The Year of Workers’ Mobility

The year 2006 is the European Year of Workers’ Mobility. This article seeks to assess how effective such a designation might be in the context of the problems that currently confront the EU. While it finds that the underlying potential is significant, the reality is that the year has been framed more with political than with social and economic goals to the fore and the result is a disappointment.     

A characterization of piecemeal second best policy

This paper derives conditions under which prices may be set proportional to marginal cost in some sectors of the economy when fixed distortions exists in other sectors. Two simple neoclassical economies are considered - one with fixed producer prices and one with variable producer prices. In the former case, nacessary and sufficient conditions are derived for piecemeal policy in terms of properties of derivatives of the demand functions. These conditions are then interpreted in terms of separability properties of utility functions where we find that only weak separability is required. In the latter case, sufficient conditions are derived which involved both demand and supply derivatives. These are also interpreted in terms of separability properties of utility and production functions. The analysis differs from previous ones in that we use a dual formulation of the problem and obtain conditions in terms of demand and supply derivatives which are observable, and we explicitly take into consideration the budgetary constraint of the government. Because of the latter, the factor of proportionality in applying piecemeal policy is not necessarily unity. So, in general, complete laissez faire is not optimal.     

Inflation and growth: Explaining a negative effect

The paper presents a monetary model of endogenous growth and specifies an econometric model consistent with it. The economic model suggests a negative inflation-growth effect, and one that is stronger at lower levels of inflation. Empirical evaluation of the model is based on a large panel of OECD and APEC member countries over the years 1961–1997. The hypothesized negative inflation effect is found comprehensively for the OECD countries to be significant and, as in the theory, to increase marginally as the inflation rate falls. For APEC countries, the results from using instrumental variables also show significant evidence of a similar behavior. The nature of the inflation-growth profile and differences in this between the regions are interpreted with the credit production technology of the model in a way not possible with a standard cash-only economy. Research assistance by László Konya, Rezida Zakirova, and Anton Nakov and comments by Michal Kejak, Myles Wallace and Toni Braun are kindly acknowledged, along with comments from the 17^th European Economic Association Meetings, Venice, and the 10^th International Panel Data Conference, Berlin. We also thank the editors and referees for valuable comments, and the first author is grateful to Central European University for research funds.     

The adoption and use of information technology: a longitudinal study of a mature family firm

Through a longitudinal study of a mature family firm, this paper investigates the adoption and use of information technology in a family business. It is argued that the adoption and use of information technology is influenced by five key factors. These factors are discussed, leading to a presentation of a series of implications and conclusions.     

Internal Wage Structures and Organizational Performance

This paper considers whether a hierarchical or compressed wage structure is positively associated with relatively high levels of organizational performance. To date, there has been little empirical research in this area (especially in the UK). Thus we present an operational measure of a compressed/hierarchical wage structure, using UK manufacturing micro–data in five industrial sectors, and examine its relationship with labour productivity. We find that the wage compression argument holds in one sector but not for the majority of sectors and that taking into account other, intra–industry characteristics, namely size and ownership differences, further weakens the relationship.     

Foreign Ownership and Productivity in the United Kingdom Estimates for U.K. Manufacturing Using the ARD

Review of Industrial Organization - There is a general assumption in much of the literature on FDI that foreign owned plants have higher productivity. The purpose of this paper is to answer the...     

State of Play: How Do College Football Programs Compete for Student Athletes?

Each year high school football players sign letters of intent with college football programs. The NCAA governs this matching market with strict rules that are designed to protect amateurism. DuMond et al. (J Sports Econ 9(1):67–87, 2008) develop a model of athlete choice. I consider the matching puzzle from the program’s perspective: What factors increase the likelihood that a school will successfully recruit an athlete? Like DuMond et al., I find that the state of play matters. However, my results suggest that football programs are willing to recruit outside their borders. In addition, the results align with prior findings about cheating in the NCAA. This extends the literature on college sport recruiting and may provide insight into other matching puzzles in academic, medical, and business job markets.     

Threshold concepts in teaching Leisure Studies

Recent debates about the decline of Leisure Studies have turned to considerations of pedagogy as a means to attract more recruits. However, the curriculum is also important according to recent work on ‘powerful knowledge’. Work on ‘threshold concepts’ provides a way to identify powerful and valuable knowledge. This work also predicts disorientation and liminality for some students. The political and ethical issues involved are considered via Boler and Zembylas on ‘discomforting pedagogy’. Personal reflections on teaching Leisure Studies were stimulated by some research on these topics and problems, and these are critically assessed. A case is made for using journal articles in pedagogy and assessment to provide threshold experiences, and some emergent paradoxes are discussed. The reactions of Leisure Studies students can be interpreted as showing particular emotional resilience and effective coping strategies to deal with challenging, liminal and disorienting experiences. Coping strategies can transfer from experience back to academic argument particularly well in this field, as well as the other way around. Leisure Studies can thus stake a claim for particular relevance in attempts to teach powerful knowledge with minimal disorientation.