Playing at work

Most of the few investigations of workplace sport in the United Kingdom are either not fully published, or are in theses which are rather inaccessible. The study reported here was commissioned by the English Sports Council and carried out by Terrestrial Environment Studies (TEST). It sought both to widen knowledge of the subject and to see whether sports facilities adjacent to a place of work proved convenient to employees; the employees' satisfaction with the facilities and any consequent effects on participation were also to be investigated. Twenty-three employers with on-site sports facilities, 21 who mainly hired their facilities, and two whose facilities were some distance away, were qualitatively assessed.     

A MICRO-ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF TEA PRODUCTION USING A SEPARABLE RESTRICTED PROFIT FUNCTION

To derive policy-relevant information, the translog form of a separable restricted profit function was used to model empirically estate tea production in Sri Lanka. Data consisted of 87 observations of prices and quantities for various inputs and outputs from 54 different Sri Lankan tea estates. In different tests, the estimated model respected generally the properties implied by underlying assumptions. Results indicated increasing economies of scale in the factory across the sample and optimal field size to be between 300 and 400 hectares. Amongst estimated short-term elasticities, the supply elasticity of made tea was found to be +0.94.     

Models of International Labor Standards

This article examines existing models of the regulation of international labor standards in the context of international trade. The article first focuses on conceptual and theoretical notions of the international regulation of labor standards. Four existing models of international labor regulations are then examined: the legislative model, the trade sanctions model, the multilateral enforcement model, and the voluntary standards model. The theoretical issues raised and the characteristics of the four models are then used to develop a suggested structure for the international regulation of labor standards in a world of free trade.     

THE INFORMATIONAL CONTENT OF BOND RATINGS

This paper explores the risk structure of interest rates. The focus is on whether yields on industrial bonds indicate that market participants base their evaluations of a bond issue's default risk on agency ratings or on publicly available financial statistics. Using a non-linear least squares procedure, the yield-to-maturity is related to Moody's rating, Standard and Poor's (S&P) rating, and accounting measures of creditworthiness such as coverage and leverage. Market yields are found to be significantly correlated with both the ratings and a set of readily available financial accounting statistics. These results indicate (1) that market participants base their evaluations of an issue's creditworthiness on more than the agencies' ratings and (2) that the ratings bring some information to the market above and beyond that contained in the set of accounting variables. The paper also asks whether the market views Moody's and Standard and Poor's ratings as equally reliable measures of risk or whether the market attaches more weight to one agency's ratings than the other. Finally, the hypothesis that the market pays more attention to the accounting measures and less to the ratings if the rating has not been reviewed recently is tested.     

Building for the future: housing-related sectors and the welsh economy

Since the establishment of the Welsh Assembly Government there has been more emphasis on indigenous enterprises in relation to economic development policy. However, the housing-related sector has received little attention. This paper¹ presents the results of research that has investigated this sector and its significance to the local economy. Whilst acknowledging the considerable data-related difficulties in this exercise, analysis of housing and housing-related functions (including construction, finance, legal services, management of housing stock) showed that the sector accounted for around 4.5% of Welsh employment, and had considerable potential for assisting in the future development of the regional economy.     

PRODUCER TURNOVER AND PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

The reallocation of resources, either across sectors or acrossproducers within a sector, can serve as a potential source ofproductivity growth. New research findings exploit comprehensivemicroeconomic data on the manufacturing sectors of Chile, Colombia,and Morocco to document resource shifts as producers enter,expand, contract, and exit operation. The micro-level adjustmentis substantial; between 25 and 30 percent of the total numberof manufacturing jobs turn over each year. In the short run,the productivity effects of this turnover are modest becausethe new plants that come on line are only slightly more productivethan the ones they replace—and both are typically small.In the longer term, however, the turnover generates more substantialincreases in productivity because the new firms that surviverecord substantial productivity gains in their early years.Moreover, firms that exit are typically on a downward productivityspiral and would probably have dragged down sectoral efficiencyfarther if they had continued in operation.