The effect of FDI on child labor

This paper examines the effect of FDI on child labor. Using 1995 data for 145 countries, we find that, contrary to common fears, FDI is negatively correlated with child labor. This effect disappears when controlling for per capita income. After doing so, we find no robust effect of either FDI or international trade on child labor. This result is robust to corrections for the endogeneity of FDI, trade, and income. Furthermore, this result is confirmed using data from earlier years. This suggests that the impact of FDI and trade on child labor, if any, is the increases in income they generate.     

Survey of the Industrial Concentration and Price-cost Margin of the Indonesian Manufacturing Industry

This research investigates trends and conditional convergence of industrial concentration and price-cost margin in 410 subsectors of the Indonesian manufacturing industry. This study uses firm (establishment) level survey data provided by the Indonesian Bureau of Central Statistics (BPS) in the period 1980–2011. The conditional convergence model is employed using four-year intervals. This research finds that the industrial concentration and price-cost margin are relatively high for most of the subsectors. Moreover, the Indonesian manufacturing industry is classified as a tight oligopoly structure. This research also reveals that the industrial concentration and price-cost margin for all subsectors tend to converge to the same value in the long run. The competition law supports the convergence of the industrial concentration and price-cost margin for the subsectors. This research concludes that the higher industrial concentration can create a higher market power in the industry.     

An aspect of variable population poverty comparisons

This paper demonstrates that the property of Replication Invariance, generally considered to be an innocuous requirement for the extension of fixed-population poverty comparisons to variable-population contexts, is incompatible with other plausible variable- and fixed-population axioms. This fact raises questions about what constitutes an appropriate headcount assessment of poverty, in terms of whether one should focus on the proportion, or the absolute numbers, of the population in poverty. This observation, in turn, has important implications for tracking poverty and setting targets for its reduction or elimination.     

Low-Cost Online Searching Techniques

This is a companion piece to the authors' article in the Journal of Economic Literature (December 1985) that explained online searching techniques for research. This article is written for teachers and provides a practical how-to guide for using low-cost online searches to prepare lectures and reading lists and for obtaining up-to-date data.     

Explaining ethnic unemployment and activity rates: evidence from the QLFS in the 1990s and 2000s

This article uses data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey for 1992–95 and 2000–03 to examine changes in ethnic unemployment and economic activity. The intention was to compare the relatively high unemployment era of the 1990s with the lower unemployment era of the 2000s. Although the ethnic minority unemployment situation has improved, only half of the difference between white and non‐white unemployment can be attributed to differences in observed characteristics. This suggests that a large unexplained discriminatory element still exists for most ethnic minorities. This has become larger for Pakistani/Bangladeshi men, implying a widening of the unexplained ethnic differential.     

资源拼凑：起源、研究脉络与理论框架

资源拼凑是企业将手头资源进行组合应对新问题、利用新机会,以化解制度和资源约束的有效途径。作为创业研究的新兴领域,资源拼凑正成为学界研究热点。总结资源拼凑起源和概念内涵,运用文献分析法和科学知识图谱,对1972-2018年中英文文献进行系统梳理,围绕资源拼凑重要主题和前沿热点构建理论分析框架,并讨论未来研究方向及中国情景下的本土研究主题。研究结论有助于国内学者拓展资源拼凑研究整体性视角,促进国内资源拼凑研究与国际前沿接轨。     

Making the risk of job loss a way of life: Does it affect job satisfaction?

This study investigates the relationship between job satisfaction and job security in European countries. In doing so, it attempts to take into account the endogenous nature of the job security–job satisfaction relationship after controlling for the various economic and personal characteristics. The results show that workers in jobs with low likelihood of job termination derive higher utility from work compared to the workers in insecure jobs. This holds even after controlling for endogeneity by using both a conventional IV approach and a selection model. This appears to be the case for both men and women.     

Paired difference analysis of size economies in UK credit unions

This study utilizes a paired difference approach to investigate for the existence of scale economies in UK credit unions. The analysis is conducted for both credit unions in aggregate as well as a number of sub-groups with the latter defined in terms of the trade organization to which credit unions are affiliated. This decomposition was viewed as particularly important in that the respective umbrella organizations have different growth strategies. The analysis revealed that significant efficiency gains are available through credit unions adopting a policy of asset growth. This finding held good irrespective of the umbrella organization to which credit unions belong although the analysis also revealed that the opportunity for efficiency gains was not so pronounced for the members of one of the trade organizations - the National Federation of Credit Unions. This finding was due to the NFCU's much more overt emphasis on self-help and community development, particularly in areas of economic disadvantage.     

THE EXTENT OF THE WORLD COFFEE MARKET

This paper employs a novel method to determine whether the prices of various types of coffee are co-integrated. In the spirit of Stigler's arbitrage definition of the market, an attempt is made to test whether all the prices co-integrate in pairs, implying that there is a single market for coffee. This test for co-integration is carried out using both linear and non-linear approaches. This finding demonstrates that the conclusions drawn from the linear and non-linear tests may be drastically different.     

Existence of Equilibria in Matching Models of Money: A New Technique

This paper develops a new technique for proving the existence and indeterminacy of monetary equilibria in money search models with divisible money. Our technique is substantially simpler than standard constructive proofs in the literature. This paper is based on the second half of Kamiya and Shimizu (2002). We are very grateful to the associate editor and an anonymous referee of this journal for their very detailed suggestions and comments. This research is financially supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from JSPS and MEXT. The second author also acknowledges the financial support by Zengin Foundation for studies on Economics and Finance.     

