High skills,high growth: Is tourism an exception?

Despite the emphasis placed by growth models on technological progress, recent empirical evidence shows that tourism, a sector widely regarded as low-skill/low-tech and one of the fastest growing industries in the world, may offer a favorable strategy for growth. In addition, in this tourism-led growth literature it is not clear whether human capital plays a role. Using a panel of 72 countries (1980–2005) this study shed new light on the effect of tourism and human capital for economic growth. While our results confirm that the tourism sector indicator is always positive and significant in growth regressions they also show that increased education contributes to growth and that the role of the tourism sector is significantly larger in countries with higher aggregate levels of human capital. Our main results are robust to the inclusion of additional variables, the use of alternative estimators in the regression analysis and the use of different sub-samples. Overall, our results suggest that an increase in human capital endowments is always beneficial, even when the development strategy focuses on the expansion of a (successful) unskilled sector.     

Regional integration and technology diffusion: The case of Uruguay

We examine the impact of trade-related R&D spillovers from the country's partners in the MERCOSUR as well as from the European Union and NAFTA blocs and the rest of the world on total factor productivity for the Uruguayan case at the industry level, for the period 1988–95. Furthermore, we analyse the impact of domestic R&D in Uruguay. There is an evidence of trade-related technology diffusion from MERCOSUR partners to Uruguay, although domestic R&D has apositive impact on productivity. Thus, policies aimed to promote domestic R&D and decreasing trade barriers could enhance Uruguayan manufacturing productivity.     

Measurement of Economic Result in Public Organizations： A Departmental Analysis

The aim of this work is to demonstrate how public university hospital （UH） managers can improve the process of decision-making by using the measurement of economic value added to the society （EVAS） generated by these organizations. Thus, the economic values of the organization and its departments were calculated, according to the theory studied： measurement model of economic result of Slomski （1996）. It was considered the conduction of a case study in a public UH, evaluating its economic performance in a 3-year period. For the interpretation of results, the Data Envelopment Analysis （DEA） which categorized the departments of the hospital studied as efficient or inefficient was used. This study revealed that managers can improve the decision-making process by using the EVAS, since it has been established that this measurement of economic value has sensitivity to identify which of the economic value drivers should be emphasized in the management.     

Does foreign aid promote recipient exports to donor countries?

This paper uses the gravity model of trade to investigate the effect of foreign aid on exports of aid recipients to donor countries. Most of the theoretical work emphasises the possible negative impact of aid on recipient countries’ exports, primarily due to exchange rate appreciation, disregarding possible positive effects of aid in overcoming supply bottlenecks and promoting bilateral trade relations. Using non-stationary panel (cointegration) estimators to control for omitted variable and endogeneity bias, we find that the net effect of aid on recipient countries’ exports is insignificant, both for our sample (of 123 countries) as a whole and for important regional sub-samples. This finding is in line with the small or insignificant macroeconomic impact of aid found in earlier studies and also suggests that exporters in recipient countries are not benefiting from improved trade relations with donors.     

Composite indicators of sustainable urban mobility: Estimating the rankings frequency distribution combining multiple methodologies

The contribution of this paper consists in applying several techniques to estimate a composite indicator of sustainable urban mobility for 116 Italian provincial towns, as proposed by Luzzati and Gucciardi (2015). The aim is to provide the decision-maker with a richer set of information on sustainable mobility, making explicit the impact of the techniques used on the values obtained. A set of 16 indicators with a nested structure has been selected and 33 combinations of normalization, weighting, and aggregation techniques are applied. The results are presented by city, by city groupings (size and location), and focusing on the ten largest Italian cities. It is found that small cities perform better in terms of sustainable mobility than medium or large cities. As expected, in some cases (e.g., Milan) the intervals of the results obtained are quite large, indicating that the techniques used to normalize, weight, and aggregate the indicators highly affect the performance indexes. In other cases (e.g., Rome) the results are stable across methodologies.     

Towards a Routine External Evaluation Protocol for Small Area Estimation

Statistical criteria are needed by which to evaluate the potential success or failure of applications of small area estimation. A necessary step to achieve this is a protocol—a series of steps—by which to assess whether an instance of small area estimation has given satisfactory results or not. Most customary attempts at evaluation of small area techniques have deficiencies. Often, evaluation is not attempted. Every small area study requires an external evaluation. With proper planning, this can be routinely achieved, although at some cost, amounting to some sacrifice of efficiency of global estimates. We propose a Routine External Evaluation Protocol to allow us to judge whether, in a given survey, small area estimation has led to accurate results and sound inference.     

