The need for a strategic approach on the railways to the management of the vehicle–track interface

Network Rail's decision in 2003 to bring track maintenance back in-house was long-overdue recognition that responsibility for safety on Britain's railways cannot be abdicated – but there was more to it than that. The accidents at Hatfield and Potter's Bar (both in Hertfordshire, UK), in particular, had exposed very vividly how privatisation had encouraged each now separated and competing part of the industry to operate in its own interests: records, data and expertise were fragmented, and track and train operators alike each sought to minimise their individual costs in isolation. This paper argues from a systems analysis perspective that, on vehicle and track maintenance at least, the overall costs to the industry are in such circumstances likely to be higher than if the various parties were to work together towards minimising total track and train maintenance costs between them. Far from increasing efficiency, privatisation had the effect of reducing it.     

Compositional data analysis and zeros in micro data

The application of compositional data analysis methods in economics has some attraction. The methodology relies upon the use of 'log-ratios' in the statistical analysis. Such an approach is not possible when the data to be analysed include observations where the observed budget share is zero. We, therefore, consider and extend the methods of compositional data analysis in the situation where the data to be analysed include observations where the observed budget share is zero. The modified compositional data methods are discussed both in statistical terms and through potential economic interpretations of the method. Further, the modified methodology is applied to the 1988-89 Australian Household Expenditure Survey yielding estimates for a system of Engel curves.     

Money demand in the czech republic since transition

We analyse the demand for money since the “break up” of the Czech-Slovak Republics at the beginning of 1993 and for the aggregates M0, Ml, and M2 using monthly data. Due to the widespread use of foreign currency in formally centrally planned economies, we also investigate the issue of currency substitution. Because of our relatively small sample period the Johansen cointegration approach is not used and instead we use the general to specific methodology in a single equation framework. Previous empirical evidence on money demand in Eastern Europe, and specifically Czech Republic, has been mixed. Both graphical and empirical results suggest that any currency substitution was a one-off event due to increased uncertainty at the end of 1992 at the time of the monetary dissolution. Certainly, currency substitution in the Czech Republic is not as strong as has been found in other former centrally planned economies. However, our results do indicate that Czech National Bank may have to take account of foreign interest rates when interpreting movements in the monetary aggregates.     

Housework and the Wages of Young, Middle-Aged, and Older Workers

This article uses samples of young, middle-aged, and older married workers drawn from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine whether the effect of housework time on wages differs among these age groups. Results from OLS, fixed effects, and panel data instrumental variables models show that young and middle-aged wives are the only groups for which the authors find consistent evidence of a housework effect on wages. Each additional hour of housework reduces their wages by 0.1–0.4%. Additionally, the analysis finds evidence that for young workers, housework time is an important determinant of the male/female wage gap. (JEL J16 , J22 , J31 )     

Duration of Rent Extraction and the Entry Mode Decision of Multinational Enterprises

The prior literature is ambiguous about the effects of stronger intellectual property rights (IPR) on the choice of a multinational firm's mode of entry into foreign markets. However, available indexes of IPR protection exist only at the country level and do not identify interindustry variation in the ability to extract rents through exclusive rights and other factors. The authors introduce this dimension and compute a parameter that reflects the relative length of time that positive profits may be earned in various industries. Estimation results find that strengthening IPR would reduce exporting in all industries in the sample. However, it would raise (reduce) foreign direct investment, relative to licensing, in industries with shorter (longer) rent‐extraction times.     

EFFECTS OF PATENTS ON PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN KOREAN MANUFACTURING: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS*

Abstract.  We analyse the contributions of patents to total factor productivity (TFP) performance in Korean manufacturing industries during the period 1981–1999. This paper treats potential autocorrelation problems seriously and uses recent panel cointegration approaches to investigate the robustness of the patent-TFP relationship. The results show that both domestic and foreign-resident patent applications have significant positive effects on productivity and that foreign-resident patent applications have a larger effect than domestic patents in improving TFP in Korean manufacturing. We also find evidence of knowledge spillovers among industries, in that the patent applications of other industries increase TFP in any single industry.     

GHG Registries: Participation and Performance Under the Canadian Voluntary Climate Challenge Program

Between 1994 and 2004, the Voluntary Challenge and Registry (VCR) played an important role in Canadian climate change policy. In this paper, we examine the decision of firms to participate in the VCR, the extent of their involvement, and then ask if greenhouse gas emissions are related to past VCR participation. As an information provision program, we find evidence that firms may participate in VCR to signal their environmental responsibility to regulators and to some extent investors, but not to consumers. We also find that past involvement in the VCR is a strong and significant determinant of current involvement in the registry. Greenhouse gas emissions reported to the Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program in 2004, however, do not appear to be different between VCR reporters and non-reporters. GHG emissions are observed to be significantly lower among firms that are smaller, emit fewer toxic releases, use more renewable energy sources, are intermediate good producers, and are located in Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba.     

Revisiting the Roots of Japan's Economic Stagnation: The role of the Japanese corporation

For a long period in the 20th century, the development of the Japanese corporation appeared congruent with the development of the Japanese economy. The growth-maximising behaviour of the Japanese corporation and the preference for internal growth over acquisitions (see Odagiri, 1992) appeared to suit the long-term ambitions of Japan. Now, that formerly clear connection between the ambitions of corporate Japan and the Japanese public interest is no longer so clear. Increasingly, the global ambitions of the corporation appear as an impediment to Japan's economic development. By favouring the development of large-scale transnational corporations, Japanese industrial policy-making appears to have contained a fundamental flaw. Japan is now dominated by large-scale organisations with global ambitions, controlled by corporate elites. It is unlikely that their strategic decisions will correspond with the wider public interest, which raises the possibility that Japan is now afflicted with 'strategic failure'. Other examples from around the world suggest that Japan is not unique in this respect. Alternative ways forward are suggested.     

Immigration and the Trade of Provinces

A link between immigration, imports, and exports has been found by a number of papers that have used the gravity equation to analyze bilateral trade patterns. We discuss what this research implies about the mechanisms through which immigrants expand trade and identify strengths and weakness of the various approaches. This paper also contributes to this literature by estimating immigrant effects for Canada using cross‐province variation in international trade and immigration patterns. We derive an alternative functional form capturing the relationship between immigration and trade based on the proposition that immigrants use their connections and superior 'market intelligence' to exploit trade opportunities that non‐immigrants do not access. We find that the average new immigrant expands exports to his/her native country by $312 and expands imports by $944.