Is it Easier to Escape from Low Pay in Urban Areas? Evidence from the UK

In this paper we compare periods of low pay employment between urban and rural areas in the UK. Using the British Household Panel Survey, we estimate the probability that a period of low pay employment will end allowing for a number of possible outcomes, namely to a ‘high pay’ job, self-employment, unemployment and out of the labour force. The results show that there are statistically significant differences in the dynamics of low pay across urban and rural labour markets, particularly in terms of exits to high pay and out of the labour force. After controlling for different personal and job characteristics across markets, urban low pay durations are somewhat shorter on average, with a higher probability that urban workers will move to high pay. However, the results suggest that any urban-rural differences in the typical low pay experience are particularly concentrated among certain types of individuals, e.g. young workers, women without qualifications.Preprin

Russian equity market linkages before and after the 1998 crisis: Evidence from time-varying and stochastic cointegration tests

This paper examines the relationships between the Russian and other Central European (CE) and developed countries’ equity markets over the 1995-2004 period. Along with the traditional Johansen and Juselius (1990) multivariate cointegration tests, we apply novel cointegration approaches, including Gregory-Hansen (1996) test, which allows for a structural break in the relationships, as well as the newly developed stochastic cointegration test by Harris, McCabe and Leybourne (2002) and the non-parametric cointegration method of Breitung (2002). The latter tests point to a significant agreement that in the aftermath of the Russian crisis of 1998 there was an increasing degree of comovements of the Russian market with other developed markets, but not with CE developing markets. This result is further confirmed by dynamic conditional correlation modeling, which allows us to investigate graphically the evolution of comovements in the system. The results of detailed cointegration analysis suggest a. that the time-varying nature of equity markets comovements should be explicitly accounted for while modeling long run relationships b. that there is a decline in diversification benefits for foreign investors seeking to invest in Russian equities over the long horizon.Stock Market Integration; CEE Stock markets; Russian Stock Market; Cointegration

Essays in Environmental and Resource Economics

This thesis explores topics in environmental and resource economics and is composed of two single-authored papers (Papers 1 and 3) and one co-authored paper (paper 2). The following paragraphs highlight the main research question of each paper, methodology and results and the main contributions made. Paper 1: Low-Carbon Transition: Private Sector Investment in Renewable Energy Projects in Developing Countries A transition to clean energy sources is unlikely to occur without the participation of the private sector. To date, however, most of the literature investigating determinants of renewable energy investments has focused on developed countries. In addition to this, the link fossil fuel dependence and private sector investment in renewable energies has not been investigated. This paper applies discrete time, multiple spell survival model to a dataset of private participation in renewable energy projects in a sample of 134 developing and middle-income countries for the 1990-2012 period. The paper examines the duration leading to private sector investment in renewable energy projects and how this is affected by the high dependence on fossil fuels. This paper contributes to the literature in a number of ways. First, it focuses on the factors affecting the time at which private sector investments in renewable energy projects occur. Second, the paper tests the “carbon lock-in” hypothesis in which fossil fuel dependence in its different forms deters private sector investment in the renewable energy. Third, I solely focus on developing and middle-income countries which remain understudied in the literature. The results suggest that higher dependence on fossil fuels, in the form of fuel rents and higher fossil fuel consumption, lead to a lower probability of investments in renewables. However, the negative effect becomes less pronounced with having investments in previous period. Consistent with previous literature, the results support the belief that a number of macroeconomic variables, such as higher oil prices, higher income per capita, and the implementation of domestic renewable energy policies, play an important role in increasing the likelihood of private sector investment. The results are relevant in light of recent trends in international oil prices as they suggest two potential competing effects, with lower oil prices potentially delaying investments directly through higher fossil fuel consumption but positively affecting investment through lower fuel rents. Paper 2: Geographical Proximity and Renewable Energy Diffusion: An Empirical Approach The reform of the energy landscape is central to achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and it depends substantially on the successful adoption and diffusion of renewable energies across countries. To date, the literature on the diffusion of renewable energies has highlighted a number of important determinants such as income level, domestic energy consumption and availability of finance. However, the importance of geographical proximity in explaining the observed diffusion patterns of renewable energies remains unexplored, despite the potential implications of spatial interrelationships in terms of capital accumulation and knowledge spill-over and therefore on long run economic growth. This co-authored paper examines three fundamental questions. First, it explores the importance of geographic proximity to adopters in explaining diffusion patterns of renewable energies. Second, we test whether this effect becomes more important given a large share of trade with adopters. Third, we investigate whether the importance of geographic proximity to diffusion patterns changes over time. Our results highlight the fact that the scope of diffusion of renewable energy technologies across countries like other types of technology has a spatial aspect. In addition, stronger spillover effects occur when intensive adopters of renewable energies are also important trading partners, highlighting the relevance of trade links with technology adopters as a potential catalyst of the diffusion of renewable energies across countries. The paper contributes to the larger literature on knowledge transfer and is a step in establishing the proposed links between geography, international trade and technology transfer. Given the importance of technology transfer in the economic growth process, technological interdependence between countries generated by spatial externalities is important in explaining convergence process between countries. Paper 3: Greening Industry in Vietnam: Environmental Standards and Resource Efficiency in SMEs The debate of whether mandatory or voluntary environmental management standards contribute to a win-win situation environmentally and economically has been an issue of interest recently. For large-scale enterprises in industrialised countries, such win-win has been documented; but little is known about the effectiveness of this instrument in achieving resource efficiency in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), especially in emerging countries. In Vietnam, high industrial growth rates and the inefficient technologies used by most SMEs raised concerns about the waste of materials and fuels in resource intensive industries. As a consequence, the law of Environmental Protection of 2005 required firms engaged in polluting activities to undergo an environmental impact assessment and upon compliance, obtain a certificate acknowledging satisfaction of environmental management standards (EMS). This paper fills a research gap by empirically testing whether the adoption of environmental standards certificates by small and medium enterprises in the manufacturing sector in Vietnam contributes to resource efficiency for the (2011-2013) period, where resource efficiency is measured by the aggregate consumption of water, fuel, and electricity per unit of output. In this paper, to examine the impact of adopting environmental standards certificate on resource efficiency, I use a balanced panel dataset for the years 2011 and 2013 of the Small and Medium Scale Manufacturing Enterprise (SME) survey, which comprise 1,333 firms distributed across 17 manufacturing sectors and 10 provinces. I estimate an instrumental variable model to control for the possible sources of endogeneity arising for the reverse causality between certificate adoption and resource efficiency. The paper finds a number of determinants for ESC adoption, where firm size, investment in new technology and engaging in selling products via e-trade are likely to be key variables in the decision to adopt certification. The result indicates that adopting environmental standards certificates among manufacturing SMEs in Vietnam contributed to higher aggregate resource efficiency during the 2011-2013 period, reflected by a lower use of electricity, fuel and water for each unit of output. The largest savings relate to electricity (3.25%) followed by fuel (2.68%) and water (2.2%). Additionally, certification was found to have a heterogeneous effect on the extent of resource saving depending on the sector of operation. Less polluting manufacturing activities (for example such as wood, paper, printing, food and beverages, jewellery) achieved about 3.5% resource savings at 5% significance level compared to only 1.82% in more polluting sectors such as rubber, refined petroleum and chemical products. With regards to the control variables, receiving government assistance, as well as investing in new machinery and using a higher share of raw material from households, contributed to efficiency in resource use

