Cultural determinants of human capital accumulation: Evidence from the European Social Survey

Although economists commonly view the accumulation of human capital as a key driver of economic development, what drives cross-country differences in human capital accumulation remains poorly understood. I use an epidemiological approach involving second-generation migrants to test for a possible cultural gradient in individuals’ propensity towards human capital accumulation. Results indicate a strong relationship between country-of-origin culture and human capital accumulation and are robust to using years of education instead of individuals’ engagement in human capital accumulation as the dependent variable. Drawing on dimensions of cultural differences identified in culture frameworks developed by cross-cultural researchers, results further suggest that cultural emphasis on intellectual autonomy helps explain part of the observed differences in human capital accumulation. However, further work is needed to complete our understanding of the cultural roots of individuals’ propensity towards human capital accumulation.     

A multivariate time series analysis of energy consumption,real output and pollutant emissions in a developing economy: New evidence from Nepal

Mountain economies will have to play a central role in attaining the global pursuit of green economic growth as crucial bearers of ecosystems goods and services. However, these economies are not adequately represented in the development policy debates in spite of their fundamental importance towards global sustainable development. This study examines the inter relationships between energy consumption, output and carbon emissions in a developing mountainous economy using an augmented Vector Autoregression model. Time-series data over the period 1975–2013 is studied applying a multivariate framework using population and gross fixed capital formation as additional variables for Nepal. Testing for Granger causality between integrated variables based on asymptotic theory reveals a long-run unidirectional Granger causality running from GDP to energy consumption, and a unidirectional Granger causality running from carbon emissions to GDP. We suggest that the government of Nepal can address energy poverty by accelerating the adoption energy conservation policies such as rationing energy consumption and energy efficiency improvements to narrow the energy supply-demand gap. The opportunity to promote the uptake of decentralised off-grid renewable technologies in remote areas and the large scale development of hydropower at the national level also needs to be prioritized. Our results remain robust across different estimators and contributes to an emerging literature on the nexus relationships between energy consumption, income and carbon emissions in mountainous developing economies.     

Modelling distribution of aggregate expenditure on tourism

The aim of this article is to obtain a statistical distribution that describes the aggregate expenditure of tourists related to their length of stay at a given location. This distribution enables us to estimate two parameters simultaneously; one controls the length of stay and the other, the expense incurred. We propose two distribution models, for which closed-form expressions are obtained. Covariates are introduced in order to study the factors that affect the aggregate expenditure. The results obtained indicate that the models achieve a reasonably good fit, with and without covariates.     

New evidence on the historical growth of government in Europe: The role of labor costs

We document a robust positive correlation between the size of government and the labor share of income in data from European countries covering the period 1869–1975. Following Facchini et al. (2017), we interpret this correlation as evidence that labor costs drive public spending. The long-term increase in the labor share observed over this period explains half of the overall growth of central government. The relationship holds when the labor share is instrumented with movements in technological change at the frontier. When decomposing public spending, transfers, not intensive in labor, are the only component not associated with the labor share.     

PERFORMANCE‐BASED FEE CONTRACT AND RISK‐TAKING STRATEGY IN ASSET MANAGEMENT TOURNAMENT

This paper investigates how performance‐based fee (PBF) contracts affect strategic risk‐taking behaviours of fund managers in an asset management tournament. In the perfect equilibrium, managers with better mid‐year performance will hold the risky asset with a higher probability in the remaining of the year, compared to managers with poorer mid‐year performance. If the volume of the cash flow into the winner fund is contingent on its level of success, the winning fund will take a more aggressive approach. When the PBF contract pays more heed to relative performance against the benchmark, managers are more likely to adopt aggressive strategies.     

Divestitures,privatization and corporate performance in emerging markets

We use new firm‐level data to examine the effects of firm divestitures and privatization on corporate performance in a rapidly emerging market economy. Unlike the existing literature, we control for accompanying ownership changes and the fact that divestitures and ownership are potentially endogenous variables. We find that divestitures increase the firm's profitability but do not alter its scale of operations, while the effect of privatization depends on the resulting ownership structure – sometimes improving performance and sometimes bringing about decline. The effects of privatization are thus more nuanced than suggested in earlier studies. Methodologically, our study provides evidence that it is important to control for changes in ownership when analyzing divestitures and to control for endogeneity, selection and data attrition when analyzing the effects of divestitures and privatization.     

Firm-level determinants of tax evasion in transition economies

Business tax evasion is an important issue for governments. Yet the factors that determine business tax evasion have not been sufficiently examined in the literature in general, and in transition contexts in particular. To address this gap, this study uses the WB/EBRD Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) database with a sample of over 12,692 firms from 26 transition economies. Applying various modelling strategies, we argue that tax evasion is a function of firm-level and institutional-level variables. We contribute to the literature by providing robust evidence showing that the perceived tax burden has a positive impact on tax evasion. We also find that the tax evasive behaviour of firms is positively influenced by low trust in government and in the judicial system as well as by higher perceptions of corruption and higher compliance costs. We find that smaller firms, individual businesses and firms in sectors that are less visible to the tax administration are more likely to get involved in evasive behaviour. Overall, institutional factors play an important role in determining firms’ tax evasion behaviour in transition economies. This finding has important policy implications.     

Instrumental values

This paper studies identification of partial differences of nonseparable structural functions. A model is defined which admits structural functions exhibiting a degree of monotonicity with respect to a latent variate. The model identifies partial differences when there are instrumental values of covariates over which the latent variate exhibits a local quantile invariance, and a local order condition holds. The result is useful when covariates exhibit discrete variation, as arises often in practice, and when restricting latent variates and covariates to be statistically independent is unpalatable. The results are illustrated with data from the returns-to-schooling study of Angrist and Krueger [1991. Does compulsory schooling attendance affect schooling and earnings? Quarterly Journal of Economics 106, 979–1014].     

MONOPOLISTIC LOCATION CHOICE IN A TWO‐SIDED HOTELLING MODEL

We analyse the optimal location choice of a monopolistic firm that operates two arbitrarily located platforms on a two‐sided market. By extending the traditional Hotelling framework, we show that the optimal platform locations are equivalent to the one‐sided benchmark if both sides are either restricted to single‐ or multi‐homing. In the mixed case (one side single‐homes, the other one multi‐homes), the optimal platform locations are in line with the respective symmetric case. If the monopolist is restricted to choosing the same location on either side of the market, the optimal locations are determined by the relative profitability of the market sides.     

WTO框架下PPMs劳工贸易措施的合法性问题探析

发达国家一直试图将劳工标准与贸易挂钩,在将该问题多次试图纳入WTO议题未果的情况下,发达国家开始针对在产品生产过程和生产方法(PPMs)中侵犯劳工权利、不符合进口国劳工标准的产品进行限制,也就是采取单边PPMs劳工贸易措施,设置单边劳工贸易壁垒,主要针对这种PPMs劳工贸易措施在WTO框架下是否合法进行分析,探讨发达国家采取该措施是否有法律依据。