Budget repair or budget spectacle? The passage of Wisconsin’s Act 10

Strategic planning processes use budgets to implement control and accountability. However, budgets can also be used to generate support for strategic decisions, for example by creating a political spectacle. A political spectacle is a problem engineered to have a specific political impact. This paper investigates politicians’ use of a state budget as a political manoeuvre to defend strategic decisions regarding public employee unions in Wisconsin. The analysis shows how the 2011 state budget in Wisconsin was used to create a political spectacle to generate support for eliminating collective bargaining for public workers, especially public (state) school teachers.     

Financial System Development and Economic Growth in Transition Economies: New Empirical Evidence from the CEE and CIS Countries

We examine the role of financial development in economic growth in the former Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States during the first two decades since the beginning of transition. These countries, which had undeveloped financial systems under Communism, provide an interesting test of the relationship between financial development and growth. Our study is the broadest in terms of coverage and time period. We find that measures of financial market efficiency and competitiveness are more important than the size of the market in terms of promoting economic growth.     

US firms' evaluation of employee credentials in international business

This paper updates a 1991 survey of salaries and careers among US-based international business professionals and managers. These employees typically offer a high level of both international and functional qualifications, implying that aspiring workers need substantial credentials to compete in this market. International credentials directly increase salaries only modestly, suggesting a rough balance of supply and demand for these qualifications. Larger salary premiums are commanded by functional specialties utilizing new information technology. Comparisons of the 1999 and 1991 surveys document partial convergence in employers' treatment of men and women but remaining 'glass ceiling' barriers to women's advancement.     

Is entrepreneurship a virtue?

Entrepreneurship is rarely (if ever) discussed by virtue ethicists. And economists analysing entrepreneurship have rarely described it as a virtue. Entrepreneurship is indeed a virtue and the entrepreneur can be seen as the creative counterpart of Aristotle's ‘Magnificent Man’, the virtuous possessor of wealth. But entrepreneurship is also a virtue for anyone who is economically active. By reviewing analyses of entrepreneurship by economists such as Cantillon, Schumpeter, Knight, Baumol, Kirzner and Casson, particular features of entrepreneurial practice are identified from which characteristic virtues (and vices) are isolated and analysed. The characteristic features of the vicious Entrepreneur (or crooked businessman) are also described.     

The structural,social, and strategic factors associated with successful business networks

Business networks, formal arrangements between independent businesses established to enhance member success, are generally accepted as an important strategy to help small businesses survive and prosper, and to promote regional economic development. However, knowledge about what contributes to the success of business networks themselves is less extensive and based primarily on case studies or reports of network directors. The purpose of this paper is to partially address this shortcoming. We consider the structural and social features identified in previous studies as likely correlates of business network success. Using a social constructionist definition of network success, we distinguish successful from less successful networks from among a sample of 29 industry and community business networks in the USA. Findings from interviews with 1122 members and 29 network leaders suggest that trust is central to understanding network success. Structural features have complex positive and negative indirect effects on success through trust and resource exchanges. The findings highlight the fact that business networks, while offering great potential as a way to enhance economic vitality of regions and industries, cannot be viewed as a simple remedy.     

High School Graduation in Australia: Do Schools Matter?

This study examines the determinants of high school graduation in Australia. It uses two main approaches to estimation. The first of these is a conventional probit model based on a range of family background and demographic variables. This approach is then extended through consideration of a random parameters probit model. The results show that schools matter to the chances of completing high school in Australia. However, the school effects seem to have more to do with the selection of more able students with superior socioeconomic backgrounds than with the independent creation of favourable school or classroom climates.     

Can health care information technology save babies?

Electronic medical records (EMRs) facilitate fast and accurate access to patient records, which could improve diagnosis and patient monitoring. Using a 12-year county-level panel, we find that a 10 percent increase in births that occur in hospitals with EMRs reduces neonatal mortality by 16 deaths per 100,000 live births. This is driven by a reduction of deaths from conditions requiring careful monitoring. We also find a strong decrease in mortality when we instrument for EMR adoption using variation in state medical privacy laws. Rough cost-effectiveness calculations suggest that EMRs are associated with a cost of $531,000 per baby’s life saved.     

The Persistence of the Female Wage Disadvantage

Studies of the Australian labour market during the 1980s reported that the gender wage differential narrowed. However, a different story emerged during the 1990s when the gender pay gap persisted. A large part of the pay gap is attributable to different 'treatments' of men and women in the labour market. This article examines whether the female wage-disadvantaged state is a temporary or permanent phenomenon. The results show that while there is some mobility in the female wage distribution, there also exists a high degree of stickiness. It is argued that the wage-disadvantaged state for females is generally not a temporary phenomenon.     

The industrial life cycle of wind energy electrical power generation: ARI methodology modeling of life cycle dynamics

This innovation assessment addresses the factors that have influenced the exceptionally lengthy industrial technology life cycle of wind electrical power generation since its inception in the late 19th Century. It then applies the recently developed Accelerated Radical Innovation (ARI) Model to understand the dynamics of this innovation compared to those of other major 18th-20th Century innovations.Despite market pull in the late 19th Century to link small DC electrical generators with hundreds of thousands of existing wind mills used for mechanical water pumping, several factors prevented this from happening. These include the intermittent nature of wind electrical generation requiring low cost battery storage and DC-AC conversion, and the shift in the 1890s from DC to superior AC electrical generation making possible economies of scale for delivering AC electricity long distances over the grid from large hydroelectric and coal fired plants. As a consequence, wind generated electricity remained primarily a technological development until the first energy crisis in the 1970s.Development of an extensive science and technology base for wind turbine dynamics, and deployment since 2000 of commercial scale wind turbines (> 1MW) have elevated wind electrical power generation to commercial practicality, as described in two earlier papers by the authors applying technical cost modeling and experience curve projections of cost of energy (COE) to explore the economic viability of large scale wind electricity generation.. Strongly promoted by wind energy communities of practice in Europe, North America and Asia, normative COE projections suggest that by 2020 wind electrical power will be cost competitive, without tax incentives, with electricity from conventional fossil and nuclear fuel sources.Overcoming technological, business, market, societal, networking and political hurdles to date has required 120years of development to establish wind electricity generation as a breakthrough innovation with the capability to capture 20% of the world electricity market by the mid-to-late 21st Century. Further growth and maturation is expected to continue to 2100, corresponding to a projected ≅ 210year overall industry life cycle at market saturation. This finding has profound implications for innovation theory and practice, since the length of this life cycle exceeds by a factor of ≅ 4 the average life cycle diagnosed for five industrial revolutions and four key 20th Century innovations. The new ARI model provides a holistic approach to understanding the dynamics of the industrial technology life cycle for a wide variety of radical innovations as well as wind electrical power.