Non-uniformity of job-matching in a transition economy – A nonparametric analysis for the Czech Republic

This study explores the properties and development of the matching technology in the Czech Republic during the transition to a market economy. Nonparametric additive modelling allows us to assess flexible functional forms, which comprise for instance CES and trans-log specifications. This enables us to evaluate the matching process locally for each combination of unemployment and vacancies rather than being restricted to global coefficients. Special interest is devoted to analysis and economic determinants of regional variation in the returns to scale of the matching function. Non-linearities are found in the partial adjustment process of unemployment outflows, and a negative coefficient on vacancies in some years. Moreover, increasing returns to scale in job-matching are found locally. Returns to scale are found to be negatively correlated to the share in employment in services and to outmigration, positively correlated to the employment share in industry, the unemployment rate and various measures of active labour market policies.     

农户参与式水利管理与政府声誉缺失——一个基于博弈框架的分析

为解决农户有效参与水利管理的合作意愿,本文基于博弈论的农户合作管理困境,首先对农户参与水利管理的单次静态博弈进行了合作意愿分析,得出农户在合作的单次博弈中必将陷入两难困境,导致个人理性和集体理性产生冲突,农户产生"搭便车"的倾向,且农户集体之间的合作难以达成。其次,基于不完全信息和有限理性的研究假设,再次对农户所处的两难困境进行重复动态博弈分析,推演出农户参与水利管理的合作意愿主要来自政府的有效激励机制设计及承诺。最后,本文以浙江省为例,对500个农户参与水利管理的合作意愿进行了实地调查,结果显示与农户合作博弈过程中的研究结论相符,并据此得出相应的对策及建议。     

教育不平等、增长非平衡与低发展陷阱——对农村教育和农村经济协调发展的考察

改革开放以来,我国城乡差距、农村的地区发展差距有所扩大,不公平的教育资源分配导致人力资本的不平等配置,要根本解决经济发展差距问题,达到均衡发展的目的,关键之一是要解决好农村教育的全面协调发展问题。要打破这种不均衡的教育资源配置和低发展的陷阱,必须提出教育扶贫的理念和措施。教育扶贫就是通过提高整个农村特别是落后地区农村居民的受教育水平、职业技能,进而达到促进当地经济发展的目的,这不但是对教育本身有意义,而且由于其对经济社会长期性、根本性的影响,在某种意义上讲甚至比经济扶贫更重要,针对农村教育的现状和特征,必须加大教育扶贫的力度,提高扶贫的效率。     

全球化空间重组与中国长三角城市“呼应构想”

江苏南部昆山的案例研究显示:在经济全球化时代,中国的长三角地区正创造一个崭新的全球化空间。文章延用城市"呼应构想"概念,来具体解释地方的这种发展驱动策略和政策,包括经济上的重组和政治/行政上的重构。在与临近城市上海的并行发展中,昆山是如何通过"机会袭夺"以改变国内外投资的策略取向,进而超越这些大城市中心以完善并扩展自己的经济联系。这一调查结果显示地方政府在决定城市和区域发展中仍然扮演了具有举无轻重的角色,这不仅应对了全球化进程,更是加速了长三角地区的全球化作用和联系。     

Does a clustered location matter for high-technology companies' performance? The case of biotechnology in the Netherlands

Young entrepreneurial companies in biotechnology tend to cluster in space, nearby research universities and research centers. This pattern is often ascribed to the availability of external economies, mainly local knowledge spillovers that help to reduce the uncertainty from a disruptive technology faced by these companies. Given a shortage of empirical research on cluster advantages and performance of clustered companies, we present results of a comparative analysis of clustered and non-clustered companies in biotechnology and Bionanotechnology in the Netherlands. It appears that, among other influences, a clustered location has no significant influence on innovation and speed of growth. However, a location in the largest cluster (Leiden) does contribute to a better performance in terms of innovativeness compared with all other locations. The kind of external economies involved seems to vary according to the stage in the knowledge value chain and the segment in biotechnology industry. Knowledge spillovers tend to be local for companies involved in new drugs and diagnostics research only in the first stage of the knowledge chain and for service companies regardless of the stage in the knowledge chain.     

The network of networks: Localized technological change in telecommunications and productivity growth

Radical innovations in the usage of telecommunication services have drastically changed the role of telecommunications in the economy. Today the usage of telecommunications services is associated with the opportunity to extract significant quasi-rents. An empirical analysis of the Italian case in the mid-eighties confirms the significant difference between telecommunications cost share and marginal productivity levels. The opportunity to reap transient quasi-rents has in turn pushed users to innovate so as to become major players in the arena of technological change in telecommunications and information technologies. In this context the notion of network of networks, implemented in the European Union, seems most appropriate to push the dynamic efficiency of the system and accommodate both centrifugal and centripetal innovations, yet also to retain network interoperability and interconnectivity.     

