The Union Relative Wage Effect for Academic Librarians

This note investigates the impact of labor unions on the starting salaries of academic librarians. Using data collected from members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and employing standard ordinary least squares (OLS) and seemingly unrelated regressions techniques, the union relative wage gap was estimated annually over the 1989–1998 time period. Three important results were found. First, unionized academic librarians received a positive and significant union wage premium throughout most of the decade studied. Second, this wage premium declined in magnitude over time following the trend in the economy as a whole. Lastly, by the end of the sample period, the wage effect had disappeared and was no longer significantly different from zero.     

Environmental Costing: A path to Implementation

Environmental strategies and their related costs have received little formal attention from Australian accountants. Yet, internationally as well as in Australia, green strategies and their related costs are now being recognised by a range of corporations. In this paper, international corporate examples are reviewed. Environmental cost categories and potential classifications and approaches for decision and control purposes are proposed. The paper offers recommendations for the initial development of environmental costing practices at the corporate level and argues for the importance of developing relevant cost management systems that support environmental strategies and management.     

BOTTOM SHEAR STRESS UNDER WAVE-CURRENT INTERACTION

The present work adopts the COHERENS-SWAN model developed by the first author through coupling three-dimensional hydrodynamic model （COHERENS） and third-generation wave model （SWAN）. Inside the COHERENS-SWAN, the SWAN is regarded as a subroutine and the time- and space-varying current velocity and surface elevation are obtained from the COHERENS. Wave-enhanced bottom shear stress, wave induced surface mixing length and wave dependent surface drag coefficient have been introduced into the COHERENS. Secondly, as wave-enhanced bottom shear stress （＂bottom shear stress＂ described as BSS sometimes in this article） is concerned, a modified bottom shear stress Grant and Madsen model which introduces random wave field is given and introduced to COHERENS-SWAN. COHERENS-SWAN is also adopted to simulate three-dimensional flow in the Yellow River Delta with wave-current co-existing. Four numerical experiments were given to study the effects of wave-current interaction on enhancing bottom shear stress. The simulated current velocities, wave height and wave period match well with field measurement data. The simulated significant wave height and wave period for the case with considering the effects of current can give better agreement with measurement data than the case without involving the effects of current. The introduction of random wave generates lower the bottom shear stress than the case without introducing it. There are obvious differences between bottom shear stress of two way interaction and one way interaction. Velocity field obtained by the COHERENS-SWAN is reasonable according to previous studies and measurements.     

NUMERICAL STUDY OF WAVE EFFECTS ON SURFACE WIND STRESS AND SURFACE MIXING LENGTH BY THREE-DIMENSIONAL CIRCULATION MODELING

1. INTRODUCTION Coastal and continental shelf regions are characterized by intensive interaction between wave and current. These regions are of great economic significance to mankind. Therefore, the modeling of wave and current as well as their mutual int…     

EFFICIENCY GAINS OF SYSTEM GMM AND MDE OVER INDIVIDUAL EQUATION ESTIMATION*

In the econometric literature it is known that, under certain conditions, estimating a system of equations together is more efficient than estimating each equation separately. This finding has been proved, however, only under the assumption of a known parametric form of heteroskedasticity (including homoskedasticity) or non‐random regressors/instruments. This note shows that an analogous finding holds for GMM under heteroskedasticity of unknown form and random regressors/instruments. Specifically, I provide a necessary condition for the efficiency gain of the system GMM over the single‐equation GMM. An analogous necessary condition for the efficiency gain is also shown to hold for minimum‐distance (or χ2) estimation (MDE).     

DO REAL INTEREST RATES REALLY CONTAIN A UNIT ROOT? MORE EVIDENCE FROM A BOOTSTRAP COVARIATE UNIT ROOT TEST

This paper re‐examines the empirical finding that international real interest rates usually have a unit root. This conclusion is put forth in Rapach and Weber (2004 ), using the Ng and Perron (2001 ) tests. We use Rudebusch's (1993 ) approach to construct the small sample distributions of the Ng and Perron tests, and calculate their asymptotic sizes, size‐adjusted powers and rejection rates. These numbers show that the lack of power in the Ng and Perron tests might account for the findings of Rapach and Weber (2004 ): that the unit root null cannot be rejected for most OECD countries. Size distortions are mild in the case of Ng and Perron tests for two series, but are serious for the Phillips and Perron Z‐test on inflation rates. We then apply a powerful covariate augmented Dickey–Fuller unit root test to examine the series for which stationarity cannot be determined with the Ng and Perron tests. The bootstrap technique is also used to control possible size distortions. In contrast to the results of Rapach and Weber (2004 ), the bootstrap covariate augmented Dickey–Fuller test yields striking evidence that real interest rates are stationary for 14 of 16 OECD countries, because nominal interest rates are stationary for the 14 countries, while inflation rates are stationary for all countries.