The Role of Ideas in Understanding Industrial Relations Policy Change in Liberal Market Economies

This paper analyzes the uneven processes underpinning industrial relations policy liberalization in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and Ireland. Drawing upon 140 elite interviews and building upon ideational comparative political theories, the paper highlights the role of ideas in the policy change process. It identifies how particular ideas can be used to construct policy problems, how these ideas can gain legitimacy through battles with competing ideas, and how policy legacies can influence whether ideas take root. The findings from the comparative case analysis expose a critical difference between “positive legacies” and “negative legacies” to account for different liberalization trajectories.     

Establishing the validity of cycle path capacity assumptions in the Highway Capacity Manual

Cycle mode share increase is widely desired, but highway design practitioners lack the numerical tools to deliver infrastructure, instead relying on design standards and intuition, with little literature basis. As a case in point, the US Highway Capacity Manual (which is well used internationally) has developed levels of service for cycle infrastructure that are, at their core, based on an assumption of noninteraction between multiple cyclists. This paper uses a modified implementation of the Social Force Model to test the validity of this assumption. Necessary changes such as the consideration of acceleration characteristics and minimum maintainable speed are included. The resulting model produces valid outcomes in keeping with established traffic flow properties, reflecting three-phase traffic flow theory and the ability for the stochastic elements in traffic flow to cause flow breakdown. The developed simulation indicates that there is a fundamental difference in outcome if cyclists are assumed to have a fixed speed versus one they can change given their surroundings. This difference in outcomes is found to exist within the range of literature design flow capacities for bicycle infrastructure and also yields emergent outcomes that align closely with those known behaviors of highway vehicles, which intuitively transfer to cyclists. These findings reinforce the standing need for large-scale empirical studies to determine the basic numerical and behavioral parameters for cyclists, upon which all design ultimately rests.     

旅游对传统村落的影响研究——以安徽齐云山为例

旅游影响一直是国内外旅游研究的重要课题,旅游地居民对旅游发展的感知是研究旅游影响的重要途径。此次调查以安徽省黄山市休宁县齐云山为例,采用问卷调查和现场访谈相结合的方式,运用SPSS、CATPACTM等软件对调查结果进行数理统计,从居民与游客角度分析了旅游开发给齐云山居民带来的经济、社会文化、环境的若干影响,以及居民对旅游业所持的态度。文章着重于探讨居民对于因旅游开发所带来的村落影响的感知,以及他们对于当前旅游影响的评测和对未来旅游发展的期待。     

Foot-and-mouth Disease and Trade Restrictions: Latin American Access to Pacific Rim Beef Markets

Owing to their eradication of foot-and-mouth disease Argentina and Uruguay have recently been granted access to the fresh beef markets of the United States and Canada. This raises the prospect of Latin American suppliers gaining access to other Pacific Rim markets, and of increasing the integration of the Pacific and non-Pacific beef markets. A two-commodity spatial equilibrium model is constructed for the base year 1995. Projections are then made for the year 2001 under various policy and other scenarios. In some instances, major changes in trade patterns may result.     

Labour-Market Developments at a Time of Heightened Uncertainty

These are testing times for labour-market policies in Indonesia. The country faces two major challenges in an unpredictable international and domestic environment: providing people with better, more secure jobs and raising productivity to help raise living standards and reduce poverty. Over the past several months, new global and domestic threats to economic growth have emerged and may hinder progress in jobs and productivity. In the longer term, the government is searching for new strategies to increase productivity, with a focus on supply-side investments in skills and training. In relation to events abroad, uncertainty has increased over the early initiatives taken by the new US president and his nationalist administration, such as the scuttling of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. At home, likely to be of some significance for economic policy are mass actions that were levelled against Jakarta’s governor but de facto also directed against the government. In the medium term, our assessment of the record of the Joko Widodo (Jokowi) government on the labour market is mixed. Over the past two years, growth has been slower than under the previous administration and hence job creation has also been muted. The experience of a handful of countries in Asia suggests that the government might have done more to stimulate economic growth and create jobs. The disappointing performance of manufacturing stands out. Yet inflation has fallen and the slide in the value of international trade—both exports and imports—has reversed in recent months. Improved fiscal management and a generally successful tax amnesty are other pluses. There was also an unexpected but considerable fall in unemployment in 2015–16, according to labour-force statistics. Some policies, such as the new approach to minimum wages, seem to have had beneficial effects for both business and the economy, and Indonesia has done well in some international rankings, such as the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index. However, the picture for the medium to longer term seems less bright for the labour market. There has been much talk about raising productivity by improving skills through government support for investment in training and apprenticeships, as well as by expanding vocational training along the lines of the German model. Expanding tourism is seen as one solution to the lack of employment for young secondary- and tertiary-educated jobseekers. But we have an impression of policy-making on the run; often, the argument for government intervention has not been made clearly enough. We argue that Indonesia still lacks a coherent, well-thought-out plan to increase jobs and productivity.     

The UK and the Euro: Debating the British Decision

This article seeks to inform and enliven the debate on whether or not Britain should join the euro. The central focus of the article involves interviews with two leading economists, Professor Willem Buiter (Chief Economist and Special Counsellor to the President, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) who strongly supports the case for joining, and Professor Patrick Minford (Professor of Applied Economics, Cardiff Business School) who takes the opposite stance. The article begins with an introduction which places the interviews in context and concludes with a final section summarising the central points of commonality and departure arising in the interviews with Professors Buiter and Minford.     

Industrial incentives,domestic resource costs and resource allocation in Madagascar

This paper uses 104 episodes from the Hufbauer et al. (1985, 1990) dataset to examine the correlates of classes of outcomes of economic sanctions. The parsimonious equations presented identify the characteristics of sanctions episodes conducive to success rather than marginal success, and the characteristics productive of failure rather than marginal failure. Failure is most likely if there is significant third party assistance to the target, and if the pre-existing trade linkage between sender and target is small. Success is most easily achieved when the objective is not classified as 'modest', and when pre-sanction relations between sender and target are cordial or neutral. The equations presented overcome data and methodological flaws of earlier studies, exhibit reasonable predictive accuracy, and satisfy a battery of tests of statistical significance, hypothesized coefficient sign, goodness of fit, high likelihood and informational efficiency.