Firm ownership and internal labour practices in a transition economy

One feature common to many post‐socialist transition economies is a relatively compressed wage structure in the state‐owned sector. We conjecture that this compressed wage structure creates weak incentives for work effort and worker skill acquisition and thus presents adverse consequences for the entire transition economy if a substantial portion of the labour force works in the state sector. We explore firm wage incentives and worker training, as well as other labour practices and outcomes, in a transition setting with matched firm and worker data collected in one of the largest provinces of Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City. The Vietnamese state sector exhibits a compressed wage distribution in relation to privately owned firms with foreign ownership. State wage practices stress tenure over worker productivity and their wage policies result in flatter wage–experience profiles and lower returns to education. The state work force is in greater need of formal training, a need that is in part met through direct government financing. In spite of the opportunities for government financed training and at least partly due to inefficient worker incentives, state firms, by certain measures, exhibit lower levels of labour productivity. The private sector comparison group to state firms for all of these findings is foreign owned firms. The internal labour practices of foreign firms are more consistent with a view of profit‐maximizing firms operating with no political constraints. This is not the case for Vietnamese de novo private firms that exhibit much more idiosyncratic behaviour and whose labour practices are often indistinguishable from state firms. The exact reasons for this remain a topic of on‐going research yet we conjecture that various private sector constraints, including limited access to formal capital, play an important role.     

浅析实现图书馆现代化的几个要素

图书馆现代化的主要内容是指用现代化的科学方法和手段实现图书馆组织的系统化、网络化，藏书结构、技术方法、服务手段的现代化，干部结构的合理化，人员的专业化，管理的科学化。其内容将随着科学技术的发展和人类的需求而不断改变和充实。     

The Information Content of Nonfinancial Performance Measures in the Airline Industry

This research extends the literature on nonfinancial performance measures (NFPMs) by assessing (1) the information content of a broader set of NFPMs and (2) whether NFPMs provide information not provided by financial performance measures (FPMs) from all previously identified FPM categories, rather than just earnings and book value. Specifically, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis results presented in this paper demonstrate that nineteen NFPMs of major airlines capture seven underlying constructs not captured by eighteen common FPMs. Additionally, this research develops reliable composite measures of the identified performance measure constructs, which prior research argues are superior to individual performance measures.     

Moore's Law and the Semiconductor Industry: A Vintage Model*

In this paper we develop a vintage model to gain a better understanding of the semiconductor industry and its role in recent U.S. productivity gains. Unlike previous work, in our model the observed price declines of individual chips are driven by the introduction of better vintages rather than by learning economies. Dominated chips, nonetheless, continue to be produced, for a time, due to sunk investments in chip‐specific production equipment. The model lends partial support to Jorgenson's hypothesis that an exogenous increase in Moore's Law could have generated the more rapid price declines, and faster productivity growth, seen after 1995.     

文化是生产力发服的内在动力

随着人类社会的发展,社会的文明程度越来越高,人们对文化的认识也越来越深刻.特别是文化与生产力之间的关系引起了人们的广泛关注.文化对生产力发展起着巨大的推动作用.     

经济增长、要素投入与发展战略选择——对我国经济增长的长期机制的实证分析

中国经济增长的长期机制问题一直以来都是理论界研究的热点问题。文章通过对1953—2004年与经济增长相关因素的统计数据的回归分析,并结合其他学者的研究成果,认为支撑我国经济增长的长期动力主要来自于要素投入,而要素投入的效果却与经济发展战略制定的一些非经济因素有关。     

Estimating the Impact of Transgenic Bt Cotton on West and Central Africa: A General Equilibrium Approach

West and Central Africa (WCA)’s cotton sector is experiencing rising production costs and lower yields, reversing decades of growth. Declining input use, soil fertility and inefficient chemical pest controls are contributing factors. We evaluate the potential impact of Bt cotton on WCA using a multiregion general equilibrium model and multicountry estimates of Bt-induced productivity. We find that Bt cotton raises growers’ returns, land value and welfare. Released labor from cotton is shifted to food crops hence reducing labor shortage constraints. Overall, results indicate that potential gross benefits from Bt cotton are substantial for WCA cotton sector, and that the economic costs of nonadoption are equally significant.     

INDUSTRIAL POLICY IN GREAT BRITAIN AND ITS EFFECT ON TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY IN MANUFACTURING PLANTS, 1990–1998

Industrial policy in any economy has a number of varying and occasionally conflicting objectives, but the overarching intention of the various grants, subsidies and support schemes, arguably, must be to improve the economic performance of the plants they assist directly. However, in the absence of counterfactual evidence, whether or not assistance does improve performance is hard to establish. In this paper, we consider the impact of two UK government industrial support schemes (Regional Selective Assistance and the Small Firm Merit Awards for Research and Technology) on UK manufacturing plant level total factor productivity in an attempt to answer the question, ‘did assistance make a difference?’     

论建国以来中国共产党的农业生产力发展观

建国以来,党的农业生产力发展观经历了探索、调整和完善的过程。第一代领导集体的农业生产力发展观偏重于农业制度的改革,进行了以集体组织下改革农业技术的实践,因忽视农民积极性和生产力系统的协调性,其实践效果差。第二、三代领导集体改变了党对农业的领导方式,高度重视农民积极性和生产力系统的协同性,形成了包括发挥农民积极性、现代工程和生物技术与传统农业技术相结合、市场农业和尊重自然规律为内容的农业生产力发展观。这是中国当代农业生产力发展的成功经验,也是党对传统农业重视天地人协调经验的继承。     

Analysing Perceived Downside Risk: the Component Value‐at‐Risk Framework

Multinational companies face increasing risks arising from external risk factors, e.g. exchange rates, interest rates and commodity prices, which they have learned to hedge using derivatives. However, despite increasing disclosure requirements, a firm's net risk profile may not be transparent to shareholders. We develop the ‘Component Value‐at‐Risk (VaR)’ framework for companies to identify the multi‐dimensional downside risk profile as perceived by shareholders. This framework allows for decomposing downside risk into components that are attributable to each of the underlying risk factors. The firm can compare this perceived VaR, including its composition and dynamics, to an internal VaR based on net exposures as it is known to the company. Any differences may lead to surprises at times of earnings announcements and thus constitute a litigation threat to the firm. It may reduce this information asymmetry through targeted communication efforts.