ALBERT

Notizen: This paper uses the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia to analyze the determinants of the level and growth in earnings of adult male immigrants in their first 3.5 years in Australia. The theoretical framework is based on the immigrant adjustment model, which incorporates both the transferability of immigrant skills and selectively in migration. The cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses generate similar findings. The level and relative growth of earnings are higher for immigrants with higher levels of skill and who are economic/skills tested migrants, as distinct from family based and refugee migrants. The analysis indicates that immigrant economic assimilation does occur and that in these data the cross-section provides a good estimate of the longitudinal progress of immigrants. The findings are robust across statistical techniques.

Notizen: The article considers a very simple type of hedonic regression model where the only characteristic of a commodity is the commodity itself. This regression model is known as the country product dummy method for calculating country price parities in the context of making international comparisons. The paper considers only the two country or two period case and introduces value or quantity weights into the regression. The resulting measures of overall price change between the two countries or time periods are compared to traditional bilateral index number formulae. It is shown how the Geary Khamis, Walsh and Törnqvist price indexes can be obtained as special cases of this framework.

Notizen: There are concerns that the unprecedented economic boom which Ireland experienced in the second half of the 1990s has raised only some living standards and has widened income gaps. This paper analyzes Ireland's income distribution in comparative perspective, to understand how Ireland's distribution changed and how it compares to other rich countries. We begin with OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data to compare Ireland's degree of well-being and inequality with other advanced countries. We also look in some detail at alternative sources of Irish income and their implications for the trends in income inequality in Ireland from 1994 to 2000. For instance, we examine the top of the distribution using data from the administration of the income tax system. We conclude that the spectacular economic growth in the past decade has seen the gap in average income between Ireland and the richer OECD countries narrow dramatically. However, this growth has not greatly affected the Irish ranking in terms of income inequality. Ireland remains an outlier among rich European nations in its high degree of income inequality, though still falling well short of the level seen in the United States. In the end, we find that Ireland's new-found prosperity provides a “social dividend,” and choices about how it is used will fundamentally affect whether the current high level of income inequality persists into the future.

Notizen: In this paper we present a new industry-level database to analyze sources of growth in four major European countries: France, Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom (EU-4), in comparison with the United States for the period 1979–2000. Aggregate labor productivity growth is decomposed into industry-level contributions of labor quality, ICT and non-ICT capital deepening and TFP. A small set of service industries is mainly responsible for the acceleration in ICT capital deepening in both regions, but their contribution to growth is lower in the EU-4 than in the U.S. TFP in these ICT-intensive services accelerated in the U.S. in the 1990s, but not in Europe. In addition, widespread deceleration in non-ICT capital deepening in the EU-4 has led to a European labor productivity slowdown.

Notizen: Different spending patterns across households and differences in price increases across goods and services lead to unequal levels of inflation faced by different households. In this paper we measure the degree of inequality in inflation across U.S. households for the period 1987–2000. The broad picture that emerges from our results is that over our whole sample period there are substantial differences in the inflation experiences across U.S. households. We find that the cost of living increases were generally higher for the elderly, in large part because of their health care expenditures, and that the cost of living of poor households is most sensitive to the, historically large, fluctuations in gasoline prices. Still, when looking at the whole population, we find that individual households that are confronted with high inflation in one year do not generally face high inflation in the subsequent year as well.

Notizen: The country-product-dummy (CPD) method, originally proposed in Summers (1973), has recently been revisited in its weighted formulation to handle a variety of data related situations (Rao and Timmer, 2000, 2003; Heravi et al., 2001; Rao, 2001; Aten and Menezes, 2002; Heston and Aten, 2002; Deaton et al., 2004). The CPD method is also increasingly being used in the context of hedonic modelling instead of its original purpose of filling holes in Summers (1973). However, the CPD method is seen, among practitioners, as a black box due to its regression formulation. The main objective of the paper is to establish equivalence of purchasing power parities and international prices derived from the application of the weighted-CPD method with those arising out of the Rao-system for multilateral comparisons. A major implication of this result is that the weighted-CPD method would then be a natural method of aggregation at all levels of aggregation within the context of international comparisons.

Notizen: U.S. households have increasingly used mutual funds to own equity outside of retirement accounts owing to two developments. The first is a decline in equity mutual fund loads, which are negatively correlated with stock ownership rates, which have doubled owing to greater ownership through mutual funds. The second is improved confidence in future family finances. Both effects are consistent with recent models of equity participation, in which lower asset transfer costs and lower income risk induce equity investing by middle-income households, who—in practice and owing to diversification considerations—are more likely to indirectly hold stocks through mutual funds.

Notizen: This paper examines the relation between fluctuations in the aggregate value of equities and the adequacy of households’ saving for retirement. Using more recent data than most studies on this topic, we find that many and perhaps most households appear to be saving adequate amounts for retirement, and that there is almost no link between aggregate equity values and the adequacy of retirement saving. A simulated 40 percent decline in stocks has little effect on the adequacy of saving. The substantial growth in equity values and ownership in the 1980s and 1990s did not lead to a surge in the adequacy of retirement saving provisions. The results occur because equity holdings are concentrated among households with significant amounts of other wealth.

Notizen: In this paper, I analyze the impact of social security wealth, retirement payments, and living expenses during retirement on people's retirement savings in general, and on their individual pension holdings in particular, using micro data from a 1996 Japanese household survey. I confirm a replacement effect of social security on saving for all types of households and on individual pensions for self-employed households only. This suggests that the social security assets of self-employed households are less than their optimal level of annuitized assets and that they would increase their demand for individual pensions if social security benefits were to be reduced.

