On the estimation of simultaneous-equations error-components models with an application to a model of developing country foreign trade

An empirical balance of payments model involving the demand and supply of imports and exports for 31 developing countries is estimated utilizing panel data over 1964-1987. In order to compute error-components 3SLS estimates of this model, which requires different instruments for different equations, we propose a generalization of the Fuller-Battese transformation to obtain GMM estimates. Our empirical results suggest that very little of the short-run adjustment in external imbalances is likely to be achieved by exchange rate policies, and most of the burden must fall on aggregate demand management.     

Impacts of Adjusting Environmental Regulations When Enforcement Authority Is Diffuse: Confined Animal Feeding Operations and Environmental Quality

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recently adjusted regulations governing confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), significantly increasing the number of regulated firms. A theoretical model is developed to analyze how changes to the number of regulated firms, monitoring effort, and compliance standards affect environmental quality. The model suggests increasing the number of regulated firms, ceteris paribus , has an ambiguous effect on environmental quality, and may actually reduce it. The impact of increasing compliance standards depends on how violations are prosecuted and sanctions are set. Greater monitoring effort increases environmental quality.     

The Three Critical Flaws of Critical Geopolitics: Towards a Neo-Classical Geopolitics

Critical geopolitics is the dominant school of geopolitics in contemporary geography. Critical geopolitics is a body of radical scholarship that emerged in the 1980s that attempts to move beyond classic geopolitics. In order to resuscitate geopolitics, critical geopoliticians had to distance themselves from the imperialist, racist, and environmentally determinist geopolitics of the 1940s. In doing so, however, critical geopoliticians created a body of scholarship that omits important explanatory variables necessary to understand post–Cold War geopolitics. We argue that critical geopolitics unnecessarily limits the wider application of geopolitics because it is: 1) anti-geopolitics; 2) anti-cartographic; and 3) anti-environmental.     

Thatcherism delayed? The Irish crisis and the paradox of social partnership

This article reviews the state of Irish industrial relations in light of the current economic crisis. It argues that social partnership, paradoxically, was rooted in the continuation of a tradition of permissive voluntarism with minimal employment rights with both direct and indirect implications for the current Irish economic crisis. As such, Irish industrial relations cannot be understood in isolation from a broader analysis of the rise and fall of social structures of capitalist accumulation. The discussion considers the prognosis for social partnership post‐economic crisis.     

A Note on the Earnings of Real Estate Salespersons and others in the Financial Services Industry

The earnings of females in various sales professions are less than their male counterparts. By expanding on the set of variables used by Jud and Winkler we were able to explain a large portion of this differential for most professions. Child rearing and marriage explain much of the differential in income in business sales outside of real estate. These variables fail to explain the remaining large gap in real estate sales, however.     

Discount Point Concessions: Comment

This article comments on a recent article by Asabere and Hoffman. It addresses calculation and econometric measurement issues of their work and offers an explanation for their (anomalous) findings.     

Non-parametric Productivity Analysis with Undesirable Outputs: An Application to the Canadian Pulp and Paper Industry

This article extends the Chavas–Cox approach to non-parametric analysis by incorporating undesirable outputs to provide a more complete representation of the production technology. Inner and outer non-parametric technology bounds are constructed. The methods are illustrated with application to time series data for the Canadian pulp and paper industry. Conventional measures that ignore changes in pollutant outputs underestimate true productivity growth. Further, there is a large gap between estimates generated with reference to inner and outer bounds to the technology, suggesting that researchers need to be aware of the limitations of results derived from analyses relying only on DEA methods.