The Long–Term Effectiveness of the Hong Kong Employees Retraining Programme

The Employees Retraining Programme in Hong Kong was promoted as the solution to structural unemployment resulting from rapid transformation of the economy. However, our study of the labour market performance of a group of trainees shows no evidence of any positive programme effect, more than three years after the completion of training, when compared to a group of job searchers. In particular, full time training is found to be less effective than part time training, and training in general skills is significantly less effective than training in specific occupational skills. This suggests problems in the design and implementation of retraining in Hong Kong.     

THE POWER OF WHISPERS: A THEORY OF RUMOR,COMMUNICATION, AND REVOLUTION*

We study how rumors mobilize individuals who take collective action. Rumors may or may not be informative, but they create public topics on which people can exchange their views. Individuals with diverse private information rationally evaluate the informativeness of rumors about regime strength. A rumor against the regime can coordinate a larger mass of attackers if individuals can discuss its veracity than if they cannot. Communication can be so effective that a rumor can have an even greater impact on mobilization than when the same story is fully believed by everybody. However, an extreme rumor can backfire and discourage mobilization.     

Sectoral shifts Impact on Hong Kong workers

This paper documents the accelerating rate of economic transformation in Hong Kong during the 1980s and its impact on the labour market. Earnings in expanding sectors have risen faster than earnings in declining sectors. The magnitude of the effect, however, is small and variable. Sectoral shifts have also had negligible effects on aggregate unemployment and unemployment in declining sectors. It is found that the degree of earnings inequality has increased contemporaneously with the rising rate of economic transformation. The earnings of less well-educated workers have fallen relative to other workers. The earnings of elderly workers, however, have not fallen relative to other workers. The reallocation of labour from low-wage sectors to high-wage sectors has resulted in a substantial growth in earnings for most workers involved.     

Are Financial Development and Trade Openness Complements or Substitutes?

This article studies the long‐ and short‐run relationships between financial development and trade openness. Using the pooled mean group estimator of Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (1999) for unbalanced panel data for 87 countries over the 1960–2005 period, our empirical results indicate that long‐run complementarity between financial development and trade openness coexists with short‐run substitutionarity between the two policy variables. But when splitting the data into OECD and non‐OECD country groups, this finding can be observed only in non‐OECD countries. For OECD countries, financial development has negligible effects on trade. In addition, we find nonlinearity in the relationship in that long‐run responses of trade decrease with financial development. The article further finds coexistence of negative trade effects of financial fragility and positive trade impacts of financial depth.     

MEN, MONEY, AND MEDALS: AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES

Abstract.  Population size and the level of income per capita are major determinants of the number of medals won by a country in the 1952–2004 Olympic Games. A parsimonious count (Poisson) model fits the data very well: the squared correlation between the predicted value of the number of medals won and the observed value is about 56%. There exist strong country-specific effects in Olympic medals results. While the USA and China tend to outperform other countries relative to their size and income, the Asian dragons tend to under-perform in the Games.     

The Fisher Equation: A Nonlinear Panel Data Approach

This article reinvestigates the Fisher equation. Using the panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) model, it was found that there is a significant regime-switching effect concerning the impact of inflation on interest rates. Specifically, inflation is found to raise the interest rates and the effect becomes stronger in magnitude with inflation. However, the data do not provide evidence in support of the one-for-one Fisher effect. The evidence is robust to interest rates with different maturities and subsamples.     

Asset bubbles in an overlapping generations model with endogenous labor supply

This paper examines the effects of asset bubbles in an overlapping generations model with endogenous labor supply. We show analytically that asset bubbles can lead to an expansion in steady-state capital, investment, employment and output under certain conditions.     

GAMING A SELECTIVE ADMISSIONS SYSTEM

A university uses both early-stage selection outcome (high-school affiliation) and late-stage admission test outcome (standardized test scores) to select students. We use this model to study policies that have been proposed to combat inefficient gaming in college admissions. Increasing university enrollment size can exacerbate gaming and worsen the selection outcome. Abolishing standardized tests for university admissions increases gaming targeting high-school admissions and worsens the selection outcome, whereas eliminating high-school ability sorting may improve the university selection outcome under some cost conditions of gaming. Committing to a lower-powered selection scheme can improve the selection outcome by reducing gaming behaviors.