The older nurse in the workplace: does age matter?

Between 2010 and 2020, over 40% of the RN workforce will be over 50 years of age, and many RNs are expected to retire and withdraw from the workforce. Given that older nurses are the fastest growing cohort of the workforce, the important findings presented in this article deserve careful consideration by policymakers, health care leaders, and managers.     

Contributions to the exchequer funds by state level public sector enterprises: does political alignment matter?

Regular payments or contributions to states’ exchequer funds are mandated for state level public sector enterprises (SLPEs) in most states in India. However, in the absence of a regular mechanism to ensure timely payments, the contributions are abysmally poor. In most SLPEs, the situation is driven by the presence of soft budget constraints and strong financial support from the state governments. The current study analyses the effect of political factors on the contribution that SLPEs make to the state governments’ exchequer funds. Using different econometric methods, the study finds that SLPEs located in assembly constituencies that are politically aligned with the state government, make frequent and larger contributions to the exchequer funds. Surprisingly, the subsidies provided to the SLPEs by state governments are not driven by political alignment between the state government and the constituency where the enterprise is located. In fact, subsidies compensate for the contributions to the extent that there is no effect of political alignment on net contributions (contributions–subsidies) by SLPEs to state governments. Finally, political alignment has a strong influence on the relative share of contributions made by SLPEs to state governments vis-à-vis the centre. These results are robust across different model specifications.     

Efficiency and productivity in the Indian unorganized manufacturing sector: did reforms matter?

This paper analyzes total factor productivity growth of the unorganized manufacturing sector in India using several rounds of the large scale national sample survey state level data for 15 major Indian states for the period 1978–1979 to 2000–2001. Data envelopment analysis is used to compute Malmquist total factor productivity index and its components. The impact of economic reforms on efficiency and productivity is examined. Evidence suggests that total factor productivity registered a positive growth during the period in the country as a whole. Most states in the country witnessed higher total factor productivity growth in the post 1990s reforms period than in the pre-reforms period. Decomposition of the Malmquist productivity index shows that improvement in technical efficiency rather than technical progress had contributed to the observed acceleration in the growth rate. Econometric analysis of the determinants of total factor productivity growth demonstrates that ownership, literacy, farm growth and infrastructure availability significantly influence total factor productivity growth in the sector.

Higher education enrolment in Bangladesh: does the wage premium matter?

This paper empirically examines the decisions of individuals to enrol in a course of tertiary education in Bangladesh, focussing on the period 1999 to 2009. Of particular interest is whether the wage premium―the gap in wage earnings between tertiary and secondary school graduates―is associated with decisions to enrol in tertiary education. The analytical framework used here is the human capital theory, which is tested through a discrete choice model. Using data from Bangladesh Labour Force Surveys, empirical results suggest that the wage premium is positively associated with decisions of males to enrol in tertiary education, while for females there appears to be no such association. A battery of robustness tests supports our results.     

Getting into the energy efficiency scene: does corporate social responsibility matter for energy efficiency in SMEs?

A growing body of literature argues that improving energy efficiency is an essential step that firms must take to mitigate climate change issues. It is assumed that corporate social responsibility (CSR) in general plays a prominent role in firms’ policies, and this paper specifically investigates the effects of the individual CSR dimensions on SMEs’ energy efficiency improvement. Based on data from a sample of 146 thousand SMEs, and using logit model, and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, the study reveals that high activities in social, environmental and economic CSR dimensions are associated with high energy efficiency. Specifically, the environmental CSR dimension has the highest contribution to improving energy efficiency. Furthermore, this study indicates that energy efficiency improvement can be achieved by large SMEs provided they have developed simultaneously the environmental, social, and economic CSR dimensions. In doing so, this study answers to recent calls for more research on CSR-energy efficiency relationship and addresses with greater precision why it matters to relate the role of the CSR dimensions and energy efficiency. Furthermore, this study can be of value to policymakers who are called to promote CSR practices of SMEs in order to foster their energy efficiency.     