Tobit Estimation with Unknown Point of Censoring with an Application to Milk Market Participation in the Ethiopian Highlands

Data augmentation is a powerful technique for estimating models with latent or missing data, but applications in agricultural economics have thus far been few. This paper showcases the technique in an application to data on milk market participation in the Ethiopian highlands. There, a key impediment to economic development is an apparently low rate of market participation. Consequently, economic interest centers on the “locations” of nonparticipants in relation to the market and their “reservation values” across covariates. These quantities are of policy interest because they provide measures of the additional inputs necessary in order for nonparticipants to enter the market. One quantity of primary interest is the minimum amount of surplus milk (the “minimum efficient scale of operations”) that the household must acquire before market participation becomes feasible. We estimate this quantity through routine application of data augmentation and Gibbs sampling applied to a random‐censored Tobit regression. Incorporating random censoring affects markedly the marketable‐surplus requirements of the household, but only slightly the covariates requirements estimates and, generally, leads to more plausible policy estimates than the estimates obtained from the zero‐censored formulation. Augmenter le nombre de données est une technique puissante permettant d'estimer les modèles pour lesquels les données manquent ou sont latentes, mais, jusqu'à présent, on n'y a guère recouru en économie rurale. L'article que void illustre une application de cette technique aux données se rapportant à la participation des producteurs au marché laitier dans les hauts plateaux de l'Éthiopie. Le faible taux de participation apparent constitue un obstacle de taille au développemenl économique de la région. Par conséquent, pour l'économiste, il est inléressanl de savoir où les « non‐participants » se trouvent par rapport au marché et de jauger leurs « réserves » en fonction des autres variables. Les valeurs de ce genre présenlenl de l'intérêt au niveau de l'élaboration des politiques, parce qu'elles donnent une idée des intrants supplémenlaires qui convaincraient les non‐participants de faire leur entrée sur le marché. Une valeur d'un intérêt primordial est le volume minimal de lait excédentaire («échelle minimale d'efficacité») que le ménage doit acquérir avant de participer au marché. On a eslimé cette valeur en appliquant la technique d'augmentation des données de la façon habituelle et en appliquant l'échanlillonnage de Gibbs à une régression Tobit censurée au hasard. L'intégration d'une censuration aléaloire affecte de maniére appréciable le volume de lait excédentaire commercialisable dont le ménage a besoin, mais ne louche que légèrement la valeur estimative des covariables requises et, en général, débouche sur des estimations plus plausibles que celles oblenues sans censuration en ce qui concerne l'élaboration des politiques.     

INTERNATIONAL TFP DYNAMICS AND HUMAN CAPITAL STOCKS: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS, 1960–2003

This paper adopts fixed‐effect panel methodologies to obtain TFP values for a sample of 76 countries from 1960 through 2003. Our results are robust to the use of different estimators (LSDV, Kiviet‐corrected LSDV, and GMM). They show that TFP dynamics are characterized by a process of conditional convergence where most countries do not catch up with the U.S., and where human capital plays an important role in technology adoption, as suggested by Nelson and Phelps in 1966. Such a role is robust to the inclusion of controls for the quality of institutions in a country. Further, our results imply a plausible link between stages of development and returns to different levels of education. Finally, we calculate the minimum human capital level necessary to generate catch‐up and find that virtually all countries are above that level—a result that again emphasizes the importance of human capital in technology diffusion.     

GLOBE: A twenty year journey into the intriguing world of culture and leadership

Since its inception in the early 1990s, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) project has investigated the complex relationship between societal culture and organizational behavior. The focus of this paper is on leadership, specifically what we know and have learned from the GLOBE project so far. Among other findings, we demonstrate that national culture indirectly influences leadership behaviors through the leadership expectations of societies. In other words, executives tend to lead in a manner more or less consistent with the leadership prototypes endorsed within their particular culture. In turn, leaders who behave according to expectations are most effective. We also found that some leadership behaviors are universally effective such as charismatic/value-based leadership; others are much more culturally sensitive such as participative leadership. Finally, we identified truly superior (and also truly inferior) CEOs by the degree to which their behaviors exceed (or fail to meet) their society's expectations. All in all, understanding national culture gives us a heads-up as to which kinds of leadership will likely be enacted and effective in each society. We believe that the GLOBE journey has helped us understand the complex, tricky, and fascinating relationships among societal culture, organizational behavior, and leadership processes.     

An integrated scenario analysis for the metal coating sector in Europe

Although new paint products and technologies have been developed, the sector of paint application still contributes substantially to total volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions. Recent environmental legislation, especially the EU Solvent Emission Directive 1999/13/EC and its transposition into national law, coming into force in 2007, will have an important influence on the sector structure and the associated supply chain, especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper summarises a comprehensive scenario analysis to explore possible future trajectories for the sector. The main focus is on paint application activities, considering in particular the consequences of new environmentally friendly products and technologies which can be used by SMEs. Four different scenarios representing possible future states of the sector are evaluated, taking into account environmental, technical and socio-economic aspects along the associated supply chain and life cycle. The scenarios allow the formulation of recommendations and guidelines for policy makers and industries. This example confirms that interdisciplinary scenario analysis is a suitable approach to investigate possible future development of an industrial sector.