Combining work and informal care: the importance of caring organisations

Population ageing and rising costs of long‐term care mean that organisations will be confronted in the future with a growing number of employees who combine paid work with providing informal care to a relative or non‐kin. Combining work and informal care successfully partly depends on job and care‐related features, but more information is needed on the importance of organisational aspects in this regard. The impact of organisational support on work outcomes (work–care balance and perceived need for job adaptations) was studied among 1,991 employed informal caregivers in 50 different organisations. Multilevel logistic regression analyses revealed that a heavy care burden decreased the odds of combining work and care successfully. Caregivers who felt supported by colleagues and supervisors, and who worked in supportive organisations had higher odds of good work outcomes. The findings imply that organisations should be explicit about their concern for informal caregivers and be particularly aware of colleagues with heavy care responsibilities.     

Labor skills and factor proportions trade in the gulf cooperation council

A new measure of factor intensity and abundance from trade theory is utilized to predict potential trade and income redistribution between traditional and modern economies in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Differences in labor skill intensity and abundance suggest there will be substantial trade between the modern (Bahrain, Qatar, UAE) and traditional (Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia) economies in the GCC. Due to the limited data, the UAE and Kuwait are taken to represent the modern and traditional economies.     

The Impact of the Crisis on Internal Population Movement in Indonesia

One of the ways in which Indonesians have adapted to economic change over recent decades is through permanent and temporary movement within and outside the country. This paper focuses on the effects which the crisis that started in 1997 has had upon population mobility among different groups and in different areas within the country. It begins by summarising the employment effects of the crisis, as indicated by the 1997 and 1998 National Labour Force Surveys. It then uses results from a number of surveys to identify the changes that have occurred in population mobility in Indonesia during the crisis. In particular it looks at the extent and nature of urban to rural movement, and at patterns of movement between Java and the Outer Islands. Although comprehensive data are lacking, it is argued that population mobility has become an important coping mechanism for confronting the crisis.     

Economic analysis of different options in integrated pest and soil fertility management in maize systems of Western Kenya

The major biotic constraints to the production of maize, the major staple food in Western Kenya, are field pests such as Striga and stem borers, and low soil fertility. To counter these constraints, new cropping systems have been developed, including “push‐pull,” rotations with promiscuous soybean varieties and green manure crops, and imidazolinone resistant‐ (IR‐) maize. To analyze the technical and economic performance of these technologies, both with and without fertilizer, on‐farm researcher‐managed long‐term trials were implemented over six seasons in two sites each in Vihiga and Siaya districts of Western Kenya. The economic results, based on marginal analysis using a multioutput, multiperiod model, show that the new cropping systems with fodder intercropping (push‐pull) or soybean rotations were highly profitable. Push‐pull is more profitable but requires a relatively high initial investment cost. Green manure rotation, IR‐maize, and fertilizer all increased yields, but these investments were generally not justified by their increased revenue. We argue that research on rotation and cropping systems to tackle pest and soil fertility problems in Africa deserve more attention. This will require increased collaboration between agronomists and economists to set up long‐term experiments with new cropping systems to develop proper economic models.     

Exports and Productivity Selection Effects for Dutch Firms

The paper tests whether recent theories of international trade with heterogeneous firms can explain the export patterns in Dutch firm- and plant- level data in manufacturing and services. Recent trade models with heterogeneous firms predict that the export decision of firms is affected by sunk entry costs in foreign markets, with only the most productive firms self-selecting into exports. We test a latent variable model of the export decision by probit regressions and standard OLS panel regressions. Our results support the self-selection prediction. The process further appears to be conditioned by scale effects, market structure and multinational affiliation. Regarding alternative explanations, we do not find evidence for the learning-by-exporting hypothesis, even when controlling for the firm’s distance to the international productivity frontier.     

CONCEPTUALIZATION OF ASSETS AND LIABILITIES

The conceptualization of assets and liabilities is fundamental to an understanding of financial accounting. It is often maintained that assets and liabilities represent economic resources and economic obligations, respectively, but that not all economic resources are assets and not all economic obligations are liabilities — a somewhat confusing state of affairs. This paper presents a schema for distinguishing assets from economic resources and liabilities from economic obligations based on the authoritative literature in the United States, Australia, Canada and Great Britain. The schema should be useful for clarifying certain financial accounting controversies concerning income taxes, leases, pension benefit payments and executory contracts.