Bridging Sales and Services Quality Functions in Retailing of High Technology Consumer Products

High technology product sales are positively associated with performance of retailers and distributors in terms of customer service quality, growth in sales and increase in market share. This paper aims at analyzing the impact of retail sales strategies and performance of customer services on customer acquisition, retention and sales growth of high technology consumer products of the high technology consumer products retailers and distributors in Mexico. This paper discusses the triadic relationship of customer- retailer-distributor in the high technology consumer products market segment in reference to the SERVQUAL factors which establish services quality encompassing tangibility, responsiveness, trust, accuracy and empathy. Results of the study reveal that the customers perceive better quality of the relationship in a given frame of functions that are performed effectively by the distributor lowering the extent of conflicts thereof. The discussions in the paper argue that high conformance of quality services delivered by the distributors and value added customer relationship is instrumental for retailers in acquiring new customers and retaining existing customer by augmenting the customer life time value.High technology products sales, customer services, SERVQUAL, customer-distributor relationship, customer value, distributor performance

Tourism economics research: A review and assessment

This paper aims to provide the most up-to-date survey of tourism economics research and to summarise the key trends in its recent development. Particular attention is paid to the research progress made over the last decade in respect of approaches, methodological innovations, emerging topics, research gaps, and directions for future research. Remarkable but unbalanced developments have been observed across different sub-research areas in tourism economics. While neoclassical economics has contributed the most to the development of tourism economics, alternative schools of thought in economics have also emerged in advancing our understanding of tourism from different perspectives. As tourism studies are multi- and inter-disciplinary, integrating economics with other social science disciplines will further contribute to knowledge creation in tourism studies

Fundamental principles in drawing inference from sequence analysis

Individual life courses are dynamic and can be represented as a sequence of states for some portion of their experiences. More generally, study of such sequences has been made in many fields around social science; for example, sociology, linguistics, psychology, and the conceptualisation of subjects progressing through a sequence of states is common. However, many models and sets of data allow only for the treatment of aggregates or transitions, rather than interpreting whole sequences. The temporal aspect of the analysis is fundamental to any inference about the evolution of the subjects but assumptions about time are not normally made explicit. Moreover, without a clear idea of what sequences look like, it is impossible to determine when something is not seen whether it was not actually there. Some principles are proposed which link the ideas of sequences, hypothesis, analytical framework, categorisation and representation; each one being underpinned by the consideration of time. To make inferences about sequences, one needs to: understand what these sequences represent; the hypothesis and assumptions that can be derived about sequences; identify the categories within the sequences; and data representation at each stage. These ideas are obvious in themselves but they are interlinked, imposing restrictions on each other and on the inferences which can be draw