1,720,955 research outputs found
Do Unions Matter? Trade Reform and Manufacturing Wages in South Africa-super- †
No full textThe effect of nominal tariff cuts on industry wage differentials has been the subject of a number of recent empirical studies. In this paper we investigate the latter relationship with respect to the South African trade reform experience using micro-level labour data for the period from 1995 to 2004. Our study extends on the existing literature in two respects: first, we are the first controlling for the potential effect of labour market institutions, such as collective bargaining power, in assessing the relationship between tariffs and industry wages. Second, we account for general equilibrium effects by controlling for the impact of changes in effective tariff rates. On the one hand, we find that only wages in industries with levels of unionisation beyond a certain threshold were adversely affected by tariff cuts. This negative effect is exacerbated by the extent of sectoral union power. The reported large magnitudes of the tariff impact on wages is in line with the considerably high mark-ups documented for South Africa. On the other hand we find some evidence suggesting that wages in industries with union power below the threshold were positively affected by the tariff cuts. This evidence suggests the omitted variable bias resulting from not controlling for industry heterogeneities in bargaining power when examining the wage--trade relationship. Copyright 2010 The author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected], Oxford University Press.
Efficiency Gains from Trade Reform: Foreign Technology or Import Competition? Evidence from South Africa’s Manufacturing Sector
No full textThe empirical trade literature examining the effect of tariff reductions on productivity commonly proxies the former with Nominal Tariff Rates (NTR) and estimates the latter as the production function residual. In the context of the South African trade reform experience we examine the different channels by which tariff cuts affect productivity growth. Using industry level data for the manufacturing sector and covering the reform period from 1994 to 2004, we disentangle the differential effect of increased foreign competition, proxied by reductions in NTR, and that of the imported technology, proxied by the reductions in Input Tariff Rates (ITR), on productivity growth. Our measure of efficiency growth controls for the effect of tariff reductions on markups. The results suggest that the efficiency difference between foreign and domestic inputs have the major effect on productivity gains. Declines in ITR significantly raise productivity growth compared to an insignificant effect for NTR. Additionally, we find that higher protection rates are associated with higher markups, albeit this finding is not robust across all specifications.Productivity, Trade Reform, Tariffs, Manufacturing, South Africa
Do Unions Matter? Trade Reform and Manufacturing Wages in South Africa
Get PDFThe effect of nominal tariff cuts on industry wage differentials has been the subject of a number of recent empirical studies. In this paper we investigate the latter relationship with respect to the South African trade reform experience using labor force data for the period from 1995 to 2004. Our study extends on the existing literature in two respects: firstly, we control for the potential effect of labor market institutions, such as collective bargaining power, in assessing the relationship between tariffs and industry wages. Secondly, we account for general equilibrium effects by controlling for the impact of changes in effective tariffs rates. We find that on the one hand, only wages in industries with levels of unionization beyond a certain threshold were adversely affected by tariff cuts. This negative effect is exacerbated by the extent of sectoral union power. The reported large magnitudes of the tariff impact on wages is in line with the considerably high markups documented for South Africa. On the other hand we find some evidence suggesting that wages in industries with union power below the threshold were positively affected by the tariff cuts
Do the Gulf Oil-Producing Countries Influence Regional Growth? T+L3886he Impact of Financial and Remittance Flows
No full textThis paper tests the association between the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries'' financial and remittance outflows and regional growth in the Middle East. The findings, based on 35-year panel data, indicate that growth rates of real GDP, private consumption and private investment in regional countries are strongly associated with remittance outflows from and the accumulation of financial surpluses in the GCC. Unlike in other developing and emerging market countries, growth in regional countries is not influenced by growth in the North, and is not export led. Linkages with the GCC could help sustain output growth in the regional countries in the face of the global economic slowdown and oil price shocks and could provide diversification gains to international capital seeking markets uncorrelated with Northern and emerging market countries.Emerging markets;Capital flows;Oil producing countries;Economic growth;Gross domestic product;Private consumption;Private investment;Outward remittances;Regional shocks;Oil prices;remittances, remittance, growth rate, gdp growth, business cycles, remittance outflows, business cycle, real gdp, growth rates, remittance flows, gdp growth rates, gdp growth rate, migration, remittance outflow, remittance inflows, growth cycles, impacts of remittances, regional economic growth, gdp per capita, remittances data, gdp deflator, worker remittances, migrant, gdps, capital formation, bilateral remittances
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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