Notizen: This paper proposes a social welfare framework in which to analyze the relationships between growth, trends in inequality, mobility, and social welfare. An application of the framework to worldwide and regional data on per capita GDP suggests a lack of convergence at the world level, opposite trends in convergence in various regions of the world, and a fairly low level of mobility or re-ranking between countries over time.

Notizen: A formulation for incorporating Life expectancy information into empirical economic welfare calculations is presented. In an application analyzing the economic progress of the African continent during the 1990s due consideration of life expectancy factors substantially modifies the conclusions drawn from standard welfare calculations.

Notizen: Did global income inequality rise or fall over the last decades of the twentieth century? The answer depends on how cross-country income comparisons are made. Exchange rate comparisons suggest that inequality rose whilst the purchasing power comparisons of the Penn World Table suggest it fell. We show that both measures of real incomes lead to biased international income comparisons. Exchange rate comparisons ignore the relative price of non-tradables, whilst the fixed price method underlying the Penn World Table is subject to substitution bias. The contradictory trends are due to growing dissimilarity between national price structures increasing the degree of bias in each method. When we correct the income data to eliminate bias we find no compelling evidence of a significant change in world inequality.

Notizen: Equivalence scales are used to enable welfare comparisons across heterogeneous households. In this paper, we propose to use the achievement of a certain level of functioning as the identifying assumption for the derivation of equivalence scales. This will allow us not only to deal with welfare comparisons between households of different size and composition, but will also enable us to incorporate other characteristics (such as location and employment status) in the creation of equivalence scales for welfare comparisons. The paper applies this approach to create equivalence scales for the functioning “shelter” using Belgian and Italian data. The analysis shows that the income differences associated with different characteristics only play a small role in explaining differences in functionings. An important policy message is therefore that compensating people for functioning shortfalls in monetary terms may not be sensible.

Notizen: This paper analyzes distributional changes over the last quarter of the twentieth century. We focus on four distinct distributions: the distribution of hourly wage rates, the distribution of annual earnings of individuals, the distribution of annual earnings of families, and the distribution of total family income adjusted for family size. Both male wage rate inequality and family income inequality accelerated during the early 1980s, increased at a slower rate through the early 1990s and then stabilized at a high level through the early 2000s. The similarity in the timing of changes in these two distributions has been used as evidence that increased family income inequality primarily reflects increased inequality of wage rates. We show that other important factors were also at work.

Notizen: The Human Development Index (HDI) uses GDP per capita to measure “command over resources,” which implicitly makes the strong value judgment that inequality and insecurity do not matter. This paper presents revised estimates of the Index of Economic Well-Being (IEWB) for the United States, the U.K., Canada, Australia, Germany, Norway and Sweden for the period 1980 to 2001 and demonstrates that replacing an index of the log per capita incomes with our IEWB as the “command over resources” component in the Human Development Index (HDI) affects the level and trend of the HDI, even among affluent nations. Because the IEWB recognizes four dimensions of command over resources (Current effective per capita Consumption flows, Net societal Accumulation of stocks of productive resources, Income Distribution and Economic Security), its use has a particularly large impact where underlying trends in these components diverge (e.g. the U.K. or the United States).

Notizen: This paper is an attempt to translate empirically some of the categorizations of human development reviewed by Alkire (2002). It compares the estimates of human development obtained on the basis of Sen's (1985) capability approach, Narayan et al.'s (2000) dimensions of well-being, Cummins (1996) domains of life satisfaction and Allardt's (1993) comparative Scandinavian welfare study. To obtain these estimates of human development use is made of techniques developed in efficiency analysis, an approach rarely applied to the study of consumption and standards of living (see, however, Lovell et al., 1994). Our database is the British Household Panel Survey. Our findings vindicate the multidimensional approach to human development but show a great empirical resemblance between the four conceptual approaches to well-being.

Notizen: Income per capita and most widely reported, non- or non-exclusively income based human well-being indicators are highly correlated among countries. Yet many countries exhibit higher achievement in the latter than predicted by the former. The reverse is true for many other countries. This paper commences by extracting the inter-country variation in a composite of various widely-reported, non-income-based well-being indices not accounted for by variations in income pre capita. This extraction is interpreted inter alia as a measure of non-economic well-being. The paper then looks at correlations between this extraction and a number of new or less widely-used well-being measures, in an attempt to find the measure that best captures these achievements. A number of indicators are examined, including measures of poverty, inequality, health status, education status, gender bias, empowerment, governance and subjective well-being.

Notizen: This paper analyzes how inflation-induced erosions of nominally defined amounts built into relevant tax rules (“bracket creep”) alter distributional and revenue-generating properties of income taxes and social insurance contributions. Using a multi-country tax-benefit model, it provides quantitative estimates for Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. In the absence of automatic inflation adjustment mechanisms, effects on individual tax burdens can be substantial, even with low inflation. Bracket creep is found to reduce tax progressivity. At the same time, overall tax revenues increase. In terms of tax systems’ equalizing capacities, which depend on both these factors, the second effect dominates: if tax systems were left unadjusted then inflation would lead to lower and slightly more equally distributed household incomes. However, existing inflation adjustment regimes in the Netherlands and the U.K. successfully prevent large tax burdens changes.

Notizen: When comparing poverty across distributions, an analyst must select a poverty line to identify the poor, an equivalence scale to compare individuals from households of different compositions and sizes, and a poverty index to aggregate individual deprivation into an index of total poverty. A different choice of poverty line, poverty index or equivalence scale can of course reverse an initial poverty ordering. This paper develops easily-checked sequential stochastic dominance conditions that throw light on the robustness of poverty comparisons to these important measurement issues. These general conditions extend well-known results to any order of dominance, to the choice of individual versus family based aggregation, and to the estimation of “critical sets” of measurement assumptions. Our theoretical results are briefly illustrated using data for four countries drawn from the Luxembourg Income Study databases.

