Banking Market Structure, Financial Dependence and Growth: International Evidence from Industry Data

This paper explores the empirical relevance of banking market structure on growth. There is substantial evidence of a positive relationship between the level of development of the banking sector of an economy and its long-run output growth. Little is known, however, about the role played by the market structure of the banking sector on the dynamics of capital accumulation. This paper provides evidence that bank concentration promotes the growth of those industrial sectors that are more in need of external finance by facilitating credit access to younger firms. However, we also find evidence of a general depressing effect on growth associated with a concentrated banking industry, which impacts all sectors and all firms indiscriminately.     

Technical Change, Growth and Trade: New Departures in Institutional Economics

This article analyses the main theoretical and policy issues emerging from the literature on the evolutionary-institutional economics of technical change, the four distinguishing characteristics of which are that technology is often proprietary in nature; only a part of knowledge is codifiable in handbooks, blueprints, patents, and so on; there are fundamental variations in the above two points across different technological fields; and the evolution of knowledge is highly path-dependent.     

Education and Intergenerational Mobility in Occupations

A bstract The problem of measuring the intergenerational transmission of inequality and its implications for social welfare is studied. A possible decomposition of relevant factors–namely, educational attainments and other factors–is proposed and applied to three individual data sets regarding Germany, Italy, and the United States. The main result is that educational attainment is responsible for almost half of observed immobility The possibility that increasing equality of opportunity in entering the educational system may result in less inequality in income distribution is considered.     

Comparing Travel Cost Models And The Precision Of Their Consumer Surplus Estimates: Albert Park And Maroondah Reservoir

This study examines different types of Travel Cost Models to estimate and compare the recreational values of two parks in Victoria, Australia: Maroondah Reservoir and Albert Park. Zonal Travel Cost models and a number of different functional forms are used in this study. Standard errors are used to estimate upper and lower bounds for the recreational value estimates, enabling comparison between the precision of the different types of Travel Cost Models and functional forms estimated. The double log functional form city zone Travel Cost Model was chosen as the best estimate for Albert Park's recrea-tional value at $22.9 million per year. Maroondah Reservoir's best estimate is provided by the double log functional form regional zone Travel Cost Model at a value of $2.5 million per year, consider-ably less than that of Albert Park. Albert Park is found to have a comparatively larger 'proximity power' (attracting many more visitors) while Maroondah Reservoir exhibited a larger degree of 'pulling power' (a higher proportion of its visitors travel further distances).     

Capital controls and distribution of income: Empirical evidence for Great Britain Japan and Australia

Zusammenfassung Kapitalverkehrskontrollen und Einkommensverteilung. Empirische Befunde für Gro?britannien, Japan und Australien. - Der Verfasser geht davon aus, da? die Einführung von Kapitalverkehrskontrollen die nationale Einkommensverteilung beeinflu?t; insbesondere zeigt er, da? Ma?nahmen zur Verhinderung von Kapitalabflüssen die Einkommensverteilung zugunsten der Lohnempf?nger verschiebt. Nachdem er die Wirksamkeit von Kontrollen mit Hilfe der Unterschiede zwischen in- und ausl?ndischen Zinss?tzen gemessen und die Erfahrungen dreier L?nder (Gro?britannien, Japan und Australien) berücksichtigt hat, pr?sentiert er einige Korrelationsindizes und Kausalit?tstests, um zu untersuchen, ob m?glicherweise Beziehungen zur Verteilung des Volkseinkommens bestehen. Danach entwickelt und sch?tzt er ein Strukturmodell. Der Autor zeigt, da? das Ausma? der finanziellen Protektion die (optimale) Wahl von Besch?ftigung und Lohn durch heimische Firmen und Gewerkschaften tendenziell beeinflu?t hat.

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Résumé Les contr?les de capitaux et la distribution du revenu: La preuve empirique pour La Grande Bretagne, le Japon et l’Australie. - Dans cette étude l’auteur soutient l’opinion que l’adoption des contr?les de capitaux se répercutent sur la distribution du revenue national; et plus spécifiquement elle montre qu’en empêchant l’exportation des capitaux, la distribution du revenu change en faveur des salariés. Après avoir mesuré l’efficacité des contr?les à l’aide de l’écart entre les taux d'intérêt nationaux et les taux off-shore et après avoir reconsidéré les expériences de trois pays (Grande Bretagne, Japon, Australie) on présente quelques indices de corrélation et des tests de causalité pour étudier s’il y a des rapports avec la distribution du revenu national. Puis on propose un modèle structurel. Les estimations montrent que le degré de protection financière pourrait avoir influencé la sélection optimale de l’emploi et du salaire par les entreprises nationales et les syndicats.