Exchange rate pass-through in the Asian countries: does inflation volatility matter?

This paper presents a nonlinear relationship between exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) and inflation volatility. Through the lens of a threshold framework, we uncover a clear evidence of near to one ERPT to consumer prices once inflation volatility crosses a threshold level of 4.17. Clearly, there are significant differences in the degree of ERPT between the high and low inflation volatility in the inflation targeting (IT) and non-IT Asian countries.     

On locally optimal programs in the Robinson–Solow–Srinivasan model

In the context of a model due to Robinson, Solow and Srinivasan (the RSS model), we report results on the existence and characterization of locally optimal programs, a concept taken from theoretical physics. In particular, we propose a (new) transversality condition under which all locally optimal programs are good. An extended introduction places our theorems in the context of previous work on the existence question, including that on agreeable programs. It appears that there is no completely rational way to attack [the] problem without considering development programmes over an infinite horizon (Gale in Rev Econ Stud 34:1–8, 1967). The analysis of simple models is essential if we are to understand the corresponding situation for more complex models of the economy (Mirrlees and Stern in J Econ Theory 4:268–288, 1972). The technical convenience, for clear and quantitative results, of using an infinite time horizon is rather great (Hammond and Mirrlees in Models of economic growth, Wiley, New York, pp 283–299, 1973).     

Deterministic and stochastic trends in the Lee–Carter mortality model

The Lee and Carter (1992) model assumes that the deterministic and stochastic time series dynamics load with identical weights when describing the development of age-specific mortality rates. Effectively this means that the main characteristics of the model simplify to a random walk model with age-specific drift components. But restricting the adjustment mechanism of the stochastic and linear trend components to be identical may be too strong a simplification. In fact, the presence of a stochastic trend component may itself result from a bias induced by properly fitting the linear trend that characterizes mortality data. We find empirical evidence that this feature of the Lee–Carter model overly restricts the system dynamics and we suggest to separate the deterministic and stochastic time series components at the benefit of improved fit and forecasting performance. In fact, we find that the classical Lee–Carter model will otherwise overestimate the reduction of mortality for the younger age groups and will underestimate the reduction of mortality for the older age groups. In practice, our recommendation means that the Lee–Carter model instead of a one-factor model should be formulated as a two- (or several) factor model where one factor is deterministic and the other factors are stochastic. This feature generalizes to the range of models that extend the Lee–Carter model in various directions.     

Why is the teen birth rate in the United States so high and why does it matter?

Teens in the United States are far more likely to give birth than in any other industrialized country in the world. U.S. teens are two and a half times as likely to give birth as compared to teens in Canada, around four times as likely as teens in Germany or Norway, and almost 10 times as likely as teens in Switzerland. Among more developed countries, Russia has the next highest teen birth rate after the United States, but an American teenage girl is still around 25 percent more likely to give birth than her counterpart in Russia. Moreover, these statistics incorporate the almost 40 percent fall in the teen birth rate that the United States has experienced over the past two decades. Differences across U.S. states are quite dramatic as well. A teenage girl in Mississippi is four times more likely to give birth than a teenage girl in New Hampshire--and 15 times more likely to give birth as a teen compared to a teenage girl in Switzerland. This paper has two overarching goals: understanding why the teen birth rate is so high in the United States and understanding why it matters. Thus, we begin by examining multiple sources of data to put current rates of teen childbearing into the perspective of cross-country comparisons and recent historical context. We examine teen birth rates alongside pregnancy, abortion, and "shotgun" marriage rates as well as the antecedent behaviors of sexual activity and contraceptive use. We seek insights as to why the rate of teen childbearing is so unusually high in the United States as a whole, and in some U.S. states in particular. We argue that explanations that economists have tended to study are unable to account for any sizable share of the variation in teen childbearing rates across place. We describe some recent empirical work demonstrating that variation in income inequality across U.S. states and developed countries can explain a sizable share of the geographic variation in teen childbearing. To the extent that income inequality is associated with a lack of economic opportunity and heightened social marginalization for those at the bottom of the distribution, this empirical finding is potentially consistent with the ideas that other social scientists have been promoting for decades but which have been largely untested with large data sets and standard econometric methods. Our reading of the totality of evidence leads us to conclude that being on a low economic trajectory in life leads many teenage girls to have children while they are young and unmarried and that poor outcomes seen later in life (relative to teens who do not have children) are simply the continuation of the original low economic trajectory. That is, teen childbearing is explained by the low economic trajectory but is not an additional cause of later difficulties in life. Surprisingly, teen birth itself does not appear to have much direct economic consequence. Moreover, no silver bullet such as expanding access to contraception or abstinence education will solve this particular social problem. Our view is that teen childbearing is so high in the United States because of underlying social and economic problems. It reflects a decision among a set of girls to "drop-out" of the economic mainstream; they choose non-marital motherhood at a young age instead of investing in their own economic progress because they feel they have little chance of advancement. This thesis suggests that to address teen childbearing in America will require addressing some difficult social problems: in particular, the perceived and actual lack of economic opportunity among those at the bottom of the economic ladder.     

