Employee share ownership in a unionised duopoly

Profit sharing schemes have been analysed assuming Cournot competition and decentralised wage negotiations, and it has been found that firms share profits in equilibrium. This paper analyses a different remuneration system: employee share ownership. We find that whether firms choose to share ownership or not depends on both the type of competition in the product market and the way in which workers organise to negotiate wages. If wage setting is decentralised, under duopolistic Cournot competition both firms share ownership. If wage setting is centralised, only one firm shares ownership if the degree to which goods are substitutes takes an intermediate value; otherwise, the two firms share ownership. In this case, if the union sets the same wage for all workers neither firm shares ownership. Therefore, centralised wage setting discourages share ownership. Finally, under Bertrand competition neither firm shares ownership regardless of how workers are organised to negotiate wages.     

Estimating short and long-run relationships: a guide for the applied economist

Many applied economists face problems in selecting an appropriate technique to estimate short and long-run relationships with the time series methods. This article reviews three alternative approaches viz., general to specific, vector autoregressions and the vector error correction models. As in other methodological controversies, definite answers are difficult. It is suggested that if these techniques are seen as tools to summarize data, as in Smith (2000 Smith, RP. 2000. “Unit Roots and all that: the impact of time-series methods on macroeconomics”. In Macroeconomics and the Real World, Edited by: Backhouse, RE. and Salanti, A. 199–215. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  [Google Scholar]), often there maybe only minor differences in their estimates. Therefore a computationally attractive technique is likely to be popular.     

The effect of taxation on labour supply: the case of moonlighting

The authors provide a simple test of supply-side economics by estimating the responsiveness of moonlighting labour supply to changes in the marginal tax rate and the wage rate. While standard theory teachers that changes in taxes and wage should have opposite and equal effects on labour supply, taxes affect the entire asset position of the household. In the short run, an adjustment of hours in the second job may be the only option available to an individual in responding to a tax change. Thus, analyses based on after-tax wages may understate supply-side effects. To estimate these effects a tobit procedure is employed. The empirical results suggest a backward-bending supply curve over thet range of moonlighting hours. Data consist of a subsample of male blue-collar workers from the 1978 cross-section of the Panel study of Income Dynamics.     

Teaching the Minimum Wage in Econ 101 in Light of the New Economics of the Minimum Wage

The author argues that the recent controversy over the effect of the minimum wage on employment offers an opportunity for teaching introductory economics. Research findings on the minimum wage could be used to motivate alternative models of the labor market, such as monopsony and search models, and to teach students how economists test hypotheses with data.     

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Variance and lower partial moment betas as bases for costing equity capital among regulated utilities

An important question in the setting of public utility rates is, ‘What constitutes a fair rate of return or cost of equity capital for a regulated utility?’ Recent debates over this issue have centred on the CAPM's ability to produce realistic equity cost figures for use in the rate-setting process. Several researchers recommend modified or expanded versions of the market model as a means of improving its predictive capabilities. One such approach is the lower partial moment model. The purpose of the present paper is to assess the robustness of the lower partial moment model relative to the conventional CAPM as a basis for estimating the cost of a utility company's equity capital. The hypothesis that empirical estimates of the LPM beta tend to overestimate the true systematic risk of utility companies was corroborated by our test results.     

Trade and Renewable Resources in a Second Best World: An Overview

We provide an overview and introduction to the emerging field of trade and renewable resources, and discuss the potential impact of trade liberalization on welfare and resource conservation. A key factor determining the effect of trade reform is the institutional context or property rights regime, and our survey is organized such that it loosely follows the development of new insights with respect to institutions in this literature. This implies a transition from the benevolent planners model to the polar opposite benchmark of open access in the 1990s. Currently the pendulum is swinging back towards management and regulation, but institutions are treated as endogenous. We discuss and compare various key models in some detail and search for common ground between protagonists and antagonists of free trade. Paper based on Keynote address by Erwin Bulte, 12th Annual Conference of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Bilbao (Spain), June 28–30, 2003.     

Policy reform and productivity change in Chinese agriculture: A distance function approach

Agricultural policy reform has been an important source of change in the Chinese agricultural sector. The reforms led to productivity growth and helped China to pursue its self-sufficiency goal especially in the grain sector. In order to analyze whether observable productivity growth stems from technologically induced components or from the market induced parts, a multi-input–multi-output model is derived by using an econometric distance function framework. A decomposition allows to distinguish allocative effects, scale effects, technological change, and technical efficiency change. Data on farms in Zhejiang from 1986 to 2000 are used to analyze the impact of policy reform.     

Emerging Asian MNEs and Their Internationalization Strategies—Case Study Evidence on Taiwanese and Singaporean Firms

There is as yet limited empirical research on the internationalization processes, strategies and operations of Asian MNEs. Drawing on primary data from 12 case studies of emerging Taiwanese and Singaporean MNEs in the textile and electronics industries, this paper examines and analyses their internationalization characteristics and strategies, including motivations, patterns and sources of competitive advantage. The findings indicate that the emerging Taiwanese and Singaporean MNEs, while exhibiting characteristics such as that described in extant theories also suggest some differences. The empirical findings, limitations and areas for further research are discussed.