The Effects of (within and with EU) Regional Integration: Impact on Real Effective Exchange Rate Volatility, Institutional Quality and Growth for MENA Countries

institutions, exchange rate, economic policy

Stranded Capital in Fisheries: The Pacific Coast Groundfish/Whiting Case

Current rationalization options for West Coast groundfish trawl fisheries include significant allocations of harvester quota to processors, justified as compensation for “stranded capital.†This article discusses the origin of the concept of stranded capital, its use in other policy settings, preconditions, measurement, and remedies for addressing it. Our main finding is that rationalization of fisheries is unlikely to generate significant processing stranded capital. Most capital involved in fisheries processing is malleable and not likely to be devalued as a result of rationalization. If policy makers nevertheless judge it desirable to consider compensation, a legitimate process would tie compensation to anticipated or demonstrated capital losses. Current policies proposed on the U.S. West Coast to transfer harvester quota are arbitrary and unsupported by empirical estimates of the magnitude of the problem. They are likely to generate important spillover effects that could negate some of the intended benefits of rationalization.Stranded capital, rationalization, malleable capital, processor compensation, Industrial Organization, Political Economy, Q22,

Regional Trade Agreements and U.S. Agriculture

Regional trade agreements (RTA's) have become a fixture in the global trade arena. Their advocates contend that RTA's can serve as building blocks for multilateral trade liberalization. Their opponents argue that these trade pacts will divert trade from more efficient nonmember producing countries. U.S. agriculture can benefit from participating in RTA's and may lose when it does not. Agriculture is an important source of potential U.S. gains from RTA's. While the United States, as a global trader with diverse trade partners, can gain potentially more from global free trade than from RTA's, many recent RTA's have been more comprehensive in their liberalization of agricultural trade liberalization than the Uruguay Round. A strong multilateral process can help ensure that RTA's are trade creating, rather than protectionist.International Relations/Trade,

An Alternative Methodology for Estimating Credit Quality Transition Matrices

This study presents an alternative way of estimating credit transition matrices using a hazard function model. The model is useful both for testing the validity of the Markovian assumption, frequently made in credit rating applications, and also for estimating transition matrices conditioning on firm-specific and macroeconomic covariates that influence the migration process. The model presented in the paper is likely to be useful in other applications, though we would hesitate to extrapolate numerical values of coefficients outside of our application. Transition matrices estimated this way may be an important tool for a credit risk administration system, in the sense that with them a practitioner can easily forecast the behavior of the clients´ratings in the future and their possible changes of stateFirms; macroeconomic variables; firm-specific covariates; hazard function; transition intensities. Classification JEL: C4; E44; G21; G23; G38.

A Utilization-Focused Evaluation of a Community College Adjunct Faculty Professional Development Program

Nationally adjunct faculty comprise almost 70% of all two-year institution faculty while in the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) adjunct faculty teach 60% of the community college courses, and should past trends continue, the number of adjunct faculty members is expected to grow 10% within the next fifteen years (Caliber, 2007; Phillipe & Sullivan, 2005). Research conducted regarding adjunct faculty in the community colleges (Gappa & Leslie, 1993; Rouche et al., 1995) has tended to focus on descriptive characteristics and attitudes of adjunct faculty (Valadez & Anthony, 2001) and on quality of life issues (Rhoades, 1996). While these national studies may have addressed professional development, it was generally not the focus of the research. What researchers have concluded, however, was that professional development for adjunct faculty was lacking (Salmon, 2006). Many community colleges are choosing not to replace departing full-time faculty with full-time faculty members turning instead to adjunct labor to meet their needs (Flannigan, Jones, & Moore, 2004; Salmon, 2006). The economic benefits of hiring adjunct faculty are inarguable: part-time employees are simply less expensive than full-time employees. Without the efforts of these adjunct faculty members, however, community colleges would not have the staffing necessary to meet the demands of their diverse constituents. Reliance on adjunct faculty means that, in many cases, students are more likely to be taught by adjunct faculty than by full time faculty. Community colleges are obliged to assure quality instruction is provided for students regardless of the faculty member\u27s employment status. Quality instruction is supported by providing professional development for all faculty members. This study found that adjunct faculty perceived content delivered during professional development opportunities to be valuable and useful. However, the data also indicated that only small percentage made requested changes, yet 90% of the adjunct faculty reported making other changes based on professional development content. The study affirms that professional development for adjunct faculty did have an impact on their behaviors but it was not a sizable impact

Advising Fraternities and Sororities (part 3)

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/eberly_advising/1002/thumbnail.jp

Management consulting : structure and growth of a knowledge intensive business service market in Europe

The globalisation of contemporary capitalism is bringing about at least two important implications for the emergence and significance of business services. First, the social division of labour steadily increases (ILLERIS 1996). Within the complex organisation of production and trade new intermediate actors emerge either from the externalisation of existing functions in the course of corporate restructuring policies or from the fragmentation of the production chain into newly defined functions. Second, competitive advantages of firms increasingly rest on their ability to innovate and learn. As global communication erodes knowledge advantages more quickly, product life cycles shorten and permanent organisational learning results to be crucial for the creation and maintenance of competitiveness. Intra- and interorganisational relations of firms now are the key assets for learning and reflexivity (STORPER 1997). These two aspects of globalisation help understand why management consulting - as only one among other knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) - has been experiencing such a boost throughout the last two decades. Throughout the last ten years, the business has grown annually by 10% on average in Europe. Management consulting can be seen first, as a new organisational intermediate and second, as an agent of change and reflexivity to business organisations. Although the KIBS industry may not take a great share of the national GDP its impact on national economies should not be underestimated. Estimations show that today up to 80% of the value added to industrial products stem from business services (ILLERIS 1996). Economic geographers have been paying more attention to KIBS since the late 1970s and focus on the transformation of the spatial economy through the emerging business services. This market survey is conceived as a first step of a research programme on the internationalisation of management consulting and as a contribution to the lively debate in economic geography. The management consulting industry is unlimited in many ways: There are only scarce institutional boundaries, low barriers to entry, a very heterogeneous supply structure and multiple forms of transaction. Official statistics have not yet provided devices of grasping this market and it may be therefore, that research and literature on this business are rather poor. The following survey is an attempt to selectively compile existing material, empirical studies and statistics in order to draw a sketchy picture of the European market, its institutional constraints, agents and dynamics. German examples will be employed to pursue arguments in more depth