Long‐Term Earnings Inequality,Earnings Instability and Temporary Employment in Spain: 1993–2000

This article provides a longitudinal perspective on changes in Spanish male earnings inequality for the period 1993–2000 by decomposing the earnings covariance structure into its permanent and transitory parts. Cross‐sectional earnings inequality of male full‐time employees falls over the second half of the 1990s. Such decline was determined by a decrease in earnings instability and an increase of the permanent earnings component. Given the marked decline in temporary employment over the sample period, we also examine the effect of the type of contract on earnings variance components and find that workers on a fixed‐term contract face, on average, more instability than workers on a permanent contract. This evidence suggests that the decline in temporary employment is responsible for the decreasing earnings instability.     

Intellectual property piracy in a North–South context: empirical evidence

The protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) has been a contentious issue for more than 20 years. Industrialized nations have moved to knowledge‐based economies, and simultaneously, trade barriers have fallen, making intellectual property (IP) vulnerable. Adding to this vulnerability are conflicting international institutional environments, belief systems, and economic realities. The debate over IPR protection has become a significant global trade issue pitting the net‐technology producing “North” against the net‐technology consuming “South.” With this in mind, there has been much debate about the impact of alternative IPR regimes (tight or loose) on the welfare of Southern economies. Policy makers, in both the South and the North, search for arguments to convince recalcitrant Southern countries to follow the Northern model of strict IPR regimes. The South, faced with a dilemma, searches for arguments to justify looser regimes or convince its populace that tighter regimes are in the best interest of the nation. The objective of this research is to add empirical clarity about the welfare impacts of weak IPR on the firm and host country. To this end, we employ a novel methodological design and unique context. The research design is deductive, in that we use the empirical setting of Pioneer‐Argentina, S.A., a seller of bioengineered agricultural seeds, to test the existing theory of weak IPR impacts in a North–South context.     

Dimensions in the confluence of futures studies and action research

This article puts forward the proposition that the confluence of action research and futures studies can be seen across a number of domains: political, organisational, grassroots, global and individual. While this confluence embodies an heterogeneity of practices, it is their underlying approach, the processes used, which are shared. Identifying both the many distinctive practices in their unique contexts, and their more homogeneous processes is the primary task of this paper. Aspects of this confluence are explored as they relate to social change, empowerment, humanisation, ways of knowing and ethics.     

FISCAL ILLUSION AT THE LOCAL SPHERE: AN EMPIRICAL TEST OF THE FLYPAPER EFFECT USING SOUTH AFRICAN MUNICIPAL DATA1

While South Africa operates a relatively decentralised governance and administrative structure, an important feature of the country's intergovernmental fiscal relations system is the gap that exists between the expenditure responsibilities of sub‐national authorities and their assigned revenue bases. The resulting vertical fiscal imbalance is mainly addressed via significant intergovernmental transfers to provinces and local governments. This factor presents strong a priori grounds for assuming that in the South African context, the heavy dependence of many local governments on intergovernmental transfers may generate fiscal illusion. Despite this, there have not been many empirical studies of fiscal illusion in South Africa's intergovernmental transfer system. This paper extends existing literature on fiscal illusion by using the fiscal year 2005/06 financial and expenditure data from 237 local government authorities in South Africa to evaluate the flypaper variant of the fiscal illusion hypothesis. Empirical results indicate that the marginal effects of municipal own‐source revenues on local expenditure exceed those of intergovernmental transfers. No statistical evidence in support of the flypaper hypothesis within the context of municipal expenditures in South Africa is found.     

Fiscal sustainability across government tiers

This paper analyses how fiscal adjustment comes about when both central and sub-national governments are involved in consolidation. We test sustainability of public debt with a fiscal rule for both federal and regional government. Results for the German Länder show that lower tier governments bear a relatively smaller part of the burden of debt consolidation, if they consolidate at all. Most of the fiscal adjustment occurs via central government debt. In contrast, both the US federal and state levels contribute to consolidation of public finances.     

Geographic versus industry diversification: Constraints matter

This research addresses whether geographic diversification provides benefits over industry diversification in the Eurozone. Our contribution is to show that in the absence of constraints, no empirical evidence is found to support the argument that geographic diversification dominates industry diversification, except in the euro subperiod. With short-selling constraints, however, the tangency portfolio of geographic diversification is not attainable by industry diversification. In out-of-sample geographic minimum variance portfolios outperform industry portfolios in economic terms, although we cannot establish statistical significance.     

The aftermath of the subprime crisis: a clustering analysis of world banking sector

The banking sector has been on the spotlight in both academic and policy circles since the outburst of the subprime bubble. The crisis has its roots in the US, but there were spillover effects around the world. We study the behavior of the banking sector of 40 countries during the period 2007–2010, using a new clustering methodology. Our methodology combines regime switching models in the modeling of longitudinal variations with cluster analysis that identifies groups of countries with similar profiles. Our results show that although there were periods of intense contagion, the impact was uneven among sample countries. The crisis had episodic effects on some countries, while others had severe devaluations after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. Finally, a small group of banking systems has plunged into a long severe crisis.     

Ethical judgments and intentions: a multinational study of marketing professionals

A multinational study of marketing professionals was conducted in the US, England, Spain and Turkey. Respondents from these countries were compared on various ethics-related constructs such as idealism, relativism, moral intensity and corporate ethical values. Analyses of variance indicated that moral intensity had a signi ?cant impact on both ethical judgments and behavioral intentions. However, corporate ethical values, an idealistic ethical perspective and a relativistic ethical perspective only partially impacted ethical judgments and intentions. Country differences showed that the US was highest in terms of corporate ethical values while being the lowest in terms of relativism and signi?cantly lower than Spain and Turkey in terms of idealism. Turkey was the highest in terms of both idealism and relativism yet lowest in terms of corporate ethical values. Country differences in terms of moral intensity tended to be situation-speci?c. One managerial implication, for ?rms in all four countries, is that a clear set of corporate policies concerning ethics can positively in?uence the behavioral intentions of employees. It is important that employees do not misinterpret the desires of top management where ethical issues are involved.     

The Impact of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills on Professional Salaries in An Emerging Economy,Chile

Professional salaries in Chile are here explained on the basis not only of traditional human capital variables but also of variables indicative of other cognitive and noncognitive skills. As might be expected, college entrance scores (SAT), our measure of advanced cognitive skills, are found to impact strongly and nonlinearly on salaries. More surprisingly, ranking in one's high school graduation class raises one's salary 10 years later by the equivalent of one year of additional experience, suggesting that ranking stands for a more permanent noncognitive skill such as effort or self‐discipline. As is typically found, women earn less than men, but, to our surprise, they also have lower asking salaries than men.