Notizen: Equivalization of incomes for household composition is accepted practice when measuring poverty but other variations in needs are rarely acknowledged. This paper uses data from two U.K. household surveys to quantify the extra costs of living associated with disability. The extra costs of disability are derived by comparing the “standard of living” of households with and without disabled members at a given income, having controlled for other sources of variation. Logit and ordered logit regressions are used to estimate the relationship between a range of standard of living indicators, income, and disability. The extra costs of disability derived are substantial and rise with severity of disability. Unadjusted incomes significantly understate the problem of low income amongst disabled people, and thereby in the population as a whole.

Notizen: The deficiencies of the Deininger and Squire data set on household income inequality are well known to include sparse coverage, problematic measurements, and the combination of diverse data types into a single data set. Yet many studies have relied on this data due to the lack of available alternatives. In this paper we show how the UTIP-UNIDO measures of manufacturing pay inequality can be used, with other information, to estimate measures of household income inequality. We take advantage of the systematic relationship between the UTIP-UNIDO estimates and those of Deininger and Squire. The residuals from this exercise provide a map to problematic observations in the Deininger and Squire data, and the estimated coefficients provide a way to construct a new panel data set of estimated household income inequality. This new data set provides comparable and consistent measurements across space and through time.

Notizen: This paper makes a systematic comparison of four approaches to multidimensional poverty analysis based respectively on the theory of fuzzy sets, information theory, efficiency analysis and axiomatic derivations of poverty indices. The database was the 1995 Israeli Census that provided information on the ownership of various durable goods. There appears to be a fair degree of agreement between the various multidimensional poverty indices concerning the identification of the poor households. The four approaches have also shown that poverty decreases with the schooling level of the head of the household, first decreases and then increases with his/her age and with the size of the household. Poverty is higher when the head of the household is single and lower when he/she is married, lowest when the head of the household is Jewish and highest when he/she is Muslim. Poverty is also higher among households whose head immigrated in recent years, does not work or lives in Jerusalem. These observations were made on the basis of logit regressions. This impact on poverty of many of the variables is not very different from the one that is observed when poverty measurement is based only on the income or the total expenditures of the households.

Notizen: Income redistribution studies on the macro–economic level have been undertaken in Denmark for the years 1938–39, 1949, 1955, and 1963. By use of national accounts figures and all other available statistics, it was on certain assumptions possible to distribute public sector income and expenditure by income groups.A quite different approach is used in a Danish redistribution study on the micro-economic level for 1971, which relies solely on the comprehensive data from the family budget survey for that year. Unfortunately this study only relates to employee households.This paper deals with the 1963 and 1971 studies. First it describes and discusses the differences in methodology between the two studies and indicates some ideas for future studies in this field in Denmark. In the following sections some main results of the two studies are given, briefly for the 1963 study and more comprehensively for the 1971 study. The studies show the great and growing strength of the policy of redistribution through public sector income and expenditure in Denmark.It is the opinion of the authors that the appearance of redistribution studies based on comprehensive family budget surveys makes for a substantial improvement of redistribution figures, and that the purely micro-level frame of reference makes it possible to interpret the results in a more satisfactory way than before. Furthermore, the appearance of detailed input-output based national accounts data should bring about further improvements in redistribution figures through better data on indirect taxes and subsidies as well as supporting data which are necessary to link the micro and macro levels in a consistent way.

Notizen: It is often discussed that inflation introduces a substantial, arbitrary and regressive redistribution of income and wealth under even mild inflation. But after a quarter century of experience with inflation in postwar Japan, very little is known about these costs of inflation on an empirical basis. Due to the complexity of the evaluation of the redistributional impact on Japan, the present paper analyzes the effects of inflation on individuals or groups as wage earners, debtors and creditors, taxpayers, and holders of real estate.The main results of the present investigation suggest that the Japanese inflation for 1955–75 did not seem to introduce much inequality in the income (flow) account in the economy, but that the inequality between households has appeared more in the wealth (stock) account, especially between the house-owner groups and non-house-owner groups. These observations are mainly derived from the following investigations; (i) the wage lag hypothesis about inflation, even if not wrong, does not seem acceptable when applied to the entire period (1955–75) as well as to each of the five sub-periods; (ii) there has been a substantial transfer of real purchasing power from households to non-financial corporations, and, to a lesser extent, to government entities in the debtor-creditor redistribution; (iii) among households, the most substantial redistribution takes place from the non-houseowners to houseowners with land, because of the huge amount of capital gains from the rapid increase in the price of real estate relative to the prices of other assets or the consumer price index, except for the last three years of rampaging inflation.

