Immigration and the Trade of Provinces

A link between immigration, imports, and exports has been found by a number of papers that have used the gravity equation to analyze bilateral trade patterns. We discuss what this research implies about the mechanisms through which immigrants expand trade and identify strengths and weakness of the various approaches. This paper also contributes to this literature by estimating immigrant effects for Canada using cross‐province variation in international trade and immigration patterns. We derive an alternative functional form capturing the relationship between immigration and trade based on the proposition that immigrants use their connections and superior 'market intelligence' to exploit trade opportunities that non‐immigrants do not access. We find that the average new immigrant expands exports to his/her native country by $312 and expands imports by $944.     

Revisiting the Roots of Japan's Economic Stagnation: The role of the Japanese corporation

For a long period in the 20th century, the development of the Japanese corporation appeared congruent with the development of the Japanese economy. The growth-maximising behaviour of the Japanese corporation and the preference for internal growth over acquisitions (see Odagiri, 1992) appeared to suit the long-term ambitions of Japan. Now, that formerly clear connection between the ambitions of corporate Japan and the Japanese public interest is no longer so clear. Increasingly, the global ambitions of the corporation appear as an impediment to Japan's economic development. By favouring the development of large-scale transnational corporations, Japanese industrial policy-making appears to have contained a fundamental flaw. Japan is now dominated by large-scale organisations with global ambitions, controlled by corporate elites. It is unlikely that their strategic decisions will correspond with the wider public interest, which raises the possibility that Japan is now afflicted with 'strategic failure'. Other examples from around the world suggest that Japan is not unique in this respect. Alternative ways forward are suggested.     

GHG Registries: Participation and Performance Under the Canadian Voluntary Climate Challenge Program

Between 1994 and 2004, the Voluntary Challenge and Registry (VCR) played an important role in Canadian climate change policy. In this paper, we examine the decision of firms to participate in the VCR, the extent of their involvement, and then ask if greenhouse gas emissions are related to past VCR participation. As an information provision program, we find evidence that firms may participate in VCR to signal their environmental responsibility to regulators and to some extent investors, but not to consumers. We also find that past involvement in the VCR is a strong and significant determinant of current involvement in the registry. Greenhouse gas emissions reported to the Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program in 2004, however, do not appear to be different between VCR reporters and non-reporters. GHG emissions are observed to be significantly lower among firms that are smaller, emit fewer toxic releases, use more renewable energy sources, are intermediate good producers, and are located in Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba.     

Money demand in the czech republic since transition

We analyse the demand for money since the “break up” of the Czech-Slovak Republics at the beginning of 1993 and for the aggregates M0, Ml, and M2 using monthly data. Due to the widespread use of foreign currency in formally centrally planned economies, we also investigate the issue of currency substitution. Because of our relatively small sample period the Johansen cointegration approach is not used and instead we use the general to specific methodology in a single equation framework. Previous empirical evidence on money demand in Eastern Europe, and specifically Czech Republic, has been mixed. Both graphical and empirical results suggest that any currency substitution was a one-off event due to increased uncertainty at the end of 1992 at the time of the monetary dissolution. Certainly, currency substitution in the Czech Republic is not as strong as has been found in other former centrally planned economies. However, our results do indicate that Czech National Bank may have to take account of foreign interest rates when interpreting movements in the monetary aggregates.     

The need for a strategic approach on the railways to the management of the vehicle–track interface

Network Rail's decision in 2003 to bring track maintenance back in-house was long-overdue recognition that responsibility for safety on Britain's railways cannot be abdicated – but there was more to it than that. The accidents at Hatfield and Potter's Bar (both in Hertfordshire, UK), in particular, had exposed very vividly how privatisation had encouraged each now separated and competing part of the industry to operate in its own interests: records, data and expertise were fragmented, and track and train operators alike each sought to minimise their individual costs in isolation. This paper argues from a systems analysis perspective that, on vehicle and track maintenance at least, the overall costs to the industry are in such circumstances likely to be higher than if the various parties were to work together towards minimising total track and train maintenance costs between them. Far from increasing efficiency, privatisation had the effect of reducing it.     

Compositional data analysis and zeros in micro data

The application of compositional data analysis methods in economics has some attraction. The methodology relies upon the use of 'log-ratios' in the statistical analysis. Such an approach is not possible when the data to be analysed include observations where the observed budget share is zero. We, therefore, consider and extend the methods of compositional data analysis in the situation where the data to be analysed include observations where the observed budget share is zero. The modified compositional data methods are discussed both in statistical terms and through potential economic interpretations of the method. Further, the modified methodology is applied to the 1988-89 Australian Household Expenditure Survey yielding estimates for a system of Engel curves.     

The role of peer-to-peer voice in severe work environments: organisational facilitators and barriers

Encouraging and facilitating employee voice among frontline employees is important in organisations to draw out problems and issues that can potentially be addressed and mitigated by organisational policies and practices. Using Conservation of Resources theory, this study focuses on paramedics and the formal and informal voice mechanisms used to safeguard their well-being. We observe that paramedics are often unwilling to use formal support mechanisms, at least in the first instance immediately following exposure to a traumatic event, but they see informal peer-to-peer voice as critical in preventing resource loss and regaining resources for subsequent call-outs. We also found that without an awareness of the importance of this support mechanism, changes in work organisation can unintentionally and unknowingly limit their capacity to engage in this form of support. Losing peer-to-peer voice can lead to the build-up of stress that could otherwise be mitigated, resulting in diminished well-being.     

An expected utility analysis of k-majority rules

Buchanan and Tullok (The calculus of consent: logical foundations of constitutional democracy. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1962) argued that the optimal k-majority rule should minimize the sum of external costs and decision costs. Dougherty et al. (Public Choice, 163(1–2):31–52, 2015) formalized their approach using various groups of voters. In this study, we analyze the optimal k-majority rule in terms of expected utility and compare our results to Dougherty et al. (2015), which focuses on costs alone. Specifically, we replace Buchanan and Tullock’s external cost function with an external utility function that accounts for both the benefits and costs of enacting proposals. We find that analyzing k-majority rules in terms of utility, rather than costs, affects the optima. Furthermore, in terms of utility, the optimal k-majority rule can vary depending on the group one expects to be in during a vote. With some interesting exceptions, individuals from groups that favor the proposal often find small k-majority rules optimal. Individuals from groups that oppose the proposal often find large k-majority rules optimal.     

Winners, Losers, and the Nuclear-Waste Dilemma

This paper explores how property-right assignment affects social efficiency when a public program has both “public good” and “public bad” components. We show that when willingness to accept a public bad exceeds the willingness to pay, the net benefit is unambiguously lower when the property right supports the status quo institutional structure. Thus, Kaldor–Hicks efficiency tests tend to favor public programs and mitigation over the status quo even when mitigation negatively affects another group. To illustrate the result, we develop social-cost estimates for moving nuclear waste from current temporary-storage facilities to a permanent central repository at Yucca Mountain, NV, USA. For a representative city with a population of 226,195, the present value of the external cost of shipping waste is $1.42 billion when those living near temporary nuclear-waste storage facilities are assigned the property right to “health and safety.” That number swells to $5.95 billion when those living near the transport route are assigned the property right. Thus, property-right assignment affects the efficient level of nuclear-waste, and thus nuclear energy, produced.