Relative productivity and factor-intensity in the manufacturing sectors of the U.S. and the U.K. during the nineteenth century

Summary The main objective of the paper is to examine the relationship between relative factor-costs and relative factor-intensity in the American and British textile sectors during the nineteenth century. The empirical attempt is made within an explicit theoretical framework (a model). This framework is based primarily onimplicit analytical arguments made by E. Rothbarth and H. J. Habakkuk while explaining the causes for the superiority of American industrial efficiency as compared with the British. It is shown that various indicators for the textile sectors during most of the second half of the nineteenth century favor a higher capitalintensity in the U.S.This work is part of a Ph.D. thesis written for the University of Rochester Department of Economics. The author is deeply indebted to S. Engerman for his valuable help and comments. He has also benefited from comments by E. Drandakis, G. S. Maddala, F. J. de Jong and T. K. Kumar. Needless to say, the author takes full responsibility for the content of this paper. Currently the author is an Assistant Professor at Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, U.S.A.     

The impact of vocational education on productivity in the United States

This paper examines the impact of vocational education on productivity in the United States. By using a cross-correlation test for directional causality, it is shown that vocational education has led to improvements in human capital that in turn increase productivity as measured by real private domestic product per worker hour in nonfarm business. The reverse is not true: that is, changes in productivity do not have a statistically identifiable impact on vocational education. Moreover, the time it takes for significant cross-correlations to appear suggests that the total effect of any vocational educational change takes at least 10 to 20 years to exhaust itself.When the manufacturing sector is studied separately, such positive results are not obtained. Only two out of seven vocational education measures appear to have a significant effect on productivity. For these two measures, the time for an identifiable impact to occur is also fairly long.     

Breaking the link between quality and the environment: Auditing for sustainability and life cycle assessment

This article outlines the trend in business towards the integration of environmental issues into quality management. It outlines how standards like BS7750 and the EU eco-management and audit scheme are based on a paradigm which stresses environmental management as a continuous cycle of incremental improvement which ignores many of the wider aspects of sustainable development. In an attack on the dominant ideology surrounding environmental management the article stresses the need to change corporate cultures, to move towards new auditing methodologies, to put increasing stress on life-cycle assessment, and to increase (and not deregulate) environmental legislation.     

International projects'' changing patterns: Sales engineers'' changing roles

Dealing with international projects, a reflexion on recent changes of international environment as well as client expectations suggests to emphasize the importance of two additional types of business relationships which tend to complete the “traditional” big international bi-/multi-laterally supported projects scheme: — (a) big international “self-supporting” projects requiring partnership with client or, even, direct provider's involvement (if not investment), — (b) big multi-national clients developing a huge range of projects of all size worldwide, with a more or less developed need of integration of sourcing.The key issue for the providers lies, in fact, in the organisation of relationships with existing and potential clients in those two developing types of complex international operations. Hence, it suggests to re-define the company contacts systems with the client and, above all, the role and profile of the sales engineers, traditionally in charge of these responsabilities.The purpose of this article is to evaluate the environmental changes as well as their impact on international project features and to make a first attempt to evaluate the consequences of these changes on coordinators'/managers' profiles.