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Resumen Controles de capital y distributión del ingreso: evidencia empírica para el Reino Unido, el Japón y Australia. - En este trabajo se argumenta que la adoptión des controles de capital afecta a la distributión del ingreso national. Más específicamente, se demuestra que al impedirse las exportaciones de capital se modifica la distributión del ingreso en favor de los asalariados. Después de medir la efectividad de los controles con el diferencial entre las tasas nacionales y las tasas offshore, y de pasar revista a la experiencia de tres países (el Reino Unido, el Japón y Australia), se presentan algunos índices de correlatión y tests de causalidad, con el fin de investigar la existencia de una relatión potential con la distributión del ingreso national. Finalmente, se propone y estima un modelo estructural que muestra que el grado de proteción financiera podría haber afectado la decisión sobre el empleo y el salario (óptimos) por parte de empresas y sindicatos nationales.

     

„Problemsucher,Problemfinder und Problemlöser in einem sind gefragt“

Ohne Zusammenfassung Dr. Matthias Salge (43) leitet seit 2004 das operative und strategische Controlling der Volksfürsorge. Davor war er in der Corporate-Finance Beratung der Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft PricewaterhouseCoopers sowie bei der Frankfurter Allianz als Vorstandsassistent und im Vertrieb t?tig. Er hat an den Universit?ten G?ttingen, Kiel und Barcelona Volkswirtschaftslehre studiert und über ein kapitalmarkttheoretisches Thema an der Universit?t Kiel promoviert. Daniele Baldino (32) leitet seit 2005 im Controlling der Volksfürsorge die Abteilung Strategisches Controlling. Die berufliche Laufbahn in der AMB Generali Gruppe begann er 2002 als Vorstandsassistent, zun?chst in der Volksfürsorge, anschlie?end in der Konzernzentrale. Davor war er in der KPMG Unternehmensberatung sowie im Private-Equity-Umfeld t?tig. Baldino hat European Business Studies (EBS) in Regensburg studiert mit Aufenthalten in Frankreich und Gro?britannien.     

Unemployment or protectionism: Some choices for the USA and Western Europe to the year 2000

This article reports on the economic implications to the USA and Western European economies after imposing protectionist trade policies on selected groups of imports till 2000. The effects of this policy are also presented for Japan and the non-oil-producing developing countries. Before discussing the results of the computations and the import restricting assumptions, a summary of the methodological framework, the World Input-Output Model, used in the computation is presented.     

An examination of the ethical beliefs of managers using selected scenarios in a cross-cultural environment

Academic literature addressing the topic of business ethics has paid little attention to cross-cultural studies of business ethics. Uncertainty exists concerning the effect of culture on ethical beliefs. The purpose of this research is to compare the ethical beliefs of managers operating in South Africa and Australia. Responses of 52 managers to a series of ethical scenarios were sought. Results indicate that despite differences in socio-cultural and political factors there are no statistically significant differences between the two groups regarding their own ethical beliefs. Results thus support the view that culture has little or no impact on ethical beliefs.Russell Abratt (DBA Pretoria) is Professor of Marketing at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. His research interests include business ethics and promotional strategy. His work has been published in various sources includingJournal of Business Ethics, European Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Advertising andIndustrial Marketing Management.Deon Nel (DCom Pretoria) is Professor of Marketing at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. His research interests include business ethics and group decision making in organisations. His work has been published in various sources includingJournal of Business Ethics, European Journal of Marketing, Management Research News.Nicola Higgs is a graduate student at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.     

Credit quantity and credit quality: Bank competition and capital accumulation

In this paper we show that bank competition has an intrinsically ambiguous impact on capital accumulation. We further show that it is also responsible for the emergence of development traps in economies that otherwise would be characterized by unique equilibria. These results explain the conflicting evidence emerging from the recent empirical studies of the effects of bank competition on economic growth. We obtain them developing a dynamic, general equilibrium model of capital accumulation where banks operate in a Cournot oligopoly. More banks lead to a higher quantity of credit available to entrepreneurs, but also to diminished incentives to offer relationship services that improve the likelihood of success of investment projects. We also show that conditioning on one key parameter resolves the theoretical ambiguity: in economies where intrinsic market uncertainty is high (low), less (more) competition leads to higher capital accumulation.