Notizen: Preliminary estimates of the total incomes system of accounts (TISA) are provided for 1959 and 1969. They extend conventional accounts to include all consumption services produced by government and households as well as by enterprises, but define household purchases of durable and semi-durable goods as investment. Acquisitions of capital throughout the economy, intangible as well as tangible, and not only in the business sector, are included in capital accumulation along with, for tangible capital, net revaluations, that is capital gains net of increases in the general price level. Imputations are offered for non market consumption and capital accumulation, most prominently in unpaid household work and education. Much of government output, particularly police services and defense, is recalculated as intermediate, along with expenses related to work, while media services, treated by the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) as business purchases of intermediate product, enter into TISA consumption. Subsidies are included in the value of product, as are services of volunteers and imputations for the underpayment of military conscripts and of jurors. Separate accounts are offered for the national income and product, business, nonprofit institutions, government enterprises, government and households.The ratios of BEA to TISA Net National Product were 81.4 percent and 76.5 percent in 1959 and 1969, respectively. BEA national income was 74.1 percent of the corresponding TISA net national income in 1959 and 69.6 percent in 1969, reflecting a greater per annum rate of growth of TISA net national income, 7.49 percent, as against 6.82 percent for the corresponding BEA national income.BEA gross private domestic investment, restricted to business acquisitions of tangible capital at original cost, was estimated as only approximately 22 percent of comprehensive TISA gross domestic capital formation in 1959 and some 20 percent in 1969. The BEA net private domestic investment growth rate of 7.32 percent per annum from 1959 to 1969 may be compared with a TISA net domestic capital formation growth rate of 9.42 percent.

Notizen: This paper is in 7 sections. Section 1 gives as background a chronological account of the steps taken in the United Kingdom, from 1974 to late 1977, towards the development of a new system of accounting in company reports which would allow for the effect of changing costs and prices on the measurement of profit and of capital employed in the business. Section 2 discusses the main features of the system, known as current cost accounting, as it is seen in the United Kingdom. Section 3 surveys the relationship between current cost accounting and the national income and expenditure statistics, and the likely implications of the introduction of current cost accounting upon the quality of macro-economic statistics, including estimates of national and sector balance sheets. Section 4 describes some of the problems of implementing current cost accounting, particularly in special situations, and outlines the solutions which were proposed in the “Exposure Draft” published in 1976 by the accountancy profession in the United Kingdom. Section 5 considers the definition of distributable profit in relation to the need to maintain capital, considering the concept of gain, the system of valuing assets and liabilities, and the enterprise's capacity to take on additional debt as a means of financing its assets. Section 6 briefly surveys the implications for taxation, price control and price setting. Section 7 concludes by surveying the scene at the end of 1977 and by looking at likely future developments.

Notizen: This article explores the assumptions underlying present definitions of national income in its principal uses, and considers the alterations that would be needed to allow for the inclusion of environmental quality. A numerical example illustrates the impact of alternative measures. The discussion concludes that if we want national income to conform more closely to theoretical concepts of welfare indices, then we need to include a proxy for those environmental services that would not be completely free goods if it were possible to overcome their inherent non-marketability. The least unsatisfactory proxy would be the spending on environmental protection.

Notizen: This paper examines the causes and consequences of the inflationary process in terms of its impact upon the national accounting flows, illustrated by the case of France during the period 1966–76. The first section of the paper discusses the apparent causes of inflation, and lays out the circuits through which inflation is propagated. The second section looks behind the apparent causes to examine more closely the reasons for the observed behavior. The final section considers the consequences of inflation in terms of factor allocation, and in turn its impact upon unemployment, the balance of payments, and the rate of growth.

Notizen: In the June 1977 issue of the American Economic Review extraordinary attention was given to the statistical problem of measuring the effect on inequality in current income arising from differences associated with age. The method adopted by Paglin was severely criticized although everyone recognized the value of Paglin's unusual, if not original, emphasis on the importance of the underlying issue.This paper is not primarily concerned with the statistical problem of correcting data on current income distributions for income-age differences. It is concerned mainly with the lifetime income perspective itself-with ways of viewing the long-term path of persons and of ways of viewing inequalities in that path as they develop within and among different generations.The paper discusses issues of measurement on a birth-cohort or longitudinal basis, recent trends for selected cohorts, intra-and inter-cohort variances in lifetime income, and various policy issues, for example, the equity of the U.S. Social Security System viewed on a lifetime dimension.

Notizen: This article reports on the plans of the member countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) in the area of the purchasing power parity comparisons of national product and similar aggregates. A series of comparisons of the U.S.S.R. with other individual member countries was made for 1959,1966, and 1973. A new series will be undertaken for the year 1978. The scope of the program will be expanded to cover several new aggregates, including productivity concepts and total consumption of the population. The article discusses the conceptual and methodological problems and plans. Among other matters, attention is being given to the possibility of reducing the number of specifications priced, without sacrificing accuracy.

Notizen: The problem of identification and classification of off-shore financial flows and extra-territorial funds is discussed with special reference to the case of the “captive” insurance market in Bermuda. The problem is examined in the context of the UN SNA definitions relating to the evaluation of insurance activities and the difficulty of gaining access to relevant and complete data. The conclusion is reached that the conduct of off-shore financial operations by local institutions and the resulting surpluses generated remain essentially extranational and thus contribute very little to the domestic value added of the tax haven concerned. Furthermore, by its very nature, information relating to the transactors involved, as well as the value of their transactions, is difficult to obtain. This raises a much wider issue, however, as to whether such surpluses are ever identified in any country's national income estimates.

Notizen: This paper has two main points. First, the usefulness of the industry detail called for in the SNA would be increased if it were altered to facilitate the construction of price and quantity aggregates classified by stage-of-process sectors. Second, the price and quantity data so arranged should be augmented by data on behaviorally related variables classified the same way. The feasibility of the stage-of-process approach is demonstrated by a table showing the high degree to which the U.S. input-output table for 1967 can be triangularized. The analytical usefulness of the approach is demonstrated through analysis of changes in prices, output, unfilled orders and finished goods inventories for primary and for finished goods manufacturers.

Notizen: This article proposes a method of characterizing the growth process using two parameters, a production index measuring growth, and a structural change index measuring the changes in the composition of output. It discusses the properties of the structural change index that is developed, including its relation to the bias in growth rates measured by conventional index numbers. It then applies the measure to an examination of Yugoslav industry for the period 1952–71.

