Working-time reduction and employment: experiences in Europe and economic policy recommendations

The paper seeks to evaluate the evidence on the employment effectsof the collective working-time reductions in Europe over thepast 20 years. While theoretical analyses produce contradictoryassessments, most empirical studies show positive employmenteffects but take insufficient account of these conditions underwhich the reductions in working time were implemented. Theseconditions for the success of collective working-time reductionsinclude an active training policy designed to minimise skillshortages in the labour market, the modernisation of work organisation,wage increases in conjunction with productivity gains and amore equal income distribution.     

R&D–Marketing Integration Mechanisms, Communication Flows, and Innovation Success

Rudy Moenaert, William Souder, Arnoud De Meyer, and Dirk Deschoolmeester report the results of their study of forty technologically innovative Belgian companies to examine the interaction between marketing and R&D. They studied one commercially successful and one commercially unsuccessful technological product innovation project in each participating company and collected data from one marketing and one R&D respondent per project. Communication flows between marketing and R&D are increased under conditions involving formalization of projects, decentralization, positive interfunctional climate, and role flexibility.     

Value of Multinationality: Internalization, Managerial Self-interest, and Managerial Compensation

In this paper, we examine the impact of managerial self-interest on the value of multinationality. Since agency theory also suggests that a divergence between the interests of managers and shareholders can be aligned by effective managerial incentive, we also examine the effect of managerial compensation on the value of multinationality. Our results show that for high- Q (Tobin's Q > 1 ) firms, investors do not associate the spending of free cash flow on multinationality with the problem of overinvestments. For high- Q firms, it is also found that the value of multinationality can be enhanced by effective managerial incentives. For low- Q firms (Tobin's Q < 1 ), it is found that the concern of managerial self-interest overwhelms the benefits of internalization, making multinationality a value-decreasing event. For low- Q firms, managerial compensation is also ineffective in promoting value-enhancing foreign direct investments.     

A Conceptual Model of the Household's Housing Decision–Making Process: The Economic Perspective

At some stage in every household's family life cycle, the household is likely to make certain decisions with regard to its housing environment. Although the household's housing decisions essentially comprise the decision to move, and the selection of a new residence, the process from which these decisions are derived is very complex because varying circumstances could produce a multitude of different housing decisions. Due to the sheer complexity of the household's housing decision–making process, researchers have generally focused on individual decision–making stages rather than on the process as a whole. This paper therefore attempts to conceptualize the entire household housing decision–making process using theoretical concepts from the economic perspective, and then tests the conceptual model with empirical evidence drawn from the moving population within the multi–racial society in Singapore.     

北极冰川融化影响几何？

北极冰川融化将使跨北极通航成为可能，运输公司可减少40％的航运距离。马六甲海峡也将不再垄断国际通运。国际经济将进一步融合。     

Playing for Your Own Audience: Extremism in Two‐Party Elections

This paper considers a two‐party election with a single‐dimensional policy space. We assume that each voter has a higher probability of observing the position of the party he is affiliated with than the position of the other party, an assumption that is consistent with the National Election Studies (NES) electoral data set. In equilibrium, the two parties locate away from the median, because the voters who dislike a party's platform observe its policy choice with a lower probability, and its own audience like policy choices that cater to its taste. As the asymmetry in voter information or the cost of voting increases, the parties adopt more extreme platforms, while if there are fewer extreme voters the opposite effect occurs. Making voters more symmetrically informed about the two parties' platforms increases the welfare of society, while asymmetric information acquisition by the voters is worse than no information acquisition at all.     

Demographic and Economic Pressure on Emigration out of Africa*

Two of the main forces driving European emigration in the late nineteenth century were real wage gaps between sending and receiving regions and demographic booms in the low‐wage sending regions. Our new estimates of net migration for the countries of sub‐Saharan Africa show that exactly the same forces driving African across‐border migration are at work today. The results suggest that rapid growth in the cohort of potential young emigrants, population pressure on the resource base, and slow economic growth are likely to intensify the pressure for migration out of Africa and into high‐wage OECD countries over the next two decades.     

Non‐linear Predictability of UK Stock Market Returns*

Linear predictability of stock market returns has been widely reported. However, recently developed theoretical research has suggested that due to the interaction of noise and arbitrage traders, stock returns are inherently non‐linear, whereby market dynamics differ between small and large returns. This paper examines whether an exponential smooth transition threshold model, which is capable of capturing this non‐linear behaviour, can provide a better characterization of UK stock market returns than either a linear model or an alternate non‐linear model. The results of both in‐sample and out‐of‐sample specification tests support the exponential smooth transition threshold model and hence the belief that investor behaviour does differ between large and small returns.     

Quasi‐rational and ex ante price expectations in commodity supply models: an empirical analysis of the US broiler market

A statistically optimal inference about agents' ex ante price expectations within the US broiler market is derived using futures prices of related commodities along with a quasi‐rational forecasting regression equation. The modelling approach, which builds on a Hamilton‐type framework, includes endogenous production and allows expected cash price to be decomposed into anticipated and unanticipated components. We therefore infer the relative importance of various informational sources in expectation formation. Results show that, in addition to the quasi‐rational forecast, the true supply shock, future prices, and ex post commodity price forecast errors have, at times, been influential in broiler producers' price expectations. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.