Contagious diseases and tourism: a systematic review based on bibliometric and content analysis methods

Quality & Quantity - The present study examines the existing knowledge and intellectual structure on contagious diseases and tourism to map the development of the concept through collaborative...     

Price Dynamics in a Vertical Sector: The Case of Butter

We develop a reduced-form model of price transmission in a vertical sector, allowing for refined asymmetric, contemporaneous and lagged, own and cross-price effects under time-varying volatility. The model is used to investigate the wholesale-retail price dynamics in the U.S. butter market. The analysis documents the nature of nonlinear price dynamics in a vertical sector. It finds strong evidence of asymmetric retail price responses, both in the short term and the longer term, but only weak evidence of asymmetric wholesale price responses. Asymmetric retail responses play a major role in generating a skewed distribution of butter prices. The empirical results indicate the presence of imperfect competition at the retail level.     

Labor Regulations,Employment and Wages: Evidence from India's Apparel Sector

While India is among the world's largest producers and exporters of apparel products, the sector has not performed to its potential. This study analyzes why this might be so from the perspective of the structure of production in the sector, the most striking aspect of which is a firm size distribution heavily dominated by small firms. Using nationally representative firm‐level and labor force survey data, we argue that the dominance of firms operating at scales too small to apply modern production and management technologies is one proximate reason for India's relative underperformance. Further, we note that India's labor regulations and the associated enforcement regime are important policy drivers of Indian firms' tendency to avoid placing “too many workers under one roof”.     

Caveat Emptor: Abolishing Public Measurements, Standardizing Quantities, and Enhancing Market Transparency in the London Coal Trade c1830

This article evaluates efforts to standardize quantities inthe London coal trade c1830, and traces the end of the publicmeasurement system first introduced in the fourteenth century.Increasing traffic in coal, reduction of taxes on the commodity,inefficient public meters, etc., contributed to the demise ofpublic measurements. This outcome was the result of extensivenegotiations between merchants, the various levels of statebureaucracy, and the parliament. Switching measurement standardswas difficult, if not costly, to coordinate. Abolishing publicmeasurements and switching from volume to weight measurementswas part of the efforts to strengthen governance along the commoditychain, secure property rights by making quantities predictableand alter a mechanism that powerful merchants considered hadbecome inappropriate.     

Why do diplomas pay? An expanded Mincerian framework applied to Mexico

We compare four explanations for the value of diplomas, each of which has implications for unemployment and wage variation amongst graduates, most of which have not previously been tested for when seeking to explain the effects of diplomas. We test for these implications using a refined econometric framework, exploiting idiosyncrasies in Mexican labour market and educational institutions. Premiums in Mexico appear to result from diplomas tied to jobs with downwards rigid wages?–?an uncommon but simple explanation. The standard explanations, including screening, are not suggested by Mexican data. Our results illuminate how labour markets segmented by diplomas clear. This depends upon the nature of the labour market rigidities exactly as predicted by neoclassical theory.     

Where have All the Educated Workers Gone? Services and Wage Inequality in Three Asian Economies

The wage returns to college have risen relative to those to secondary education in many developing economies. In India, the Philippines and Thailand, this is related to the expansion of services employment. We show this using decompositions connecting shifts in the returns to education to changing job opportunities. High‐skill services employment grew slowly while relative demand in the sector shifted from secondary to college graduates, pushing workers with secondary education into low‐skill intensive services. These polarizing trends in services employment account for the growing convexity of the Mincerian wage profile, and may constrain governments seeking to use educational expansion to alter the wage distribution.