Notizen: Expanding a conventional national accounting framework in order to include activities that are not produced or consumed via ordinary markets requires the accountant to adopt some procedure for assigning unit values to these activities. Often, as is the case with governmental services, unit values are equated with unit costs of production.This paper argues that the appropriate valuation generally differs depending on whether the activity is viewed from the perspective of the producer, the consumer, or society. The theoretical justification for this position is developed first for the case of nonmarketed environmental services and then for in-kind governmental transfers.Rather than choosing a single unit value, the paper argues for and outlines an accounting system that will permit the simultaneous adoption of more than one valuation. Techniques for implementing the system for the environment and for in-kind transfers are discussed.Finally, drawing on the experience of the authors, the paper argues for the importance of developing data sets with more than one valuation. The authors claim that the effort to implement the system has generated valuable ancillary data sets even though data limitations and unresolved methodological questions have precluded complete implementation.

Notizen: The paper presents some estimates of the imputed dollar value of household work (HW)for Canada in 1961 and 1971, finding this to be about $16 and $38 billion respectively, equal to 40 percent of GNP. From the results we derive some implications about five questions raised in the relevant literature. First, no clear evidence of a downward trend for the ratio HW/GNP is found, contrary to U.S. results. Second, addition of HW to GNP as a welfare measure does not affect the general pattern of past growth estimates. Third, a cost–by-function method of estimating HW is found superior in its theoretical support and the detail it provides, but the opportunity-cost method, despite doubts on its theoretical validity, gives a good approximation in the aggregate, and, being simpler, is likely to remain popular. Fourth, disaggregation does matter if detail by region or family type is required, in which case data by number and ages of children and market-employment status of females are needed; for the total, a reasonable estimate (6–7 percent error)is given by further aggregated data. Fifth, sensitivity of HW to accuracy in the data used is large only for female wages chosen, in particular for the function “cooking”. Finally, though available data must be manipulated to fit the needs of HW, especially for earlier years, the extent of this is not all that much more than is commonly found for GNP estimations.

Notizen: This paper discusses the problem of valuing the time spent on household production and presents estimates of that production for the United States in 1960 and 1970. The estimates are derived by using both opportunity cost and market cost valuations of household time. A comparative analysis of these estimates concludes first that opportunity cost estimates exceeded market cost estimates by 1.0 to 3.0 percent of the GNP. Second, the ratio of household production to the GNP, although declining slightly between 1960 and 1970, may in the long run tend to be relatively stable. These conclusions do not support the popular views that over time household production will decline in relative magnitude, or that the opportunity cost method of valuing household time, relative to the market cost method, is significantly upward biased.

Notizen: Construction has traditionally constituted one of the problem areas in the preparation of industry price and quantity statistm with in the system of national accounts of most countries. The difficulty stems from what is considered to be the unique character of construction projects. This has unnecessarily impeded the calculation of output price indexes and has resulted in the use of various input-based prices as proxies for output prices.One of the objectives of the development of the system of construction price statistics described in this paper is to permit deflation of the outputs of construction industries in order to produce industry output data in constant prices in a manner consistent with measures for the rest of the economy. This is a more promising approach to improving constant price industry and expenditure measures within the SNA framework than attempting such improvements through the collection of a vast array of quantity data.Construction industries sell specified configurations of materials-in-place which are, to borrow the jargon of other fields, sub-assemblies of some total system. As in other areas of industrial pricing, some of these products are simple and some are complex. Trade contractors sell these sub-assemblies or commodities mainly to an owner-builder or to a general contractor who, in turn, resells the trade contractors’ commodities along with whatever sub-assemblies the general contractor has produced. These sub-assemblies, when combined with, for example, the relevant outputs (or sub-assemblies) of manufacturers, the design services of service industries and the purchasers’ own contributions, yield the wide variety of plant and structures which constitute the various classes of gross fixed capital formation, which are not typically solely the outputs of the construction industries.The resulting contractors’ selling price indexes will provide deflators for the whole range of outputs of the various construction industries. These will become part of the system of industry selling price indexes from which relevant indexes for the various goods and services can be selected and combined with appropriate weights to yield arrays of deflators for the highly complex capital expenditures of business, institutions and government.Ultimately this integrated system of construction industry statistics will permit the preparation of gross output and value added measures, in both current and constant prices, to be calculated for the construction industries as an integral part of the Canadian System of National Accounts, as well as provide a key element for improving the deflation of fixed capital formation.

Notizen: The constant price method is used here to evaluate transfers related to inflation either between households and other economic agents (essentially enterprises) or among groups of households defined by occupation, age class and so on. The results obtained are only fragmentary due to a lack of many pieces of information. The method requires in fact the splitting up of every value variation into a price component and a size component.Nevertheless, some interesting results are shown. In recent years, if the total productivity surplus has always been positive, the wealth surplus of households is sometimes positive, sometimes negative. Concerning the distribution of the productivity surplus among household groups, it has not been possible to find significant distortions, other than those which are related to differences in the propensity to save. On the contrary, marked distortions appear in the distribution of the wealth surplus due to wide differences in estate composition and indebtedness level.

