Recast directive on European works councils: cosmetic surgery or substantial progress?

Overdue by nine years, contested by employers and awaited by trade unions, a review of the European works council Directive 94/45/EC finally became reality in 2009. This article presents background information about the positions of the European social partners and other institutional EU actors in order to understand the outcome of the events of 2008–09. Focus is directed towards providing a general overview of the new elements in the recast directive on European works councils (EWCs). Keeping the different views on EWCs of the social partners in perspective, the article argues that the recast directive, despite its shortcomings, represents progress rather than superficial cosmetic surgery.     

Changes in living conditions in Poland under economic transition

This paper presents changes in living conditions which have taken place in Polish provinces during the transformation period. To define the changes, 31 measures grouped into 12 fields have been established representing some basic aspects of living conditions. They years 1990 and 1994 were taken as the period of comparison. For analysis of changes in the value of living conditions, indicators were made using the statistical measures of dispersion, dynamics, and a graphic method. The average standard of living has decreased by 4.5 of one percentage point. Among 49 administrative provinces in Poland, only seven noted an increase. It is concluded that there are growing regional disparities in the living conditions of Polish people     

Maximum likelihood estimators of the dagum model parameters

This paper will show the sample size needed to provide good maximum likelihood estimators of the Dagum model parameters. The principal goal of this study is to verify the asymptotic properties of these estimators for finite sample sizes comparable to the ones employed in the real surveys (for example, the Labor Force Survey).     

Using Geographically Weighted Choice Models to Account for the Spatial Heterogeneity of Preferences

In this paper, we investigate the use of geographically weighted choice models for modelling spatially clustered preferences. We argue that this is a useful way of generating highly‐detailed spatial maps of willingness to pay for environmental conservation, given the costs of collecting data. The data used in this study come from a discrete choice experiment survey of public preferences for the implementation of a new national forest management and protection programme in Poland. We combine these with high‐resolution spatial data related to local forest characteristics. Using locally estimated discrete choice models we obtain location‐specific estimates of willingness to pay (WTP). Variation in these estimates is explained by characteristics of the forests close to where respondents live. These results are compared with those obtained from a more typical, two stage procedure which uses Bayesian posterior means of the mixed logit model random parameters to calculate location‐specific estimates of WTP. We find that there are indeed strong spatial patterns to the benefits of changes to the management to national forests. People living in areas with more species‐rich forests and those living nearer bigger areas of mixed forests have significantly different WTP values than those living in other locations. This kind of information potentially enables a better distributional analysis of the gains and losses from changes to natural resource management, and better targeting of investments in forest quality.     

The evolution of consumer preferences in Poland

This note investigates a change of consumer preferences in Poland in the period of 1996–2016. I use the Euler equation–generalized method of moments (GMM) to estimate the structural parameters of the aggregate consumption function to show that consumers in Poland significantly change their attitude to risk during the global financial crisis, when the estimate of the risk-aversion parameter becomes very high, while otherwise close to zero suggesting near risk neutrality. Also, the subjective trade-off between consumption today and tomorrow undergoes an evolution towards lower ‘impatience’. Over-identifying restrictions are tested and the null hypothesis of validity of instruments is not rejected. The stability over time of the estimated parameters is tested and rejected. The evolution of preferences is shown through recursive estimates of the deep parameters, too.     

Classification schemes and the study of social mobility: A detailed examination of the Blau-Duncan categories

The Blau-Duncan system of seventeen occuptational categories has frequently been used as the basis for the study of social mobility patterns in the contemporary United States. In this paper, we examine the validity of these categories by subdividing them in various ways and examining the mobility flows in this more detailed classification. Initial log-linear and cluster analyses using data from the Occupational Changes in a Generation II (OCG-II) survey suggest that the Blau-Duncan scheme hides certain patterns of social structuration, and we form new classification systems on the basis of these results. However, cross-validation analyses using the cumulative General Social Survey data set show that the improvements associated with our schemes do not generalize beyond the OCG-II data. Thus, we recommend continued use of the Blau-Duncan categories, given that they have been employed so often in previous work.     

Evolutionary models in economics: a survey of methods and building blocks

This paper assesses methods and components of formal evolutionary-economic modelling. Methods are broadly classified into evolutionary game theory and selection dynamics, evolutionary computation and multi-agent models, each with relevant subcategories. The components or building blocks are organized into diversity, innovation, selection, bounded rationality, diffusion, path dependency and lock-in, coevolution, multilevel and group selection, and mechanisms of growth. The number of alternatives that has been proposed for each category is vast, making it difficult to comprehend the variety of assumptions and formalizations underlying existing evolutionary-economic models. Our survey aims to clarify for each model component the choice range, formal expressions, associated assumptions, and possible techniques for formalization. Our study is unique in that it provides more information about the formal details of specific model components and is considerably more inclusive than earlier reviews.     

Demand-supply coevolution with multiple increasing returns: Policy analysis for unlocking and system transitions

Currently, there is much concern about how to make a transition away from environmentally unsustainable activities to sustainable ones, notably in agriculture, energy and transport sectors. The success of such a transition depends on whether one is capable of escaping the lock-in of the dominant, unsustainable technology, which is usually due to multiple lock-in factors. Here, we present a formal model to study the likelihood of market lock-in in the presence of multiple increasing returns. The proposed framework describes coevolving populations of boundedly rational consumers and innovating firms. On the demand side, we focus attention on the interdependence of consumer preferences. We examine the impact of alternative demand side specifications on the direction of innovative activities of firms. On the supply side, a technological trajectory arises from the interplay of incremental innovation, search for a new product design and marketing activities. Our framework provides a general and complete account of increasing returns on supply and demand sides, as well as their synergetic interactions. The model is used to study a number of policy instruments aimed at escaping lock-in.     

Responses to monetary policy shocks in the east and the west of Europe: a comparison

This paper compares impulse responses to monetary policy shocks in the euro area countries before the EMU and in the New Member States (NMS) from central–eastern Europe. We mitigate the small‐sample problem, which is especially acute for the NMS, by using a Bayesian estimation that combines information across countries. The impulse responses in the NMS are broadly similar to those in the euro area countries. There is some evidence that in the NMS, which have had higher and more volatile inflation, the Phillips curve is steeper than in the euro area countries. This finding is consistent with economic theory. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.