Different roads: changes in industrial and employee relations in the Czech Republic and East Germany* since 1989

This article examines the differential impact of post Communist restructuring on industrial and employee relations in the Czech Republic and East Germany. It reviews the pre and post Communist systems of industrial relations and personnel management in the two countries and draws on original survey data to examine how this influences employee relations at organisation level.     

Investment allocation and urbanization in socialist economic development: The case of Czechoslovakia of

This paper tests two hypotheses about economic ;fficiency of development strategies of socialist countries. The first is that they overinvest in industry and that increased investment in agriculture would increase the output growth rate. The second is that efforts to limit urbanization have enabled these countries to grow more rapidly by minimizing the need for urban-infrastructure investments. The hypotheses are tested by means of counterfactual simulations performed with an econometric model of Czechoslovakia. We find that growth would have been faster only in the long run, had more investment been directed to agriculture. Urbanization policies appeared only to control inflationary pressures.     

A note on beneficial changes in random variables

This paper is an extension of Jack Meyer's paper titled “Beneficial Changes in Random Variables Under Multiple Sources of Risk and Their Comparative Statics” published in the June 1992 issue of this journal. The extension consists of showing which of the sufficient conditions in Meyer's Theorems 1 and 3 are also necessary, and which are not. In addition, conditions are provided which are necessary and sufficient for general beneficial changes to imply a decrease in the demand for insurance.     

Financial analysts' forecasts of earnings: Their value to investors

This paper attempts to determine whether financial analysts' forecasts of earnings are useful to investors. This is accomplished by devising and evaluating the performance of trading rules under which transactions are triggered by revisions in earnings forecasts. The main finding is that an investor who acts upon the publicly available revisions of earnings forecasts can consistently outperform a buy-and-hold policy; in fact, such an investor could more than double his return. The results are inconsistent with the efficient market-hypothesis and indicate that the market reacts gradually rather than instantaneously to new information.     

The allocative efficiency of centrally planned foreign trade: A programming approach to the Czech case

In this paper the efficiency of the allocation of Czech trade with the member countries of OECD is investigated by means of a linear programming model. We find that considerable losses in this trade occurred in both of the years 1962 and 1964 examined. The bulk of the losses occurs in the allocation of exports and their magnitude is very dependent on the foreign elasticity of demand. Balance of payments constraints, on the other hand, are not an important cause of misallocation.