Rents, dissipation and lost treasures: Comment

In an interesting recent paper, Dari-Mattiacci and Parisi (2005) extended Tullock's (1980) rent-seeking game with an entry decision. The mixed strategies identified by Dari-Mattiacci and Parisi for the case of increasing returns in the contest success function (r2) do not constitute an equilibrium of the game they study. However, these strategies are an equilibrium if the strategy space of the game is restricted by a minimum expenditure requirement, and this minimum expenditure requirement is an element of a specific interval.     

Liver and spleen ruptures in authentic car-to-car side collisions with main impact at front door or B-pillar.

Seventy-nine belt-protected front seat occupants sustained authentic car-to-car side collisions with impact at front door or B-pillar in which energy equivalent speed (EES) and delta V had a highly significant influence on the occurrence of liver and spleen ruptures. From an EES greater than or equal to 40 km/h the risk of suffering liver and spleen injuries proved to be much higher for occupants on the impact side. Drivers on the impact side often had combined liver and spleen ruptures, front seat passengers had only liver ruptures and combined liver and spleen ruptures. The number of rib fractures on the left or right had a highly significant influence on the occurrence of liver and spleen ruptures. Liver ruptures and combined liver and spleen ruptures were often combined with pelvic ruptures.     

Wachsende Lohnungleichheit in Deutschland

Based on the thesis of growing overall inequality in the German society, this paper discusses changes in the inequality of wages for the period between 1998 and 2006. Our objective is to identify differences in real wage growth for various occupational classes. The theoretical foundation of the article is based on economic as well as sociological concepts. With regard to recent findings of labor economists, one could postulate that market forces driven by technological changes and the corresponding growth in the relative demand for highly-skilled labor have led to an increase in wage inequality (skill-biased technological change, SBTC). In contrast, a structural theory approach, based on the work of Aage B. Sørensen, would argue that increasing wage inequality is due to changes in the extent to which certain labor market groups are able to generate rents. For the empirical analysis, data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and data from the BIBB/IAB-Survey are used. Our results show that people in lower occupational classes belong to the losers of the general income dynamics in Germany between 1998 and 2006. Moreover, the inclusion of a broad variety of characteristics of the occupational position reveals that the growth of wage inequality in Germany can be explained by skill-biased technological changes, but also by changes in rent generating processes.     

The R&D performance of the South African manufacturing sector, 1970–1993

In this article we undertake a detailed exploration of the research and development activities in one particular middle-income country. We explore what the data from R&D surveys can tell us about the levels, the determinants and the effectiveness of R&D in the manufacturing sector. We point to some of the broader factors that may have influenced South Africa’s drive to improve the technological capacity of its manufacturing sector, but we mostly focus on those issues associated directly with R&D. We show that the degree of interaction between the different domains of R&D activity, business, government and the tertiary sector has been weak, and that the possibility of positive spill-overs between these domains has not been fully exploited. In addition, little or no policy intervention designed to stimulate R&D activity by industry has been deployed in South Africa. We find that South African R&D activity has mainly been reactive in character and suggest that this lies at the heart of South Africa’s mixed R&D performance in relation to other developing countries.