Services Input Intensity and US Manufacturing Employment Responses to the China Shock

Review of Industrial Organization - We present industry-level evidence that manufacturing sectors that make use of services as inputs more intensively are more robust to shocks from import...     

A Reform in Search of a Purpose: French Insolvency Law Changes (Again!)

This article charts the additions made by the French legislator to the insolvency framework, reformed relatively recently in 2005 and 2008, consisting in a fresh set of amendments in 2014 aimed at encouraging more take up of upstream rescue proceedings as well as improving the existing procedures.     

The Power of Social Network Construction and Analysis for Knowledge Discovery in the Medical Referral Process

The social network model is powerful enough to provide for the analysis and study of a variety of application domains from daily life, including health care and health informatics. After the widespread appearance of automated tools capable of deriving and analyzing social networks, social network analysis (SNA) and mining in the health care domain has recently received considerable attention for its key role in understanding how various bodies within the health care system form communities and how they are socially connected with each other. This understanding helps enhance the organizational structures and process flows, among others. In this article, we show how SNA techniques can solve issues in the medical referral system in the Canadian health care system and the like, by analyzing the social network of general practitioners (GPs) and specialists (SPs). One of the main targets is to optimize the communication between GPs and SPs with hopes of decreasing the waiting time of patients to be seen by SPs. Various SNA and mining techniques are described and analyzed, backed by reporting some experimental results.     

Parcel distribution timetabling problem

In this paper we propose a model to generate an effective timetable for time definite parcel distribution companies operating a hierarchical hub-and-spoke network. The model, referred to as parcel distribution timetabling problem, provides the departure times from each serviced city and each servicing facility in order to minimize the travel times of all shipments from their origin cities to their destination cities. Although the problem is faced by every parcel distribution company, it is rarely addressed in the literature. There is no evidence that parcel distribution companies, including the international ones, are developing operational research models in generating their timetables. The application of the model to a real-world case led to a decrease of more than 11% in the average travel time of the shipments. The company was even more delighted by the rapidity of the model in generating the timetable; this task that used to take weeks is decreased to just minutes.     

Artificial decision-making and artificial ethics: A management concern

Expert systems are knowledge-based information systems which are expected to have human attributes in order to replicate human capacity in ethical decision making. An expert system functions by virtue of its information, its inferential rules, and its decision criteria, each of which may be problematic. This paper addresses three basic reasons for ethical concern when using the currently available expert systems in a decisions-making capacity. These reasons are (1) expert systems' lack of human intelligence, (2) expert systems' lack of emotions and values, and (3) expert systems' possible incorporation of intentional or accidental bias. For these reasons artificial ethics seems to be science fiction. Consequently, expert systems should be used only in an advising capacity and managers should not absolve themselves from legal and ethical responsibility when using expert systems in decision making.Omar E. M. Khalil is a visiting Lecturer of information systems at the University of Massachussets at Dartmouth. He has published in theInternational Journal of Man-Machine Studies and in several proceedings.     

BOOK REVIEW

Using panel data methods to analyze data from 14 Latin American countries from 1978 to 2003, this paper empirically examines the links between foreign direct investment (FDI), local conditions, and economic growth. The results suggest that FDI plays an important role in contributing to economic growth. However, the effect of FDI on economic growth is dependent on host economy–based conditions. The empirical results from this study show that there is a positive interaction effect of FDI with technology gap and a negative interaction effect of FDI with the level of school attainment on economic growth. Furthermore, the empirical results from the FDI equation suggest that inflation, trade, school attainment, and telephone lines are the most determinant of location decisions for foreign investors. To explore the relationship between FDI and economic growth further, this paper examines Granger-causality between FDI and economic growth. Our empirical evidence shows that the direction of causality is from economic growth to FDI and not the reverse for Asian countries. Therefore, the causal link between FDI and economic growth is unidirectional. We also provide evidence that the link between FDI and economic growth is bidirectional for Latin American countries, which indicates that economic growth initially could attract more FDI, which, in turn, would then result in accelerated economic growth.     

Weak-Form Market Efficiency of the Nigerian Stock Market in the Context of Financial Reforms and Global Financial Crises

The weak-form efficient market hypothesis for the Nigerian Stock Market (NSM) is explored using different statistical tests. The analyses use overall stock market returns collected over the period 2000–2010. It is shown that the NSM is not weak-form efficient which questions the benefits of the 2004 financial reforms. It is also shown that the degree of market inefficiency varies across the periods corresponding to the financial reforms and 2007 global financial crisis, for daily and monthly returns. The results are important to security analysts, investors, and security exchange regulatory agencies in their investment, stock market development, and policy-making decisions.     

Income and Fiscal Incidence by Age and Gender: Some Evidence from New Zealand

With many fiscal policies likely to have quite different age/gender incidences, this paper examines age and gender dimensions of income distribution and fiscal incidence in New Zealand using Household Economic Survey data for 2010. Applying, and testing, an intra‐household income sharing rule, our evidence suggests strong life‐cycle and gender aspects to fiscal incidence. Net tax liabilities are found to be low and negative, at younger and older ages but positive during much of the “working age.” Notwithstanding considerable within‐gender heterogeneity, women are found on average to have systematically and persistently lower net fiscal liabilities than men, especially at older ages.     

Sustainable fisheries development in the tropics: trawlers and licence limitation in Malaysia

Sustainable fisheries development requires sound fisheries management. Area licence limitation programmes may form the cornerstone for most tropical multispecies fisheries management programmes. An empirical analysis of Peninsular Malaysian fishing trawlers is used to design an area licence limitation programme that conforms to the multiproduct production technology, and cost and revenue structures to best accommodate condtions of asymmetric information between the regulator and fishing vessels.