Human capital in a global and knowledge-based economy. Part 2. Asssessment at the EU country level.

This report is an extension and partial update of de la Fuente and Ciccone (2002). It constructs estimates of the private and social rates of return on schooling for fourteen EU countries using microeconometric estimates of Mincerian wage equations, the results of cross-country growth regressions and OECD data on educational expenditures, tax rates and social benefits. The results are used to draw some tentative conclusions regarding the optimality of observed investment patterns and educational subsidy levels.

Human capital in a global and knowledge-based economy

This document is a report prepared for the DG for Employment and Social Affairs of the European Commission. It surveys the available evidence on the contribution of investment in human capital to aggregate productivity growth and on its impact on wages and other labour outcomes at the individual level. It also draws some tentative policy conclusions for an average European country.

Personal relations and their effect on behavior in an organizational setting: an experimental study

We study how personal relations affect performance in organizations. In the experimental game we use a manager has to assign different degrees of decision power to two employees. These two employees then have to make distributive decisions which affect themselves and the manager. Our focus is on the effects on managers' assignment of decision power and on employees' distributive decisions of one of the employees and the manager knowing each other personally. Our evidence shows that managers tend to favor employees that they personally know and that these employees tend, more than other employees, to favor the manager in their distributive decisions. However, this behavior does not affect the performance of the employees that do not know the manager. All these effects are independent of whether the employees that know the manager are more or less productive than those who do not know the manager. The results shed light on discrimination and nepotism and its consequences for the performance of family firms and other organizations.

Dynamic diagnosis based on interval analytical redundancy relations and signs of the symptoms

A model-based approach for fault diagnosis is proposed, where the fault detection is based on checking the consistencyof the Analytical Redundancy Relations (ARRs) using an interval tool. The tool takes into account the uncertainty in theparameters and the measurements using intervals. Faults are explicitly included in the model, which allows for the exploitation of additional information. This information is obtained from partial derivatives computed from the ARRs. The signs in the residuals are used to prune the candidate space when performing the fault diagnosis task. The method is illustrated using a two-tank example, in which these aspects are shown to have an impact on the diagnosis and fault discrimination, since the proposed method goes beyond the structural methods

The Effects of Expanding Ethanol Markets On Ethanol Production Feed Markets And the Iowa Economy, June 30 2001

Report produced by Iowa Departmment of Agriculture and Land Stewardship

Systemic risk, interbank relations and liquidity provision by the Central Bank

We model systemic risk in an interbank market. Banks face liquidityneeds as consumers are uncertain about where they need to consume. Interbank credit lines allow to cope with these liquidity shocks while reducing the cost of maintaining reserves. However, the interbank market exposes the system to a coordination failure(gridlock equilibrium) even if all banks are solvent. When one bankis insolvent, the stability of the banking system is affected in various ways depending on the patterns of payments across locations. We investigate the ability of the banking industry to withstand the insolvency of one bank and whether the closure ofone bank generates a chain reaction on the rest of the system. Weanalyze the coordinating role of the Central Bank in preventing payments systemic repercussions and we examine the justification ofthe Too-big-to-fail-policy.

Women, Work and the Iowa Economy, September 2008

Women play a substantial and crucial role in the Iowa economy. Women make up almost half the labor force, participating in the labor force at one of the highest rates in the nation. At the same time, disparities persist as to women���s prospects for success in that same economy. For instance, although women in Iowa are more likely than men to receive post-secondary education, they are also more likely to be in poverty and to earn a lower wage than male peers. The ���gender gap,��� the difference between male and female wages, is a much-discussed but often misunderstood tool that helps measure women���s success in the workforce. Women���s median wages are lower than men���s median wages largely because of differences in male and female occupations and work history, although gender discrimination in the workforce also plays a role. This report investigates Iowa���s gender gap in ways that clearly show both its causes and effects and suggests policy responses that could ensure women���s full and equal participation in Iowa���s economic future. Understanding the differences between men���s and women���s experiences in the state economy is important for developing policies that can effectively address barriers to economic success for all Iowans.

Services sans fronti��res : mondialisation, normalisation et r��gulation de l'��conomie des services

Les services p��sent plus de 80 % du PIB des pays de l'OCDE mais �� peine plus de 20 % dans leurs ��changes internationaux, ��cart qui s'explique, pour partie, par la difficult�� �� pr��coniser des normes internationales de type ISO aux activit��s du secteur tertiaire. �� l'aide d'un riche ensemble d'��tudes de cas, un ��clairage sur les entraves �� la mondialisation des services, qu'elles soient d'ordre social, ��conomique ou culturel. Unique dans sa th��matique, l'ouvrage s'��loigne des analyses conventionnelles sur la mondialisation des march��s et les rapports de puissance inter��tatiques. En pla��ant la probl��matique des services au coeur du nouveau r��gime de croissance capitaliste, il met en perspective les pol��miques sur la sous-traitance et les d��localisations et ouvre la voie �� de nouvelles hypoth��ses sur les liens entre tertiarisation, internationalisation et normalisation. Ont ��galement contribu�� �� cet ouvrage : Pablo Andres Diaz ? Christian du Tertre ? Fran��ois-Xavier Dudouet ? Tero Erkkil�� ? Eva Hartmann ? Christophe Hauert ? Niilo Kauppi ? Pascal Petit ? Carlos Ramirez ? Antoine Vion.