A note on black economic well-being in the North and West

Conclusion These very positive gains in economic well-being for certain categories of black families do not surprise us. Those in which the head is under 35 and live in the North and the West have had relatively more opportunity open to them as a result of some of the strong enforcement policies of the late sixties and affirmative action programs. This group of the black population, by and large, is better educated, more mobile, and more job-ready. It is, therefore, in a position to be more productive and thereby earn relatively higher incomes when society relaxes some of its discriminating tendencies. No such advantages, however, are available to the households headed by females or older households which comprise the overwhelming members of families in poverty.     

Industry aspects of takeovers and divestitures: Evidence from the UK

This paper examines takeover and divestiture activity at the industry level for the population of UK firms over the period 1986–2000. Consistent with US research, takeovers in the UK cluster both across industries and over time. The evidence for divestitures indicates clustering across industries only. The paper further investigates whether broad and specific industry shocks (e.g., growth, free cash flow, concentration, deregulation, foreign competition, technology, stock market performance) explain takeover and divestiture clustering at the industry level. The results suggest that broad shocks increase (decrease) the likelihood of takeovers (divestitures), although not significantly for takeovers. Specific industry shocks that increase the likelihood of takeover activity include low growth, the threat of foreign competition and high stock market performance. For divestitures, high industry concentration and deregulation increase activity. Little evidence is found for deregulation as a significant factor in explaining takeover activity.     

澳大利亚个人理财业的发展与启示

20世纪80年代以来,个人理财业的迅速扩张使得澳大利亚个人理财业发生了根本的变化.与澳大利亚相比,中国个人理财业正处于早期形成阶段,加强理财的教育培训,构建合理的理财经营模式,进行严格的金融监管对个人理财业健康发展十分重要.     

Angebotsökonomie: wenig Innovation — viele Jobs!

Deregulation of labour markets through structural reforms as proposed by supply side economists has a negative impact on innovation and brings down the growth rates of labour productivity. This paper discusses why the Schumpeter II innovation model is functioning poorly with higher labour turnover. Deregulation of labour markets also changes power relations between capital and labour, which leads to lower wage growth. Panel data analyses show that a one per cent lower wage increase leads to 0.32-0.49% lower growth of value added per labour hour.     

Job Creation and Job Destruction in a Regulated Labor Market: The Case of Austria

We study Austrian job reallocation in the period of 1978 to 1998, using a large administrative dataset where we correct for spurious entries and exits of firms. We find that on average 9 out of 100 randomly selected jobs were created within the last year, and that about 9 out of randomly selected 100 jobs were destroyed within the next year. Hence, the magnitude of Austrian job flows seems to be comparable to other countries, similar to the well-known results of Davis et al. (1996) for the United States. Job reallocation appears to be driven primarily by idiosyncratic shocks. However, job creation increases significantly during cyclical upswings whereas job destruction rises in downturns. We also find substantial persistence of job creation and destruction. The pronounced pattern of job reallocation rates falling with firm size and age continues to hold when we use a set of controls. Finally, we show that – controlling for sector and firm size composition – Austrian job reallocation rates are only half the rates for the U.S. This result is not surprising given the impact of tighter regulation and labor law in Austria.     

Changes in the Austrian structure of wages, 1996–2002: evidence from linked employer-employee data

Analyzing data from the Structure of Earnings Surveys we find that wage dispersion in Austria increased only marginally between 1996 and 2002. There was an increase in the returns to education which accrued only to male workers. The positive effects of tenure and especially of experience on wages decreased over time. We adopt the Machado–Mata (J Appl Econ 20:445–465, 2005) counterfactual decomposition technique which allows to attribute changes in each wage decile to changes in worker and workplace characteristics and into changes in returns to these characteristics. Behind the small net increase in inequality we document a number of interesting gross effects that influence the change in the wage distribution. We find that both composition effects due to gender, education and age and market-driven effects such as changes in returns and changing workplace characteristics contributed to a higher dispersion of wages.     

The implementation of monetary policy in New Zealand: What factors affect the 90-day bank bill rate?

This paper discusses the implementation of monetary policy in New Zealand and its flow-on effects on the 90-day bank bill rate over the 1999–2005 period. The effects of external factors are considered as well. Our findings indicate that the maturity spectrum ratio exerted a positive effect on the 90-day bank bill rate while the allotment ratio did not. This interest rate had a tendency to revert to the level set by its Australian counterpart, though at a relatively slow speed. No such link exists between the NZ 90-day rate and the U.S. 90-day rate. Neither the maturity spectrum nor the allotment ratio contributed to the volatility of the most important short-term interest rate in New Zealand.     

Combining forecasts: An application to elections

We summarize the literature on the effectiveness of combining forecasts by assessing the conditions under which combining is most valuable. Using data on the six US presidential elections from 1992 to 2012, we report the reductions in error obtained by averaging forecasts within and across four election forecasting methods: poll projections, expert judgment, quantitative models, and the Iowa Electronic Markets. Across the six elections, the resulting combined forecasts were more accurate than any individual component method, on average. The gains in accuracy from combining increased with the numbers of forecasts used, especially when these forecasts were based on different methods and different data, and in situations involving high levels of uncertainty. Such combining yielded error reductions of between 16% and 59%, compared to the average errors of the individual forecasts. This improvement is substantially greater than the 12% reduction in error that had been reported previously for combining forecasts.