Short-term training has recently become the largest active labor market program in Germany regarding the number of participants. Little is known about the effectiveness of different types of ...short-term training, particularly their long-run effects. This paper estimates the effects of short-term training programs in West Germany starting in the time periods 1980–1992 and 2000–2003 on the three outcomes employment, earnings, and participation in long-term training programs. We find that short-term training shows mostly persistently positive and often significant employment effects. Short-term training focusing on testing and monitoring search effort shows slightly smaller effects compared to the pure training variant. The lock-in periods lasted longer in the 1980s and 1990s compared to the early 2000s. Short-term training results in higher future participation in long-term training programs.
An important contribution to scholarship... rigorous and
intelligible. -- Patrick James, University of
Missouri International Change and the Stability of Multiethnic
States contributes to the debate ...over ethnic conflict and cooperation in multiethnic
states destabilized by the changing environment of the post--Cold War era, proposing
a new way of viewing and dealing with these problems. Through an analysis of
important moments in the history of two prominent multiethnic societies -- the
former Yugoslavia and Lebanon -- in which nonstate actors such as communal groups
played important roles in events that determined the fates of both states, Badredine
Arfi builds a general theory of how the governance of multiethnic societies is
transformed under changing international conditions. His work provides new insights
on how policymaking can be improved to respond to the challenges posed by the
creation, maintenance, transformation, and, when it occurs, collapse of state
governance in multiethnic societies. This timely work will interest scholars of
international relations and comparative politics, regional specialists,
policymakers, and activists.
The book deals with the violent and inconclusive break up of Yugoslavia. The author relies on the rational political choice approach to construct an explanation that (i) given the preference of the ...exYugoslav nations for ethnic justice over individual liberties and rights, and (ii) given the influences of the long terra ethnic strategies and rivalries, the legacy of the four decades of communist rule, and the complexities of the post-socialist transformation process, the break up of their common country was what it took the Yugoslav nations to try to realize their political preferences.
In Chapter 1 the process of “Balkanization” is discussed. First, the theory of constitutional choice is criticized. It is shown that the assumptions (stated and unstated) on which the theory is founded are not mutually consistent. Second, it is argued that that makes the idea of self-determination inoperable and self-destructive. Yugoslavia was founded on the principle of self-determination; it has been dissolving in accordance with the same principle. Third, the illusive idea of individual and ethnic identity, of the “self”, in the Balkans is described and analyzed. Fourth, the implications for the failure of any constitutional idea to be accepted as legitimate in Yugoslavia are drawn.
In Chapter 2 the process of the discovery of liberalism during the communist rule is discussed and the reasons for its failure given. All the classical liberal ideas were discovered in Yugoslavia in conflict with the socialist principles; they failed to play a key role in the transformation of the country because they did not arise from an idea of a Yugoslav state.
In Chapter 3 a “straightforward explanation” of the break up of Yugoslavia is given. It is argued that the state did not break up for economic reasons (as a way to get out of socialism), but for the following two reasons: (i) independent ethnic state is the long term strategy of Serbs and Croats (the two dominant Yugoslav nations); (ii) political preferences came to dominate the economic ones in the process of transformation. Given the goals and the preferences and given the facts of the ethnic configuration, the break up of Yugoslavia was inevitable and it inevitably had to be inconclusive.
In Chapter 4 the contribution of the communist legacy is discussed and the record of individual and collective rights left in the ex-Yugoslav states is reviewed. It is shown that none of the newly established states has achieved a significant increase in those rights and is far from any ideal of a liberal state.
In the conclusion, the idea that “Balkans are different” is rejected and it is argued that the failure of the principles of civic rights and international order to be respected and implemented will invariably lead to the same set of outcome. In that the importance of the case of Yugoslavia lies.
This paper offers an explanation for the coexistence of convergence across countries and the lack thereof at the regional level in the European Union. The model shows that, even if it accelerates ...growth and brings convergence across countries, the intensification of international knowledge spillovers due to more cross-country interaction may exacerbate within-country regional disparities, if regions with different specialization do not benefit evenly from the exchange of knowledge. The empirical evidence supports the implications of the model. In particular, the data show that regions specialized in advanced sectors at the beginning of the sample period became more similar in terms of per capita income, while regions specialized in traditional sectors lagged.
Using data drawn from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, which allows students to be linked to particular teachers and classes, we estimate the impact of observable and unobservable ...schooling characteristics on student outcomes. A variety of models show some schooling resources (in particular, teacher qualifications) to be significant in influencing tenth-grade mathematics test scores. Unobservable school, teacher, and class characteristics are important in explaining student achievement but do not appear to be correlated with observable variables in our sample. Thus, our results suggest that the omission of unobservables does not cause biased estimates in standard educational production functions.
A semiparametric extension of the GJR model (Glosten et al., 1993. Journal of Finance 48, 1779–1801) is proposed for the volatility of foreign exchange returns. Under reasonable assumptions, ...asymptotic normal distributions are established for the estimators of the model, corroborated by simulation results. When applied to the Deutsche Mark/US Dollar and the Deutsche Mark/British Pound daily returns data, the semiparametric volatility model outperforms the GJR model as well as the more commonly used GARCH(
1
,
1
) model in terms of goodness-of-fit, and forecasting, by correcting overgrowth in volatility.
Previous studies document negative long-term abnormal stock returns following seasoned equity offering (SEO) issuances and conclude that markets are inefficient. Other studies, however, argue that ...these results are a manifestation of risk mismeasurement (i.e., the bad-model problem), not market inefficiency. We test the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) and avoid the bad-model problem by examining the long-term performance of our sample firms' bonds and stocks following their SEOs. Our results are inconsistent with the EMH. We also provide evidence that SEOs transfer wealth from shareholders to bondholders because SEOs reduce default risk.
PDF
