Two alternative estimates of the effects of EEC and EFTA on the pattern of trade

This contribution pursues two of the approaches reviewed in the survey article in this issue, viz, the weighted-share approach and the analytical one. The results of the former are complemented by estimates of the corresponding effects on the level of trade.     

Evaluating Systemic Geopolitics – A Twenty-First Century View

This article explores the effects of borders on the making of trade union policies and on their capacity to act. It takes as an entry-point the reform of Luxembourg's system of family allowances and financial support for students in 2010, which redefined the group of beneficiaries and partly excluded cross-border workers from neighbouring countries. This led to heated debates in Luxembourg and in the Greater Region (comprising Luxembourg, Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, Lorraine and Wallonia) during which trade unions played an important part. The author explores the contradictory logics of both competition and cooperation within the Greater Region. These lead to a gap between integration as a discourse and what it means for local populations, in particular regarding labour market competition. The debates within trade unions on the issue of social entitlements for cross-border workers offer insights into the dynamics of this dichotomy and into the everyday fabric of cross-border social relations.     

New meaning for the emotional state of the elderly,from a leisure standpoint

Continuing developments in science and technology that affect many dimensions of human life, especially those related to longevity, require responses from social policies and programmes to enable quality‐of‐life improvements in every sector, including leisure. To contribute to research in this area, this qualitative study sought to identify the perceptions of and meanings attached to participation in (active outdoor) leisure by a group of elderly citizens of Araras, São Paulo State, Brazil. Data were collected via questionnaires administered to a mixed‐gender sample of 100 persons, aged between 60 and 80 years, after they had participated in an outdoor adventure/leisure programme. The data were subjected to thematic content analysis. The study revealed that the participants identified positive emotional effects as a result of their participation, relating to their sense of belonging to a group, to their increased quality of life and to their ability to remain physically active.     

On the Validity of the “Importance Minus Performance” Construct—A Genuine Contribution of the Tourism Literature or a Mishap?

Measuring service quality in a reliable and valid manner is crucial. Accordingly, this study explores whether the tourism-oriented Importance-Performance construct is a theoretically sound measure of service quality. The conceptual analysis is followed by an empirical test of the construct's prediction capability within the realm of service quality/satisfaction framework in the tourism context of a large festival. Both the conceptual and empirical results clearly indicate that the validity of the Importance-Performance construct should be strongly doubted, and that tourism and hospitality managers as well as researchers would be better off avoiding the use of the Importance-Performance construct.     

Financial System Development and Economic Growth in Transition Economies: New Empirical Evidence from the CEE and CIS Countries

We examine the role of financial development in economic growth in the former Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States during the first two decades since the beginning of transition. These countries, which had undeveloped financial systems under Communism, provide an interesting test of the relationship between financial development and growth. Our study is the broadest in terms of coverage and time period. We find that measures of financial market efficiency and competitiveness are more important than the size of the market in terms of promoting economic growth.     

Interbranch cooperation and the shadow of the future

Prisoners’ Dilemma (PD) experiments confirm and extend Axelrod’s (The evolution of cooperation. Basic Books, New York, 1984) Shadow of the Future hypothesis: subjects cooperate in infinitely repeated PD, but they also cooperate until near the end in finitely repeated PD. So the extended hypothesis is that cooperation depends on the probability of continued play. Observational tests of this hypothesis, or even applications, have been rare at best. Here we not only apply but test it for interbranch cooperation under separated-powers constitutions, specifically those of the American states, using the end of governors’ final terms as end points and the rate of overridden vetoes as the extreme case of a breakdown in interbranch cooperation. Controlling for a variety of factors, including divided government, we find support for the hypothesis, whose explanation of interbranch interaction fills a gap left open by Madison’s Federalist 51: how republican government can control itself when what is needed is “energy” more than safeguards.     

Mortgage Prepayment and Default Decisions: A Poisson Regression Approach

This paper uses an extensive and geographically dispersed sample of single-family fixed rate mortgages to assess the prepayment and default behavior of individual homeowners. We make use of Poisson regression to efficiently estimate the parameters of a proportional hazards model for prepayment and default decisions. Poisson regression for grouped survival data has several advantages over partial likelihood methods. First, when dealing with time-dependent covar-iates, it is considerably more efficient in terms of computations. Second, it is possible to estimate full-hazard models which include, for example, functions of time as well as multiple time scales (i.e., age of the loan and calendar time), in a much more straightforward manner than partial likelihood methods for un-grouped data. Third, Poisson regression can be used to estimate non-proportional hazards models such as additive excess risk specifications. Taken together, our data and estimation methodology allow us to obtain a better understanding of the economic factors underlying prepayment and default decisions.     

On Industrialization,Human Resources Training,and Policy Coordination

Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade - This paper proposes a dynamic model using a general equilibrium approach and shows that the coordination of public policies with suitable human...