The 'Minnowbrook perspective' became the term attached to the outcomes of a conference of young public administrationists held in 1968. A followup conference on the same site in 1988 reviewed those ...perspectives from the standpoint of the end of the Reagan administration and of an extended period of bureaucracy bashing. Reviews and compares the 2 conferences. (PAS)
fre Contrairement au développement dans les autres pays industrialisés, la taille moyenne des établissements a continué à augmenter dans l'industrie suédoise. Les données suédoises sont présentées ...ici pour la première fois dans la nomenclature NACE adoptée par la Communauté européenne. L'analyse est d'abord faite au niveau 2-chiffres de la NACE à des intervalles de cinq ans. L'emploi industriel a augmenté fermement jusqu'à ce qu'il atteigne un pic juste au-dessus des 900 000 emplois au début des années 70, à partir duquel il chute à 766 000 en 1988. Au même moment, le nombre d'établissements industriels a diminué constamment passant de près de 14 000 en 1968 à 9 000 en 1988. En conséquence, la production par établissement a plus que doublé et l'emploi moyen par établissement a augmenté de 34 %. Le déclin le plus sévère dans le nombre d'établissement a concerné la catégorie de la taille la plus faible (moins de 10 employés), passant de 5 831 à 1 234 établissements. Le nombre d'unités de production dans cette catégorie a été réduit dans chaque industrie à 2 chiffres. L'analyse confirme l'observation qu'il y a un manque d'esprit d'entreprise dans l'industrie suédoise. Il est suggéré qu'une explication possible pour le changement continu dans la distribution par tailles puisse être corrélé avec l'ajustement continu à l'intégration européenne. eng Contrary to the development in other industrial countries, the average plant size in Swedish industry has continued to increase. Swedish data are presented here for the first time according to the NACE classification adopted by the European Community. The analysis is carried out primarily at the 2-digit NACE level at 5-year intervals. Industrial employment rose steadily until it reached a peak of just over 900,000 in the early 1970s and then fell to 766,000 in 1988. Meanwhile, the number of industrial plants fell continuously from nearly 14,000 in 1968 to just over 9,000 in 1988. As a result, output per establishment more than doubled, and the average employment per establishment increased by 34 %. The most severe decline in the number of establishments occurred in the smallest size category (less than 10 employees), from 5,831 to 1,234 establishments. The number of plants in this size category was reduced in every 2-digit industry. The analysis confirms the observation that there is a lack of entrepreneurship in Swedish industry. It is suggested that a possible explanation for the continued shift in the size distribution may have to do with continued adjustment to European integration.
It is often argued that technological spillovers or other externalities associated with exports or trade are sector-specific, yet trade and growth linkages are typically examined at the level of ...macroeconomic aggregates. This paper extends the analysis another level of specificity, analyzing the commodity composition of trade. This paper addresses three interrelated sets of questions. First, have Asian countries exhibited unusually high exports in particular industries? Has their commodity composition of exports been unusually concentrated? Second, has specialization in particular sectors emerged unusually rapidly the case of Asian countries? Third, can export similarity across Asian countries be explained by economic fundamentals?
In recent years several models have been proposed to estimate time-varying technical efficiency. These models differ to a great extent in specification and estimation. This paper undertakes a ...comparison between different specifications proposed in earlier research. The models are used to estimate the technical efficiency of 15 Colombian cement plants observed in the period 1968–1988. The efficiency scores and the time path of efficiency are found to vary substantially across models.
An exploration is made into how welfare dependency measured by the lengths of welfare spells has changed over the past 20 years. After identifying the trends underlying the shifts in distributions of ...spells, 3 sources for explaining the observed shifts are explored: 1. changes in the composition of the recipient population, 2. changes in public-assistance benefits for female heads of household, and 3. changes in labor-market opportunities. The findings developed in Hoynes and MaCurdy (1993) are heavily drawn upon. These findings show that the length of welfare spells decreased significantly between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s, but increased in the 1980s. While changes in welfare benefits play some role in explaining the trends in welfare dependency, changes in labor-market opportunities appear to play even a smaller role. After controlling for demographic and economic variables, some of the trend in welfare dependency persists.
A striking characteristic of recent Western labour market trends is the rise in employment among mothers of very young children. So far, few studies have analysed the impact of public policies on ...employment rates of young mothers. In this study we address this issue by comparing two similar countries, Norway and Sweden, which have the same set of policies with slight variations, using data sets with similar designs. We analyse rates of re-entry into paid work after first birth for mothers in 1968-88 by means of hazard regression. One important finding is that the right to paid maternity leave with jobsecurity greatly speeds up the return to work.
In the context of an equilibrium asset-pricing model, the dynamics of the instantaneous real interest rate and the instantaneous rate of expected inflation are estimated. Unlike previous models, we ...allow real interest rates and inflation to be mutually dependent processes. The model is estimated as a state-space system that includes observations on various maturity Treasury bills and NBER-ASA survey forecasts of inflation. Over the period 1968-1988, we find evidence that instantaneous real interest rates and expected inflation are significantly negatively correlated. Real interest rates also display greater volatility and weaker mean reversion than expected inflation.
This paper seeks an explanation for the well-documented wage disadvantage of mothers compared to women without children. An analysis of data from the 1968-88 National Longitudinal Survey of Young ...Women shows that human capital inputs and unobserved heterogeneity explain 55-57% of the gap. Further analysis suggests that mothers tended to face the highest wage penalty when they first returned to work. A finding that medium-skill mothers (high school graduates) suffered more prolonged and severe wage losses than either low- or high-skill mother casts doubt on the work-effort explanation for the wage gap, according to which women reduce work effort in response to childcare duties. The authors instead cite variable time constraints: high school graduates are likely to hold jobs requiring their presence during regular office hours, and are unlikely to gain flexibility by finding work at other hours or by taking work home in the evening.
Livestock makes an important contribution to the livelihood of Sahelian farmers and herders and is a source of self-insurance against income shocks. By allocating livestock efficiently over space, ...spatial market integration should foster a sustainable use of pasture resources. It is also expected to favour the sharing of risk across regions by smoothing idiosyncratic price variations. Using monthly livestock price data from Niger, we show that livestock markets are poorly integrated. Prices are seldom cointegrated, suggesting that large price differentials occasionally persist between adjacent areas for long periods of time. A parity bounds approach indicates that one has to assume high transportation costs and large quality variations to reconcile the data with efficient spatial arbitrage. These results confirm descriptive studies that have emphasised regional segmentation in West African livestock trade.
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