Economic policy uncertainty in the US: Does it matter for the Euro area?

We investigate the effects of a US economic policy uncertainty shock on some Euro area macroeconomic aggregates via Structural VARs. We model the indicators of economic policy uncertainty recently developed by  Baker et al. (2013) jointly with the aggregate price indexes and alternative indicators of the business cycle for the two above indicated economic areas. According to our SVARs, a one standard deviation shock to US economic policy uncertainty leads to a statistically significant fall in the European industrial production and prices of −0.12% and −0.06%, respectively. The contribution of the US uncertainty shock on the European aggregates is shown to be quantitatively larger than the one exerted by an Euro area-specific uncertainty shock.     

Analysis on the disparity in economic growth and consumption between urban sector and rural sector of China: 1978–2008

This paper designs a theoretical model of excess per-capita income growth and brings forward such indices as excess per-capita income, per-capita base consumption and decreasing factor as well as the corresponding measurement methods. It studies from a brand new aspect the disparity between the economic growth in urban sector and rural sector of China in the past 30 years after the reform and opening-up, together with the disparity between the effects of such growth on consumption. The research results show that: At present the problem of the duality of urban and rural sector of China is still serious; the impaired amount of economic growth in urban sector is larger than that in rural sector while the impairing strength in rural sector is higher than that in urban sector; and it is vital to increase the excess per-capita investment in rural sector in order to effectively strengthen consumption related policies. Therefore, promoting urbanization but reasonably controlling the urbanization progress while strengthening the infrastructure construction in rural areas would be the efficient approach to reduce the impairing strength over the economic growth, to build up consumption market, to improve the duality of economy and to realize sustainable development.     

Modeling input–output impacts with substitutions in the household sector: A numerical example

Although there have been many elaborations of the basic input–output approach, including multi-regional models, dynamic models, models with variable coefficients, supply-side models, etc., these approaches all have the same limitation. The fixed-coefficients production function assumptions ignore substitutions in response to price changes that can be expected to accompany most shocks— skipping over the heart and soul of market economics. This research note suggests a simple approach to estimating new technical coefficients matrices after a shock so that the consequences of short-term substitution effects can be studied. Given a reduction in income (as reflected in the value added row), households are likely to make substitutions, reducing their final demand by less than the application of base-year I–O coefficients would indicate. But if ex post changed income and consumption can be observed, the application of RAS procedures can generate an appropriately modified A matrix. The resulting set of interdependent substitutions that occurred can be identified. Due to some well known limits in applying the traditional RAS approach, we reformatted it and suggest a new economic model that can link coefficient adjustments to degrees of a priori substitutability and complementarity. Based on this resolution, we look forward to detailed studies of specific coefficients and how they evolve over the short term.     

Does the role of observer countries in the regional trade agreement matter for intra-regional trade ?

