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on Transition Economics |
| By: | Irina Denisova (CEFIR at the New Economic School); Markus Eller (Oesterreichische Nationalbank); Timothy Frye (Columbia University and the Harriman Institute); Ekaterina Zhuravskaya (New Economic School, Paris School of Economics, and EHESS) |
| Abstract: | A 2006 survey of 28,000 individuals in 28 post-communist countries reveals overwhelming support for revising privatization, but also that most respondents prefer to leave firms in private hands. We test whether individuals support revising privatization primarily due to a preference for state property or due to concerns about the legitimacy of privatization. We find that a lack of human capital and privately owned assets affects the support for revising privatization primarily via a preference for state property over private property; whereas transition-related hardships influence support for revising privatization via both a preference for state property and concerns about the illegitimacy of privatization. These results suggest the value of analyses that not only link respondent traits with support for policy, but that also probe the motivations that underpin this support. |
| Keywords: | privatization, revision, nationalization, property rights, demand for property rights, legitimacy of property rights, transition |
| Date: | 2010–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cfr:cefirw:w0143&r=tra |
| By: | Zdzienicka, Aleksandra |
| Abstract: | The aim of the paper is to re-assess the bank credit development in 11 Central and Eastern European countries and to provide new estimates of the credit-to-GDP ratio equilibrium level. Using filtering methods and dynamic panel estimations, our results suggest an “excessive” credit development for most of the studied economies until 2007. After this period, while credit has continued to remain excessive in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, it has decelerated in the other countries. However, while the results suggest a possibility of “credit crunch” in the Baltic republics and, to a less extent, in Croatia, credit deceleration may lead to “soft landing” for the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovenia. |
| Keywords: | Bank Credit; Dynamic Panel; CEECs |
| JEL: | G2 C2 |
| Date: | 2010–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:22692&r=tra |
| By: | Gregory C. Chow (Princeton University) |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews the basic laws and policies of the Chinese government on environmental problems and discusses the issues in policy implementation, the prospect of solving the environmental problems in the future and some recent successes in the development of alternative energy and in controlling pollution. It also includes two proposals for improving the regulation of industrial pollution in China and for controlling carbon emission in the world. |
| Keywords: | China, environmental policy, environmental problems, pollution |
| JEL: | D60 F18 O53 Q52 Q56 |
| Date: | 2010–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pri:cepsud:1221&r=tra |
| By: | Todo, Yasuyuki (Asian Development Bank Institute); Zhang, Weiying (Asian Development Bank Institute); Zhou, Li-An (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | This paper employs a firm-level panel data set for a high-tech cluster in the People's Republic of China to examine knowledge spillovers from multinational enterprises (MNEs) to domestic firms, focusing on the role of MNEs' employment of educated workers. We find that knowledge within MNEs spills over to domestic firms in the same industry through MNEs' employment of workers with graduate-level or overseas education. We also find that Japanese MNEs contribute less to knowledge spillovers than United States MNEs. This is most likely due to the fact that Japanese MNEs in the People's Republic of China do not employ as much educated labor. |
| Keywords: | knowledge spillovers; foreign direct investment; educated labor; the peoples republic of china |
| JEL: | F23 O12 O30 |
| Date: | 2009–12–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0174&r=tra |
| By: | Lu, Ming (Asian Development Bank Institute); Gao, Hong (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | The development path that the People's Republic of China (PRC) has been following during the past thirty years has led to both internal and external economic imbalances, and is now greatly challenged by the global crisis. This unbalanced growth path was primarily a result of the PRC's labor market reform which took the years of the mid-1990s as its turning point. Before the mid-1990s, the scale of rural-to-urban migration was limited, but it has grown dramatically since then. 1996 also saw drastic employment restructuring in urban areas of the PRC. Labor market reform, accompanied by the foreign exchange system reform in 1994, confirmed the PRC's comparative advantage of low labor cost, and therefore further increased the PRC's reliance on exports. However, the increased income disparity that resulted from the labor market reform may jeopardize sustainable growth if no adjustment is made. To sustain the high economic growth, especially in face of the current crisis, the PRC needs to adjust its reform and development strategies to promote income equality. |
