Disequilibrium theory,waiting costs,and saving behavior in centrally planned economies: A queueing-theoretic approach

An expected-utility maximizer, obliged to make a single purchase from two alternatives, finds that a queue forms for the good that would have been selected had both goods been available. An M/M/1 queue is posited and for each period of delay the maximum additional payment $\text{b}{}^1$ that the consumer would incur to join the queue is determined. This has implications for saving. Not only the availability of the good, but also the delay in obtaining it, the alteration in its arrival rate, and the “stampede effect” determine saving behavior.     

Efficiency And Equity Aspects Of The

The joint impact of long term structural features, on the one hand, and of recent market-oriented reforms in the macroeconomic incentive regime, on the other, are inducing major changes in social and production organization throughout the Latin American region. The new economic model is quite different in structure and performance from the one Latin American countries exhibited during the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) period. Non tradable activities such as telecommunications, energy or transport services, natural resource processing industries producing low value added industrial ‘commodities’ and assembly industries (‘maquiladoras’), producing computers, TV and Video sets and garments for the US market, together with the vehicle industry, which has managed to receive preferential treatment from the part of the various governments in the region, have performed much better than average, both in terms of labor productivity growth as well as in terms of ‘catching up’ with the international productivity frontier. Contrary to the above, unskilled labor, and engineering and knowledge intensive industries, have performed worse than average and are ‘falling behind’ international standards. Domestic subsidiaries of multinational corporations and large local conglomerates are gaining ground within GDP, while SMEs and public enterprises have been losing it. The paper examines some of the macro-to- micro relations underlying the above mentioned process of structural transformation and the interdependency between economic, technological and institutional forces inducing it. It argues that ‘main stream’ economics fails adequately to capture the role played by such interdependencies and offers a policy advice which can not deal with the new efficiency and equity problems resulting from recent structural changes.     

Fully Mature but Not Fully Legitimate: A Different Perspective on the State of Entrepreneurship Education*

This article seeks to demonstrate that the field of entrepreneurship/small business can be characterized as fully mature, a view contrasting one proposed by Kuratko. Evidence of the achievement of full maturity and marginal legitimacy is given based on benchmarks in the development of the field. In addition, this article adds additional support to the concept of partial legitimacy on which Katz and Kuratko agree. Building from these analyses, a theoretical life cycle model for the growth of disciplines in general is offered, using entrepreneurship as the example. The major consequence of entrepreneurship's full maturity is identified as the growing centrality of the business‐school based discipline of entrepreneurship in relation to the emerging entrepreneurship efforts across campuses, and the implication of this centrality for the discipline of entrepreneurship is discussed.     

The Israeli teacher-guide: The emergence and perpetuation of a role

The Israeli teacher-guide performs functions associated with tiyulim—special walks in Israel aimed at the promotion of getting to know one's native country, which are organized by public, non-commercial agencies. The Israeli teacher-guide is socially defined as an agent of education and culture rather than of leisure and entertainment. Most of his role performances are carried out during walks with various groups of casual participants. During these walks he is both the navigator and interpreter of the scenes and their meanings. On the background of the history of tourism in the Holy Land, both the emergence of the Israeli teacher-guide role and the persistence of the public demand for tiyulim and for the organizational and interpretational products of the teacher-guide, associated with tiyulim, are described in this paper. These phenomena are explained by the special peculiarities of the “Israeli condition,” which cause many to seek a sense of belonging to the Israeli land and soil and by the idea prevailing among the Israeli educational elite that tiyulim and the contents delivered during them by the teacher-guides, are appropriate means for arousing this feeling. It is hypothesized that the tiyulim may be looked upon as components of the Israeli civil religion and thus the teacher-guide is a kind of civil religion mentor.