Listing Specialization and Residential Real Estate Licensee

Earlier research has found that specialization by real estate agents creates economies of scope for real estate firms. So far, however, no research has addressed this issue at the agent level. The question this research seeks to answer is whether specialization in one side of the real estate transaction increases agent income. The most important finding is that specialization has an asymmetric impact on earnings. Specializing in listings positively enhances agent income. In contrast, specialization on the selling side has an adverse affect on agent income. The implications of these findings for the consumer and real estate industry are also examined.

Specialization dynamics.

This paper proposes a new empirical framework for analyzing specialization dynamics. A country’s pattern of specialization is viewed as a distribution across sectors, and statistical techniques for analyzing the evolution of this entire distribution are employed. The empirical framework is implemented using data on 20 industries in 7 OECD countries since 1970. We find substantial mobility in patterns of specialization. Over time horizons of 5 years, this is largely explained by forces common across countries including world prices and common changes in technical efficiency. Over longer time horizons, country-specific changes in factor endowments become more important. There is no evidence of an increase in countries’ overall degree of specialization.

International Specialization and the Return to Capital, 1976-2000

Using panel data, we provide an integrated treatment of factor endowments, factor prices, and international specialization. In the various cross sections, we confirm the Heckscher-Ohlin prediction that, with sufficient differences in country endowments, there is no factor Price equalization and countries specialize in different subsets of goods. We also explain why, despite higher returns to capital, poor countries do not attract more capital from rich countries. Moreover, along their development path, countries experience the structural change predicted by theory. We find that these changes in specialization mainly occur within industries. Despite capital accumulation by most countries, we find no decrease in the return to capital at any given capital-labour ratio. This must have facilitated growth through capital accumulationEconomic Growth and International Trade; Heckscher-Ohlin; Multiple Cones; Marginal Product of Capital; Specialization

The Effects of European Integration on Regional Employment - Specialization of Austrian Regions

This paper focuses on employment effects since Austria joined the European Union. The location of economic activity and thus employment has been of interest for the economics profession for a long time. In this respect the question on the employment effects of integration in common markets is of special interest as the hypothesis can be raised that because of increased competition regions will specialize and industries will concentrate. Therefore it is asked how regions have specialized and how industries have concentrated by using various concentration/specialization measures. Moreover, the role of foreign direct investments are observed in explaining concentration/specialization as well as regional employment shifts. It is shown (i) that no general trends in specialization/concentration can be detected, so that on a general level the hypothesis of joining a common market necessarily leads to specialization/concentration must be refused, but for specific industries and regions interesting patterns can be observed and (ii) foreign direct investments have an significant impact on employment in regions.

International Specialization and the Return to Capital

How does factor accumulation affect the pattern of international specialization and returns to capital? We provide a new integrated treatment to this question using a panel of 44 developing and developed countries over the period 1976-2000. We confirm the Heckscher-Ohlin prediction that, with sufficient differences in country endowments, there is no factor price equalization and countries specialize in different subsets of goods. Innovatively, we obtain the returns to capital implied by this model: these are consistent with the Lucas paradox, which we explain after accounting for cross-country differences in the cost of capital goods. We also find that, along their development path, countries have often experienced structural change in the form of intra-industry specialization. Our findings are consistent with Ventura's hypothesis that growth can be promoted in this way through "beating the curse of diminishing returns" – indeed we find no decrease in the return to capital at any given capital-labor ratio despite capital accumulation by most countries within a cone of diversification.economic growth and international trade, Heckscher-Ohlin, multiple cones of diversification, marginal product of capital, return to capital, Lucas paradox, specialization

The specialization problem and the completeness of unfolding

We discuss the problem of specializing a definite program with respect to sets of positive and negative examples, following Bostrom and Idestam-Almquist. This problem is very relevant in the field of inductive learning. First we show that there exist sets of examples that have no correct program, i.e., no program which implies all positive and no negative examples. Hence it only makes sense to talk about specialization problems for which a solution (a correct program) exists. To solve such problems, we first introduce UD1-specialization, based upon the transformation rule unfolding. We show UD1-specialization is incomplete - some solvable specialization problems do not have a UD1-specialization as solution - and generalize it to the stronger UD2-specialization. UD2 also turns out to be incomplete. An analysis of program specialization, using the subsumption theorem for SLD-resolution, shows the reason for this incompleteness. Based on that analysis, we then define UDS-specialization (a generalization of UD2-specialization), and prove that any specialization problem has a UDS-specialization as a solution. We also discuss the relationship between this specialization technique, and the generalization technique based on inverse resolution. Finally, we go into several more implementational matters, which outline an interesting topic for future research

Immigration and Occupations in Europe

In this paper we analyze the effect of immigrants on natives’ job specialization in Western Europe. We test whether the inflow of immigrants changes employment rates or the chosen occupation of natives with similar education and age. We find no evidence of the first and strong evidence of the second: immigrants take more manual-routine type of occupations and push natives towards more abstract complex jobs, for a given set of observable skills. We also find some evidence that this oc-cupation reallocation is larger in countries with more flexible labor laws. As abstract-complex tasks pay a premium over manual-routine ones, we can evaluate the positive effect of such reallocation on the wages of native workers. Accounting for the total change in Complex/Non Complex task supply from natives and immigrants we find that immigration does not change much the relative compen-sation of the two types of tasks but it promotes the specialization of natives into the first type.immigration, task specialization, European labor markets