Recent theoretical and empirical advances have renewed interest in monopsonistic models of the labor market. However, there is little direct empirical support for these models. We use an exogenous ...change in wages at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals as a natural experiment to investigate the extent of monopsony in the nurse labor market. We estimate that labor supply to individual hospitals is quite inelastic, with short‐run elasticity around 0.1. We also find that non‐VA hospitals responded to the VA wage change by changing their own wages.
The protrade effect of immigrants on the bilateral export performance of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia with respect to 87 foreign countries is studied. This effect, which posits ...that a greater number of immigrants in a host location leads to increased trade between the host and the immigrants' origin country, has been supported in a number of studies. Here, we extend this approach and find that the immigrant effect is greater when the origin country's political system is more corrupt and less important when Spanish or English is the language of the origin country. State-level export data averaged over the 1990-1992 period are used.
A 1993 survey on the innovative activities of Europe's largest industrial firms obtained useable results on patenting activities for 604 respondents. The data are used to calculate the sales-weighted ...propensity rates for 19 industries. The propensity rates equal the percentage of innovations for which a patent application is made. The propensity rates for product innovations average 35.9%, varying between 8.1% in textiles and 79.2% in pharmaceuticals. The average for process innovations is 24.8%, varying from 8.1% in textiles to 46.8% for precision instruments. Only four sectors have patent propensity rates, for both product and process innovations combined, that exceed 50%: pharmaceuticals, chemicals, machinery, and precision instruments. Regression results that control for the effect of industry sector show that patent propensity rates increase with firm size and are higher among firms that find patents to be an important method for preventing competitors from copying both product and process innovations. The effect of secrecy is not so straightforward. Firms that find secrecy to be an important protection method for product innovations are less likely to patent, as expected, but secrecy has little effect on the propensity to patent process innovations. The R&D intensity of the firm has no effect on patent propensity rates for both product and process innovations. The sector of activity has a strong influence on product patent propensities but very little effect on process patent propensities, after controlling for the effect of other factors.
En la última década y la segunda mitad del siglo XX, ha surgido la opinión consensuada de que las dificultades que han retrasado el desarrollo de África son más políticas que económicas. Los ...politólogos y expertos en el desarrollo de África, sugirieron que la democratización y la gobernanza eran medios de sacar a África del subdesarrollo. De acuerdo con ello, desde 1990 una ola de democratizaciones se ha extendido por la mayor parte de África. Este artículo examina el contexto y los orígenes del proceso de democratización en Ghana. La política de Ghana experimentó un rápido proceso de transformación entre 1990 y 1992. Este período fue testigo de la desaparición de una década de dictadura militar. Se produjo la reinstauración de un sistema de gobierno pluralista y constitucional. Al mismo tiempo, un dramático crecimiento de la sociedad civil empezó a hacerse visible. El trabajo identifica dos desarrollos: luchas de élites y de masas por la incorporación política y económica respectivamente, y presiones externas, que tuvieron un rol dominante en este proceso. Esto ilumina las fuerzas políticas y actores que conformaron la restauración del orden constitucional/democrático en Ghana. El artículo muestra el surgimiento del movimiento por la democracia en Ghana durante los años noventa a causa de la demanda de inclusión política y económica por parte de elementos marginados. La marginación política y económica ocurrió en circunstancias de monolitismo político, autoritarismo coercitivo y recesión económica, o en palabras de Claude Ake (2000) “persistente subdesarrollo”. La demanda por la inclusión ocurrió en dos niveles –en el nivel de las élites como demanda de una asimilación política y en el nivel de las masas como demanda de una asimilación económica. Entonces, el monolitismo político y el persistente subdesarrollo dieron nacimiento a un movimiento por la democracia cuyo objetivo fue la integración económica y política. Visto de esta forma, la ola de democratización en Ghana puede ser explicada como una respuesta a la exclusión y una vía para facilitar la integración.
