Chronic and transient poverty: Measurement and estimation, with evidence from China

The paper contributes to the measurement of poverty and vulnerability in three ways. First, it proposes a new approach to separating poverty into chronic and transient components. Second, it provides corrections for the statistical biases introduced when using a small number of periods to estimate the importance of vulnerability and transient poverty. Third, it applies these tools to the measurement of chronic and transient poverty in China using a rich panel data set that extends over 17 years. Alternative measurement techniques are found to yield significantly different estimates of the relative importance of chronic and transient poverty. The precision of the estimates is also considerably enhanced by simple statistical corrections.     

‘Meeting need: Successful charity marketing’

Ian Bruce (ICSA/Prentice Hall (Charities Management Series), Hemel Hempstead, UK; 1994; ISBN 1 872860 58 3; 292 pp; paperback; £17.95; hot line ordering No. +1442 881883)     

A model of R&D leadership and team communication: the relationship with project performance

Industrial research and development (R&D) involves the processing and transformation of new knowledge into a commercially valuable outcome. Communication is an effective mechanism to translate, share and integrate new information into commercial products or processes. We developed a five-factor model of team communication comprising: leadership role performance, team boundary spanning, communication safety, team reflexivity and task communication and tested the model using a one-year longitudinal study. Analyses were conducted on team level data from 56 teams, comprising 350 employees. Independent measures of project performance were obtained from surveys of research managers as well as project customers. Three findings emerged. Different factors predicted different stakeholders' ratings of project performance. Communication safety was the strongest predictor of customer ratings of performance. Boundary spanning is most effective when performed by the project leader not the team.     

6 strategies for building bundled payments

With 25 years of proven success, bundled payments are a logical step away from a flawed fee-for-service payment system that has rewarded additional and sometimes unnecessary procedures and driven up costs. The use of bundled payments is paying off for a growing number of providers and payers through lower costs and improved quality of care. The keys to success in bundling payments are innovation, a good cost-plus financial model, a comprehensive team of caregivers, and commitment to continual improvement and collaboration.     

Export-led growth: a survey of the empirical literature and some non-causality results. Part 2

This paper continues the investigation of Giles and Williams (2000) on export-led growth (ELG). In the first part, we surveyed the empirical export-led growth literature; it was evident that Granger non-causality tests are commonly applied as a test for ELG. In this paper, we explore the sensitivity of the test for exclusions restrictions often used as the Granger non-causality test for ELG by reconsidering two applications: Oxley's (1993) study for Portugal and Henriques and Sadorsky's (1996) analysis for Canada. We focus on the robustness of the method adopted to deal with non-stationarity, including the choice of deterministic trend degree. We show that different noncausality outcomes are easy to obtain, and consequently we recommend that readers interpret the empirical ELG literature with care. Our analysis also highlights the importance of examining the robustness of Granger non-causality test results to avoid spurious outcomes in applications.