Automation and manufacturing employment: A reappraisal

Manufacturing unemployment is caused by many kinds of organizational change, often a change to automatic production. A framework is suggested here for analyzing the relationship of automation-change to other organizational changes.     

ARDA AND POVERTY — LESSONS IN DEVELOPMENTAL PLANNING*

Rapid changes in the social and economic environment are creating problems which require new forms of government intervention. This paper explores the reason for this, the needs and the difficulties within our present institutional structure and based on experience to date in implementing the ARDA and FRED legislation, outlines a possible process through which government intervention in these new areas can be made more effective. ARDA ET LA PAUVRETÉ— LEÇONS DANS LA PLANIFICATION ET l'ÉVOLUTION: La rapidité des changements dans le milieu social et économique créent des problèmes qui demandent une nouvelle formule dans l'intervention gouvernementale. Cette dissertation explore les raisons pour cela, les besoins et les difficultés au sein, de notre présente structure et en se baseant sur l'expérience à date dans la législation ARDA et FRED, souligne une méthode possible à trovers lequel, une intervention gouvernementale dans ces nouvelles régions pourrait être plus efficace.     

Undesirable competition

We show that the entry of private profit-maximising firms makes the consumers worse off compared to having a nationalised monopoly. Such entry increases the nationalised firm’s profit, industry profit, and social welfare, at the expense of the consumers. Our result is important for competition policy.     

Ecosystem Service Value and Agricultural Conversion in the Amazon: Implications for Policy Intervention

We explore the welfare implications of agricultural expansion in the Brazilian Amazon by comparing spatially explicit estimates of soybean rents and the value of ecosystem services. Although these estimates are generated from different datasets, models, and estimation techniques, the values are comparable, such that the value of ecosystem services is greater than soybean rents for about 61% of the total area and 24% of the area where soybean rents are positive if protected areas are well enforced. Based on the balance between the benefits and costs of conversion, failure to value ecosystem services reduces total social welfare by 7.13 billion dollars annually relative to an optimum. Policy instruments that internalize the value of ecosystem services via protected lands, land conversion taxes, conservation subsidies, or excise taxes can avoid much of this loss. Regardless of intervention regime, policy makers should be cognizant of the diminishing net benefits of converting natural ecosystems to agriculture. Realizing the final 3.8% requires the conversion of an additional 15% natural ecosystems to soybean production.     

Domestic entry, optimum-welfare and maximum-revenue tariffs

In this paper, we examine the ranking of the maximum-revenue tariff and the optimum-welfare tariff under a linear Cournot oligopoly model without and with free entry of domestic firms. We demonstrate that in a regulated entry oligopoly with asymmetric costs, when the marginal cost of the domestic firms exceeds a critical value, the maximum-revenue tariff is higher than the optimum-welfare tariff. We then show that under free entry of domestic firms with asymmetric costs, when the fixed cost gets larger and the domestic firms become fewer, the difference between the optimum-welfare tariff and the maximum-revenue tariff becomes larger.     

Education and its intergenerational transmission: country of origin-specific evidence for natives and immigrants from Switzerland

This study compares the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment across immigrant groups using the Swiss Census 2000. Determinants of educational outcome and educational mobility are examined. A child’s educational opportunity depends on its parental background. Not only the effect of parental human capital but also other determinants of child educational attainment vary depending on the child’s nationality. Overall educational upward mobility is more pronounced among second generation immigrants than among natives. Children of Turkish, Portuguese and former Yugoslavian origin appear to be most disadvantaged in the process of human capital formation.

Innovation in the bioeconomy – dynamics of biorefinery innovation networks

The bioeconomy has become a central concept in many strategies for future economic development, emphasising an increasing need for collaboration across industries and sectors for innovation. This paper unpacks aspects of collaboration in the bioeconomy by looking at the development of innovation networks for biorefinery technologies from 2004 to 2014 based on innovation project data from Swedish public funding agencies using a stochastic actor-oriented model for network analysis. The analysis shows that although the network grew significantly during the time period, indicating an increasing interest in biorefinery technology innovation, inter-sectoral collaboration is not favoured over intra-sectoral collaboration. As is known from previous work on social networks trust-building is a key driver for collaboration, as actors tend to form collaborations with previous partners or indirectly connected partners, creating clustered networks.     

Origins of regional divergence: economic growth in socialist Yugoslavia†

Relative to western Europe, we know very little about the determinants of economic growth at the regional level within socialist Europe. This is somewhat unusual, given that socialist policy-makers have put great emphasis on equitable regional development. This article analyses the regional patterns of growth and divergence in socialist Yugoslavia. New estimates of output and inputs are constructed, and an analysis of output growth, factor accumulation, structural modernization, and productivity is provided. Two novel empirical findings are uncovered. The first is that the sources of growth across the regions were fundamentally different. Total factor productivity was a much more important source of growth in the richer regions than it was in the poorer ones. The second finding is that the source of the regional income divergence lies in the failure of the less developed regions to converge towards the employment rates and total factor productivities of the more developed regions. These failures are interpreted, at least partially, as symptoms of the governing objective and the soft budget constraint of the labour-managed firms that operated in Yugoslavia. It is argued that Yugoslavia's development model was less suited to the pre-conditions that prevailed in the less developed parts of the country.