Youth unemployment

Youth unemployment has been on the rise since the beginning of the crisis in 2008. Even more troublesome is the dramatic rise in the number of youth not in employment, education or training, which has led to widespread concerns about the impact on social cohesion and fears of a “lost generation”. Given the extreme differences in youth unemployment levels among member states, it is clear that no single labour market policy will be appropriate throughout the EU. There may, however, be opportunities for mutual learning on how to combat youth unemployment. This Forum explores youth unemployment in the EU via case studies of England, Belgium, Spain, Poland and Ireland. It also examines Germany’s dual vocational training system as one potential solution.     

Remaining at the margins: Case study of farmworkers in the North West Province,South Africa

This article explores living conditions, livelihoods and prospects of farmworkers with regard to land reform legislation. Research was conducted from 2004 to 2010 on four farms in the North West Province, interviewing farmworkers and farm owners. Representatives of the agricultural union Agri North West and land analysts were interviewed to obtain their perspective on farm labour. Despite protective legislation, farmworkers' living and working conditions have deteriorated. Farmworkers further lack alternative livelihood options, perpetuating their dependency on farm owners, who are the only ones providing services and some social security. Among the main barriers in the empowerment of farmworkers are limited insights regarding complex social relationships on farms, the challenge to address the specificity of power relations, and the marginalised position of farmworkers and their lack of agency in the broader political system. Both farmworkers and farm owners need support structures and strengthened institutional capacity to gradually change power dynamics.     

Towards Shared Social Responsibility: A Study of Consumers’ Willingness to Donate Micro-Insurances when Taking Out Their Own Insurance

In recent years, the concepts of charity and development aid have changed significantly. Present concepts combine direct money transfer with co-production, knowledge sharing and the development of products and services designed for the need of developing and transition economies. The concept of micro-financing is a financial service which has proven to allow for entrepreneurs in the respective countries to start up their businesses. A relatively new financial product for these countries is micro-insurance. This article deals with the question whether consumers in the Netherlands are willing to donate micro-insurances and which factors influence this willingness to contribute to the non-profit micro-insurance approach of an insurance company. The data were collected with questionnaires among a sample of the Dutch population (N = 504). The data have been processed in a one-way between-groups ANOVA, a paired sample t test and an ordinal regression analysis. The results show that approximately half of the Dutch consumers are willing to pay an additional amount on their insurance premium for the donation of micro-insurances. The amount of the insurance premium did, however, not affect the willingness to donate (WTD). If consumers could choose the beneficiary less people are willing to donate, yet those people are willing to donate more money. In conclusion, there is readiness among consumers to contribute to micro-insurance via an insurance company that assists in setting up micro-insurance projects. This indicates a possible role for companies to act as an intermediary between philanthropic acts and consumers.     

Advertising effects in complete demand systems

A rationale for including advertising in complete demand systems is presented. An advertising analogue of the Slutsky equation is derived, and properties of the expenditure and indirect utility functions characterized. Empirical estimates of a complete demand system incorporating dynamic advertising effects support neoclassical restrictions; we do not reject homogeneity, or symmetry at the 1% level. This represents surprisingly strong support for neoclassical theory relative to prior parametric studies.     

Management Innovation and Leadership: The Moderating Role of Organizational Size

Recent research on management innovation, i.e. new managerial processes, practices, or structures that change the nature of managerial work, suggests it can be an important source of competitive advantage. In this study, we focus on management innovation at the organization level and investigate the role of leadership behaviour as a key antecedent. Due to its prominent role within organizations, top management has the ability to greatly influence management innovation. In particular, we focus on leadership behaviour and examine transformational and transactional leadership. Additionally, as contextual variables like organizational size may influence the impact of leadership, we investigate its moderating role. Findings show that both leadership behaviours contribute to management innovation. Interestingly, our study indicates that smaller, less complex, organizations benefit more from transactional leadership in realizing management innovation. On the other hand, larger organizations need to draw on transformational leaders to compensate for their complexity and allow management innovation to flourish.     

Interior point methods, a decade after Karmarkar—a survey, with application to the smallest eigenvalue problem

The introduction of Karmarkar's polynomial algorithm for linear programming (LP) in 1984 has influenced wide areas in the field of optimization. While in the 1980s emphasis was on developing and implementing efficient variants of interior point methods for LP, the 1990s have shown applicability to certain structured nonlinear programming and combinatorial problems. We will give a historical account of the developments and illustrate the typical results by analyzing a new method for computing the smallest eigenvalue of a matrix. We formulate this latter problem as a so-called semidefinite optimization problem. Semidefinite optimization has recently gained much attention since it has a lot of applications in various fields (like control and system theory, combinatorial optimization, algebra, statistics, structural design) and semidefinite problems can be efficiently solved with interior point methods.     

Causes and consequences of goodwill impairment losses

The paper examines the reaction of market participants to the announcement of a goodwill impairment loss, the nature of the information conveyed by the loss, and whether a cause of goodwill impairment can be traced back to overpayment for targets at the time of prior acquisitions. Our evidence suggests that both investors and financial analysts revise their expectations downward on the announcement of an impairment loss. We find that the negative impact of the loss is significant under different reporting regimes, that is, pre-SFAS-142, transition period and post-SFAS-142, though it is lower in the post period. We further show that goodwill impairment serves as a leading indicator of a decline in future profitability. Our tests also reveal that proxies for overpayment for targets can predict the subsequent goodwill impairment. Indirect evidence suggests that firms with potentially impaired goodwill that did not report an impairment loss may have used their managerial discretion to avoid taking the loss.     

Temporary Migration and Bilateral Trade Flows

Empirical evidence on migration and trade has established that permanent migration promotes trade. This finding has been interpreted as proof for the role of migrants in reducing trade‐related transaction costs such as contract enforcement costs or information costs. This paper contributes to improving our understanding of trade‐related transaction costs by analysing empirically whether temporary migrants, like permanent migrants, have an impact on bilateral trade flows. Temporary migrants can be expected to be less integrated in the host country than permanent migrants. At the same time, their knowledge of the home country can, on average, be expected to be more up‐to‐date. Our findings therefore give insights as to the relative importance of knowledge on the host and the home country for trade‐related transaction costs. Using a gravity approach in our empirical analysis, we find that temporary migration has a positive and significant effect on trade and that temporary migration tends to have a stronger and more significant effect on both imports and exports than permanent migration. Interestingly, the role of temporary migrants in reducing trade costs does not appear to be associated with their skills.