Does studying abroad enhance employability?

Over 200,000 European students study abroad under the Erasmus programme. It appears that studying abroad may impart skills which are helpful for professional careers after graduation. Approximately, 54% of European students report that participation in the Erasmus exchange programme helped them to obtain a first job; however, interestingly, those from Central and Eastern European countries report it much more often—in 73% of cases. The aim of this paper is to find out whether studying abroad enhances the employability of higher education graduates in Poland. Using the propensity score matching method and data from a nationwide tracer survey of Polish graduates, we find that Polish students who completed at least one semester of their studies abroad do not benefit in terms of a higher employment rate after graduation.     

Model-based control charts in phase 1 statistical process control

In this paper, a general method of constructing control charts for preliminary analysis of individual observations is presented, which is based on recursive score residuals. A simulation study shows that certain implementations of these charts are highly effective in detecting assignable causes.     

Are Venture Capitalists a Catalyst for Innovation?

In this paper we test two hypotheses concerning the presence of innovation in venture capital investments and the growth of innovative venture backed firms. To examine these hypotheses we considered sample of 37 Italian venture backed firms that went public on the Italian Stock Exchange between 1995 and 2004 and by a statistical matching procedure we picked 37 twin firms among the non‐venture backed IPOs for the same period. Our evidence shows that innovation is an important factor during the selection phase but once the investment is made, the company does not promote continued innovation and concentrates all efforts to improve other economic and managerial aspects.     

Does subsidised temporary employment get the unemployed back to work? Aneconometric analysis of two different schemes

Subsidised employment is an important tool of active labour market policies to improve the reemployment chances of the unemployed. Using unusually informative individual data from administrative records, we investigate the effects of two different schemes of subsidised temporary employment implemented in Switzerland: non-profit employment programmes (EP) and a subsidy for temporary jobs (TEMP) in private and public firms. Econometric matching methods show that TEMP is more successful than EP in getting the unemployed back to work. Compared to not participating in any programme, EP and TEMP are ineffective for unemployed who find jobs easily anyway or have a short unemployment spell. For potential and actual long-term unemployed, both programmes may have positive effects, but the effect of TEMP is larger.     

Pensions reforms,workforce ageing and firm-provided welfare

This paper investigates the impact of an exogenous increase in the legal retirement age on the firms’ propensity to provide welfare services voluntarily to their employees. To this purpose we exploit a unique information derived from the Rilevazione su Imprese e Lavoro (RIL), a survey conducted in 2015 on a large and representative sample of Italian firms. Applying different regression models we show that firms which were forced to give up previously planned hirings because of the Law 201/2011 (the so-called ‘Fornero pension reform’), increased the probability of providing welfare services at workplace. By referring to the sociological, human resource management and economic literature we then argue that a sudden increase in the legal retirement age may motivate the employers to establish welfare schemes as a way to cope with an ageing workforce. Our findings also hold when propensity score matching methods are used in order to control for sample selection issues.     

The Case of the Missing Pollution Haven Hypothesis

One particularly vexing puzzle for economists and policymakers over the past several decades concerns the empirical significance of the theoretically predicted pollution haven hypothesis. While neoclassical theory and conventional wisdom both surmise that local economies will suffer deleterious effects from stricter environmental regulations, empirical studies have largely failed to validate such claims. This study utilizes the method of matching to show that the impact of stricter regulation is heterogeneous spatially, varying systematically based on location-specific attributes. Previous studies that assume a homogenous response may therefore inadvertently mask the overall impact of more stringent regulations by pooling unaffected and affected regions.JEL Classification: Q25, Q28, H00, L51, R1The authors wish to thank to Michael Crew, Anthony Heyes, an anonymous referee, Werner Antweiler, Randy Becker, Wayne Gray, Shelby Gerking, Michael Greenstone, Vern Henderson, and Arik Levinson. Participants at various university seminars and conferences also lent useful insights to this line of research.     

城镇标准地块定位技术探讨

根据重庆市建立标定地价体系的科学实践．提出城镇标准地块空间定位的技术途径为：从分析土地级别内各定级单元土地质量空间分布规律或房地产市场价格空间分布规律入手，采用定级单元总分平衡法和房地产市场价格平衡法确定标准单元，依据功能特征评价成果将标准地块定位。     

Three Corrected Score Tests for Generalized Linear Models with Dispersion Covariates

We develop three corrected score tests for generalized linear models with dispersion covariates, thus generalizing the results of Cordeiro , Ferrari and Paula (1993) and Cribari-Neto and Ferrari (1995) . We present, in matrix notation, general formulae for the coefficients which define the corrected statistics. The formulae only require simple operations on matrices and can be used to obtain analytically closed-form corrections for score test statistics in a variety of special generalized linear models with dispersion covariates. They also have advantages for numerical purposes since our formulae are readily computable using a language supporting numerical linear algebra. Two examples, namely, iid sampling without covariates on the mean or dispersion parameter oand one-way classification models, are given. We also present some simulations where the three corrected tests perform better than the usual score test, the likelihood ratio test and its Bartlett corrected version. Finally, we present a numerical example for a data set discussed by Simonoff and Tsai (1994) .     

企业研究与开发绩效评价:现状分析及改进思路

由于研发活动固有的特点,企业研究与开发(以下也称研发或R&D)的绩效评价一直是理论和实践上的难题。通过分析影响企业研发绩效评价因素,探讨现行的企业绩效评价体系存在的问题,得出了可以利用平衡计分卡设计企业研发绩效评价指标体系的结论。     

基于平衡计分卡的项目管理绩效评价模型研究

传统的项目管理往往仅将其管理领域局限于项目与项目实施间的行为,缺乏与组织战略相互因应的结合。以项目为导向(Project-base)的组织中,通过员工之间的互相支持,资源共同分享的方式,使企业能够快速地应变不同的需求与变动,动态的调整项目的分配,从而强化企业的竞争优势。本文的研究目标是试图采用平衡计分卡的模式作为项目管理与组织战略结合的桥梁,摆脱传统上单纯以量化模式评估绩效的方式,而从多个层面针对项目管理的绩效作一个较为全面的探讨,期望能使项目管理的绩效与组织战略更加紧密结合。通过平衡计分卡四个层面的绩效评价,充分地分析组织整体与项目个别的绩效表现,提供管理人员快速发现问题与制定决策的依据。