LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN THE LONG RUN: JAPAN, 1600–1909

This article examines long-term labour productivity change in Japan from the early seventeenth century to the nineteenth century. We constructed sectoral labour force estimates based on the methodology presented in a previous study, who provided a sectoral GDP series covering the Tokugawa period. Our results show the industrial structure in the Tokugawa period remained relatively stable in comparison with the economy after the Meiji Restoration. Nevertheless, the estimates of sectoral labour productivity suggest expansion of the market economy in Tokugawa Japan influenced the development of industrialisation after the Meiji Restoration.     

Implications of Exchange Rate Pass-Through and Nontradable Goods for International Policy Cooperation

This paper investigates the welfare consequences of international policy cooperation by simultaneously introducing the following three elements in a standard two-country general equilibrium model: (i) general degrees of exchange rate pass-through, (ii) nontradable goods and their sector-specific productivity shocks, and (iii) general weights on goods in Cobb–Douglas consumption indices. There are two channels for possible mutual welfare gains from policy cooperation: First, cooperation can compensate for insufficient changes in the terms of trade when the degree of exchange rate pass-through is intermediate. Second, countries can cooperate in reaction to shocks in the nontradable goods sectors. This second channel is revealed by deriving an analytical condition for welfare gains under full pass-through and this condition is characterized by the weights in the consumption indices and the variances of sector-specific productivity shocks. Numerical evaluation demonstrates that when the two countries are symmetric and equal weights on consumption goods are assumed, welfare gains from cooperation increase as symmetric pass-through elasticity increases, which implies that the second channel dominates the first, whose effect on welfare gains is nonmonotonic in pass-through elasticity.     

The Minimum Wage Law and Teenage Crime: Evidence From the US

What is the effect of minimum wage regulation on youth crime? Masanori Hashimoto, of Ohio State University, argues that in the USA the evidence suggests that the minimum wage causes both unemployment and teenage crime.     

An Analysis of Perceptions of Job Insecurity among White and Black Workers in the United States: 1977–2012

While objective measures indicate that the risk of job loss is higher for black workers than for white workers, there is little research on how what workers’ expectations of job loss differ by race. This study looks at how secure black and white workers are feeling about their jobs and how their perceptions of job insecurity have been affected by time trends and regional unemployment rates. I find that perceptions of job security of black male workers, older black workers, and black high school graduates have deteriorated relative to their white counterparts during the period 1977–2012. Among those who attended college, white workers’ perceived job insecurity has increased. Black blue-collar workers’ and construction workers’ perceptions of job insecurity also have increased relative to their white counterparts. Moreover, perceptions of job insecurity among several black groups, such as high school dropouts and old workers, are more sensitive to regional unemployment rates than their white counterparts.     

家乐福在中国市场的竞争力(上)--与世纪联华的比较分析

本文认为,家乐福在中国市场上取得成功的原因,首先要归功于公司内部富有战略构想力的企业家精神和高超的政治交涉力,使商店数量得以顺利扩展;其次要归功于家乐福的战略地位,作为大型店的发起者,它有效地利用其在各地市场中的垄断地位及世界零售业中地位所产生的期待购买量;其三,家乐福成功地削减了中国连锁经营模式未进入轨道前的购买费用及物流费用;其四,形成了具有顾客指向学习能力的商店零售组合.并成功地达到一定的顾客满意度。本文从零售格式和零售组合的角度,选择了具有代表性和可比性的家乐福南方店与世纪联华的体育馆店,对其经营状态进行了定量与定性的比较分析,认为家乐福在中国市场具有强大竞争力的原因除了具有先发者优势之外,还有一个最重要的原因就是该店在食品、服装及日用杂货卖场等特别重视“顾客指向”和“顾客的满意程度”,突出了“顾客就是上帝”这一商业最高原则。     

