were sequentially developed by introducing major impact factors, such as technological advancement, population, income, and urbanization, in order to project China's energy requirements. Based on 1997 data, the impact of economic and social changes on China's energy requirements in 2010 and 2020 were quantitatively analyzed. The results show that technological advancement has the strongest impact on energy intensity. Based on these findings, some related conclusions and corresponding policy recommendations are proposed.     

Infrastructures, incentives, and institutions: Fostering distributed knowledge bases for the learning society

While much attention has been devoted to information and communication technologies, a more fundamental change at the start of the new millennium is the increasing importance of innovation for economic prosperity and the emergence of a learning society. The analysis in this paper shows that innovation should be understood as a broad social and economic activity: it should transcend any specific technology, even if revolutionary, and should be tied to attitudes and behaviors oriented towards the exploitation of change by adding value.We build on the idea of inclusive learning, which entails a process of shared prosperity across the globe following local specific conditions, and argue that it is crucial to understand the features of knowledge-induced growth in rich countries, as well as the challenges and opportunities for late-industrialized and less-developed countries. To achieve these objectives, we emphasize the relative importance of infrastructures and incentives, but considering the increasingly important role of institutions towards the development of social capital. This is because learning societies will increasingly rely on “distributed knowledge bases” as a systematically coherent set of knowledge maintained across an economically and/or socially integrated set of agents and institutions.This broad concept has motivated the work behind the present paper, which builds on material presented at the 5th International Conference on Technology Policy and Innovation (ICTPI), which was held in Delft, The Netherlands, in June of 2001. Under the broad designation of “critical infrastructures,” the Conference brought together a range of experts to discuss technology, policy and management in a context much influenced by the dynamics of the process of knowledge accumulation, which drives learning societies. Thus, this special issue includes a set of extended contributions to the Delft conference, and the aim of this introductory paper is to set the stage for these contributions, with an original contribution on possible views on the role critical infrastructures play to foster innovation in the learning society.     

Energy price-induced and exogenous technological change: Assessing the economic and environmental outcomes

In this paper, we distinguish between factor/output substitution and shifts in the production technology frontier. Our model includes the by-products of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide emissions where the function requires the simultaneous expansion of good outputs and reductions in emissions. We estimate a directional output distance function for 80 countries over the period 1971–2000 to measure the exogenous and oil price-induced technological change. On average, we find substantial oil price-induced technological progress at the world level when long-term oil prices are rising, although the growth rate is more volatile in developed countries than in developing countries. The results also show that developed countries experience higher exogenous technological progress in comparison with developing countries, and the gap between the two has increased during the period of our study.     

Heuristic modeling and technological impact analysis

This article examines the ways in which a financial simulation can be used to estimate the impact of an organization's technological environment on the financial, marketing, and logistical activities of the organization. A method is presented for using corporate financial models to perform technological impact analysis and a new technique introduced—heuristic modeling—that can facilitate such an analysis.     

Effects of North–South trade on wage inequality and on human-capital accumulation

This paper develops an endogenous growth model with technological knowledge directed towards high- versus low-skilled labour, augmented with North–South international trade of intermediate goods and with human-capital accumulation, to analyse how trade affects wage inequality and the inter-country human-capital gap. Trade is a vehicle for inter-country technological-knowledge diffusion and human-capital accumulation interacts with the intra-country direction of technological knowledge arising from trade. In contrast with the market-size effect, stressed in the skill-biased technological change literature, the operation of the price channel following openness to trade predicts, in line with the recent trends in developed and developing countries, an increasing technological-knowledge bias towards high-skilled human capital. This, in turn, decreases inter-country gaps of technological knowledge and human capital and increases intra-country wage inequality. Also in line with recent empirical evidence, inter-country wage convergence is induced by the trade-opening level effect.