Political change and informality

This paper examines informality during the political and economic turmoil that accompanied the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt. The paper focuses on unprotected employment and the extent to which it changed by educational level immediately after the January Uprising of 2011. We find that over time and particularly after the revolution, informal employment has increased for both high‐ and low‐educated workers, albeit through different paths: high‐educated workers were more likely to be stuck in informality, while low‐educated formal workers were more likely to lose their contracts. The increase in informal employment in the wake of the Arab Spring is more pronounced for the high‐educated. The results suggest a high level of rigidity in the Egyptian labour market, even in the wake of the Arab Spring.     

Tests for structural change,aggregation, and homogeneity

Structural change can be considered by breaking up a sample into subsets and asking if these can be aggregated or pooled. Strategies for constructing tests for aggregation and structural change in this setting have not received sufficient attention in the literature. Our methodology for testing generalizes to multiple regimes a discussion of Pesaran et al. (1985) for the case of two regimes. This treatment permits a unified approach to a large number of testing problems discussed separately in the literature, as special cases or as parts of a test of homogeneity. We also provide a simple alternative to much more complex testing strategies currently being researched and developed in testing for structural change.     

Is the efficient market hypothesis day-of-the-week dependent? Evidence from the banking sector

In this article, we propose a new hypothesis: that the efficient market hypothesis is day-of-the-week-dependent. We apply the test to firms belonging to the banking sector and listed on the NYSE. We find significant evidence that the efficient market hypothesis is day-of-the-week-dependent. Overall, for only 62% of firms, the unit root null hypothesis is rejected on all the five trading days. We also discover that when investors do not account for unit root properties in devising trading strategies, they obtain spurious profits.     

Trade liberalization and industrial growth in Pakistan: a cointegration analysis

Using the framework of an endogenous growth model, this study empirically analyses the relationship between trade policies and industrial growth in Pakistan during the period 1973–1995. The cointegration and error correction modelling approaches have been applied. The empirical results suggest that there exists a unique long-run relationship among the aggregate growth function of industrial value added and its major determinants of the real capital stock, the labour force, real exports, the import tariff collection rate and the secondary school enrolment ratio. The short-term dynamic behaviour of Pakistan's growth function of industrial value added has been investigated by estimating an error correction model in which the error correction term has been found to be correctly signed and statistically significant.     

Are the FDI inflow spillover effects on Malaysia's economic growth input driven?

This paper inspects the influence of human capital, labour force, and absorptive capacity, physical capital as a control variable, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and gross domestic product (GDP) on Malaysia's productivity growth. A time series quarterly data from the period of 1999 to 2008 was used. The effects of FDI inflows on human capital, labour force, absorptive capacity and physical capital were investigated. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression was applied to estimate the data in the first step and in the second step productivity indicators were calculated. The results show that the FDI inflows and inputs used are negatively contributed to total factor productivity (TFP). Meanwhile, FDI plays a significant role in achieving economic growth through input driven as indicated by the contribution of the TFP. In this regard, a significant positive relationship between human capital, labour force and absorptive capacity which determines the spillover effect on Malaysian economic growth (GDP) was found and the physical capital has shown negative relationship.     

Stakeholder theory and practice in Europe and North America: The key to success lies in a marketing approach

Corporate reputation in Europe and North America is increasingly seen as a function of how firms treat their stakeholders. In the United States, stakeholder theory has been touted as a paradigm of good management; yet despite enlightened stakeholder practice at home, US firms continue to run into problems in Europe. Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and GE have, in one way or another, all been caught off guard when doing business in Europe. This paper suggests that some of the stakeholder relations difficulties encountered by US corporations in Europe can be explained by fundamental cultural and philosophical differences between these regions that affect how stakeholders are viewed and how relations with those groups are managed. In this paper, we examine the historical and socio-political forces influencing stakeholder theory in the US and northern Europe and then use a business-to-business marketing approach to show how US firms might develop an approach to stakeholder relations that fits the northern European environment.     

Supplier selection-order allocation: A two-stage multiple criteria dynamic programming approach

This paper proposes a two-stage multiple criteria dynamic programming approach for two of the most critical tasks in supply chain management, namely, supplier selection and order allocation. In the first stage, to address multiple decision criteria in supplier ranking, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is employed. In the second stage, supplier ranks are fed into an order allocation model that aims at maximizing a utility function for the firm as well as minimizing the total supply chain costs, subject to constraints on demand, capacity, and inventory levels. A dynamic programming approach is crafted to solve the proposed bi-objective model.     

An economic production and remanufacturing model with learning effects

Managing inventory in reverse logistics has been receiving much attention in recent years. One inventory problem that has been of interest to researchers is the production and remanufacturing model, where used items are collected and remanufactured to satisfy customer demand. The available models in the literature do not discuss the learning effects in production and remanufacturing processes. This may not be true in industries where labour costs and learning costs are expensive. By modelling these learning effects, management may use established learning models to better utilize capacity, manage inventories, and coordinate production and distribution throughout the chain.This paper extends the production, remanufacture, and waste disposal model by assuming learning to occur in both production and remanufacturing processes. However, this paper also assumes that improvements due to learning require capital investment. Mathematical models are developed, numerical examples are provided, and results are discussed.