Occupational job creation: patterns and implications

This paper empirically investigates the matching process ofjob seekers and job vacancies, on different occupational labormarkets, and reveals the relative importance of supply and demandfactors, and frictions in the job creation process. Using datafrom German administrative records, we estimate matching functionsboth on the aggregate level, and for different occupationaland educational groups. The data allow to avoid some of theusual problems in empirical matching studies; extensive robustnessand stationarity tests are carried out. The results indicatesubstantial heterogeneity in the matching processes at disaggregatelevels. This information can be useful for policymakers, sincepolicy interventions that are effective in creating employmenton some occupational labor markets might lead to unsatisfactoryresults for other occupations.     

Property-led regeneration and job creation: The Belfast case

This paper presents the results of a recent evaluation of the Urban Development Grant in Belfast. In contrast to cities in Great Britain, the Urban Development Grant in Belfast has been available not just to property speculators, but also to owner-occupiers of commercial premises. The grant is to facilitate employment growth in assisted businesses by removing constraints on trade and production imposed by unsuitable premises or location. An analysis of employment change in UDG-assisted and non-assisted businesses is undertaken to ascertain whether grant assistance was associated with employment growth.     

Analysing job creation effects of scaling up infrastructure spending in South Africa

In a first for South Africa, this article draws on literature on infrastructure productivity to model dynamic economy-wide employment impacts of infrastructure investment funded with different fiscal tools. Using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model, the South African investment plan is modelled, given the infrastructure externality. Alternative fiscal scenarios to finance the policy are modelled in the article. In the long run, unemployment decreases for all types of workers under one of the scenarios. In the short run, only elementary occupation workers benefit from a decrease in unemployment; for the rest, unemployment rises.     

Policy evaluation and meta-evaluation: The case of rural co-operatives

Many presentations of debates about co-operatives and rural development, and some of these debates themselves, are simplistic, or self-asserting, or self-defeating. Evaluation theory has not been given the attention it merits. Positions in meta-evaluation have been un-, or misidentified. Philosophical problems of values at the levels of policy and programme analysis have been neglected or glossed over. This paper addresses itself to some of these issues, in respect of the structuring of the evaluative argument and counter-argument. The case of rural co-operative evaluation is analysed by a method which could also be used for study and appraisal of other public policies for development.     

Agricultural planning,pricing policy and co-operatives in Vietnam

In the competition between national government and local co-operatives, a central contradiction in socialist rural development, the price system, market control and terms of trade are crucially related to the relative power and capacity of the central government to control ratios of accumulation and consumption. In Vietnam there is a dynamic interaction between government and agricultural producers over pricing policy and paradoxically, it is the co-operative, primarily viewed by the state as a means of providing cheap food, which has strengthened the collective bargaining position of agricultural producers. The government has had to introduce material incentives to expand agricultural production beyond subsistence levels and bow to pressure to alter the previous accumulation/consumption ratios in favour of consumption.     

Democracy and Durability: Empirical Analysis and a Causality Test

The current literature has failed to differentiate between the collapse of democratic and authoritarian rules or whether democratic regimes collapse for the same reasons as do authoritarian regimes. Therefore, the current literature is silent on whether democracies are more fragile or less susceptible to economic and political breakdowns. Using a multitude of political instability variables, this paper explores empirically, whether political freedom and civil liberty (a proxy for democracy) has any effect on the stability of the political order. The empirical results of the paper confirm the hypothesis that democracy is conducive to political stability; the higher the level of political freedom and civil liberty, the more stable countries are. The paper also presented a Granger-causality test of political instability and the level of political freedom and civil liberty. The test results indicate that the level of political freedom and civil liberty Granger-cause the level of political instability, while the level of political instability does not Granger-cause the level of political freedom and civil liberty. The test results indicate that Granger-causality runs one-way from political freedom and civil liberty to political instability and not the other way. A further comprehensive research is needed on the multi-layered and the complex relationship among democracy and the resilience of the political order.I would like to thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments that improved the quality of the paper. I would also like to thank the Research Council of Niagara University for their financial support.     

The interrelation of job vacancies and workforce in Russia: Gender-specific features

The article is devoted to the joint dynamics of male and female labor and vacancies in Russia. A model of population and labor mobility is proposed, which takes account of gender differences in labor. The dynamics of the model coefficients is analyzed and the efficiency of adjustment current labor demand and supply is retrospectively estimated by decomposing the impact of individual factors on general change in the indicators under analysis. The model coefficients are evaluated for the future, and the dynamics of change in major parameters of the labor market, including gender characteristics, is forecasted.     

重庆农民工返乡创业问题分析及对策研究

文章运用SWOT分析模型对农民工返乡创业的优势、劣势、机会和威胁做了详细地分析,找出了目前农民工返乡创业存在的困境,并从政府和农民工两方面提出了应对措施。     

20世纪50年代的职工储蓄动员与现代国家建设

伴随着现代国家建设,政府对民众日常生活的介入与塑造愈益加深。1949年以后,为了早日向工业国转变,国家选择了高投入、高积累的工业化发展战略,并通过计划经济体制调整国民收入中积累和消费部分的比重,个体消费者的经济活动也因此被纳入国家计划的范畴。储蓄作为一种延期消费,具有调节货币流通、推迟社会购买力、增加生产建设资金的作用。为此,国家加大了对城市居民特别是职工储蓄的推广力度。对银行储蓄的大力提倡和动员,成为国家调整积累与消费关系的重要手段,同时它也在无形中改造了民众传统的经济生活方式和消费习惯。根植于传统“熟人社会”的民间借贷具有强大的生命力,成为现代国家推广银行储蓄的一大阻力。在这种情况下,互助储金会等新型的互助.互济组织应运而生,承担着将职工从民间信贷导向银行储蓄的历史功能。     

Goldsmith-Banking: Mutual Acceptance and Interbanker Clearing in Restoration London

During the second half of the 17th century, London's goldsmith-bankers formed a system of banking through mutual debt acceptance and interbanker clearing. Widespread acceptance of bank notes, orders, and bills created positive externalities for member bankers and promoted the use of bank supplied media of exchange during the Financial Revolution in England. Mutual acceptance by goldsmith-bankers arose endogenously as a dominant strategy Nash equilibrium. The bilateral clearing of these acceptances produced incentive compatible co-monitoring between goldsmith-bankers. The responsiveness of co-monitoring is supported by statistical analysis of the accounts of the Restoration era goldsmith Edward Backwell. Systemic cohesion was further reinforced by the screening of new members through apprenticeship.     

Racial discrimination in labor markets: A job filtering hypothesis

Summary and Conclusions The immediately preceeding analysis has examined, in a dynamic context, racial interaction in an occupationally specified employment growth process. We exhibited a demand theoretic model which states that non-whites may register employment gains in low-skilled occupations in a given area as a result of the growth of total demand for labor in low-skilled occupations relative to the available supply of white labor for such occupations. Discrimination operative at the point of job entry is reduced if a deficiency of white labor tends to raise the cost of such discrimination for profit-maximizing white employers.