At the outset of the Thatcher/Reagan era, the employment and labor law systems across six Anglo-American countries could be divided into three pairings: the Wagner Act model of the United States and ...Canada; the Voluntarist system of collective bargaining and strong unions in the United Kingdom and Ireland; and the highly centralized, legalistic Award systems of Australia and New Zealand. The authors argue that there has been growing convergence in two major areas: First, of labor law toward a private ordering of employment relations in which terms and conditions of work and employment are primarily determined at the level of the enterprise; and second, of individual employment rights, toward a basket of minimum standards that can then be improved upon by the parties. The greatest similarity is found in Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. Ireland retains a greater degree of public ordering, while the United States diverges in favoring the interests of employers over those of employees and organized labor. The authors explore reasons for the convergence.
A key goal of the COMESA Treaty () was to stimulate sustainable economic growth in the region through increased trade between member states. On the basis of a 1980–2010 annual panel dataset, we ...examine the contribution of COMESA integration to economic growth in the region using instrumental variables GMM regression in the framework of a cross‐country growth model. Contrary to a priori expectation, we find no significant empirical support for a positive growth impact, as yet, on the region from the integration. Growth in capital stock, population, world GDP and the level of openness to international trade turned out to be the most robust drivers of growth in the COMESA region over the period.
This paper presents estimates of the effects that terms of trade volatility has on real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth. Based on 5‐year nonoverlapping panel data comprising 175 ...countries during 1980 to 2010, the paper finds that terms of trade volatility has significant negative effects on economic growth in countries with procyclical government spending. In countries where government spending is countercyclical, terms of trade volatility has no significant effect on growth. Conditional on the mediating role of government spending cyclicality, the GDP share of domestic credit to the private sector has no significant effect on the relationship between growth and terms of trade volatility.
Our study investigates the market-wide herding behavior in the U.S. equity REIT market. Utilizing the quantile regression method, we find that herding is more likely to be present in the high ...quantiles of the REIT return dispersion. This implies that REIT investors tend to herd under turbulent market conditions. Our results also support the asymmetry of herding behaviors, that is, herding is more likely to occur and becomes stronger in declining markets than in rising markets. In addition, our findings show that the current financial crisis has caused a change in the circumstances under which herding can occur, as we find that during the current crisis REIT investors may not start to herd until the market becomes extremely turbulent whereas during the relatively normal period before the crisis, investors tend to herd when the market is moderately turbulent. Finally, we find that compared with the case of the ‘pre-modern’ era, REIT investors are more likely to herd in the ‘modern’ era, during which herding usually occurs when the market becomes tumultuous. This implies that the switch of REITs from passive externally managed entities into active self-managed ones has made the investors more responsive to market sentiment.
The paper explores the extent to which the pressure of debt service on other spending items may magnify governments’ concern for debt dynamics, independently of the public debt level itself. Our ...empirical analysis identifies thresholds of interest bill indicators beyond which governments appear to intensify efforts to curb the debt trajectory. Hence, in the current context of historically high public debts, a country experiencing high and rising borrowing costs and interest payments would be more likely to enact a more aggressive fiscal consolidation than one benefitting from persistently low interest rates – even though both consolidation paths would be consistent with solvency. This could be an important consideration when setting the appropriate pace of normalization of monetary policy.
This book presents a new history of German film from 1980-2010, a period that witnessed rapid transformations, including intensified globalization, a restructured world economy, geopolitical ...realignment, and technological change, all of which have affected cinema in fundamental ways. Rethinking the conventional periodization of German film history, Baer posits 1980-rather than 1989-as a crucial turning point for German cinema's embrace of a new market orientation and move away from the state-sponsored film culture that characterized both DEFA and the New German Cinema. Reading films from East, West, and post-unification Germany together, Baer argues that contemporary German cinema is characterized most strongly by its origins in and responses to advanced capitalism. Informed by a feminist approach and in dialogue with prominent theories of contemporary film, the book places a special focus on how German films make visible the neoliberal recasting of gender and national identities around the new millennium.
Empirical studies usually analyse the relationship between an economy's trade sector and tax revenue in developing countries through the effect of trade liberalization on tax revenue. This paper ...takes a different angle by examining the impact of export upgrading strategies (export diversification and improvement in export quality) on non-resource tax revenue. The panel data-set covers a sample of 172 countries, including both developed and developing countries, spanning the period 1980-2010. The analysis is conducted both on the entire sample and sub-samples. The findings indicate that export product upgrading exerts a positive and significant effect on non-resource tax revenue, including for the sub-samples considered, with the exception of low-income countries for which we observe mixed results. Moreover, countries which upgrade their export products in a context of trade openness consistently experience higher non-resource tax revenue, both in the short and long term.
Purpose - The paper has three objectives: first, to reflect on the contribution of this journal to the study of retail location assessment and decision making; second, to use the results of a ...questionnaire survey of retailers to assess the employment of location assessment techniques a decade since a similar survey conducted by Hernández and Bennison; third, in the light of these results, to conclude what likely challenges the location planning profession will face over the next decade.Design methodology approach - Employs an online questionnaire survey of retailers across a range of sizes and sub-sectors.Findings - Specialist location planning teams within retailers are found to be small with established forecasting processes firmly established for new or relocated stores - indicative of less activity focused on the management of the existing portfolio or the identification of outlets within the network for rationalisation. The vast majority of site assessment techniques increased in use over the decade, reflecting a greater reliance on data and analysis to inform decision making alongside the traditional use of experience and intuition. Complementing highly technical evaluation techniques, the site visit is widely recognised as informing modelling and subsequent decision making.Research limitations implications - The survey sample is smaller and contains a greater proportion of larger businesses than that undertaken by Hernández and Bennison.Originality value - The paper underlines the changes in location planning sophistication a decade on from a landmark survey, suggests the implications of the observed changes and identifies likely developments in the profession.
We study the effect of two tax innovations - value added taxes (VAT) and autonomous revenue authorities (ARA) - on tax revenues in sub-Saharan Africa. The dataset consists of 47 countries over ...1980-2010. We find that VATs have no effect on total tax revenues, neither in the short- nor in the long-run. ARAs lead to higher tax revenues in the short- and medium-run, but the effect dissipates over time. The main conclusion is that tax innovations are not a panacea to overcome the revenue shortages in African countries, but they are helpful in the short- and medium-run.
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