Do Market Pressures Induce Economic Efficiency?: The Case of Slovenian Manufacturing, 1994-2001

The Slovenian transition represents a slow but steady liberalization of constraints on competition. Using a unique longitudinal data set on all manufacturing firms in Slovenia over the period 1994-2001, this study analyzes how firm efficiency changed in response to changing competitive pressures, holding constant firm attributes. Results show that the period was one of atypically rapid growth of total factor productivity (TFP) relative to levels in OECD countries, and that the rise in firm efficiency occurs across almost all industries and firm types: large or small; state or private; domestic or foreign-owned. Changes in firm ownership type have no impact on firm efficiency. Rather, competitive pressures that sort out inefficient firms of all types and retain the most efficient, coupled with the entry of new private firms that are at least as efficient as surviving firms, prove to be the major source of TFP gains. Market competition from new entrants, foreign-owned firms, and international trade also raise TFP in the industry. Results strongly confirm that market competition fosters efficiency.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40007/3/wp621.pd

Lattice Boltzmann simulations of droplet dynamics in time-dependent flows

We study the deformation and dynamics of droplets in time-dependent flows using 3D numerical simulations of two immiscible fluids based on the lattice Boltzmann model (LBM). Analytical models are available in the literature, which assume the droplet shape to be an ellipsoid at all times (P.L. Maffettone, M. Minale, J. Non-Newton. Fluid Mech 78, 227 (1998); M. Minale, Rheol. Acta 47, 667 (2008)). Beyond the practical importance of using a mesoscale simulation to assess ab-initio the robustness and limitations of such theoretical models, our simulations are also key to discuss - in controlled situations - some relevant phenomenology related to the interplay between the flow time scales and the droplet time scales regarding the transparency transition for high enough shear frequencies for an external oscillating flow. This work may be regarded as a step forward to discuss extensions towards a novel DNS approach, describing the mesoscale physics of small droplets subjected to a generic hydrodynamical strain field, possibly mimicking the effect of a realistic turbulent flow on dilute droplet suspensions

Male-female differences in labor market outcomes during the early transition to market : the case of Estonia and Slovenia

The authors analyze changes in women's relative wages, using social security data from Slovenia (1987-92) and a retrospective survey of Estonia's labor force (1989-94). Estonia adopted liberal labor market policies. Slovenia took an interventionist approach. Nevertheless, relative wages for women rose in both countries. Actually, real wages fell for both men and women, but women lost less than men did. Certain factorfavored women: 1) Returns to human capital rose during the transition. 2) Relative labor demand shifted toward predominantly female sectors (health, education, financial services, retail trade) and away from traditionally male sectors (agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation). 3) Women with low wages had a disproportionate incentive to exit the labor market, especially in Estonia. Women were less mobile across jobs in both countries, however, so men disproportionately filled new jobs in expanding sectors. Women who remained employed had higher average education levels. Women's relative immobility will tend to reduce their early relative gains. Their relative wages will also continue to fall if their share of the expanding sectors continue to fall.Labor Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Banks&Banking Reform,Public Health Promotion,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Labor Standards,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Environmental Economics&Policies

Winners and losers in transition : returns to education, experience, and gender in Slovenia

The authors identify winners and losers in Slovenia's economic transition by tracing changes in returns to education, experience, and gender and changes in wage inequality from 1987 to 1991. They find the following. Relative wages and employment rose for the most educated and fell for the least educated, in all industries. Relative wages and employment rose with years of work experience until pensionable age. At pensionable age, relative wages increased very rapidly and relative employment was greatly reduced. Using pension policies to encourage early retirement drastically reduced the supply of very experienced workers. Either the policy caused firms to bid up wages for workers of pensionable age to keep them from retiring, or it caused a selection process in which only the highest-paid workers remained in the workforce. Regardless, the pension policy has proved to be costly, and early retirements did not make room forthe youngest workers but for those just under pensionable age. Women gained relative to men in both wages and employment primarily because they occupy education and industry groups less adversely affected by the transition, not because of economywide reductions in discrimination against women. Increasing returns to education and experience contributed to wage inequality, but the variance in wages also increased for individuals with identical skills. Big changes in relative wages should signal future reallocation of labor toward more productive, higher-paying sectors. Setting minimum wages, fixing ranges of pay, and indexing wages to inflation did not prevent increases in wage variation from occuring. Wage minimums did not appear to have an effect, presumably because inflation reduced real minimum wages so quickly that most workers were paid above the minimums. In Slovenia, policy changes are reflected in labor market outcomes. Disabling the tax-transfer policy from relatively profitable to relatively unprofitable firms and eliminating worker referendums on wage scales removed mechanisms that tended to compress wage variation. Greater demand for skilled workers also reflected both the economywide need to cope with uncertainty and such industry-specific factors as reduced labor demand, especially in less skill-intensive industries. The results in Slovenia contrast sharply with those in eastern Germany. Eastern German workers have had decreasing returns to education and experience. But it is not clear how relevant the eastern German experience is to other transitional economies because of western Germany's efforts to alleviate problems. More similar to the authors'findings are the results of Flanagan (1993) on the Czech Republic, which show increasing returns to education but decreasing returns to experience. In some respects, Slovenia is atypical because it is richer and more western in orientation than other transitional economies. However, economies could learn from the experience in Slovenia because Slovenia also had social ownership, full employment coupled with substantial hidden unemployment, and an egalitarian wage structure. And Slovenia has introduced labor market reform and experienced social dislocations similar to those in other transitional European economies.Municipal Financial Management,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Firing cost and firm size : a study of Sri Lanka's severance pay system