Alternative Specifications of the Institutional Constraints to Economic Growth - Or Why is there a Shortage of Electronic Engineers and Computer Scientists in Sweden?

There is a shortage of engineers and scientists, in particular, electronic engineers and computer scientists, in Sweden. This shortage is argued to be one factor behind the structural weakness of Swedish industry in the 'high tech' area. The conventional explanation of the imbalance in the supply and demand for electronic engineers and computer scientists is focused on the incentives for the individual to demand higher education. These are argued to be low due to the relatively equal income distribution in Sweden and to high taxation. We find that the evidence given in support of this specification of the institutional problem is not convincing. Instead, we specify the institutional problem as having been a lack of opportunities to study electronics and computer science. With recent institutional changes in higher education, this problem is currently being tackled. Looking ahead, we see a new institutional problem emerging with a distinct gender bias. In order to increase the number of degrees awarded in electronics and computer science further, we will need to raise the interest of women in science and technology studies. This requires major institutional changes with regard to both the form and content of the educational programmes.     

Wage–productivity differentials and Indian economic efficiency

A frontier-general equilibrium analysis with skill transformation evaluates the productivities of skilled and unskilled labor and potential of the Indian economy. We compare the wages of skilled and unskilled labor between 1994 and 2002 with their respective productivities over this period. Education is considered to be responsible for the skill formation over this period: the change in skilled labor supply is endogenous in the model. Compared to its productivity, skilled labor is underpaid in the initial period and overpaid in the second period. Unskilled labor is underpaid in both periods. A decomposition exercise shows that skilled labor gains from free trade, and stands to lose due to education and domestic competition in the second period. The annualized rate of return to education is between 7 and 10%. The economy operates below its potential in both periods, particularly in the second—due to trade limitations and the failure to capture the return to education. Service sectors are found to have potential to grow significantly.     

中美两国基础研究社会捐赠比较及对我国的启示

鼓励多元化投入基础研究的国家政策频繁出台，使社会捐赠作为基础研究投入来源引起学者普遍关注。美国运用社会资本进行科研捐赠具有多年发展经验，在支持生命科学、数学、物理学等前沿基础研究领域取得较好成效。为考察我国基础研究社会捐赠现状，对中美两国社会捐赠框架、科研投入多元化格局、捐赠激励政策、非营利机构布局及社会捐赠瓶颈等内容进行对比，从增设基础研究捐赠类目、成立基础研究专项基金会、完善基础研究捐赠税收优惠政策和积极吸收社会小额捐款4个方面提出适合我国国情的基础研究社会捐赠政策措施。     

新疆农村公共服务供给的非政府组织途径

新疆农村经济社会发展的水平不断提高,使得农村、农民对公共服务的需求日益扩大化和个性化,单靠政府是无法有效提供的。因此,有必要引入非政府组织,协同政府一起提供农村生产、生活中需要的各种公共服务。从新疆农村发展的现实需要和理论依据两方面分析了非政府组织在公共服务领域的作用,并提出了一些促进新疆农村非政府组织发展的思路和对策。     

The Impact of Land-Use Change on Ecosystem Services,Biodiversity and Returns to Landowners: A Case Study in the State of Minnesota

Land-use change has a significant impact on the world’s ecosystems. Changes in the extent and composition of forests, grasslands, wetlands and other ecosystems have large impacts on the provision of ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation and returns to landowners. While the change in private returns to landowners due to land-use change can often be measured, changes in the supply and value of ecosystem services and the provision of biodiversity conservation have been harder to quantify. In this paper we use a spatially explicit integrated modeling tool (InVEST) to quantify the changes in ecosystem services, habitat for biodiversity, and returns to landowners from land-use change in Minnesota from 1992 to 2001. We evaluate the impact of actual land-use change and a suite of alternative land-use change scenarios. We find a lack of concordance in the ranking of baseline and alternative land-use scenarios in terms of generation of private returns to landowners and net social benefits (private returns plus ecosystem service value). Returns to landowners are highest in a scenario with large-scale agricultural expansion. This scenario, however, generated the lowest net social benefits across all scenarios considered because of large losses in stored carbon and negative impacts on water quality. Further, this scenario resulted in the largest decline in habitat quality for general terrestrial biodiversity and forest songbirds. Our results illustrate the importance of taking ecosystem services into account in land-use and land-management decision-making and linking such decisions to incentives that accurately reflect social returns.     