| Keywords: | china labor market unemployment; china income inequality; china economic growth crisis |
| JEL: | J21 O15 O53 |
| Date: | 2009–11–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0162&r=tra |
| By: | Dewen, Wang (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews the development of the social security system and trends in the urban labor market in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Despite its remarkable economic achievement, the PRC faces a difficult path before it can reform and improve its social security system and provide basic support for all of its people. The unemployment shock has caused rural and urban household income to decrease and has thus slowed down household consumption growth. The provision of broader social security would not only mitigate unemployment shocks in the short term, but it would also guarantee individuals and households more security for spending that could reduce the high savings rate and help achieve a balanced growth path in the long run. The author's findings argue that households with social security coverage spend more and income distribution among urban households is improved through public transfers. |
| Keywords: | social security system prc; urban labor market prc |
| JEL: | D12 D63 H55 J26 |
| Date: | 2010–05–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0215&r=tra |
| By: | Meng, Xin (Australian National University); Shen, Kailing (Xiamen University); Xue, Sen (Xiamen University) |
| Abstract: | In the past 20 years the average real earnings of Chinese urban male workers have increased by 350 per cent. Accompanying this unprecedented growth is a considerable increase in earnings inequality. Between 1988 and 2007 the variance of log earnings increased from 0.27 to 0.48, a 78 per cent increase. Using a unique set of repeated cross-sectional data this paper examines the causes of this increase in earnings inequality. We find that the major changes occurred in the 1990s when the labour market moved from a centrally planned system to a market oriented system. The decomposition exercise conducted in the paper identifies the factor that drives the significant increase in the earnings variance in the 1990s to be an increase in the within-education-experience cell residual variances. Such an increase may be explained mainly by the increase in the price of unobserved skills. When an economy shifts from an administratively determined wage system to a market-oriented one, rewards to both observed and unobserved skills increase. The turn of the century saw a slowing down of the reward to both the observed and unobserved skills, due largely to the college expansion program that occurred at the end of the 1990s. |
| Keywords: | earnings inequality, China |
| JEL: | J31 P2 P3 |
| Date: | 2010–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4919&r=tra |
| By: | Vittas, Dimitri; Rudolph, Heinz; Pollner, John |
| Abstract: | Over the past decade or so, most Central and Eastern European countries have reformed their pension systems, significantly downsizing their public pillars and creating private pillars based on capitalization accounts. Early policy attention was focused on the accumulation phase but several countries are now reaching the stage where they need to address the design of the payout phase. This paper reviews the complex policy issues that will confront policymakers in this effort and summarizes recent plans and developments in four countries (Poland, Hungary, Estonia, and Lithuania). The paper concludes by highlighting a number of options that merit detailed consideration. |
| Keywords: | Debt Markets,Pensions&Retirement Systems,Financial Literacy,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Investment and Investment Climate |
| Date: | 2010–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5276&r=tra |
| By: | Correa, Paulo; Iootty, Mariana |
| Abstract: | Two sources of growth are firm learning and innovation. Using a unique panel data for 1,686 firms in six countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Turkey), this paper applies panel data estimatorsand Juhn-Murphy Pierce decomposition in order to identify the effects of the global economic crisis on sales growth of innovative and young enterprises in Eastern European countries. The results show that innovative and young firms were significantly more affected by the crisis than non innovative and older enterprises. The authors interpret these results as an indication that the achievement of pre-crisis growth rates in those countries may be difficult. |
| Keywords: | Microfinance,Achieving Shared Growth,E-Business,Small Scale Enterprise,Economic Growth |
| Date: | 2010–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5278&r=tra |
| By: | Fortuin, Frances T.J.M.; Omta, S.W.F. (Onno) |