Notizen: As a basis for judging how public policy affects the poor, this article explores how “poor” families may be defined and how well such families can be distinguished from other families in the less developed countries. This is done by seeking proxies for poverty which are relatively easy to measure, accurate in discriminating between the poor and the non-poor, and relevant to public policy. To this end, a highly parsimonious model is developed, based on truncation and regression procedures, using only family size and number of wage earners in addition to either income or an education-age combination. Application of this model to data from household surveys in three major cities of Latin America shows that the model is highly effective in pinpointing poverty households, although the pattern of errors is not random, the most frequent type of error being to classify poverty households as non-poor.Especially significant is that the model is nearly as effective for discriminating poverty households from others when financial variables are excluded as when they are included. This would suggest that a good deal of flexibility exists in deciding what variables to include in future studies of this type. The results also suggest that even better results should be possible if more complete information is obtained on the employment status of the different members of the household and on the contribution of each to household income. Ideally, the data collection and model development should proceed in an iterative manner since there are numerous possible variables as well as alternative model formulations.

Notizen: Unlike most developing countries, the Philippines has had several (four) reasonably comparable family income and expenditure surveys, covering a reasonable period of time (15 years). This study draws on those surveys and on wage data in an attempt to judge how, if at all, the distribution of income has been changing. The household survey data shows a declining share of both income and consumption for the top income groups; for the bottom quintile the share of recorded income fell while that of recorded consumption rose. When possible biases of the data are allowed for, it is hard to argue that either a narrowing or widening of income differentials occurred over these years. Real wages of a number of important occupations appear to have fallen, however. Only a partial reconciliation of the trends indicated by these wage series and the income trends for various occupational groups implicit in the household survey data was possible, indicating either data problems or the need for more subtle interpretations of the data. Since structural change in the labour force has been rapid (an increasing share being found in the high income occupations as time passed), declining wage rates for certain lower income groups cannot be taken to imply a general worsening of distribution. Our final conclusion is that distribution has probably changed little, and is about as likely to have changed one way as the other.

Notizen: The paper reports on several results from a comprehensive study of the household incidence of public expenditure in Peninsular Malaysia in 1974. The results for education show a pro-poor distribution of expenditure when measured as a share of household income. Using however the criterion of each according to his needs (that is the number of school-age children per household) reverses this outcome. In agriculture, because of the importance of land settlement, benefits from public expenditure distribute predominantly in favor of the poor.The research differs from the usual study of this kind in that individual government outputs such as school years, or fertilizer loans, were defined, and in the case of education their unit costs estimated and their distribution across households measured. In the case of education, both the costs of services from capital and the households’ out-of-pocket educational costs were added to the current subsidies. As one consequence, it was seen that total expenditure for education in Malaysia exceeds one-eighth of GNP, nearly double the conventional estimate. Equally important, for the poor the burden of private costs for education even within a public system were seen to be very high.The contrasts between the strong results for education, a broad based social service, and the less conclusive results for agriculture, an economic service which impacts directly on production, were instructive in suggesting the limitations of such research in measuring the effects of government budget activity on distribution.

Notizen: To adjust business accounting for inflation, one current proposal is to convert all dollar figures in existing financial statements to units of fixed general purchasing power. A widely offered alternative is to retain the dollar units but replace the historical-cost figures by current values. The two alternatives would yield very different results. After reviewing these and variant proposals, the analysis concentrates on certain major issues: the unit of measurement; the treatment of capital gains; the concept of capital maintenance; and the treatment of changes in the purchasing power of debt. Current value accounting would not correct for changes in the general price level and would involve far more difficult problems of concept and measurement than general purchasing power accounting. The latter is therefore preferable.

Notizen: In this paper, we reclassify U.S. input-output data along functional lines by analyzing the use of products represented in the detailed coefficients of the 1967 interindustry study. Our new categories comprise 11 producing “industries,” services (nonproduction), energy (nonproduction), marketing, distribution, other general, crude materials, semi-finished materials, energy production, service production, and machinery replacement, furnishing products to 80 consuming industries. This functional input-output system is then used to analyze postwar structural change in the American economy. Distinct shifts in the uses of different types of inputs are indicated and the implications of these results are discussed.

Notizen: TRADE UNIONS UNDER CAPITALISM: Tom Clarke and Laurie Clements (Eds) ESSAYS IN LABOUR HISTORY 1918–1939: Asa Briggs and John Saville (Eds) WORKER PARTICIPATION WORKER SIT-INS AND JOB PROTECTION: J. Greenwood A SURVEY OF CONTEMPORARY BRITISH WORKER COOPERATIVES: P. Chaplin and R. Cowe CAN WORKERS MANAGE?: B. Chiplin, J. Coyne and L. Sirc LABOR SHORTAGE AND ECONOMIC ANALYSIS; A STUDY OF OCCUPATIONAL LABOUR MARKETS: B. Thomas and D. Deaton MEASURING INEQUALITY: F. A. Cowell CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: A RE-ASSESSMENT: Michael Beesley and Tom Evans

Notizen: Books reviewed: The Emergence of European Trade Unionism Jean-Louis Robert, Antoine Prost and Chris Wrigley (eds) Ashgate, 2004, 254 pp., £49.50 
Reviewed by Ralph Darlington 
University of Salford Complying with Europe: EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States Gerda Falkner, Oliver Treib, Mirian Hartlapp and Simone Leiber CUP, 2005, 404 pp., £45.00 (hardback), £19.99 (paperback) 
Reviewed by Brian Towers 
University of Nottingham European Integration and Industrial Relations: Multi-level Governance in the Making Paul Marginson and Keith Sisson Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, 360 pp., £60.00 (hardback) 
Reviewed by Tony Royle 
National University of Ireland, Galway The Future of Work in Europe Paul Littlewood, Ignace Glorieux and Ingrid Jonsson (eds) Ashgate, 2004, 262 pp., £45.00 
Reviewed by Paul Teague 
Queen's University, Belfast

Notizen: This article brings gender to the centre of concepts used to explore union joining and participation, demonstrating that a gender-sensitive analysis adds to our understanding. Using qualitative data from a study of women in two large male-dominated UK trade unions, the article explores four key influences on women's union joining and participation—family, union, work and feminism. While prior beliefs and values played a role in promoting joining and participation, gendered experiences of unions and the workplace had a more profound influence. Feminism affected the nature of participation in that self-identified feminists were more critical of the masculine character of trade unionism.