中国经济内外失衡的测度与分析——基于经济失衡度指标体系的构建

以经济分析逻辑与相关指标内涵为依据,构建起衡量一国经济失衡度的指标体系,并对2000年以来中国经济失衡程度进行了测度。结果显示,中国经济内外失衡总体状况近年来趋向恶化,内外失衡总指数从2001年的0.3856提高到2010年的0.5509,其中外部失衡指数从2001年的0.2916提高到2010年的0.4879,内部失衡指数从2001年的0.4796提高到2010年的0.6138。中国需加强与其他国家的政策协调,理顺收入分配关系以扩大内需,为解决内外失衡问题创造条件。     

The political economy of contributive pensions in developing countries

This paper sheds light on the role of public institutions as a way to reduce tax evasion through a close link between payroll taxation and pension benefits. We use a political economy model in which agents have the possibility to hide part of their earnings in order to avoid taxation and, where the public system is more efficient in providing annuitized pension benefits than the private sector. We show that in the absence of evasion costs, agents are indifferent to the tax rate level as they can always perfectly adapt compliance so as to face their preferred effective tax rate. There is unanimity in favour of the maximum tax rate and, the public pension system is found to be partially contributive in order to increase tax compliance and thus the resources collected. This, in turn, enables higher redistribution toward the worst-off agents. When evasion costs are introduced, perfect substitutability between compliance and taxation breaks down. At the majority-voting equilibrium, individuals at the bottom of the income distribution who are in favour of more redistribution, and those at the top who want to transfer more resources to the old age, form a coalition against middle-income agents, in favour of high tax rates. In addition to the previous tax base argument, the optimal level of the Bismarkian pillar is now chosen so as to account for political support.     

Suit the action to the word,the word to the action: Eliciting motives for trust and reciprocity by attitudinal and behavioural measures

Two important primitives of social capital are the disposition to trust and to reciprocate manifested in social life. In this paper, attitudinal and behavioural evidence is used to investigate the nature of the motivations underlying behaviour in Trust and Dictator games. In doing so, we have three aims. First, to find out whether, and to what extent, answers to a questionnaire about attitudes towards trust and civicness predict subjects’ behaviour. Second, to disentangle strategic from other-regarding motivations by comparing behaviour in Trust and Dictator Games. Third, to investigate to what extent a correspondence could be found between subjects’ attitudinal ‘type’ and their behaviour in the two interactive experimental settings. The paper builds on previous work in the area and in particular finds that using surveys to distinguish between the behavioural responses of different attitudinal types–“Trusting” or “Prudent” on the one hand and “Trustworthy” or “Untrustworthy” on the other, allows us to dig deeper into the underlying motivations of the experimental subjects. The self-declared trusting tend to manifest trust by investing more in the risky interaction than the prudent, and the self-declared trustworthy are inclined to return more than the untrustworthy. Moreover, the self-reported trustworthy and untrustworthy tend to manifest positive or negative reciprocity, respectively. The evidence suggests that the former are moved by the intention to reward and the latter by the desire to punish a stingy Sender by returning an even smaller amount than received. This seems to confirm the “multiple self” view (Elster, 1986), whereby in the personality of each individual many components–possibly distant in terms of the motivating sentiments–are gathered together.     

Trade and Industry Policy

This article consists of a review of changes in trade and industry policy, along with discussions of the determinants of change and the major problem areas. Policy between 1965 and 1985 is summarised, and the growth of unemployment in the 1970s is suggested as a key determinant of change. Higher protection in certain industries, and moves to more quantitative methods ot protection can be related to unemployment, in Australia as in other countries. Theory and empirical evidence suggest that protection is likely to prove ineffective in reducing unemployment. The reliance on protection in particular cases is ascribed to a wish by governments to preserve specific jobs, not to increase overall employment. Policy can have a role in facilitating or restricting structural change which can arise from several sources, such as changing trade patterns and preferences. The devices of policy are considered briefly to determine whether they are likely to facilitate change or not. It is concluded that they often provide incentives to avoid change. The scale problem is considered, and it is suggested that the cost of protection could be high in industries subject to significant scale economies. Scale and adjustments are considered in the light of two industries, motor vehicles and whitegoods, and the role of industry plans is examined. The actuality of trade and industry policy often differs from announced intentions, and this ambiguity can give rise to uncertainty which itself has a cost.     