Interactive visualization of 3D mantle convection

The current availability of thousands of processors at many high performance computing centers has made it feasible to carry out, in near real time, interactive visualization of 3D mantle convection temperature fields, using grid configurations having 10–100 million unknowns. We will describe the technical details involved in carrying out this endeavor, using the facilities available at the Laboratory of Computational Science and Engineering (LCSE) at the University of Minnesota. These technical details involve the modification of a parallel mantle convection program, ACuTEMan; the usage of client–server socket based programs to transfer upwards of a terabyte of time series scientific model data using a local network; a rendering system containing multiple nodes; a high resolution PowerWall display, and the interactive visualization software, DSCVR. We have found that working in an interactive visualizastion mode allows for fast and efficient analysis of mantle convection results.     

Effect of agglomeration on technical efficiency of small and medium‐sized garment firms in Egypt

This study investigates the effect of agglomeration on technical efficiency of small and medium‐sized garment firms in Egypt. Using a sample of 502 firms, we estimated a translog stochastic frontier production function with inefficiency components. We also applied a switching regression model to address self‐selection in choice of agglomeration. Results confirm that agglomeration enhances technical efficiency of sampled firms through development of industrial linkages and accumulation of human capital. Given the increasing importance of cluster‐based development policies, we underscore the need to promote agglomeration of garment firms, and thereby foster forward and backward linkages to improve their efficiency and to develop global value chains.     

On the determinants of exporters' currency pricing: History vs. expectations

The purpose of this paper is to investigate why the choice of invoice currency under exchange rate uncertainty depends not only on expectations but also on history. The analysis is motivated by the fact that the US dollar has historically been the dominant vehicle currency in developing countries. The theoretical analysis is based on an open economy model of monopolistic competition. When the market is competitive enough, the exporting firms tend to set their prices not to deviate from those of the competitors. As a result, a coordination failure can lead the third currency to be a less efficient equilibrium invoice currency. The role of expectations is important in selecting the equilibrium in the static framework. However, in the dynamic model with staggered price-setting, the role of history becomes another key determinant of the equilibrium currency pricing. The role of history may dominate the role of expectations when the firms are myopic, particularly in the competitive local market. It also becomes dominant in the staggered price setting when a fraction of the new price setters are backward-looking. The result suggests the importance of history in explaining why the firm tends to choose the US dollar as vehicle currency. J. Japanese Int. Economies 20 (4) (2006) 548–568.     

Estimating noncooperative and cooperative models of bargaining: an empirical comparison

This paper examines the issue of model selection in studies of strategic situations. In particular, we compare estimation results from a noncooperative formulation of government formulation à la (Baron and Ferejohn in Am Poli Sci Rev 87:34–47, 1989) with those from two alternative cooperative formulations (Nash in Econometrica 18:155–162, 1950; Shapley and Shubik in Am Poli Sci Rev 48:787–792, 1954). Although the estimates of the ministerial ranking are similar, statistical testing suggests that the noncooperative formulation is best fitted to the observed data among the alternative models. This result implies that modeling the noncooperative structure in bargaining situations is crucially important at the risk of possibly misspecifying the details of the game.     

Factors affecting customers’ continued intentions to use Islamic banks

No study has concurrently verified the religious motives and attitudes that affected the customers’ continued intentions to use Islamic banks along with the importance of other factors and attributes associated with conventional banking services. This study examines factors affecting customers’ attitudes toward Islamic banks based on data obtained from interview surveys conducted in Jordan. The findings show that customers’ religious motives, their evaluations of a bank's compliance with Islamic law as an indication of the customers’ religious attitudes toward Islamic banks, and the ease of access to credit had a positive effect on the customers’ intentions to continue using Islamic banks. More specifically, the findings suggest that customers who continuously transact with Islamic banks more strongly emphasize religious attitudes, rather than credit constraints (such as the degree of access to credit) and religious motives. This study further reveals that religious attitudes, rather than mere religious motives, were the primary criterion for the customers’ continued intent to use Islamic banks, especially when considering the strong effect of their religious attitudes toward Islamic banks.