Consistent with its focus on social policies, Sri Lanka has devoted significant attention to worker protection. One of the main pillars of its worker protection policy is the Termination of Employment of Workman Act (TEWA) introduced in 1971. The act aims to limit unemployment by raising the cost of layoffs. The act requires that each layoff of a covered worker, whether individual or as a part of a mass layoff, must be approved by the government. Until recently, the government also decided on a case-by-case basis the level of severance pay the firm had to pay to the laid off workers. Since its introduction, critics have argued that the TEWA's non-transparent, discretionary, and costly regulations discourage employment growth, hinder reallocation of labor from inefficient firms to more profitable sectors, slow the introduction of new technologies, and increase unemployment. Defenders including trade unions and the government argue that on the contrary, severance pay promotes longer-lasting employment relationships that improve incentives for training and enhance cooperation and trust between employers and workers. The paper is organized as follows: section two provides an institutional background, highlighting the intensions of the TEWA at its introduction, and it's the provisions and procedures. Section three presents the theoretical framework and formulates hypotheses to be empirically tested. Section four describes the data and the identification strategy devised to identify the employment effects of TEWA. Section five presents the empirical results based on the estimation of the multinomial model of employment growth of firms. Section six concludes witha summary and policy recommendations.Labor Markets,Microfinance,Labor Policies,Emerging Markets,Small Scale Enterprise

AN EXAMINATION OF THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGICAL TOOLS IN RELATION TO THE COGNITIVE DEMAND OF MATHEMATICAL TASKS IN SECONDARY CLASSROOMS

This study investigates the role of digital cognitive technologies in supporting students' mathematical thinking while engaging with instructional tasks. Specifically, the study sought to better understand how the use of technology is related to the cognitive demand of tasks. Data were collected in four secondary mathematics classrooms via classroom observations, collection of student work, and post-lesson teacher interviews. Opportunities for high level thinking by students were evaluated using the Mathematical Tasks Framework (Stein, Smith, Henningsen, & Silver, 2009). Technology use was evaluated with respect to whether it served to amplify students' thinking by making students' work more efficient or accurate without changing the nature of the task, or whether it was used to reorganize students' thinking by supporting a shift to something different or beyond what the technology was doing for them (Pea, 1985). Results indicate that the mere inclusion of technology in a task was not related to the cognitive demand during any of the three phases of implementation, as technology was used in both high and low level tasks. However, results suggested an association between the level of cognitive demand of a task and the way that technology was used. In general, when technology was used as an amplifier, it was not related to the thinking requirements of the task, while the use of technology as a reorganizer was central to the thinking requirements of the task. The decline of tasks set up at high level often corresponded to technology being used as an amplifier and reorganizer during set up, but as only an amplifier during implementation. Overall, the role of technology in the decline or maintenance of high level thinking during implementation seems to depend more on teachers' classroom practice than any particular issues related to the use of technology. How prepared students were to engage in high level thinking tasks in general, how teachers anticipated students' needs while using technology to engage with the task, and how teachers responded to student questions and difficulties were influential factors in the maintenance or decline of these tasks

Black Holes in 4D N=4 Super-Yang-Mills Field Theory

Black-hole solutions to general relativity carry a thermodynamic entropy, discovered by Bekenstein and Hawking to be proportional to the area of the event horizon, at leading order in the semiclassical expansion. In a theory of quantum gravity, black holes must constitute ensembles of quantum microstates whose large number accounts for the entropy. We study this issue in the context of gravity with a negative cosmological constant. We exploit the most basic example of the holographic description of gravity (AdS/CFT): type IIB string theory on AdS5 7S5, equivalent to maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions. We thus resolve a long-standing question: Does the four-dimensional N=4 SU(N) Super-Yang-Mills theory on S3 at large N contain enough states to account for the entropy of rotating electrically charged supersymmetric black holes in 5D anti-de Sitter space? Our answer is positive. By reconsidering the large N limit of the superconformal index, using the so-called Bethe-ansatz formulation, we find an exponentially large contribution which exactly reproduces the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of the black holes. Besides, the large N limit exhibits a complicated structure, with many competing exponential contributions and Stokes lines, hinting at new physics. Our method opens the way toward a quantitative study of quantum properties of black holes in anti-de Sitter space