| Abstract: | This paper aims at comparing the innovative potential of leading food processing companies in emerging and developed economies. We asked ourselves how the clearly differing economic and social conditions of two areas that are only comparable in terms of their number of inhabitants (about 16 to 18 million), namely a fast growing emerging economy (the Shanghai area in China) and a developed economy (The Netherlands) affect competitiveness and innovation of their leading prospector companies. Our study population consisted of 31 respondents (CEOs, CTOs and R&D directors) from 18 leading prospector companies in the food processing industry: nine in the Netherlands and nine in Shanghai. We focus on how the combination of external forces exerted by actors in the network (competitors, suppliers and buyers) and internal forces (especially innovation capabilities) affect competitiveness and innovation performance of these companies. A 52-item research questionnaire, based on industrial organization theory and the Resource-Based-View, was designed for this study, including quantitative questions on innovative input and output and business performance, and qualitative questions about competitive pressure and the quality of the innovation process. Interesting findings are that both innovative as well as business performance are predominantly related to the companiesâ internal (innovation) capabilities. As expected, clear differences between Chinese and Dutch companies were found regarding the external forces as well as in the internal capabilities they deploy to survive The pressure from the external environment, especially the power of buyers and the threat of new entrants is clearly felt more strongly by the Dutch companies than by their Chinese counterparts. The Chinese companies report to significantly use more KPIâs to monitor the R&D process, whereas the Dutch companies are significantly more active in stimulating an innovative culture. Interestingly, however, neither of these differences leads to significant differences in business or innovation performance between the two groups in our study. The answer to the question whether agri-food companies in developed economies still have a competitive edge compared to those in emerging economies, such as China that emerges from the data collected so far points in the direction of the disappearance of the traditional advantage of the companies from developed economies: no significant differences could be found neither in innovation performance, nor in business performance among the companies from the Netherlands and the Shanghai region in China. |
| Keywords: | Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Risk and Uncertainty, |
| Date: | 2009–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iefi09:59198&r=tra |
| By: | Pinto, Brian; Ulatov, Sergei |
| Abstract: | Russia had more-or-less completed the privatization of its manufacturing and natural resource sectors by the end of 1997. And in February 1998, the annual inflation rate at last dipped into the single digits. Privatization should have helped with stronger micro-foundations for growth. The conquest of inflation should have cemented macroeconomic credibility, lowered real interest rates, and spurred investment. Instead, Russia suffered a massivepublic debt-exchange rate-banking crisis just six months later, in August 1998. In showing how this turn of events unfolded, the authors focus on the interaction among Russia's deteriorating fiscal fundamentals, its weak micro-foundations of growth and financial globalization. They argue that the expectation of a large official bailout in the final 10 weeks before the meltdown played an important role, with Russia's external debt increasing by $16 billion or 8 percent of post-crisis gross domestic product during this time. The lessons and insights extracted from the 1998 Russian crisis are of general applicability, oil and geopolitics notwithstanding. These include a discussion of when financial globalization might actually hurt and a cutoff in market access might actually help; circumstances in which an official bailout could backfire; and why financial engineering tends to fail when fiscal solvency problems are present. |
| Keywords: | Debt Markets,Emerging Markets,Banks&Banking Reform,Access to Finance,Currencies and Exchange Rates |
| Date: | 2010–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5312&r=tra |
| By: | Ma, Alyson (Asian Development Bank Institute); Assche, Ari Van (Asian Development Bank Institute); Hong, Chang (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | This paper unveils a systematic pattern in the People's Republic of China's (PRC) processing trade. In a cross-section of the PRC's provinces, the average distance traveled by processing imports (import distance) is negatively correlated with the average distance traveled by processing exports (export distance). To explain this pattern, we set up a three-country industry-equilibrium model in which heterogeneous firms from two advanced economies, East and West, sell their products in each other's markets. Each firm can use two modes to serve the foreign market. A firm can directly export its products from its home country. Alternatively, it can indirectly export to the foreign market by assembling its product in a third low-cost economy, PRC, which is located in the vicinity of East. Our model established two theoretical predictions relating the PRC's geographical location to its processing trade patterns. First, the PRC's processing exports are negatively affected by both an increase in import distance and an increase in export distance. Second, the PRC's processing exports to East Asian economies are more sensitive to export distance and less sensitive to import distance than its processing exports to non-Asian economies. We found empirical support for both predictions. |
| Keywords: | location trade costs prc; processing trade export platform prc; fdi prc |
| JEL: | F12 F14 F23 |
| Date: | 2009–12–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0175&r=tra |