Accounting for Latent Attitudes in Willingness-to-Pay Studies: The Case of Coastal Water Quality Improvements in Tobago

The study of human behaviour and in particular individual choices is of great interest in the field of environmental economics. Substantial attention has been paid to the way in which preferences vary across individuals, and there is a realisation that such differences are at least in part due to underlying attitudes and convictions. While this has been confirmed in empirical work, the methods typically employed are based on the arguably misguided use of responses to attitudinal questions as direct measures of underlying attitudes. As discussed in other literature, especially in transport research, this potentially leads to measurement error and endogeneity bias, and attitudes should rather be treated as latent variables. In this paper, we illustrate the use of such an Integrated Choice and Latent Variable model in the context of beach visitors?? willingness-to-pay for improvements in water quality. We show how a latent attitudinal variable, which we refer to as a pro-intervention attitude, helps explain both the responses from the stated choice exercise as well as answers to various rating questions related to respondent attitudes. The incorporation of the latent variable leads to important gains in model fit and substantially different willingness-to-pay patterns.     

An Empirical Study of Urban Credit Cooperatives in China

The overall objective of this study is to try and uncover to what extent the borrowing and lending pattern of Chinese urban credit cooperatives (UCCs) leads them to conform to the theoretical view of credit cooperatives and to what degree they are mainly characterized by elements which result from their regulatory environment and the status of China as an economy in transition. We provide evidence from a specially-commissioned survey on the characteristics and functioning of UCCs. Our statistical and econometric analysis points to the tentative conclusion that there are major regional differences in the performance of UCCs both in terms of the quality of loans granted and overall profitability. The latter is also influenced by the quality of the loans made, and this in turn is affected by the number of directors in the UCC and the extent to which the UCC grants loans to state-owned enterprises.     

土地价格市场化对中国工业部门要素投入与技术选择的影响

土地价格市场化是中国要素价格改革的重要组成部分。文章基于2007-2013年中国工业部门面板数据,实证检验了工业用地相对价格变动对中国工业部门要素投入调整和技术进步偏向的影响。研究发现：短期内,东部地区工业用地相对价格上升抑制了工业用地需求,并诱致了非土地要素对工业用地的替代,但在全国层面和中西部地区并没有显著观察到土地要素相对价格变动的短期诱致替代效应;长期内,工业用地价格上升诱致了能源与物质资本节约型和知识资本使用型技术的使用,土地节约型技术进步特征仅在东部地区得到了显著支持,在全国层面和中西部地区都不显著,这与中国政府主导型的工业用地价格市场化改革特征密切相关。未来中国应以土地价格市场化改革为契机,重视土地价格杠杆对工业部门要素结构优化和技术创新的激励效应,推动工业转型升级。     

Outcomes from use of an evidence-based practice guideline

The aim of evidence-based guidelines is primarily to improve patient outcomes without adding to the existing cost of care because both payers and policymakers want to identify health care costs that do not result in benefit to the patient. The purpose of the reported project was to generate a practice guideline for the treatment of uncomplicated acute cystitis in a female population, to determine the extent to which the guideline would be used by providers and to measure the cost and quality of outcomes from its use. A retrospective chart review was used to gather pre-guideline practice and cost data. Measurements included the type, frequency, and duration of antibiotic therapy and the use of urine cultures and both complications and routine followup visits. The implementation of an outpatient practice guideline resulted in a significant change in antibiotic prescribing and a trend toward a change in ordering cultures and clinic followup. There was also a significant decrease in treatment costs.     

Measures for knowledge-based economic development: Introducing data mining techniques to economic developers in the state of Georgia and the US South

The contribution of knowledge to economic growth and competitiveness has attracted increased attention. Publications with a topical focus on areas related to innovation have risen dramatically from 1963 to 2005, but more slowly in local and regional development journals. In contrast to the wide use of aggregate measures of innovation, this paper presents four cases presenting disaggregated knowledge-based approaches into the policy- and decision-making processes of economic developers in the state of Georgia and the US South. The first case uses information obtained from patents and publications to inform traditional out-of-area economic development recruitment strategies in a more knowledge-oriented direction. The second case exemplifies the use of data mining to identify top researchers as part of a strategic state economic development effort. The third case illustrates how local knowledge-based capabilities can be identified in cities not traditionally viewed as innovative. Nanotechnology-related knowledge assets in the southern United States are mapped and assessed in the fourth case. Disaggregated methods used in traditional strategies were most intuitively understood and used, but new knowledge measures were found to encourage local and state economic developers to begin to embrace new paradigms.