THE RELATIVE PERFORMANCE OF FORMAL AND INFORMAL SECTORS IN INDIA

We evaluate the relative performance of formal and informal sectors in India by looking into their productivity difference. Recognizing the intersectoral linkages in the economy, the competitive general equilibrium prices are computed; these signal the productivities. Our model synthesizes frontier analysis with the general equilibrium approach to generate shadow prices. The formal activities are found to be more productive than the informal. However, the informal services sector is as efficient as the formal one. There would be an overall productivity gain of 22% to the economy if factors were allocated to productive activities. The shadow prices from the model indicate that the formal capital and informal capital are scarce factors, while it has been the opposite for formal (regular) and informal (casual) labour. Formal labour is more productive than its informal counterpart; formal capital and informal capital are equally productive.     

REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA: INTERREGIONAL TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE AND REGIONAL COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE

Significant economic disparities among China's Eastern, Central, and Western regions pose unequivocal challenges to social equality and political stability in the country. A major impediment to economic development, especially in the poor, remote Western region, is the shortage of a transportation infrastructure. The Chinese government has committed to substantial investment for improving the accessibility of this vast, land-locked region as a mechanism for promoting its development. The paper examines the impacts of the intended transportation infrastructure build-up on the Western region's comparative advantage and its interregional trade. The World Trade Model is extended to represent this investment and applied to determine interregional trade in China based on region-specific technologies, factor endowments and prices, and consumption patterns as well as the capacities and costs of carrying goods among regions using the interregional transportation infrastructure in place in the base year of 1997 and that planned for 2010 and 2020. The model is implemented for three regions, 27 sectors, and seven factors. The results indicate that the planned infrastructure build-up will be cost-effective, will increase benefits especially for the Western region, and that it can conserve energy overall at given levels of demand but substitute oil for coal. Based on these and other model results, some recommendations are offered about strategies for regional development in China.     

MANAGEMENT CONTROL SYSTEMS IN FAMILY FIRMS: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE AND DIRECTIONS FOR THE FUTURE

Family firms play a significant role in the global economy. Although family firm literature has devoted much time and effort to investigating topics concerning corporate governance, leadership, ownership and succession, accounting issues have received relatively scant attention. In this paper, we assemble and critically review extant literature on the choice of management controls. This is an essential topic for firms as management control systems (MCS) are used to make sure subordinates behave in function of the goals of the firm. Family firms, however, have distinct features, such as differences in governance structures and goals, which can have a significant impact on whether and how MCS are used. We conclude this review paper by providing avenues for future research that can advance our understanding of both the determinants and the outcomes of the choice of MCS.     

ECONOMIC TRANSITION AND LABOUR MARKET DYNAMICS IN CHINA: AN INTERPRETATIVE SURVEY OF THE ‘TURNING POINT’ DEBATE

Has the Chinese economy approached the ‘Lewisian turning point’ that marks the ending of the initial phase of industrial transformation fuelled by surplus labour? In this paper we undertake an interpretative survey of the literature on this issue, in the context of China's labour market conditions prior to the reforms and structural change of the past three decades. The available evidence is mixed, and our assessment makes a strong case for probing institutional constraints to labour mobility from an economy‐wide perspective, going beyond the confines of the rural economy.     

DEVELOPMENT OF REGIONAL SOCIAL ACCOUNTING MATRICES WITH DETAILED AGRICULTURAL LAND RENT DATA AND IMPROVED VALUE-ADDED COMPONENTS FOR THE USA

We describe a method for creating social accounting matrices (SAMs) with detailed agricultural land rent data for any arbitrary subset of the 48 contiguous states in the USA. Data on land use and land rents from various public sources is merged with national accounts data. The method reorganizes the rental income of persons concept present in national accounts to payments to conventional primary factors of production. This method also reallocates portions of the indirect business tax account to the appropriate sales and import tax accounts. SAMs created using this method should be useful inputs into input–output or computable general equilibrium models explicitly representing a heterogeneous land market and analyzing the economic effects of agricultural, bioenergy, water and climate policies on land-use change, land rents, agricultural commodity markets, trade and households’ welfare. The method's implementation is freely available, enabling others to rapidly create SAMs with their own desired region and sector aggregations.