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ABSTRACT:
In the last decade and half of the twentieth century, a consensus emerged that the difficulties that have slowed down Africa’s development are more political than economic. Political scientists and Africa’s development partners, consequently, suggested democratization and good governance as means of bringing Africa out of underdevelopment. Accordingly, since 1990, a wave of democratization has engulfed most of Africa. This paper examines the context and origins of the democratization process in Ghana. The politics of Ghana underwent a most rapid process of transformation between 1990 and 1992. The period witnessed the obliteration of a decade of military dictatorship. There was a reinstallation of pluralist politics and constitutional rule. At the same time, a dramatic growth of civil society became discernible. The paper identifies two developments, elite and mass struggles for political and economic incorporation respectively, and external pressures, as having played the dominant role in this process. It highlights the political forces and actors that shaped the restoration of constitutional/democratic rule in Ghana. The paper addresses the concern that the movement toward democracy in Ghana in the 1990s arose as a demand by politically and economically marginalized elements for incorporation. The political and economic marginalization occurred in conditions of political monolithism, coercive authoritarianism, and economic slump or, in the words of Claude Ake (2000), “persistent underdevelopment”. The demand for incorporation occurred on two levels - on the level of elites as demand for political assimilation and on the level of the masses as demand for economic assimilation. Thus, political monolithism and persistent underdevelopment gave birth to a democracy movement the aim of which was economic and political integration. Seen this way, the Ghanaian democratization wave was intended to counteract exclusivity and facilitate inclusivity.
It is found that while a substantial number of university-based scientists participate in networks that are geographically bounded, approximately 70% of the links between biotechnology companies and ...the university-based scientists are nonlocal. It is concluded that while proximity matters in establishing formal ties between university-based scientists and companies, its influence is anything but overwhelming. A new data base is employed, which includes virtually the entire population of biotechnology firms that prepared an initial public offering in the early 1990s, to examine the extent to which the firms and the university-based scientists involved with the firms are located within the same region. A probit analysis is undertaken to link the likelihood that a scientist is located in the same region as the biotechnology firm with which she is involved to characteristics specific to the scientists and to the role played with the biotechnology firms.
The relationship between a home's sale price and its proximity to different open spaces types is explored using a data set comprised of single‐family home sales in the city of Portland, within ...Multnomah County, between 1990 and 1992. Homes located within 1,500 feet of a natural area park, where more than 50% of the park is preserved in native and/or natural vegetation, are found to experience, on average, the largest increase in sale price. The open space size that maximizes a home's sale price is calculated for each open space type. Natural area parks require the largest acreage to maximize sale price, and specialty parks are found to have the largest potential effect on a home's sale price. A zonal approach is used to examine the relationship between a home's sale price and its distance to an open space. Natural area parks and specialty parks are found to have a positive and statistically significant effect on a home's sale price for each zone studied. Homes located adjacent to golf courses (within 200 feet) are estimated to experience the largest increase in sale price due to open space proximity although the effect drops off quickly as distance from the golf course increases.
The author investigates whether judges deciding on unfair dismissal cases are sensitive to economic conditions faced by workers and firms. Using the 1992 survey of Employment Tribunal Applications in ...Great Britain and controlling for case selection, she finds that both the unemployment and the bankruptcy rates significantly decrease the probability of judges deciding in favor of dismissed employees. A one-point increase in the unemployment rate leads to a seven-point decrease in this probability; this effect, however, is not significant for unemployed workers. These findings are consistent with the idea that judges, while tailoring firing costs to economic circumstances, are somewhat more sensitive to firms' interests.
Previous research on unemployment insurance (UI) has emphasized the program's effect on individual search behavior. This state‐contingent income may also reduce the labor supply of family members ...during the unemployment spell. We investigate this question within the context of wives' labor supply responses to their husbands' unemployment spells. We find strong “crowdout” of this form of family self‐insurance; our estimates imply that for each dollar of UI receipt wives earn up to 73 cents less. The reduction in spousal hours of work is over 40% as large as previous estimates of the effect of UI on search time of husbands.
Studies of horse race betting have empirically established a long shot anomaly; that is, low‐probabiliy, high‐variance bets (long shots) provide low mean returns and high‐probability, lowvariance ...bets provide relatively high mean returns. Because bettors willingly accept low‐return, high‐variance bets, researchers conclude that bettors are risk lovers. In this study, we show that the data are at least as consistent with risk aversion as they are with risk loving when one explicitly considers the skewness of bet returns. Because the variance and skewness of bet returns are highly correlated, bettors may appear to prefer variance when it is skewness that they crave.
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