Notizen: The French system of continuing vocational training was set up in 1970 by an intersectoral collective agreement that was then followed by legislation. More than 30 years on, the economic and social context has changed and the system now faces new challenges. In 2001 and again in 2003 the social partners embarked upon new negotiations in a bid to redesign the system. Analysis of the negotiation process and of its outcomes  reveals  both  the  persistence  of  societal  characteristics  and  the  emergence  of significant innovations, particularly in the individualisation of training. This dual trend is explained by the characteristics of the actors involved as well as by the weakness of the state.

Notizen: Books reviewed: Decentralised Pay Setting: A Study of the Outcomes of Collective Bargaining Reforms in the Civil Service in Australia, Sweden and the UK 
K. A. Bender and R. F. Elliott 
Ashgate, 2003, xii + 160 pp., £50.00 A Very Late Development: An Autobiography 
Alan Fox 
British Universities Industrial Relations Association, 2nd and revised edition, 2004, 306 pp., £8.00 (paperback) Unions in the 21st Century: An International Perspective 
Anil Verma and Thomas A. Kochan (eds) 
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, 296 pp., £50.00 The Management of Human Resources in the Asia Pacific Region: Convergence Reconsidered 
Chris Rowley and John Benson (eds)
Cass (Studies in Asia Pacific Business), 2004, 208 pp., £18.99

Notizen: While previous work has identified a shift in the host business system which facilitates multinational corporations in their quest to introduce non-union approaches, little or no qualitative data have been brought to bear on this issue. This article presents case-based evidence on the dynamics of this trend in Ireland, focusing specifically on management approaches to collective employee representation as well as providing an exposition of the patterns of trade union recognition and avoidance in evidence.

Notizen: The article addresses the question whether or not the trend towards the decentralisation of collective bargaining on working time in Germany entails a loss in the binding power of industry-level agreements. To this end, both working-time agreements and practices are examined at the firm or establishment level in the automotive industry. Additionally, the article examines the extent to which workplace micro-level changes are reflected in official statistics. The findings indicate that unions and works councils have taken on new roles preventing a widespread erosion of collective regulations.

Notizen: There has been a growing interest in the way patterns of employment relations are changing in China. However, there remains insufficient understanding in employment relations in small private businesses. This study of small businesses in China explores major issues in employment relations in these firms. The finding shows that there are major differences between large and small businesses in China in their employment practices and that considerable similarities exist between small firms in China and those in other countries.

Notizen: FINANCING STRIKERS John Gennard INDUSTRY AND LABOUR: Class Struggle at Work and Monopoly Captalism Andrew L Friedman THE INEQUALITY OF PAY Henry Phelps-Brown THE PSYCHOANALYSIS OF ORGANISATIONS Robert De Board PROPHECY AND PROGRESS: THE SOCIOLOGY OF INDUSTRIAL AND POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY Krishan Kumar COMMON SENSE INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS Dennis D Hunt

Notizen: THE SOCIAL ORGANISATION OF STRIKES: by Eric Batstone, Ian Boraston and Stephen Frenkel EXECUTIVE EASE AND DISEASE: by Dr. Beric Wright THE INDUSTRIAL TRIBUNALS HANDBOOK: by Bowes Egan TRADE UNIONISM UNDER COLLECTIVE BARGAINING: A Theroy based on comparisons of six countries: by H. A. Clegg INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY IN WESTERN EUROPE: A North American perspective PERSONNEL AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: A MANAGERIAL APPROACH: J. B. Miner and M. G. Miner POLICY ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY PERSONNEL AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: M. G. Miner end J. B. Miner “PENSIONS AND INDUSTflIAL RELATIONS”: Harry Lucas

Notizen: The process of European integration has reached the limits of European solidarity—both within the member states and between them. Increasingly, Europeans are demonstrating reluctance to accept common rules, to recognise common values, to protect common interests, or to promote common objectives. Instead, Europeans appear to be expressing many different and yet interrelated forms of disaffection. Voter abstention is high, security cooperation is weak, economic confidence is low, and support for either European enlargement or institutional reform is vanishing. To respond to this crisis, European politicians need to manage expectations better, they need to accept responsibility for public policy problems, they need to explain the limits of what Europe can do, and they need to search for new formulas to meet different national challenges with common European institutions.

Notizen: In the aftermath of the rejection of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe in referendums in France and the Netherlands this article analyses the complex messages delivered by the voters and evaluates key elements of the Constitution from the perspective of European Union (EU) employment law. On the basis of this evaluation the author seeks to establish whether there is anything worth salvaging from the wreckage of the Constitution and, if so, to identify the main priorities in the area of EU employment law and the means to make progress by amending the Treaties or otherwise.

Notizen: This article examines whether the regulation of service work through a ‘licence to practice’ can be effective in raising skill levels and improving the working conditions of employees. Research from the fitness industry on the impact of self-regulation of training standards is used to explore some of the difficulties of this type of policy option.

