What makes a country socially capable of catching up?

What Makes a Country Socially Capable of Catching Up? —In this study, the authors test whether social capability promotes catching up, the hypothesis that there is technological spillover from leaders to followers. A simple model that captures the hypothesized interaction is presented and tested on an extended sample of countries. The stock of human capital and the degree of integration into the world economy are used to measure social capability. Both measures are important in determining the degree to which the catching-up potential is realized. The authors also find an independent effect of increased trade intensity and trade regime on productivity growth.     

Nonlinear taxes in a life-cycle consistent model of family labour supply

This paper deals with family labour supply under nonlinear income taxation in a life-cycle consistent framework. A major purpose of the paper is, therefore, to bring together previous research on how to model joint supply decisions, life-cycle consistency and piecewise linear taxation, and then perform an econometric application using Swedish cross-section data. The paper starts by constructing an intertemporal model of household behaviour, which is used to derive optimal hours of work for the husband and the wife, respectively. Then, given the appropriate theoretical framework, the model is specified in a way suitable for econometric analysis. Regarding the estimation results, we find that both male and female labour supply are sensitive not only to changes in the own marginal wage rate and the virtual nonlabour income, but also to changes in the marginal wage rate of the spouse. The latter means that cross-wage effects are important when it comes to interpret the consequences of income taxation.     

The expectation of products of quadratic forms in normal variables: the practice

Summary  A table is presented to simplify the computation of the expectation of a product of quadratic forms in normal variables. Some peculiarities of the table are discussed.     

Regional Industrial Renewal: The Growth of 'Antenna Technology' in West Sweden

The article analyses how a technical knowledge field ('antenna technology') is developed and exploited in a region (West Sweden). To identify regional actors, the paper outlines a way of delineating a technical knowledge field and its changes over time. Drawing on this, an historical account is given of the international and the regional development, focusing on the changing and expanding nature of industries and markets (from military to civilian applications) and technologies. The paper emphasizes the long regional history, providing experience, which together with a number of diversifications, has given regional actors a platform from which to exploit the growing economic utility of the technical knowledge. It is also shown why some applications have not been exploited in the region.     

The Geography and Concentration of Authorship in the Top Five: Implications For European Economics

We study to what degree authors who publish in the five most prestigious journals in economics have previously published there and in which world region they are based. Although still high, the concentration of United States‐based and previously published top‐five authors has decreased. This trend is driven by increased co‐authorship between USA and non‐USA scholars and between scholars with and without previous top‐five articles. Only around 5% of all articles each year are written solely by first‐time authors from outside the United States, and this share has not increased since the mid‐1990s. Against this background, we argue that European institutions should be wary of putting too much emphasis on publishing in these five journals. Both the advancement and diversity of the economics discipline may otherwise suffer.     

Students’ attitudes toward technology: exploring the relationship among affective,cognitive and behavioral components of the attitude construct

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - When studying attitudes toward technology education, the affective attitudinal component has primarily been the focus. This study focuses...     

Attracting private sector participation in infrastructure investment: the UK case

This article examines the potential for private sector organizations to contribute to public sector innovation. Specifically, the study explores how partnering with the private sector can go beyond delivery and extend to development of new services and new markets. The term ‘commercialization partnership’ is coined for such partnerships and the article describes an exploratory investigation of this emerging form of innovation.     

Corruption in public service delivery: An experimental analysis

To improve our understanding of corruption in service delivery, we use a newly designed game that allows us to investigate the effects of the institutional environment on the behavior of service providers and their monitors. We focus on the effect of four different factors: whether monitors are accountable to the service recipients, the degree of observability of service providers’ effort, the providers’ wages and the providers’ professional norms. In accordance with theory, we find that service providers perform better when monitors are elected by service recipients and when their effort is more easily observed. However, there is only weak evidence that service providers perform better when paid more. Monitors are more vigilant when elected and when service providers are paid more. Playing the game with Ethiopian nursing students, we also find that those with greater exposure to the Ethiopian public health sector perform less well, either as provider or as monitor, when the experiment is framed as a public health provision scenario, suggesting that experience and norms affect behavior.