The factory system in the British industrial revolution: A complementarity thesis

This paper offers an explanation for the rise of the factory system in Britain during the Industrial Revolution (1770-1850) based on the concept of complementarity: Investment in machinery, process supervision, and improved quality control formed a cluster of complementary activities in which adopting any one increased the marginal return to also adopting the others. Further, factory owners introduced process supervision not only to increase work effort, but also to balance worker incentives among production, quality control, and asset maintenance tasks. To test this hypothesis, I have constructed a new data set from firm studies and archival records. Measures of firms’ adoption of the activities are positively correlated in the cross-section of firms, providing evidence in favor of the complementarity hypothesis.     

110～220kV输电线路设计要点分析

社会经济的发展促进了电力行业的改革进步,早期的输电线路已经难以满足高负荷的用电需求。110～220 kV输电线路是电力系统中重要的电力传输装置,对我国现代社会供电运行有着很大的影响。在设计输电线路时应该考虑到多个方面的问题,文章从安全性能、在线监测、杆塔施工等方面进行设计分析。     

提高关口电能计量装置准确度技术分析

随着电力体制的改革和电力工业的发展,发电企业用于结算电量的电能表由发电机前移至主变出口最终前移至线路出口关口电能表,就要求关口电能计量装置的准确度愈来愈高。本文针对大唐珲春发电厂220千伏系统二期关口电能计量装置误差产生的原因进行分析,发现影响关口电能表准确度的各项因素,制定解决方案逐步进行实施,消除这些不利因素对关口电能表的影响,提高关口电能计量装置准确度,希望能起到借鉴作用。     

MIL-STD 188-220C协议中的NAD算法

M IL-STD 188-220C是军用分组无线电C4I系统之间的互操作标准。协议的流量控制采用5种不同的网络访问延迟(Network Access Delay,NAD)算法实现。为解决不同NAD算法之间如何选择的问题,基于战术互联网应用环境,采用了网络仿真的方法,对协议进行了分析比较,在信道吞吐量、端到端时延、对信息优先级的支持、节点公平性和实现复杂性等方面,得出了不同NAD算法的性能和特点。这些结论对于协议的应用和改进都有一定的参考意义。     

220kV电力施工现场常见问题分析与处理

220kV电力施工现场存在着诸多问题,也潜藏着一定危险因素。为最大限度地减少人身及设备等的损害,我们要认真分析电力施工现场存在的问题,并对这些问题进行科学合理的处理,有效防止事故进一步扩大。本文对220kV电力施工现场常见的问题及应急处理措施进行了具体分析。     

浅析某220kV变电站母线相继故障的继电保护动作

为了保证变电站以及整个电力系统的正常运行,变电站的继电保护装置要及时准确地找到问题并切除故障。本文通过介绍某一起比较罕见的变电站母线事故,对故障后的继电保护动作进行分析。     

Seasonal rural labor markets and their relevance to policy analyses in developing countries

Seasonality is a salient feature of rural livelihoods and particularly within agriculture the demand for labor varies with the seasons and weather. In low-income countries, agriculture employs almost two-thirds of the labor force and incomes from labor are a major determinant of welfare. Therefore, an appropriate model representation of rural labor markets is critical when analyzing agricultural and food policies. Economy-wide models are commonly used for ex-ante policy analysis, but have so far ignored the influence of seasonality, implicitly assuming separability of seasonal labor demand and supply. This study relaxes that assumption using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model calibrated to the Bhutanese economy as an illustrative case. Using model setups with and without seasonal labor markets, a cereal export ban of India is simulated leading to higher import prices for Bhutan. Results demonstrate that neglecting the influence of seasons on rural labor markets systematically biases model results. Assuming homogeneity of labor units, i.e., allowing substitution across seasons, understates the impacts of policy changes on rural wage rates, distorts households' labor-leisure trade-off decisions and overstates agricultural supply response. Given the widespread use of economy-wide models, the results are important for understanding the implications of domestic and global policy changes for agriculture and welfare in developing economies.     

Teachers and politics

I find that self-selection into teacher training programs in Germany is co-determined with ideology. Incoming teacher-trainees are more left-wing in ideology and political preferences than the average incoming university student. I find also that teacher training programs exert a socialization effect: as compared to the average student, teacher trainees’ views are reinforced and they become more left-wing as they progress in their studies. In a third step, I use the German Socio-Economic Panel to compare tenured teachers’ political attitudes with other university graduates and other civil servants, and find that tenured teachers are more left-wing than the average in the respective reference groups. I consider possible explanations for the left-wing orientation of teachers in the German educational system and implications of indoctrination and imbalance of views.     

The zero-information-limit condition and spurious inference in weakly identified models

In many econometric models the asymptotic variance of a parameter estimate depends on the value of another structural parameter in such a way that the data contain little information about the former when the latter is close to a critical value. This paper introduces the zero-information-limit-condition (ZILC) to identify such models where ‘weak identification’ leads to spurious inference. We find that standard errors tend to be underestimated in these cases, but the size of the asymptotic t-test may either be too great (the intuitive case emphasized in the ‘weak instrument’ literature) or too small as in two cases illustrated here.     

Do better institutions offset the adverse effect of a financial crisis on investment? Evidence from East Asia

We extend the neoclassical investment theory to capture the deviation of current institutional quality from its ideal level. We show that an improvement in institutions increases the speed of adjustment towards desired capital stock and the marginal product of capital and hence enhances the investment demand. Next, we apply our theoretical model to East Asia. Using Generalized Method of Moments, we estimate a dynamic panel data model to investigate the effect of alternate measures of institutional quality on investment dynamics in this region. Our findings underline the role of institutions as a deep determinant of investment. We also conclude that the East Asian countries with better institutional quality are less prone to the adverse effects of financial crises on their fixed capital formation. Our results are robust to the estimation methods and changes in institutional measures and hence might have important policy implication for policymakers and investors in East Asia.