Setting the course for quality assurance in higher education

While the application of quality management and total quality management in higher education (HE) are discussed in literature, quality assurance (QA) of academic programs—the main services offered by higher education institutes (HEIs)—is yet to be fully understood. Scepticism prevails on how the principles of QA—having origin in manufacturing sector—can be applied in HE. The main question addressed in this article is ‘how the academic processes can be designed for QA?’ This paper suggests the use of systems approach for a number of reasons: first systems approach brings wide range of stakeholders into organisational consciousness. Second, it allows deployment of QA strategically through the development of a mission for the HEI. Third, it allows alignment and realignment of academic processes with the mission of the HEI. Finally, it allows systematic management of QA implementation with an essential focus on continual improvement. The mentioned elements are embodied in a framework consisting of a list of diagnostic questions to guide the integration of QA into academic processes. The framework should help HEIs integrate QA into academic programs with continual improvement as an essential ingredient.     

Capital Maintenance and Investment: Complements or Substitutes?

This paper studies the properties of demand for capital maintenance services and its interaction with investment under variable capital utilization rate and adjustment costs. The depreciation rate varies with the maintenance effort and the utilization rate of capital. We show that the properties of the demand functions for maintenance services and capital goods depend closely on the sign of the cross derivative of the depreciation function, i.e., on whether the marginal efficiency of maintenance decreases or increases when the rate of capital utilization rises. In our model, it is impossible to reconcile some unquestionable empirical facts and some minimal regularity conditions on the demand function for maintenance services if this cross derivative is positive. In all cases, investment and maintenance are gross complements. Received September 9, 2001; revised version received April 22, 2002 Published online: December 5, 2002 ? Springer-Verlag 2002     

Optimal Control in Infinite Horizon Problems: A Sobolev Space Approach

In this paper, we make use of the Sobolev space to derive at once the Pontryagin conditions for the standard optimal growth model in continuous time, including a necessary and sufficient transversality condition. An application to the Ramsey model is given. We use an order ideal argument to solve the problem inherent to the fact that L ¹ spaces have natural positive cones with no interior points. The paper was written when Cuong Le Van was visiting CORE, Université catholique de Louvain, and Cagri Saglam was a research fellow of the Economics Department of the same university. The authors are indebted to an anonymous referee and Takashi Kamihigashi for very useful comments. R. Boucekkine acknowledges the support of the Belgian research programmes PAI P4/01 and ARC 03/08-302.     

Information technologies, embodiment and growth

This paper studies the conditions under which an IT revolution may occur and have permanent effects on long-term growth. To this end, we construct a multi-sectoral growth model with endogenous embodied technical progress. The R&D sector expands the range of softwares. The capital sector produces efficient capital combining hardware with available softwares. Technological progress is therefore embodied: New softwares can only be run on the most recent generations of hardware. The new softwares are copyrighted during a fixed period of time. First, we analytically characterize the balanced growth paths of the model. Then we focus on the dynamic response of the economy to technological shocks. Substitution effects favorable to the IT sectors are shown to arise when positive supply shocks affect the production of efficient capital and/or the creation of new softwares. Positive shocks specific to the capital sector are unable to produce effects on long-term growth, in contrast to the shocks specific to the R&D sector.     

Trade‐Adjusted Concentration Ratios in the US Manufacturing Sector

This paper incorporates international trade into the four‐firm concentration ratio to get a more realistic measure of market structure in the US manufacturing sector using 1997 and 2002 NAICS data. As expected, trade‐adjusted CR₄ is significantly lower than the published CR₄. Moreover, the effect of international trade is higher in 2002 than in 1997, offsetting the increase in domestic concentration and leaving the US manufacturing sector in 2002 as competitive as it was in 1997. Furthermore, different tests are used to check the validity of the results. All of them confirm that trade‐adjusted CR₄s are significantly lower than their published counterparts.     

Note on global dynamics and imbalance effects in the Lucas–Uzawa model

In the traditional literature on the Lucas–Uzawa model, it is proved that in the so‐called normal parametric case, human capital stock grows at a rate greater than its long‐run counterpart in the neighbourhood of the long‐run balanced growth path. We first prove that the claim is true outside the neighborhood of balanced growth paths. More importantly, we identify a crucial asymmetry: whatever the parametric case considered, physical capital stock always grows at a rate lower than its long‐run counterpart when the ratio of physical to human capital is above its long‐run value.     

Long-Memory,Asymmetry and Fat-Tailed GARCH Models in Value-at-Risk Estimation: Empirical Evidence from the Global Real Estate Markets

In this paper, we address the question of whether long memory, asymmetry, and fat-tails in global real estate markets volatility matter when forecasting the two most popular measures of risk in financial markets, namely Value-at-risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ESF), for both short and long trading positions. The computations of both VaR and ESF are conducted with three long memory GARCH-class models including the Fractionally Integrated GARCH (FIGARCH), Hyperbolic GARCH (HYGARCH), and Fractionally Integrated Asymmetric Power ARCH (FIAPARCH). These models are estimated under three alternative innovation’s distributions: normal, Student, and skewed Student. To test the efficacy of the forecast, we employ various backtesting methodologies. Our empirical findings show that considering for long memory, fat-tails, and asymmetry performs better in predicting a one-day-ahead VaR and ESF for both short and long trading positions. In particular, the forecasting ability analysis points out that the FIAPARCH model under skewed Student distribution turns out to improve substantially the VaR and ESF forecasts. These results may have several potential implications for the market participants, financial institutions, and the government.