Framing biomimetics in a strategic orientation perspective (biopreneuring)

This paper discusses how design originally rooted in biology can be translated into applications outside its original domain (biomimetics), and thus become strategically important for commercial organisations. This paper will also discuss how concepts from organisation and management theory can help conceptualise opportunity exploration and exploitation of bio-inspired designs to commercial applications (biopreneuring). Until now, research on biomimetics has primarily focused on translating design from biology to technology, leaving the application of biomimetics for business purposes somewhat overlooked. This paper fills some of that void. Business orientation literature is applied to identify some of the key strategic aspects associated with commercial translations. In closing, this paper briefly sketches out some key implications for business research and for affected decision-makers.     

The political economy of expulsion: the regulation of Jewish moneylending in medieval England

This paper develops an analytic narrative examining an institution known as ‘The Exchequer of the Jewry’. The prohibition on usury resulted in most moneylending activities being concentrated within the Jewish community. The king set up the Exchequer of the Jewry in order to extract these monopoly profits. This institution lasted for almost 100 years but collapsed during the second part of the thirteenth century. This collapse resulted in the expulsion of the Anglo-Jewish population. This paper provides a rational choice account of the institutional trajectory of the Exchequer of the Jewry. This account explains why it ultimately failed to provide a suitable framework for the development of capital markets in medieval England.     

Economic rents in franchising: Do they exist?

This work demonstrates the very existence of economic rents in franchising using, for the first time, the franchisees’ actual financial statements. This finding makes franchising more appealing for applicants and supports the hypothesis that rents are efficient devices to motivate franchisees.     

The Southampton econometric model building unit : Some lessons learned

This paper draws on the author's experience as a research fellow on the Southampton Econometric Model Building Unit in suggesting that there is a case for large-scale, structural, disaggregated econometric models. This is particularly so if, like SEMBU, the aim is to improve both economic theory and economic policy advice rather than simply to forecast actual futures. It is argued that for such an approach to model building to be successful, funding agencies should adopt a long-term view and the Central Statistical Office and other data generating bodies should become much more closely involved with the model-building unit. This latter cooperation could prove mutually beneficial.     

The Human Adaptation for Culture and its Behavioral Implications

During phylogeny, man adapted for culture in ways other primates did not. This key adaptation is the one that enabled humans to understand other individuals as intentional agents like the self. This genetic event opened the way for new and powerful cultural processes but did not specify the detailed outcomes of behavior we see today. It just provided the basis for cultural evolution that, with no further genetic events, enabled the distinctive characteristics of human cognition. These capabilities can explain the motivational underpinnings of a variety of human inclinations and behaviors, such as a tendency toward cooperation, altruism, or fairness. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The PR Premium

Press releases (PR) are the most common and popular way for a firm to publicize its news. The annual number of PR varies substantially among firms, from just a few to hundreds. This work documents a gap in stock's returns between firms that publish low and high number of PR per annum in favor of the former. This gap was found for both the year of publication and the following one and its magnitude is 7–8% and 5–6%, respectively. This gap remains intact even after controlling for firm characteristics such as beta, market capitalization and more. I call this gap the “PR Premium.”     

Manipulating uncertainty

Uncertainty about the distributional incidence of policy reforms may, if it impinges selectively on particular subsets of voters, alter the direction of the majority vote. This possibility should be a matter of special concern when subject to potential manipulation by a purposeful agent such as a Leviathan-like bureaucracy. This paper discusses a constitutional defense against such prospect. This paper was prepared for a conference on “Constitutional Status Quo and Prospects for Change” held at George Mason University in April, 1994. I am grateful to participants in that conference and to my colleagues at Nova, especially to Mário Páscoa, for their comments and criticisms. I also benefited from comments of an anonymous referee. Responsibility for errors remains with me.     

Comments

This paper argues for a fundamental reorientation of fiscal policy from the current aggregate demand management model to a model that explicitly and directly targets the unemployed. Some advantages notwithstanding, aggregate demand management has a number of serious drawbacks that merit its reconsideration. This paper identifies these shortcomings and builds the case for a targeted demand management approach that can deliver economic stabilization through full employment and better income distribution. This approach is consistent with the original Keynesian policy recommendations and offers a reinterpretation of Keynes's proposal for the modern context with the help of the work of Hyman Minsky.     

A PANIC analysis on regional and sectoral inflation: the Spanish case

This article studies the stochastic properties of several inflation rates for the Spanish economy using the consumer price index (CPI) for the 17 regions and 12 groups of goods and services, and the producer price index (PPI) for 26 industrial sectors. To this end, we employ the panel analysis of nonstationarity in idiosyncratic and common components (PANIC) approach proposed by Bai and Ng (2004, 2010). This methodology enables us to decompose the observed inflation rate series into a common and an idiosyncratic component, thus allowing us to identify the exact source of nonstationarity. Our analysis provides strong evidence of the presence of a common stochastic trend driving the observed series forming the panel of CPI-based inflation rates for the regions. This, coupled with the presence of a jointly stationary idiosyncratic component, implies the existence of pairwise cointegration across the regional CPI-based inflation rates, which show a clear pattern of convergence over time. This gives an indication of increased geographical homogeneity in consumption patterns. The evidence for the panels of CPI-based inflation of groups of goods and services and PPI-based inflation of industrial sectors indicates the existence of four independent common stochastic trends. This, combined with jointly stationary idiosyncratic series, provides much weaker evidence of cross-cointegration for these two panels.     

构建后WTO时代金融稳定的长效机制

后WTO时代,我国金融稳定的难度大大增加,从而金融稳定的重要性和紧迫性更加凸显.实现金融稳定不能仅仅依靠或寄希望于某些短期的、临时的应急措施,而需要建立一种长效机制.这就要求除了平时密切关注金融开放条件下的金融运行状态并采取相应的对策以外,更为重要的还是要通过深化金融改革、加快金融创新和健全法制规范来促进金融业自身的稳健发展,不断提高金融体系整体的竞争力和增强抵御金融风险的能力.