Notizen: Books reviewed: The Employment Relationship: Examining Psychological and Contextual Perspectives 
J. A. M. Coyle-Shapiro, L. M. Shore, S. M. Taylor and L. E. Tetrick (eds) 
Oxford University Press, 2004, 377 pp., £55.00 
Reviewed by Melanie Simms 
University of Kent International and Comparative Employment Relations: Globalisation and the Developed Market Economies 
Greg J. Bamber, Russell D. Lansbury and Nick Wailes (eds) 
Sage Publications, 2004 (4th edn), 472 pp., £75.00 (hardback), £24.99 (paperback) 
Reviewed by Sarah Pass 
Cardiff University Multinational Companies and Global Human Resource Strategies 
William N. Cooke (ed.) 
Quorum, 2003, 433 pp., £48.50 
Reviewed by Trevor Colling 
University of Warwick

Notizen: This article reports on the union recognition dispute that took place at the McDonald's food-processing plant in Moscow. It examines this dispute in the context of McDonald's employment practices worldwide, the interventions made by international and local unions, and Russian government bodies. Despite these interventions it became impossible to either organise the workforce or establish a collective agreement. The case illustrates the difficulties facing both local unions and global union federations when confronted by intransigent multinational companies, especially in low-skilled sectors in transitional economies.

Notizen: The European Employment Strategy includes a new commitment to a substantial reduction in the gender pay gap in European Union (EU) member states, but progress requires a radical shift away from the traditional policy emphasis on the supply-side deficiencies of women compared with men. Mainstream theory argues that gender inequality is reduced once the pay gap is ‘adjusted’ for differences in individual characteristics (education, experience, etc.). But new empirical studies in many EU member states demonstrate that the work environment—the general wage structure, job and workplace characteristics—shapes gender pay inequality. Given the negative gender impact of trend declines in minimum wages, moves towards more decentralisation of wage-setting and public sector restructuring, the article argues for a holistic, gender mainstreaming approach to pay policy.

Notizen: Books reviewed: Industrial Relations in Central and Eastern Europe: Transformation and Integration. A Comparison of the Eight New Member States 
Heribert Kohl and Hans-Wolfgang Platzer (eds) 
ETUI, 2004, 422 pp., ‰27.00 Union Organisation and Activity 
John Kelly and Paul Willman (eds) 
Routledge, 2004, xvi + 187 pp., £65.00 (hardback), £25.00 (paperback) Gender, Diversity and Trade Unions 
Fiona Colgan and Sue Ledwith (eds) 
Routledge, 2002, xv + 320 pp., £70.00

Notizen: During the 1990s, outsourcing work was commonly associated with the weakening of union organisation and the deterioration of pay, working conditions and job security. A variant of outsourcing, termed here as ‘insourcing’, involves a firm purchasing ‘non-core’ functions and services from enterprises located under the same roof. This case study of Fiat outlines the impact of insourcing on traditional arrangements and practices, and analyses the response of Italian local unions. The findings indicate that in the context of ‘bargained compromise’ between trade unions and management in the Italian motor industry insourcing did not have the negative implications for union organisation and employee terms and conditions associated with traditional outsourcing.

Notizen: This paper is concerned with exploring the barriers to cross-border trade union cooperation among graphical workers in Europe. Highlighting the increasing globalisation of graphical multinationals, the paper illustrates that graphical unions cannot restrict their activities to developments within national boundaries. As such it highlights some of the obstacles that unions face in attempting to instigate transnational cooperation strategies. These obstacles include: the role of employers, the prevailing practices of the unions, employee reticence, the role of the law and resource constraints. It concludes by stressing the continuing need to strengthen cross-border trade union networks with the ability to impose effective sanctions against the unbridled growth of multinational power.

Notizen: Books reviewed:John T. Addison and Claus Schnabel (eds). International Handbook of Trade Unions
Reviewed by John KellyWalter Müller-Jentsch and Hansjörg Weitbrecht (eds). The Changing Contours of German Industrial Relations
Reviewed by Steve FrenchYonatan Reshef and Sandra Rastin. Unions in the Time of Revolution. Government Restructuring in Alberta and Ontario
Reviewed by Roy J. Adams

Notizen: A lower national minimum wage for 18- to 21-year-olds and the exclusion of all workers under 18 prompted fears of a distortion in the British labour market and an undermining of training initiatives. Empirical data collected from employers in two low paying sectors, revealing the full utilisation of young workers and under-utilisation of training initiatives, ensure these fears are not justified and that the government's basis for the lower rate cannot be substantiated.

Notizen: In response to Schmidt, Le, and Ilies' (2003) call for further assessment of transient error variance in measures of key individual difference variables, the current study examines transient error estimates for eight speeded cognitive ability scales and a composite scale. One hundred twenty-three participants were tested on two occasions with a 1-week interval between administrations. Estimates of transient error ranged from a low of .01 to a high of .18, with an average value of .09. The coefficient of equivalence, based on the split-half method, resulted in overestimates of reliability by as little as 1.90% to as much as 25.96%, with an average 12.96%.

Notizen:   Benefit transfer has become increasingly important for policy researchers as a low-cost approach for assigning benefits to environmental amenities. To gain insights on how to best perform benefit transfer, this study analyzes estimates from both the travel cost (TC) and contingent valuation (CV) methods. The analysis compared the point estimate approach with the benefit function approach for transferring economic benefits between a study site and a policy site. Data from the 1996 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation for deer hunting was used to provide both the CV willingness-to-pay and the TC consumer surplus estimates. The study found that when focusing on a nonsite-specific activity such as deer hunting, benefits transferred fairly well, with the average error being slightly less than 30 percent for CV estimates and just under 35 percent for TC estimates. In addition, the empirical results suggest that the more precise benefit function approach provide some improvement to the more general point estimate approach, with the CV methods showing moderate gains while the TC method showing only minimal gains. The study also found that the closer the distance between the policy and research sites was, the more the precision of the benefit transfer increased.