Against a General Theory of Populism: The Case of East-Central Europe

Intereconomics - Social science, like all other sciences, is supposed to explore the substance below the surface of things. However, populism discourse in general is stuck on the surface, focusing...     

Instrumental measurement of the cognitive and emotional background of deception

Quality & Quantity - The aim of this study is to instrumentally explore the cognitive and emotional load behind deception. According to literature, the cognitive and emotional load comprises of...     

Policy Dimensions of Progressive Institutional Change: Lessons from China’s Construction of a Socialist Market Economy

Abstract:

Through a comprehensive review of the progressive institutional change (PIC) literature, I first discuss four possible trajectories of PIC by considering the forces of societal reaction that might frame the path, as well as the scale and scope of the changes. Thus, I pose four questions that need to be asked when related policies are formulated for PIC. To illustrate this method, I scrutinize the evidence from the construction of a socialist market economy by the Chinese government since the 1980s and argue that related policies have successfully promoted PIC from three dimensions: (1) curbing potential conflicts with power groups; (2) promoting a sense of awareness among stakeholders; and (3) minimizing disturbances to the community. Actually, the related changes demonstrate a dynamic “displacement process” for PICs. Despite the success of this sociosystem, it is found that the sustaining of PIC which requires policy factors that enhance instrumental efficiency in the Chinese context will serve as a challenge to the Chinese government ahead.     

Evidence of different models of socially responsible HRM in Europe

Socially responsible human resource management (SR‐HRM) is becoming increasingly important for academics and managers. The interface between HRM and corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the subject of analysis in this article. It adopts a contextual perspective to analyze whether the institutional context influences the implementation of socially responsible HRM (SR‐HRM). Considering the differences in the national institutional contexts across Europe, this study explores the different models of SR‐HRM in that region. The research is focused on a sample of 153 companies headquartered in Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The findings evidence the influence exerted by the national institutional context on the implementation of SR‐HRM. Differences among country clusters suggest the existence of different models of SR‐HRM in Europe. However, these models do not correspond to the blocks on HRM or on CSR identified by the literature but instead provide a novel categorization.     

The evolution of world trade from 1995 to 2014: A network approach

This paper employs network analysis to study world trade from 1995 to 2014. We focus on the main connective features of the world trade network (WTN) and their dynamics. Results suggest that countries’ efforts to attain the benefits of trade have resulted in an intertwined network that is increasingly dense, reciprocal, and clustered. However, these features do not correspond to a linear aggregation of the characteristics of its constituents (trade sectors). Trade linkages are distributed homogeneously among countries, but their intensity (i.e. their value) is highly concentrated in a small set of countries. The main connective features of the WTN were not affected by the 2007–2008 international financial crisis. However, we find that the crisis marks a turning point in the evolution of the WTN from a two-group (led by the US and Germany) to a three-group (led by the US, Germany, and China) hierarchical structure.     

Bank market power and the intensity of borrower discouragement: analysis of SMEs across developed and developing European countries

Small Business Economics - This paper analyzes the effect of bank market power on the financial constraints of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the study of borrower...     

Tax-benefit systems and differences in aggregate labour force participation: Comparative evidence from the Czech Republic and Hungary

This paper investigates the extent to which cross-country differences in aggregate participation rates can be explained by differences in tax-benefit systems. We take the example of two countries, the Czech Republic and Hungary, which – despite a lot of similarities – differ markedly in labour force participation rates. Using comparable individual-level labour supply estimates, we simulate how the aggregate participation rate would change in one country if the other country’s tax and social welfare system were adopted. The estimation results for the two countries are quite similar, suggesting that individual preferences are essentially identical in the two countries. The simulation results show that about one-third of the difference in the participation rates of the 15–74 year-old population and more than two-thirds of the participation of the prime-age population can be explained by differences in the tax-benefit systems.     

A city of trades: Spanish and Italian immigrants in late-nineteenth-century Buenos Aires,Argentina

The city of Buenos Aires in the 1890s is an extreme case in immigration history since the native workers accounted for less than one-third of the labour force. In this paper, we look at the labour market performance of Argentineans vis-à-vis the largest two immigrant groups, Italians and the Spaniards. We find that, on average, Argentineans enjoyed higher wages, but workers specialised in particular occupations by nationality. Immigrants clustered in occupations with lower salaries. Despite higher literacy levels and the language advantage, Spaniards did not outperform Italians in earnings. Ethnic networks facilitated the integration of immigrants into the host society and played a role in the occupation selection of immigrants. Our results suggest that Italian prosperity in Buenos Aires was not based on superior earnings or skills but on older and powerful networks.     

Sales forecasting in financial distribution: a comparison of quantitative forecasting methods

This paper deals with the issue of forecastability of sales activities of independent financial advisers (agents). Employing the most common quantitative methods on a diverse sample of timelines from multiple advisory companies, we have found that under most settings, these methods offer sub-par performance with high relative errors and no statistical differences between them. When a more granular approach is applied (reflecting sales unit size), ARIMA and the simple moving average emerge as significantly less accurate. This outcome is true for all sales units regardless of their size, when relative error is concerned. Thus, our analysis confirms the difficult forecastability of financial sales, speaking against the utilisation of more sophisticated forecasting methods, which mostly fail when compared to their much simpler and less costly counterparts.

     

Employee share ownership in a unionised duopoly

Profit sharing schemes have been analysed assuming Cournot competition and decentralised wage negotiations, and it has been found that firms share profits in equilibrium. This paper analyses a different remuneration system: employee share ownership. We find that whether firms choose to share ownership or not depends on both the type of competition in the product market and the way in which workers organise to negotiate wages. If wage setting is decentralised, under duopolistic Cournot competition both firms share ownership. If wage setting is centralised, only one firm shares ownership if the degree to which goods are substitutes takes an intermediate value; otherwise, the two firms share ownership. In this case, if the union sets the same wage for all workers neither firm shares ownership. Therefore, centralised wage setting discourages share ownership. Finally, under Bertrand competition neither firm shares ownership regardless of how workers are organised to negotiate wages.