Scale,Scope and Survival: A Comparison of Cooperative and Capitalist Modes of Production

This paper draws on a comprehensive data set from Portugal to investigate the activities, internal characteristics and survival prospects of cooperatives and capitalist enterprises. Consistent with theory, high levels of market concentration and low entry costs were shown to be conducive to cooperatives. Cooperatives were found to be, on average, older and to operate with a larger, more highly educated and more productive labour force than do their capitalist counterparts. Finally, we show that cooperatives have a markedly higher probability of survival than do capitalist enterprises due, in part, to differences in industry of operation and internal characteristics.     

Why Have Housing Transactions Been So Weak?

Activity in the UK housing market has been surprisingly weak over the last couple of years, particularly given the very cheap, fixed-rate mortgage deals that are now available. In this article, Geoff Meen asks why the number of transactions has been so low and looks at future prospects for the housing market.     

Which skills contribute most to absorptive capacity,innovation and productivity performance? Evidence from the US and Western Europe

ABSTRACT

Skills are widely recognised as central to absorptive capacity, that is, firms’ ability to identify and make effective use of knowledge, ideas and technologies that are generated elsewhere. But identification of the specific levels of education and skills that contribute most to the development of absorptive capacity is often hampered by the use of skill measures as proxies for absorptive capacity itself. Drawing on a cross-country industry-level dataset, we retain separate measures of key components of absorptive capacity, namely, skills, R&D investments and openness to foreign trade and investment. We then estimate a system of structural equations in order to evaluate the extent to which different levels of skill contribute to innovative output (measured by growth in patenting) and subsequently to growth in productivity. We find important roles for both high-level skills and upper intermediate (technician-level) skills in converting the knowledge sourcing opportunities provided by openness into innovative output. In final stages of production (making use of innovative output), productivity growth in countries near to the technological frontier is enhanced not just by high-level and upper intermediate skills but also by the skills of the workforce as a whole.     

Sustainability accounting—a brief history and conceptual framework

Research linking accounting to the emerging concept of sustainability surfaced in the early 1990s and has received continuing attention in academic and professional accounting literature. This paper tracks this brief history through to the release of the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in August 2002, consolidating the various approaches into a sustainability accounting framework. The result is a comprehensive reporting model that presents an enormous challenge to business organisations, requiring a significant commitment of resources to achieve widespread implementation. Failure to meet this challenge enables business organisations to continue to avoid accountability for their continuing unsustainability. The paper concludes with a personal view as to how implementation of the sustainability accounting framework could proceed.