Political constraints to growth in an economic union

This paper studies the political economy of growth in an economic union such as the EU. In the spirit of Acemoglu, Aghion and Zilibotti [Acemoglu, D., Aghion, P. and Zilibotti, F., 2006a, Distance to frontier, selection and economic growth, Journal of the European Economic Association, 4:1, 37–74; Acemoglu, D., Aghion, P., and Zilibotti, F., 2006b, Growth, development and appropriate versus inappropriate institutions, mimeo MIT.], as the economy approaches the world technology frontier, structural reforms that increase competition in intermediate goods sectors are necessary to boost innovation and productivity growth. Reforms, however, raise the opposition of incumbents and, therefore, are politically difficult to implement. When there are important cross-border policy spillover effects, national governments are more easily captured by vested interests, as they fail to internalize the benefits of reforms on the rest of the union. In this situation, productivity growth may be sluggish and the economy can fail to converge to the frontier. On the other hand, when policy is chosen by a union government (or a collective body that takes into account union welfare), the internalization of spillovers raises the perceived benefit of reforms and, consequently, lowers the ability of lobbies to obtain high levels of protection.     

以发展性评价为导向,促进教师队伍发展和教学质量提高

在教育改革实践中,要想促进学生全面发展,首先需促进教师的发展。只有拥有了一支具有可持续发展能力的高素质的教师队伍,才能更好地落实学校的发展目标,从而满足人民群众对教育不断改革的要求。除了在办学思想、教育观念、管理体制方面突破创新外,要认真落实,扎实推进,这对于保障教学质量的提高和创新人才培养具有重要作用。     

高职院校高等数学师资队伍评价标准研究

高等数学在职业教育的人才培养过程中,发挥着重要的作用。然而在职业教育不断发展的过程中,也有一些值得关注的问题。即在师资队伍评价方面,目前还没有一个有效的、易操作的师资队伍评价标准。本文结合工作实践,研究了高职教育师资队伍评价标准。     

Establishing Collaborative Business Education Programs in China

ABSTRACT

American universities have a valuable product for export to China, a world-class business education. Currently, the demand for Western-style business education far exceeds the supply. The undergraduate university system in China offers an excellent, though under-utilized, venue for providing Western-style business education to large numbers of China's next-generation business leaders. This paper describes the official procedures for establishing joint business education programs in Shanghai as well as the benefits and challenges of international collaboration.     

Transitional Change in Poland

No abstract available for this article.     

基层工会组织开展“创先争优”活动存在的问题与对策研究

文章通过对基层工会组织开展"创先争优"活动存在的问题进行梳理、归类、分析,提出了相应的对策和建议,具有一定的参考意义。     

Technological innovations in the Indian banking industry: the late bloomer

Given that technological innovations in the banking sector in industrialised countries have been shown to increase productivity of this industry around the world, then why did India shy away from adopting this technology until the 1990s? Why has India been a late adopter of technology in the banking industry when it could have reaped the benefits from the existing R&D expertise developed by innovators and early adopters? This article charts out the path of technological innovation in the Indian banking industry post-economic liberalisation (1991-2) and identifies initial conditions in terms of competitive environment and regulatory pressures that have contributed to the diffusion of these innovations. The article highlights the role of labour unions in public sector banks and their initial opposition to technological adoption. The empirical analysis demonstrates the superior performance of the early adopters of technology (private sector and foreign banks) as measured by productivity, returns on equity, and market share, as compared to the late or passive adopters (public sector banks).     

Why did UK manufacturing profitability rise over the 1980s?

Profitability in UK manufacturing collapsed in the early 1980s, but then recovered to 1970s levels. To account for the changes in profits we propose a series of extensions of the widely-used Cowling and Waterson (1976) model. Our extensions incorporate demand shocks, varying competition and collusion, and the role of unions. The resulting model encompasses Cowling/Waterson, the Kreps and Scheinkman (1983) varying competition model and the Green and Porter (1984) and Rotemberg and Saloner (1986) varying collusion models. Using a panel of 53 UK industries, 1973–1986 we estimate the encompassing model by generalised methods of moments/instrumental variables. Our major findings are: (a) there is no substantial contribution to changes in aggregate profitability from the batting average effect of movements between sectors; (b) the collapse of profits in the early 1980s was mainly driven by the collapse in demand; (c) the fall in union density in the 1980s has increased profitability despite a fall in concentration. We also find tentative evidence suggesting that collusion is pro-cyclical as in Green and Porter (1984).For very useful comments I thank Josef Falkinger, Paul Geroski and David Audretsch. I thank Chris Martin for letting me use much of our joint work and Ian Small for the data.     

The growth of US credit unions

The growth of US credit unions during the 1990s is investigated empirically, using univariate and multivariate cross sectional and panel estimation techniques. Univariate tests of the law of proportionate effect suggest that in general large credit unions grew faster than their smaller counterparts. On average credit unions with above-average growth in one period tended to experience below-average growth in the next. Smaller credit unions tended to have more variable growth than large ones. While credit unions share a common co-operative philosophy, they differ in terms of age profile, scope for membership growth, charter type and financial structure and performance. In estimations of a multivariate growth model, most of these characteristics are found to have a significant influence on the size-growth relationship. While large state chartered credit unions grew faster than their smaller counterparts, the reverse was true for federally chartered credit unions. In general, if larger credit unions grew faster than smaller ones, they tended to do so for specific reasons: because their charters were less restrictive, because they were more efficient, or because they had a financial structure that was more conducive to growth. Therefore credit union growth was not ‘random', but highly systematic.     

Do credit unions use their tax advantage to benefit members? Evidence from a cost function

This paper examines whether the credit union income tax subsidy is passed along to members or consumed by managers. To that end, we estimate a translog cost function for credit unions and mutual thrifts that is tailored to the unique objectives of mutually owned depository institutions. We find that credit unions with residential common bonds have higher costs than mutual thrifts, but single common bond occupational and associational credit unions are more cost efficient. Thus, it appears that residential credit unions engage in expense preference behavior and hence redirect some portion of their tax benefit away from members.