Productivity slowdown and misallocation in the post-recession: What prevents recovery?

This study explores the effects of the 2008 global economic crisis on the labor allocation and productivity in Luxembourg. The analysis is based on firm-level data from manufacturing and non-financial service sectors and finds a dramatic productivity slowdown after 2008. The study reveals that the cleansing effect of recession did not function effectively which would otherwise improve the efficiency in the labor allocation and counterbalance the productivity slowdown. The firm entry and job creation rates are lower in the post-crisis period, but the job destruction is not significantly altered by the crisis. The findings call attention for the strict employment protection legislation that possibly plays a role in preventing reallocation towards more efficient establishments. Relaxing the employment protection legislation simultaneously with facilitating the entry and growth of young firms is expected to promote creative destruction, improve allocative efficiency and speed up the post-crisis recovery.     

Left-right party ideology and government policies: A meta-analysis

Abstract. This paper summarizes how the partisan influence literature assesses the relationship between the left–right party composition of government and policy outputs through a meta–analysis of 693 parameter estimates of the party–policy relationship published in 43 empirical studies. Based on a simplified 'combined tests' meta–analytic technique, we show that the average correlation between the party composition of government and policy outputs is not significantly different from zero. A mutivariate logistic regression analysis examines how support for partisan theory is affected by a subset of mediating factors that can be applied to all the estimates under review. The analysis demonstrates that there are clearly identifiable conditions under which the probability of support for partisan theory can be substantially increased. We conclude that further research is needed on institutional and socio–economic determinants of public policy.     

Left–right party ideology and government policies: A meta–analysis

This paper summarizes how the partisan influence literature assesses the relationship between the left–right party composition of government and policy outputs through a meta–analysis of 693 parameter estimates of the party–policy relationship published in 43 empirical studies. Based on a simplified 'combined tests' meta–analytic technique, we show that the average correlation between the party composition of government and policy outputs is not significantly different from zero. A mutivariate logistic regression analysis examines how support for partisan theory is affected by a subset of mediating factors that can be applied to all the estimates under review. The analysis demonstrates that there are clearly identifiable conditions under which the probability of support for partisan theory can be substantially increased. We conclude that further research is needed on institutional and socio–economic determinants of public policy.     

Negotiating a Korea – EU free trade agreement: easier said than done

A number of countries have chosen recently to shift away from an exclusive support to trade multilateralism and towards regional or bilateral trade agreements. Being no exceptions in this respect, the Republic of South Korea and the European Union have engaged in a bilateral FTA negotiation in early 2007. The objective of the paper is to account for the unexpected difficulties encountered in the negotiation. The paper starts with a brief overview of the trade and investment relations between the two partners and underlines the complementarity between the two partners, as well as their respective offensive and defensive interests. As a next step, the paper delves into the “politics” of the FTA negotiation with a view to highlighting the motivations and objectives of the various partners involved. It comes to the conclusion that the major reason why the negotiation turned out to be more complex than initially expected relates to the two partners’ diverging views as to what a discriminatory FTA should imply.     

Intensity and Breadth of Participation in Organized Activities During the Adolescent Years: Multiple Associations with Youth Outcomes

The goal of this study was to examine initial levels and rates of change in the intensity and breadth of participation in organized activities during the adolescent years, and how these participation practices were related to youth outcomes in later adolescence. The main objectives were (a) to examine growth curves of intensity and breadth of participation from Grades 7 through 11 and their interrelations, and (b) to test the associations between these dimensions of participation and academic orientation, risky behaviors, internalizing problems, and civic development in Grade 11. A homogenous sample of 299 youth (mean age = 13.37, SD = .41; 62% girls) were surveyed annually using questionnaires and phone interviews. The main results revealed that (a) even though both intensity and breadth of participation decreased over time, intensity of participation showed steeper declines by later grades, and (b) initial levels of participation were better predictors of later outcomes than rates of change over time. Regardless of the levels of change taking place over time, results revealed that youth with high initial levels of participation (both intensity and breadth) were more committed to school and developed more positive values towards society by Grade 11 than those who participated less. This might suggest that a high level of participation during early-to-mid-adolescence is particularly important when it comes to later outcomes.     

A General Empirical Law of Public Budgets: A Comparative Analysis

We examine regularities and differences in public budgeting in comparative perspective. Budgets quantify collective political decisions made in response to incoming information, the preferences of decision makers, and the institutions that structure how decisions are made. We first establish that the distribution of budget changes in many Western democracies follows a non-Gaussian distribution, the power function. This implies that budgets are highly incremental, yet occasionally are punctuated by large changes. This pattern holds regardless of the type of political system—parliamentary or presidential—and for level of government. By studying the power function's exponents we find systematic differences for budgetary increases versus decreases (the former are more punctuated) in most systems, and for levels of government (local governments are less punctuated). Finally, we show that differences among countries in the coefficients of the general budget law correspond to differences in formal institutional structures. While the general form of the law is probably dictated by the fundamental operations of human and organizational information processing, differences in the magnitudes of the law's basic parameters are country- and institution-specific .     

Operationalizing cultural citizenship: towards a concept of culture regime*

This paper contributes to the study of cultural citizenship by laying the foundations for a concept of culture regime. Depicting culture as a malleable concept that encompasses both particularistic and universalistic elements, the paper emphasizes the potential of the concept of culture regime to bridge those of citizenship, language and ethnicity regime. While presenting narrow conceptions of culture as ethnic identity as a defensible compromise in the context of comparative empirical research, the paper discusses how the study of culture regimes could integrate broader approaches to culture by incorporating other forms of cultural claims and identities that go beyond ethnic traits. In doing so, the paper aims to promote an inter-disciplinary dialogue on cultural citizenship, arguing that some of the differences in cross-disciplinary approaches to culture owe to methodological rather than ontological considerations.     

Pursuing performance and maintaining compliance: Balancing performance improvement and accountability in Ontario's public health system

This article examines the compatibility between performance improvement and compliance‐based accountability in the implementation of a new system of public health performance management in Ontario. Findings from this mixed‐method study show that only minor elements of performance improvement get incorporated into pre‐existing compliance‐based accountability structures, that reinforcement of accountability structures works to the detriment of performance improvement intentions, and that limiting managerial influence in developing performance measures and targets diminish the utility of information for improvement. The study concludes that achieving a better balance requires an alternative to top‐down decision making that goes beyond consultation to include partnership.