Telecommunications policy-making in New Zealand during the last two decades

During the last two decades the traditional roles of the major providers of telecommunications services have changed due to internal and external economic, political, social and technological pressures. This paper, using case-study research, describes the ‘change agents’ and formal structures involved in telecommunications policy-making processes, taking note of a move towards, and need for, a coherent national communications policy. It illustrates how decisions have been made and lays the groundwork for a more detailed study of the evolutionary changes in telecommunications policy-making in New Zealand in subsequent years.     

Export Entry,Export Exit and Productivity in German Manufacturing Industries

This paper contributes to the flourishing literature on exports and productivity by using a unique newly available panel of exporting establishments from the manufacturing sector of Germany from 1995 to 2004 to test three hypotheses motivated by a theoretical model by Hopenhayn (Econometrica 1992): (H1) Firms that stop exporting in year t were in t?1 less productive than firms that continue to export in t. (H2) Firms that start to export in year t are less productive than firms that export both in year t?1 and in year t. (H3) Firms from a cohort of export starters that still export in the last year of the panel were more productive in the start year than firms from the same cohort that stopped exporting in between. While results for West Germany support all three hypotheses, this is only the case for (H1) and (H2) in East Germany.     

Bias correction and bootstrapping of error component models for panel data: Theory and applications

The wellknown Wallace-Hussain estimator is applied in pooled models with random individual effects, and the magnitude of the bias caused by the estimator is estimated by bootstrap methods. Furthermore, the significance of the bias is tested using an asymptotic test based on the bootstrap results.A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Econometric Society European Meeting ESEM '88 in Bologna. The authors thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments. The data for one of the applications (the earnings function) are from the German Socio-Economic Panel and we thank the DIW and the Sfb 3 for the permission to use these data.     

Catching Growth Determinants with the Adaptive Lasso

Abstract. This paper uses the adaptive Lasso estimator to determine variables important for economic growth. The adaptive Lasso estimator is a computationally very efficient procedure that simultaneously performs model selection and parameter estimation. The computational cost of this method is negligibly small compared with standard approaches in the growth regressions literature. We apply this method for a regional dataset for the European Union covering the 255 NUTS2 regions in the 27 member states over the period 1995–2005. The results suggest that initial GDP per capita (with an implied convergence speed of about 1.5% per annum), human capital (proxied by the shares of highly and medium educated in the working age population), structural labor market characteristics (the initial unemployment rate and the initial activity rate of the low educated) as well as being a capital region are important for economic growth.     

Crafting social rules: Common law vs. statute law,once again

While a considerable literature has arisen seeking to compare the economic efficiency of common law and statute law processes, some scholars have argued that these efforts are misplaced because what should be assessed is not efficiency but stability of expectations. This paper argues that any generic comparison of common law and statute law must be inconclusive, because there is no such thing asthe common law or statute law process. Rather, there are many particular processes, and any claim based on a comparison of generic alternatives will falter because it will fail to reflect essential institutional detail. I am grateful to Charles K. Rowley and Viktor J. Vanberg for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper, and to the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation for its continuing support of my scholarly efforts. I am also grateful to Robert J. Staaf for advice and encouragement on many occasions over the years, traces of which, I am confident, are evident here.     

A Note on the Firm Size – Export Relationship

The positive relationship between firm size and direct exports is often considered as a stylized fact. Numerous econometric investigations back theoretical considerations by showing that a ceteris paribus positive relationship between firm size and direct export activities exists. This note contributes to the literature by closely looking at an econometric modelling issues that has largely been neglected hitherto. Various approaches used in the literature to model the exports/sales ratio, which is a percentage variable with usually many observations at the lower limit, are discussed. It is argued that all these methods are seriously flawed, and an alternative approach is suggested that is applied using data from a large comprehensive recent survey of German manufacturing establishments. Furthermore, the relation between firm size and exports is examined in four selected industries to test whether the importance of economies of scale and transaction cost efficiencies vary considerably between industries.     

Considerations in Ethical Decision-Making and Software Piracy

Individuals are faced with the many opportunities to pirate. The decision to pirate or not may be related to an individual's attitudes toward other ethical issues. A person's ethical and moral predispositions and the judgments that they use to make decisions may be consistent across various ethical dilemmas and may indicate their likelihood to pirate software. This paper investigates the relationship between religion and a theoretical ethical decision making process that an individual uses when evaluating ethical or unethical situations. An ethical decision making model was studied for general unethical scenarios and for the unethical behavior of software piracy. The research model was tested via path analysis using structural equation modeling and was found to be appropriate for the sample data. The results suggest that there is a relationship between religion and the stages of an ethical decision making process regarding general ethical situations and software piracy.     

Export entry and exit by German firms

Export Entry and Exit by German Firms. — While exports have played an important role in German business cycles, little is known about the export supply response of German firms. This paper presents a dynamic model of the export decision by a profit-maximizing firm. Using a panel of German manufacturing plants, we test for the role of plant characteristics and sunk costs in the entry decision. We find evidence for substantial sunk costs: exporting today by a plant increases the probability by 50 percent that the plant will export tomorrow. This advantage depreciates quickly, falling by two-thirds in a year. The authors also find evidence that plant success, as measured by size and productivity, increases the likelihood of exporting.