Entry restrictions and the determination of quality

Entry restrictions are a common form of regulation in markets and occupations, either as a means of limiting the size of a market or affecting the quality of products or services provided by it. This paper analyzes demand, cost and informational characteristics that affect the impact of this type of policies on the quality mix of products provided by an industry and the welfare of its consumers. Selective increases in the costs of entry such as licensing requirements and direct restrictions with competitive bidding for entry rights are considered. We analyze the effects of these policies on entry decisions and also the additional selection effects that are obtained when exit is allowed for and the rights to participate in an industry can be freely traded.     

Employment Decisions in Self-Directed Work Teams: A Regulatory Compliance Perspective

Organizations are increasingly relying on self-directed work teams (SDWTs) to accomplish organizational tasks. The introduction of SDWTs into the workplace poses a number of managerial challenges. This paper will focus on one such challenge, the continuing need to comply with labor and equal employment regulations. We discuss several factors that potentially affect the legal compliance process. These include: (1) the impact of an increasingly diverse workforce on individual behavior and team processes, and (2) the role of procedural justice perceptions in effective HR compliance management. We conclude with some practical solutions to the challenge of managing compliance in SDWT settings.     

Public Investment, Congestion, and Private Capital Accumulation

This paper analyses the impact of public investment on the dynamics of private capital formation in an intertemporal optimising market-clearing framework. The key feature characterising the analysis is that the public good is treated as a durable capital good, subject to congestion. We show how in the presence of congestion the effect of government investment on private capital formation involves a tradeoff between the degree of substitution between private and public capital in production and the degree of congestion. Both lump-sum and distortionary tax financing are considered, with this tradeoff being tightened in the latter case     

Recent and Future Developments Related to “Gdp and Beyond”

Progress of societies? Well‐being of citizens? Trans‐generational impact of policies? To answer such fundamental questions and much more, the European Commission published, in August 2009, its Communication on “GDP and Beyond: Measuring Progress in a Changing World.” Through a co‐operative project, co‐chaired by Eurostat and INSEE (France), the ESS acted decisively and established an action plan to be carried out by 2020 in the context of the European Statistical Programme. This plan which also builds on Eurostat's work on Sustainable Development Indicators. For most of these actions, work has either been accomplished or is in good progress. Further challenges lie ahead, including reconciling macro‐ and micro‐data sources on household economic resources and completing the indicators set on Quality‐of‐Life. The work will also contribute to the global efforts on the Sustainable Development Goals/post‐2015 development agenda.     

Parallel Neutrality

This paper develops the notion of parallel-neutral technical change for inputs and outputs. It is shown that parallel-neutral technical change generalizes existing radial notions of neutral technical change. A taxonomy of the structural consequences of parallel-neutral technical change is developed.     

Intertemporal Budget Policies and Macroeconomic Adjustment in Indebted Open Economies

This paper analyzes the role of government intertemporal budget policies in a growing open economy including nominal assets in the presence of an upward sloping supply of debt. This introduces transitional dynamics that influence the effects of government policy instruments on economic growth and the long term fiscal liability. It is shown that capital income taxes or a combination of tax‐cum‐expenditure or government expenditure alone can balance the long term intertemporal government budget constraint. However, those results are shown to depend critically upon the extent of distortion in capital flows brought about the upward sloping supply of debt.     

The Division of Labor Under Homogeneity: A Critique of Mises and Rothbard

A bstract .   Even the most passionate defenders of free trade, such as Mises and Rothbard, claim that trade cannot occur under conditions of strict homogeneity of land, labor, and capital. We show that specialization, trade, and the division of labor can emerge even when resources are initially homogenous, due to "natural heterogeneity," economies of scale, and learning.