When management strikes: PATCO and the British miners

In this article the author analyses the parallels and differences between the Federal Government's strong actions against air traffic controllers and the British Government's assault upon striking coalminers     

The struggle for space: Past and future of the space race

This article is geared toward shedding some more light on what may be the next space race and its contours.Space flight is undoubtedly a human achievement of the second half of the 20th century, and probably the most audacious one of the past century. The space race started suddenly in the 1950s and has grown explosively during the following two decades, but decreased steadily after the 1970s. After the 1990s, however, we have seen a shy rebirth of space-related activities, when many other actors (states) entered the stage, adding up to the agonizing role of the two-actor piece that we have witnessed during the so-called Cold War.The opening years of the 21st century provided a more complex narrative for space exploration. At the start of the new millennium a new technosphere [1] emerged, dominated by what is used to be called as the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), with the Internet playing the leading role among the bandwagon of technological novelties that appeared during the twilight of space activities. In despite of the fact that artificial satellites represent the very backbone of the global communications system, space activities seem to play a secondary role amidst the apparently accelerated rate of change concerning the technological systems of the present technosphere. But, as it is demonstrated in this paper, things are changing, and very probably a renewed space race will unfold in the coming decades.A question may be placed: what happened? Why the Earth stood still with regard to the race toward the cosmos? Answer: futurists, even prestigious ones like Herman Kahn and Arthur Clarke, did not consider the existence of socioeconomic long waves (Kondratieff waves, or K-waves for short) with their two decades long economic downturn, which has contributed to the deceleration of space-related activities.Analyzing the worldwide evolving scenario of space-related activities during the last eighty years under the framework of the succeeding K-waves and applying some technological forecasting tools, namely the logistic analysis, technological surveillance and intensive data mining, scrutinizing more than 7500 events occurred in the period 1930–2010 related with space activities, it is demonstrated that the space race like the one that we have witnessed until now is a natural growth process that has saturated at the dawn of this century. The same analysis demonstrates that a new growth process in this field might be nowadays under way with contours very different from that imagined by futurists and science fiction writers sixty years ago. Also the main trends in the usage of launching vehicles and satellites are framed and discussed in this paper.     

Non-profit organizations,entrepreneurship, social capital and economic growth

Traditional economic growth literature focuses mainly on the neoclassical approach. According to this view, firms try to maximize their benefits so that there is no place for non-profit organizations (NPOs). However, the activity of NPOs has a higher relevance in society, and it is necessary to analyze its effects on economic growth. These effects are not direct, but occur through other variables that directly promote economic growth, such as entrepreneurship activity and human capital, and through the improvement of education. We engage in an empirical analysis of these issues using data from 11 countries.     

Agricultural commodities pricing model applied to the Brazilian sugar market

This article suggests a pricing model for commodities used to produce biofuel. The model is based on the concept that the deterministic component of the Wiener process is not constant and depends on time and exogenous variables. The model, which incorporates theory of storage, the convenience yield and the seasonality of harvests, was applied in the Brazilian sugar market. After predictions were made with the Kalman filter, the model produced results that were statistically more accurate than those returned by the two‐factor model available in the literature.     

Intergenerational Earnings Inequality: New Evidence From Italy

Using an innovative dataset built by merging survey and administrative data, we provide new estimates of intergenerational earnings’ inequality between fathers and sons in Italy, extending previous evidence in several directions. We rely on the TSTSLS method to predict fathers’ earnings and compute intergenerational elasticities and imputed rank–rank slopes, trying to reduce estimation biases. Confirming previous evidence, we find that Italy is characterized by a high intergenerational inequality in cross-country comparison. Extending previous analyses, we show that the intergenerational association increases when sons at older ages and multi-annual averages of pseudo-fathers’ and sons’ earnings are considered. We also find that the intergenerational persistence differs across geographical macro-areas and is high also for daughters, especially when family earnings are considered. Furthermore, estimates where possible mediating factors of the parental influence are included among the covariates show that a high intergenerational association persists when sons’ education and occupation are controlled for.     

The influence of user-supplier relationship on innovation dynamics of Oil & Gas industry

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the role of user-supplier relationships in the innovation dynamics of the Oil and Gas (O&G) industry, from an analysis supported by R&D and patent application data. This paper points to some recent interesting phenomena in the O&G sector, such as: (i) the remarkable advancement of two Chinese oil companies; (ii) the significant growth in O&G companies’ technological engagement in exploration and production (E&P) from the 2000s; (iii) the non-negligible increase in the application of O&G companies’ patents for renewable energy. Moreover, by working with the oil and gas chain complete, we show that the performance of the companies oil and gas equipment and services industry (O&GES) is restricted to the upstream activities. Finally, we bring up some arguments that have as objective relativise the typology of R&D intensity adopted by OECD.     

The impact of selected factors on new business formation in the private healthcare sector

Numerous factors influence the development of the private healthcare sector. Therefore, the selection of these factors, which represent a potential opportunity for forming new entities, is a crucial from the point of view of entrepreneurship. In our research we selected strategic variables which have got direct influence on entrepreneurship in the private healthcare sector in Poland. Theoretical approach was based on literature review which have revealed the main factors and their relationships with entrepreneurship according to the previous research studies. This research study was conducted for the entire population of municipalities in Poland. Methodology was based on Intelligent Data Analysis (IDA) which can be applied for a large amounts of data in order to extract useful knowledge from it. Moreover, in research study were applied explanation techniques – decision rules –in order to indicate, to what extent the environment have influence on strategic choices conditioning the success of businesses. The results have revealed that it is possible to determine a set of the most important factors influencing entrepreneurship in the private healthcare sector in Poland. On the other hand, were indicated these variables which do not participate in process of influencing on entrepreneurship in private healthcare sector in Poland.

     

Rural credit and the time allocation of agricultural households: The case of PRONAF in Brazil

This paper evaluates the impact of Brazil's National Program to Strengthen Family Farming (PRONAF) on the time allocation of household members. We use data from the 2014 Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios, and we apply propensity score methods to complex surveys recently recommended in the literature. We find that PRONAF helps to increase focus on agricultural activities, but it also stimulates female partners to engage in unpaid work. The results show significant effects of PRONAF on child labor and on the gender‐specific division of labor within households, although it does not have the usual adverse effects of rural credit programs on school attendance.     

Data driven rank test for the change point problem

Data driven test procedure for detection of change is introduced and its properties are studied. The new solution is max-type statistic related to data-driven rank tests for two-sample subproblems. Simulations show that the new test possesses high and stable power. The test is consistent at essentially any alternative. Asymptotic null distribution of the test is derived. The work of the first two authors has been partially supported by the grants GAČR 201/06/0186 and MSM 02160839.