Job growth in early transition: Comparing two paths*

Small start‐up firms are the engine of job creation in early transition. We ask about differences in their growth across two different transition economies: Estonia, which experienced rapid destruction of pre‐existing firms, and the Czech Republic, which reduced the old sector gradually. We find that the majority of job growth corresponds to within‐industry reallocation. The within‐industry growth of small start‐up firms is similar in the two countries, in line with the convergence to Western industry firm‐size distributions. We also find similar patterns in the evolution of wage differentials between start‐ups and old firms and small differences in the extent of low‐wage employment in start‐ups across the two transition paths. JEL Classifications: J2, J3, J4, L1, O1, P2.     

The causes and consequences of sector‐level job flows in Poland*

We look at the determinants and consequences of job reallocation in the 22 2‐digit sectors of the manufacturing industry in Poland over the period 1995–99. We find that import competition and a competitive market structure (weak concentration) have a positive and significant effect on job reallocation. Moreover, higher job reallocation is associated with higher labour productivity growth in some specifications. This confirms implications from neo‐Schumpeterian growth models: one channel through which competition might positively affect growth is through the reallocation of scarce resources from declining firms to rising ones. JEL Classifications: F16, J24, J6, O3, P3.     

Introducing Time‐to‐Educate in a Job‐Search Model

Transition patterns from school to work differ considerably across OECD countries. Some countries exhibit high youth unemployment rates, which can be considered an indicator of the difficulty facing young people trying to integrate into the labour market. At the same time, education is a time‐consuming process, and enrolment and dropout decisions depend on expected duration of studies as well as on job prospects with and without completed degrees. One way to model entry into the labour market is by means of job‐search models, where the job arrival hazard is a key parameter in capturing the ease or difficulty in finding a job. Standard models of job search and education assume that skills can be upgraded instantaneously (and mostly in the form of on‐the‐job training) at a fixed cost. This paper models education as a time‐consuming process, a concept which we call time‐to‐educate, during which an individual faces the trade‐off between continuing education and taking up a job.     

Regional job-turnover and industrial policy. a note on a potential time pattern of regional industrial policies and their job effects - the case of the german city-state of bremen

Many regions have experienced long-run economic fluctuations generated by the life cycles of their dominant industrial clusters. During the downswings in the 1970s and 1980s, proactive structural policies were typically launched in German regions to combat job losses in their core clusters and to create new jobs in new industries. With respect to the German State of Bremen, this paper provides empirical evidence of: (1) a long-run regional downswing; (2) the potential job effects of proactive regional industrial policy programmes in terms of increasing regional employment, by safeguarding jobs in the regional core industries and creating new jobs in new growth industries; and (3) a time pattern in the job effects, which are related to the different generations of programmes.     

Organizational Culture,Leadership Behaviors,and Employee Attitude in Chinese SMEs＂ Empirical Evidence

This study examines the impact of organizational culture on leadership behaviors, as well as the influence of leadership behaviors on employee attitude in Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises （SMEs）. Based on previous researches, this study establishes a conceptual model that indicates the two types of influential relationship. Data are collected from 515 subordinates of 23 SMEs in Chengdu of Sichuan province. By using statistical methods, findings of this study are concluded. Directions for future research are also discussed.     

Managers’ Escalation Behavior in Equity Investment Decisions and the Role of Corporate Governance

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between free cash flows and escalation behavior in the long-term stock buying decisions for the firms listed in Taiwan. The main findings include: (1) Managers tend to exhibit the escalation behavior in the long-term equity investment. (2) There is a positive association between the level of free cash flows and the magnitude of managers’ behavioral escalation. (3) The corporate governance mechanisms play a contributory role in mitigating the escalation behavior. The evidence is robust across subsamples for electronic versus non-electronic industries, growth versus value firms, and loss versus gain firms.     

基于“空间失配”假设的居民就业障碍研究——以兰州市城关区城中村为例

"空间失配"假设自提出以来,其研究成果对国外城市就业政策、空间发展政策产生了相当大的影响,而我国该研究还处于起步阶段,且主要集中在理论研究方面.文章借鉴国外"空间失配"理论,通过大量的问卷调查,对兰州市城关区城中村就业问题中存在的空间障碍进行了研究.     

What Drives the Property Price-Trading Volume Correlation? Evidence from a Commercial Real Estate Market

The significant price-trading volume correlation found in the residential property market presents a challenge to the rational expectation hypothesis. Existing theories account for this fact with either capital market imperfection (down-payment effect or loss-aversion consideration) or imperfect information (search theoretic models). This paper employs data from a commercial real estate market, which face a different degree of severity of capital market constraint than the residential market, and thus provide an indirect but effective test for alternative theories. Policy implications are also discussed.     

时间压力下的注册会计师行为——来自一个全国性事务所的调查证据

审计判断是一个复杂的认知活动,对周围的环境非常敏感。在中国,时间压力作为影响审计绩效的环境因素,其重要性日益上升。目前有关时间压力的有限研究主要是针对外国审计市场背景进行的。通过对我国一个全国性事务所的调查,我们发现,近年来我国注册会计师面临的时间压力越来越大。时间压力阻碍了审计程序的实施,低报审计时间,降低了审计质量。     

Good News and Bad News: Search from Unknown Wage Offer Distributions

The largest market in national economies is the labor market. Labor market contracting is characterized by job search, often from unknown wage offer distributions. This paper reports experimental tests of finite horizon models of job search in which the wage offer distribution is unknown. Theoretically-optimal search from an unknown wage offer distribution can have the seemingly paradoxical property that some offers will be accepted that are lower than other offers that will be rejected in the same period of the search horizon. Thus the reservation wage property (or lowest acceptable wage path) may not exist. This can occur because an offer that is a priori relatively high (good news) can imply that it is highly probable that search is from a favorable distribution, and such an offer can look unattractive when it is an a posteriori relatively low offer from a favorable distribution (bad news). This paper reports results from experimental treatments for search from unknown distributions in which the reservation wage property does exist and treatments in which it does not exist. We find that the consistency of search behavior with search theory reported in earlier papers is robust to the presence or absence of the reservation wage property and to whether the draws come from known or unknown distributions.