A Note on Changes in the Earnings and Unemployment Structures in Spain Evidence from the Luxembourg Income Study

This note tests whether the extraordinary rise in Spanish unemploymentin the 1980s can be traced back to rigidities in the earningsstructure in the face of relative net demand shocks againstthe unskilled (this claim is also known as the "Krugman hypothesis").I can establish that youth joblessness is key to the Spanishunemployment problem, but sampling procedures in the data setmake it impossible to track the youth unemployment problem acrosstime in a satisfactory way. Even though high youth unemploymentis consistent with the Krugman hypothesis, substantial skillupgrading of the Spanish labour force in the 1980s explainswhy the low education groups did not experience an increasein relative unemployment. (JEL J21, J31, J64)     

Comparing bank concentration across countries

Cross-country comparisons of traditional measures of concentration, such as the Herfindahl index, are of limited use for answering normative questions such as: ‘Is the banking system too concentrated in our country?’ This paper develops a measure of concentration, essentially by normalising the Herfindahl index by a minimum feasible value for that index based on market size for each country. A formal derivation is given, and the measure is related to the mark-up of price over marginal cost for banking services. The empirical implications of the new measure are illustrated by reference to some recent studies.     

Truth Half Told: Finding the Perfect Pitch for Advertising and Marketing in Socialist Yugoslavia, 1950-1991

Beginning in the 1950s, advertising and marketing specialistsin Yugoslavia campaigned aggressively to change public and officialperceptions of their work. By casting commercial promotion interms of categories already established as legitimate in theideology of Yugoslav socialism, the industry gradually naturalizedadvertising and marketing, transforming them from suspect capitalistpractices into apparent necessities of progressive, rationalproduction and distribution. Although the rhetoric used in thiscampaign consistently appealed to socialist values, in practiceYugoslav advertising and marketing were largely based on Westernmodels. Yugoslav commercial promotion was only superficially"socialist advertising"; practitioners' arguments tended toobscure the true qualities of the industry.     

Giving mergers a head start

Mergers with substantial business overlap face a barrier to speedy integration: Antitrust regulations limit the information companies can share before a deal closes. But as Dow Chemical and Union Carbide found, premerger planning by "clean teams" of former employees can help merging companies hit the ground running.     

Public sector health insurance trusts

Public sector associations have successfully developed and run employee health insurance pools for almost 30 years, providing members with savings and flexibility not available from commercial health insurance carriers. This article looks at the models, technical tools and governance philosophy that have contributed to their success in a very challenging business environment.     

Mercantilism and Imperialism in the Rise and Decline of the Dutch and British Economies 1585-1815

This essay locates the rise and relative decline of the economy of the Netherlands over the period l585-l8l5 in geopolitics. It has used the rise of Britain, l688-1815 as a point of reference and for bilateral comparison, in order to validate a hypothesis that the degree of avoidable decline had less to do with inefficiencies in the economic sphere, but flowed essentially from political failures to countervail blatant and violent challenges from the new nation's mercantilist rivals – particularly France but also Britain. I concluded that a similar pattern of political complacency, cultural inertia and liberal myopia marked the response of imperial Britain to the threat from Germany after its reunification in l870.     

Business strategy and firm location decisions: testing traditional and modern methods

Business Economics - For nearly a century, economists have relied upon the neoclassical principle of a “profit-maximizing firm.” Two modern challenges to this principle have arisen: the...     

Consumers’ Perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility: Scale Development and Validation

Researchers and companies are paying increasing attention to corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs and the reaction to them by consumers. Despite such corporate efforts and an expanding literature exploring consumers’ response to CSR, it remains unclear how consumers perceive CSR and which “Gestalt” consumers have in mind when considering CSR. Academics and managers lack a tool for measuring consumers’ perceptions of CSR (CPCSR). This research explores CPCSR and develops a measurement model. Based on qualitative data from interviews with managers and consumers, the authors develop a conceptualization of CPCSR. Subsequently, model testing and validating occurs on three large quantitative data sets. The conceptualization and the measurement scale can assist companies to assess CPCSR relative to their performance. They also enable managers in identifying shortcomings in CSR engagement and/or communication. Finally, the paper discusses implications for marketing practice and future research.     

Three decades of productivity change in French beef production: a Färe‐Primont index decomposition

The Färe‐Primont index is used to evaluate total factor productivity (TFP) change and its components for a sample of French suckler cow farms in grassland areas in 1985–2014. The results reveal an increase in TFP of 6.6 per cent over the whole observation period, with technological progress being the major source of productivity growth. Meanwhile, efficiency decreased. Farms experienced great technological progress from 1991 to 2000. From a methodological point of view, the comparison with results obtained with Malmquist indexes shows similar trends but different magnitudes, with the Malmquist index overestimating the TFP and technological changes compared to the Färe‐Primont index. In addition, the use of a sequential approach that restricts technological change to being positive or null allows for the precise calculation of technology changes, disregarding the effects of external conditions that are captured in efficiency changes. Finally, the estimation of full dimensional efficient facets (FDEFs) that guarantees the positivity of all shadow prices used to assess the mix efficiency component of TFP change is promising.