| By: | Falkowski, Jan; Ciaian, Pavel; Kancs, dâArtis |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses how farm access to credit affects farm input allocation and farm efficiency in the CEE countries. Drawing on a unique farm level panel data with 37,409 observations and employing a matching estimator we are able to control for the key source of endogeneity â unoberserved heterogeneity. We find that farms are credit constrained both in the short-run as well as in the long-run, but that credit constraint is asymmetric between inputs. Our estimates suggest that farm access to credit increases TFP up to 1.9% per 1000 EUR of additional credit. The use of variable inputs and capital investment increases up to 2.3% and 29%, respectively, per 1000 EUR of additional credit. Due to credit-financed investment in labour-saving farm equipment, labour use reduces for low level of credit Farms are found not to be credit constrained with respect to land. |
| Keywords: | Access to credit, investment, factor allocation, productivity, transition countries, Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use, Q12, P14, |
| Date: | 2010–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:eaa114:61347&r=tra |
| By: | Su, Yongyang |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the impact of changes in the securities transaction tax (STT) rate on the local A-shares market in China. We find that, on average, a 22-base-point- increase in the STT rate is associated with about a 28% drop in trading volume, while a 17-base-point- reduction in the STT rate is associated with about a 89% increase in trading volume in the Chinese A-shares market. Both the increases and reductions in the STT rate result in a significant increase in the market return volatility. Besides, the increases in the STT rate have mixed effects on market efficiency, either improving or curbing it. The reductions usually either make the market less efficient or have not effect on it. The empirical results together show that levying the STT on trading is not an effective tool to regulate stock market, at least in this emerging market. |
| Keywords: | Securities transaction taxes; stock market;volatility; trading volume |
| JEL: | G10 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:22695&r=tra |
| By: | Wei Chen; J L Ford |
| Abstract: | This paper is an original study of the volatility in China’s oil fuel spot and futures markets, and in the spot market of Singapore one of China’s main source of imports. GARCH(1,1), TGARCH(1,1) and a constant variance model are estimated using 500 daily observations from 25 August 2005. The optimum hedge ratios derived from the competing models are evaluated in terms of the variance and semi-variance (downside) risk that they promise compared with a no-hedge portfolio: and also in terms of their expected utility. This is also accomplished for hedging in the Singapore market. Out-of-sample observations (54) are used to up-date, day-by-day, the variance-covariance matrices from the estimation period. The findings are used to compare the competing models, and the two hedging strategies, over that extended period. They showed the stability of the original estimates and of the ranking of the models under any given criterion. Hedging in China’s market is more effective in terms of reducing downside risk and maximising expected utility than is hedging in Singapore’s market. The latter dominates in terms of variance reduction. |
| Keywords: | China's fuel oil spot and futures returns, Singapore's spot market, volatility, bivariate GARCH and TGARCH, hedged portfolio returns, variance reduction, downside risk, expected utility |
| JEL: | G10 C53 |
| Date: | 2010–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bir:birmec:10-15&r=tra |
| By: | Liu, Xiangfeng (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | This paper conducts an in-depth analysis of the impacts of the global financial crisis on the People's Republic of China's (PRC's) small and medium enterprises (SMEs). It also provides relevant policy suggestions at the end. First, this paper reviews the impacts of the 1997 Asian financial crisis on the PRC's SMEs, evaluating the policy measures for coping with the crisis at that time and summarizing the relevant experiences. Second, it analyzes the impacts of the current global financial crisis on the PRC's SMEs, focusing the discussion on the causes of and resulting problems from SMEs' shrinking export markets via reduced export orders, rising operating costs, decreased efficiency, increased shutdowns, sharply rising unemployment, weakened investment confidence, broken lines of funding, and reduced resources. Third, the paper makes a preliminary analysis of the countermeasures taken by the government of the PRC, focusing on its support policies for SMEs and the problems exhibited in the implementation of those policies. Finally, the author makes policy suggestions for boosting the development of SMEs and puts forward relevant measures in the context of an SME credit guarantee, the expansion of financing institutions and channels, tax reductions, the improvement of service systems, and strengthening SMEs' self-construction mechanisms. |
| Keywords: | global financial crisis; impact on prc smes |
| JEL: | F14 F41 O11 O20 |
| Date: | 2009–12–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0180&r=tra |