This article investigates the effects of trade by observed economies on the intra-regional trade by South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) members using Poison pseudo maximum likelihood estimator (PPML) gravity models with panel data over the period 2008–2014. Eight SAARC members and eight observed countries, including the EU, are analysed in capturing the trade effect of observed economies on intra-regional trade in SAARC. This article provides an empirical measure of observers’ trade, FDI and Official development assistance (ODA) with SAARC if the exports and imports of observers to/from SAARC have positive or negative signs for intra-regional exports and imports. The results show that the exports and imports of observers to SAARC members have positive effects on bilateral exports among the members. The FDI of observers reduces the bilateral intra-imports in SAARC and ODA also has a negative effect on bilateral exports among the members. These results imply that the imports by SAARC members from observer countries increase intra-regional trade in the region. The FDI and ODA increase and decrease intra-regional trade in SAARC, respectively, implying that the policies for both FDI inflow from observers and efficient aid management are needed to increase regional welfare. The study also recommends that trade between SAARC members and its observers help to increase intra-regional trade in SAARC.     

Does reference point matter in the leverage–return relationship? Evidence from the US stock market

The leverage–return relationship is supported by inconclusive empirical evidence in terms of its sign and significance. In this study, we argue that such a puzzling relationship can be understood by extending the traditional theoretical framework in a way that captures the reference dependence characteristics of prospect theory. We postulate that a firm’s leverage position relative to its reference point (i.e. target leverage) combined with market conditions places firms in either a gain or a loss domain, thereby resulting in different leverage–return relationships. Leverage and expected equity returns generally exhibit positive and negative relationships in gain and loss domains, respectively. Three hypotheses are derived and tested using 1998–2013 empirical data from the US stock market. This article contributes to the existing literature by confirming the applicability of prospect theory in explaining expected returns in the stock market.     

Productivity change in Egyptian public sector industries after ‘the opening’, 1973–1979

Policy reforms to accelerate growth and improve production efficiency have been undertaken in Egypt since 1973. This paper evaluates the impact of these reforms on Egypt's public sector firms in terms of their productivity performance. We find an important asymmetry in the consequences of the reforms between the rapidly expanding import substitution sector with high productivity growth and the stagnant traditional export sector. Our results also indicate that much of the observed productivity growth of the import substitution sector may be ascribed to improvements in capacity utilization, and suggests that Egypt's industrial policies be reassessed since such a path may not be sustainable.     

Is it possible to be too risk averse? Considerations for financial management in the public sector

Within the financial management discipline, risk aversion is viewed as ‘secure’ and ‘responsible’. Yet, frequently risk aversion is associated with delays, failure to take action, decreased employee morale and stakeholder frustration. This article considers the role of risk aversion within the public sector and questions whether the risk-averse nature of the organization, coupled with risk-averse leaders can result in negative outcomes for the agency. The article concludes that while risk aversion is important, there are actions that a risk-averse leader can take to minimize the implications of risk-averse behaviour on the organization as a whole.     

Multiple steady states and indeterminacy in the Uzawa–Lucas model with educational externalities

This paper examines a foreign technology holder’s licensing choices between royalty and fixed-fee scheme. We emphasize that foreign licensor chooses the quality of licensed technology when the licensee country does not implement perfect intellectual property protection for licensor’s technology. We study quality choice as the foreign licensor’s selection for a particular grade of technical skills. We show that fixed fee emerges as the equilibrium licensing scheme when both the transfer of his technology is relatively efficient and the licensee is sufficiently cost competitive in the domestic market, and that royalty licensing prevails otherwise. We further show it need not hold the general belief that welfare in the licensor country unambiguously rise with a stronger patenting system in the licensee country when, in particular, such patenting system in place is sufficiently lax.     

Can we reject linearity in an HAR-RV model for the S&P 500? Insights from a nonparametric HAR-RV

This article tests the linearity assumption underlying the popular heterogeneous autoregressive model for realized volatility (HAR-RV). We implement a consistent model specification test that is robust to both distributional and model misspecification. We find that, using a nonparametric HAR-RV (NPHAR-RV), we are unable to reject the null of linearity.