The Effect of Enhancing Workers’ Employability on Small and Medium Enterprises: Evidence from Spain

In this paper, we analyse the effect of promoting workers’ employability on labour productivity. To this end, we adapt a simple efficiency-wage model that includes the employer’s decision on the provision of opportunities for enhancing workers’ employment prospects in a context of job insecurity. We show that (i) by facilitating workers’ employability, the firm increases its labour productivity; and (ii) the higher the job uncertainty the higher the productivity gains due to the increase in employability. One of the advantages of our model is that it is simply enough to allow us to formulate two testable hypotheses, namely (i) the increase of jobs’ potential to enhance workers’ employability results in higher level of workers’ effort, and (ii) the provision of employability is more profitable for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) than for large firms. More precisely, SMEs should obtain higher effort levels from employees by fostering workers’ employability than large firms. We provide some evidence supporting these hypotheses from a highly representative sample of Spanish manufacturing firms. This research has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, project SEJ2004-07242-C03-02.     

提高农民消费质量:公共消费品供给制度创新的视角

在全面实现小康的进程中，随着我国农村居民生活消费逐步由数量满足型向质量提高型转化，农村公共消费品需求日益增加。但现实中，在城乡割裂的二元公共产品供给模式下，我国农村包括公共基础设施、义务教育、公共卫生、社会保障等在内的主要公共消费品供给明显不足。这一状况严重制约了农民消费质量的持续提高，亟待引起重视，并通过制度创新加以改进。     

Intra-Industry Trade Expansion and Employment Reallocation between Sectors and Occupations

This paper re-examines the relationship between trade and labour market adjustment costs by explicitly considering the effects of occupational mobility. We investigate the hypothesis that intra-industry trade expansion entails lower adjustment costs than inter-industry trade expansion—the so-called Smooth Adjustment Hypothesis (SAH). This paper makes two new contributions. First, the introduction of a new adjustment variable that considers reallocation between sectors and occupations. Second, a test of the SAH using panel data with relevant trade and non-trade control variables, which overcomes some of the methodological limitations of former studies. The results suggest a confirmation of the SAH and stress the importance of considering the effects of worker moves between occupations in the study of trade-induced adjustment. JEL no. F12, F16, J62     

‘Eco’ For Whom? Envisioning Eco‐urbanism in the Sino‐Singapore Tianjin Eco‐city,China

Eco‐cities have attracted international attention from governments, corporations, academics and other actors seeking to use sustainable urban planning to reduce urban environmental impacts. China has devoted significant political will and economic resources to the development of new‐build eco‐city projects, reflecting the Chinese government's goals to build a ‘harmonious society' in which environmental sustainability and social stability are mutually reinforcing. We critically analyse the case of the Sino‐Singapore Tianjin eco‐city to demonstrate that the eco‐city's ecologically modernizing visions of eco‐urbanism construct a protective environment for its residents that constrains broader consideration of social sustainability. Through analysis of the marketing and presentation of specific domestic and other spaces of the eco‐city, we examine the application of ecologically modernizing construction and technology to the design of the city. We argue that the eco‐city is discursively constructed as ecologically beneficial for its inhabitants rather than for the broader socio‐environmental landscape. Our analysis of residential spaces in Tianjin eco‐city introduces the question of what ‘eco’ means when considering the construction of eco‐urban environments for the city's residents.     

New Size Measurements in Population Ecology

In organizational ecology, the analysis of the impact of competition between populations on vital ratios is relatively underdeveloped. This paper addresses this issue by developing new competition measurements that focus on the importance of organizational size. The application of these measurements in the case of competition between organizational subforms in a population, and their impact on mortality rates, demonstrate their usefulness for modelling competition. Specifically, the results show how levels of competition between firms in a population can be more clearly analysed when the rival population mass or concentration indices are used.     

Linking drinking to injury--causal attribution of injury to alcohol intake among patients in a Swedish emergency room

This study analysed the drinking patterns and motivation to change drinking behaviours among injury patients who acknowledged alcohol as a factor in their injuries. A cross-sectional study was conducted over 18 months at a Swedish emergency department. A total of 1930 injury patients aged 18 - 70 years were enrolled in the study (76.8% completion rate). Of those who reported drinking, 10% acknowledged alcohol as a factor in their injury. A patient was more likely to report a causal attribution of the injury to alcohol the higher the weekly intake and the higher the frequency of heavy episodic drinking. The motivation to change variables showed a similar pattern of increased likelihood of attributing a causal link of alcohol and injury with increasing discontent with drinking behaviours and increasing desire to change drinking behaviours. The findings suggest that the ability to measure causal attribution of alcohol to injuries could be a promising tool to help patients explore the association between their injuries and alcohol use and motivate patients to modify drinking behaviours in order to avoid future injuries.     

The term structure of interest rates,the expectations hypothesis and international financial integration: Evidence from Asian economies

The validity of the expectations hypothesis of the term structure is examined for a sample of Asian countries. A panel stationarity testing procedure is employed that addresses both structural breaks and cross-sectional dependence. Asian term structures are found to be stationary and supportive of the expectations hypothesis. Further analysis suggests that international financial integration is associated with interdependencies between domestic and foreign term structures insofar as cross-term structures based on differentials between domestic (foreign) short- and foreign (domestic) long-rates are also stationary.     

On the informational role of term structure in the US monetary policy rule

This paper uses a structural approach based on the indirect inference principle to estimate a standard version of the new Keynesian monetary (NKM) model augmented with term structure using both revised and real-time data. The estimation results show that the term spread and policy inertia are both important determinants of the US estimated monetary policy rule whereas the persistence of shocks plays a small but significant role when revised and real-time data of output and inflation are both considered. More importantly, the relative importance of term spread and persistent shocks in the policy rule and the shock transmission mechanism drastically change when it is taken into account that real-time data are not well behaved.