| By: | Simon Gaechter (University of Nottingham); Benedikt Herrmann (University of Nottingham) |
| Abstract: | We report evidence from public goods experiments with and without punishment which we conducted in Russia with 566 urban and rural participants of young and mature age cohorts. Russia is interesting for studying voluntary cooperation because of its long history of collectivism, and a huge urban-rural gap. In contrast to previous experiments we find no cooperation-enhancing effect of punishment. An important reason is that there is punishment of contributors in all four subject pools. Thus, punishment can also undermine the scope for self-governance in the sense of high levels of voluntary cooperation that are sustained by sanctioning free riders only. |
| Keywords: | social norms, free riding, misdirected punishment, experiments |
| Date: | 2010–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdx:dpaper:2010-05&r=tra |
| By: | Swinnen, Johan F.M.; Van Herck, Kristine |
| Abstract: | The transition of a centrally planned to a more market economy provides a natural Experiment on the role of institutions and exchange in economic growth. This paper uses a unique dataset based on a survey of 305 dairy producing and supplying households in Bulgaria to analyze the impact of late payments for delivered products and farm assistance programs. The results of the dynamic panel analysis indicate that late payments have a negative influence on farm growth, while contracting with interlinked farm assistance programs, had a positive effect on farm growth. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use, |
| Date: | 2010–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:eaa114:61079&r=tra |
| By: | Bakucs, Lajos Z.; Bojnec, Stefan; Ferto, Imre; Latruffe, Laure |
| Abstract: | The article investigates the validity of Gibratâs Law for French, Hungarian and Slovenian farms with FADN data and Heckman selection models, quantiles regressions and panel unit root tests. The contribution to the literature is threefold. First, we compare farm growth in countries with rather different farm structures. Second, we apply two different testing techniques. Finally, we focus on specialised crop and dairy farms rather than all farms, avoiding biases due to heterogeneous structures across the agricultural sector. Results reject the Gibratâs Law for crop farms in France (except for one sub-period) and Hungary but confirm it for French and Slovenian dairy farms. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management, |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:eaa114:60911&r=tra |
| By: | Patrick Hamm; David Stuckler; Lawrence King |
| Abstract: | Why did the transitions from state socialism to capitalism result in improved growth in some countries but significant economic declines in others? Three main arguments have been advanced: (1) the most successful countries rapidly implemented privatization, liberalization, and stabilization policies; (2) failures were unrelated to economic policies but occurred because of a poor institutional environment; and (3) the policies were counterproductive because they damaged the state. We present a state-centered theory which argues that the more radical the privatization program, the worse the subsequent performance. We agree with the second account, that institutions matter, but demonstrate that it was radical privatization itself which was a major determinant of institutional weakness. In addition, our account holds that privatization was in fact a crucial determinant of institutional failure, operating primarily through the creation of a massive shock to state revenues. We perform cross-national regressions for a sample of 30 countries between 1990 and 2000, and find that mass privatization programs negatively impacted economic growth, state capacity and property rights protection. These findings are corroborated with data from a random sample of 4,000 firms from 26 post-communist countries. We show that in countries which implemented sizable mass-privatized programs, privatized firms were substantially less likely to engage in successful industrial restructuring but considerably more likely to engage in barter and have tax arrears than their state owned counterparts. |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uma:periwp:wp222&r=tra |
| By: | Gregory C. Chow |
| Abstract: | There has been much concern about inflation in China recently. The People’s Bank in the last few months has raised the reserve requirement several times to control the money supply to slow down inflation. In 1985 when I was organizing a summer workshop on macroeconomics in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, Premier Zhao Ziyang asked me to forecast inflation in 1985-1986 because in 1984 the supply of money in the form of currency in circulation increased by 50 percent. I estimated an equation using data from 1952 to 1984 to explain inflation and used the equation to project forward to forecast an inflation rate for 1985 of no more than 9 percent which turned out to be correct. This equation was published in Chow (1987, equation 18) and updated using data up to 2004 in Chow (2007, pp. 34-5). |
| Keywords: | inflation, china, Peoples Bank, money supply |
| JEL: | E30 E31 E42 E58 N15 |
| Date: | 2010–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pri:cepsud:1220&r=tra |
| By: | Blazkova, Ivana |
