Saving dynamics in the Asian countries

This paper investigates empirically the factors that have influenced the savings behavior in the fast growing Asian economies—Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Both the short and long-run movements of savings are modeled during the 1960–1997. The empirical results of the analysis based on time series data may be summarized as follows: (i) foreign savings deters domestic saving both in the short and long run; (ii) savings does not Granger cause economic growth, except for Singapore; (iii) the effect of interest rate on saving in Asian countries is inconclusive and it reflects the extent of financial liberalization adopted in these countries; and (iv) in the long run the causality runs from foreign to domestic savings.     

Christian roots of capitalist civilization

A conceptual argument is offered for the centrality of religion to the structure of capitalist civilization. This centrality is documented by examples of the role of Christianity in European civilization.     

Financial Analysis of Palestinian Industry Including Small Scale Firms

The study aims to explore the financial aspects of the Palestinian industry, and to investigate productivity and efficiency of small scale industry compared with large scale firms. In order to help policy makers in industrial planning in the new emerged Palestinian state. A special instrument has been used to collect the financial and quantitative data for the related manufacturing firms from a random sample of 215 Palestinian firms. The one way analysis of variance test was used to examine whether the mean scores differ significantly among scale sizes of the Palestinian industry concerning the selected performance measures. In addition, the Scheffe test was used as a post hoc comparison way to identify which scale size firms' performance differs than the other two scale sizes.The research revealed that small scale firms in Palestinian industry have higher labor productivity values than large scale firms, while large scale firms accomplished higher net profit margin compared to small scale industry. Creating an additional job in large scale Palestinian industry needs less cost than creating a job in small scale industry, and large scale firms have better opportunity in getting external financing than small firms.     

Time-varying Cost of Equity Capital in Southeast Asian Countries

This paper investigates variation in the cost of equity capital for the Southeast Asian countries using firm-level data over the period of 1990–2004. It is found that decreases in the firm-level cost of equity capital have been associated with stock market liberalization and securities market development. The results of the present study suggest that earlier empirical evidence regarding the decrease in the cost of equity capital using country-level data cannot be generalized to different types of firms. There has been significant time variation in the cost of equity capital within countries and across firms.     

Social capital and poverty in Uganda

This paper investigates the links between social capital and household poverty in Uganda. It assumes a two-way causal relationship between poverty and access to social capital. This suggests an endogeneity problem, so the paper uses econometric techniques that control for endogeneity. Using two nationally representative datasets, the authors' analyses revealed that access to social capital defined in terms of membership of social organisations positively affects household income and reduces poverty. Education was the key determinant of income and increases the probability of joining social networks. Their results further show that household income and welfare are positively associated with access to social capital or group participation. This suggests that government strategies to increase household income that take into consideration existing social institutions will go a long way to encourage associational growth and performance and consequently reduce poverty.     

Trade Competitiveness and Employment: Job Creation or Job Destruction

This paper empirically examines the impact of fluctuations in international trade competitiveness on employment in the UK manufacturing sector over the period 1999–2010. We find statistically significant but economically small effects of a shock to international trade competitiveness on the level of employment. Our results show that the adjustment process in employment mainly works through job creation. We also find that compared to large firms, small firms contribute more toward job creation than job destruction. Our results that changes in GDP growth rate and average wages are significantly related to employment suggest that the UK labour market significantly responds to market forces. Finally, we find that the effect of changes in the real exchange rate on both job creation and job destruction differs between exporting and non-exporting firms.     

The approximate purification of mixed strategies with finite observation sets

This note provides a finite result on the approximate purification of strategies in a class of two-person games.     

Leader power and subordinates' organizational commitment and effectiveness: Test of a theory in a developing country

This study tested the relationships of bases of leader power (coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, and referent) to subordinates' organizational commitment and of power bases and commitment to subordinates' effectiveness (performance, conformance, dependability, and personal adjustment). Two hundred fifty employees and their supervisors from three banks in Bangladesh were individually interviewed to fill out the Rahim Leader Power Inventory, Organizational Commitment Questionnaire, and Minnesota Satisfactoriness Scales, to measure power, commitment, and effectiveness, respectively. Two stepwise hierarchical regression analyses showed that legitimate and expert power bases were positively associated with commitment. Coercive power was negatively associated with effectiveness and expert power was positively associated with the same. Implications of the findings for international managers working in developing countries are discussed. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Approximate equilibria in markets with indivisible commodities

This paper presents results on the existence of approximate equilibria in large but finite exchange economies in which all the traders have non-convex consumption sets. As such, the paper gives a natural extension, to the finite economy, of Mas-Colell's results on existence with indivisible commodities and a continuum of agents. It also presents an approximate equilibrium theorem without any assumption of compactness or bounded non-convexity of preferences.