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on Business Economics |
| By: | Belke, Ansgar (University of Hohenheim and IZA Bonn); Heine, Jens M. (zeb/rolfes.schierenbeck.associates) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the degree of correlation of EU regional employment cycles and attempts to show whether these cycles reflect changing patterns of specialisation. By focusing on the regional level and by employing three different indicators of similarity of sectoral structure, it improves on existing studies. A dynamic panel data model is estimated pairs of regions by within groups, i.e., by a standard fixed effects estimator. Special attention is paid to capture the rich dynamics which are typical of employment data. The key finding is that employment growth is more synchronised when regions look alike in their sectoral structure. |
| Keywords: | regional employment, European Union, regional business cycles, specialisation, synchronicity |
| JEL: | E32 F15 R23 |
| Date: | 2004–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1439&r=bec |
| By: | Michael Fritsch; Pamela Mueller |
| Abstract: | We investigate regional differences in the level and the development of regional new business formation activity. There is a pronounced variance of start-up rates across the regions. The level of regional new firm formation is rather path-dependent so that changes are relatively small. The main factors determining the level of regional start-ups are innovation and entrepreneurship. These factors also seem to be responsible for changes in the level of regional new business formation. In addition, unemployment plays a role. Steering innovation and creating an entrepreneurial atmosphere could be an appropriate starting point for policy measures that try to promote start-ups. Our empirical evidence strongly suggests that such measures may have significant effect only in the long run. |
| Keywords: | New businesses, entrepreneurship, growth regimes, time lags |
| JEL: | M13 O1 O18 R11 |
| Date: | 2005–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esi:egpdis:2005-02&r=bec |
| By: | Jonathan Reuter (University of Oregon. Lundquist College of Business); Eric Zitzewitz (Stanford GSB) |
| Abstract: | We use mutual fund recommendations to test whether editorial content is independent from advertisers’ influence in the financial media. We find that major personal finance magazines (Money, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, and SmartMoney) are more likely to recommend funds from families that have advertised within their pages in the past, controlling for fund characteristics like expenses, past returns and the overall levels of advertising. We find little evidence of a similar relationship for mentions in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Positive media mentions in both newspapers and magazines are associated with significant future inflows into the fund while advertising expenditures are not. Therefore, if we interpret our coefficients causally, a large share of the benefit of advertising in our sample of personal finance magazines comes via the apparent content bias. The welfare implications of this apparent bias are unclear, however, since our tests suggest that bias does not directly lead publications to recommend funds with significantly lower future returns than they might have recommended in the absence of any bias. In selecting funds to recommend, magazines overweight past returns relative to expenses, and as a group their recommendations do not outperform even an equal- weighted average of their peers. Nevertheless, this approach leaves magazines with large numbers of funds with high past returns from which to select, and so bias towards advertisers can be accommodated without significantly reducing readers’ future returns. Interestingly, the recommendations of Consumer Reports, which does not accept advertising, have future returns comparable to or below those of the publications which accept do advertising. |
| Keywords: | mutual fund recommendations |
| JEL: | G11 G23 L82 D83 |
| Date: | 2005–01–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwpfi:0501003&r=bec |
| By: | Belke, Ansgar (University of Hohenheim and IZA Bonn); Schaal, Andreas (University of Hohenheim) |
| Abstract: | Anglo-Saxon countries have been successful in the 1990s concerning labor market performance compared to the former role models Germany and Japan. This reversal in relative economic performance might be related to idiosyncracies in financial markets with bank-based financial markets as in Germany and Japan being possibly inferior to stockmarket based financial markets in turbulent times and when approaching the economic frontier. A cleavage is related to venture capital markets which are flourishing on Anglo- Saxon but not on German type financial markets. Venture capital is crucial for financing structural change, new firms and innovations and therefore possibly also nowadays for employment growth. |
| Keywords: | labor markets, venture capital, unemployment, new economy, panel data analysis |
| JEL: | E22 E24 E44 G24 G32 |
| Date: | 2004–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1447&r=bec |
| By: | Petri Böckerman (Labour Institute for Economic Research); Pekka Ilmakunnas (Helsinki School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the role of adverse working conditions in the determination of individual wages and overall job satisfaction in the Finnish labour market. The potential influence of adverse working conditions on self-reported fairness of pay at the workplace is considered as an alternative, indirect measure of job satisfaction. The results show that working conditions have a very minor role in the determination of individual wages in the Finnish labour market. In contrast, adverse working conditions substantially increase the level of job dissatisfaction and the perception of unfairness of pay at the workplace. |
| Keywords: | compensating wage differentials, job satisfaction, working conditions |
| JEL: | J28 J31 |
| Date: | 2005–01–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwpla:0501001&r=bec |
| By: | Severin Borenstein (E.T. Grether Professor of Business & Public Policy, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley) |
| Abstract: | Between 1995 and 2004, I find that airline prices fell more than 20% adjusted for inflation. I also show that premia at hub airports declined and that there is now substantially less disparity between the cheaper and more expensive airports than there was a decade ago. Still, I find that prices remain quite high at a few dominated airports. |
| Keywords: | Airline Competition, Airline Hubs, Price Indices |
| JEL: | L13 L93 E31 |
| Date: | 2005–01–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwpma:0501006&r=bec |
| By: | Jörg Lingens (Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Economics, University of Kassel) |
| Abstract: | In This paper we integrate union wage bargaining into a model in which agents endogenously choose wether they want to invest in education or not. With this we take up a serious drawback in the existing literature on growth an unionisation, namely the assumption that the level of high-skilled labour is exogenously given. The impact of unionisation is that on the one hand high-skilled supply decreases, because with a higher low-skilled wage, the incentive to invest in education decreases. On the other hand high-skilled demand decreases, since investing in R&D decreases with lower production and, hence with less low-skilled employment. The interesting point is that due to a capitalisation effect, the high-skilled supply curve is U-shaped. With this the economy is characterised by multiple equilibria and the net effect of union wage bargaining depends on the equilibrium the economy starts from. The rate of growth could decrease as well as it could increase. |
| Keywords: | Labour Unions, Unemployment, Growth, Skill Formation |
| JEL: | O4 J5 |
| Date: | 2003–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kas:wpaper:45/03&r=bec |
| By: | Tricia Gladden (Department of Economics, University of Missouri-Columbia); Christopher Taber (Department of Economics and Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University) |
| Abstract: | We use a correlated random e ects model to estimate the relationship between wage levels and wage growth. Our goal is to estimate the covariance between the permanent component of wages and a random coefficient on experience. We estimate models using both potential experience and actual experience. Actual experience is allowed to be arbitrarily correlated with both the permanant component of wages and the random component on experience. Our estimates of the relationship vary across specifications from small and insignicant negative effects to moderately sized and statistically significant negative effects. Consider a worker who earns approximately 50% less than a median worker early in life. We estimate that this individual will experience faster wage growth later in life ranging from about zero to one percentage point per year. Contrary to the popular perception, wage growth among low skill workers appears to be at least as high as that for a medium skilled worker. |
| JEL: | J31 J24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:umc:wpaper:0304&r=bec |