| Abstract: | The paper is focused on formulation of demand relations in the commodity chain. Created model respects interdependence and interconnection of particular stages within the food commodity chain â it takes into account the fact that secondary demand function is formed not only by particular prices but also by level of demand on vertical previous market. The functions of primary consumer demand for final products and the functions of derived demands at the level of retail, processing and agricultural production are modeled. The wheat commodity chain in the Czech Republic is chosen for the application. Statistical verification of the model and derivation of standard characteristics of market subjectsâ behaviour (elasticities) are made. The model shows that demand of consequential vertical stage significantly takes a share in the size of particular secondary demand, consumer demand for basic bakery products is price and income inelastic and there are weak cross price elasticities among consumption of basic bakery products. |
| Keywords: | Commodity chain, vertical demand system, demand interconnection, primary demand, secondary demand, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Risk and Uncertainty, |
| Date: | 2009–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iefi09:59195&r=tra |
| By: | Robin Thompson; Ana Xavier |
| Abstract: | To empirically test whether, as surveys and anedoctal reports suggest, patients are paying to stay longer in hospital, perceived as resulting in better care (e.g. more professional attention), a unique dataset is constructed on hospital length of stay, severity, unofficial payments and socio-economic characteristics (age, gender, occupation and income) from a survey on 1508 trauma and surgical patients discharged from Almaty City (the former capital of Kazakhstan) three main hospitals between 1999 and 2000. |
| Keywords: | gender, age, occupation, patients, hospitals, care, kazakhstan, socio-economic, |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:2485&r=tra |
| By: | Zoë Kuehn (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) |
| Abstract: | For the last decade, the East German economy has been suffering from high unemployment and low economic growth. Policy makers often point to the lack of entrepreneurship as one of East Germany\'s main problems. This paper addresses the question of how East Germany\'s integration into an established economy, West Germany, may have hindered a fruitful development of entrepreneurship and how this may have affected economic growth. I build a model economy that places Lucas\'s (1978) span-of-control model into an overlapping-generations framework. Following Hassler and Rodríguez Mora (2000) managerial knowhow is defined as a combination of two factors, innate talent and entrepreneurial parental background, and growth depends on the innate talent of entrepreneurs. In East Germany, the lack of entrepreneurial parental background makes talent the decisive factor in occupational choice and more talented entrepreneurs should contribute to high growth rates. However, three key aspects of its integration into West Germany inhibit this mechanism: 1) the unrestricted mobility of East Germans to the West, 2) the policy of fixing East German wages as fractions of West German wages, and 3) the importance of parental background for entrepreneurship in West Germany. Counterfactual experiments show that eliminating any of these three aspects leads to more entrepreneurs, less unemployment, and higher economic growth in East Germany. |
| Keywords: | entrepreneurship; allocation of talent; social mobility; transition |
| JEL: | F15 E24 J22 |
| Date: | 2010–05–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imd:wpaper:wp2010-08&r=tra |
| By: | Jackson, Elisabeth; Gorton, Matthew; White, John |
| Abstract: | Utilising primary survey data, this paper evaluates the relationships between a set of supplier development strategies and performance within the milk industry in Armenia and Ukraine. Improving supplier performance is a critical task for the dairy industry in the Former Soviet Union as, during the 1990s both the quantity and quality of agricultural output deteriorated sharply. Fragmented supply chains led to high transaction costs and, in some cases, market failure. Drawing on the work of Krause et al. (2000) and Doney and Cannon (1997), a theoretical framework is presented that proposes that, either directly or indirectly, supplier assessment strategies, supplier incentives, competitive pressure, direct involvement, and trust between buyers and sellers, lead to improvements in supplier performance. Data from 618 milk producers were analysed by structural equation modelling to test ten research hypotheses. All relationships are significant except those related to supplier assessment. In particular, the results indicate that both trust and competitive pressure have a direct and positive impact on performance improvement. Trust can be fostered by buyers providing feedback and performance data to suppliers. In contrast, direct involvement strategies are negatively related to performance improvement and weaken farmersâ trust. Implications for managers are discussed along with suggestions for further research. |
| Keywords: | Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Risk and Uncertainty, |
| Date: | 2009–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iefi09:59181&r=tra |