Please select from the titles below:
- The School Leaving Intentions at the Age of Sixteen: Evidence from a Multicultural City Environment
- Towards a transmutable economics? A comment on Wynarczyk
- A Reply to Dunn's Comment
- Subsidy and Productivity in the Privatised British Passenger Railway
- The Cobb-Douglas Production Function: An Antipodean Defence?
- Process Recurrence and Input Use at the Industry Level: A Coherent Long-Period Analysis
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School Leaving Intentions at the Age of Sixteen: Evidence from a Multicultural City Environment (p.1)
by W Thomas, D J Webber and F Walton The intention to continue on to further study by students in full-time education is investigated with particular focus on the role of peer groups and educational experience. Using random effects nominal logit regression analysis and data from the Bradford Youth Cohort surveys, it is found that peer groups and the perceived importance of teachers' advice positively influence the decision to continue onto post-compulsory education. Boys intentions to leave the area in the future appears to be strongly related to the intention to stay on in education, illustrating a link between education and future geographical mobility. The importance of these variables varies between genders.
Towards a transmutable economics? A comment on Wynarczyk
(p.15)
by S P DunnThis note responds to Wynarczyk’s recent claim in this Journal that Austrian and Post Keynesian Economics share a similar axiomatic base. It is argued that while both traditions appear to emphasise the nominal importance of money, creativity and uncertainty, if they are indeed committed to taking uncertainty seriously then both must recognise nonergodic constructs such as money denominated contracts. History matters.
A Reply to Dunn's Comment (p.21)
by P WynarczykThis short reply responds to Dunn’s comment in the current issue of this journal challenging the transmutable credentials and axiomatic base of Austrian economics. It is argued contra Dunn (and Davidson) that the Austrians are transmutable theorists too with the economic calculation debate as their fundamentalist revolution.
Subsidy and Productivity in the Privatised British Passenger Railway
(p.25)
by J CowieThis paper gives an overview of subsidy reductions in the privatised passenger rail industry in Britain before focusing on productivity performance across the first four years under the privatised structure. Subsidy reductions are analysed in terms of the average annual percentage increase in passenger revenues and/or decreases in costs required to offset these reductions. Productivity is then examined through the use of a Tornqvist productivity index, with passenger train kilometres specified as the output, and labour, traction rolling stock and infrastructure specified as the inputs. For the network as a whole, it is found that total productivity has risen on average by four per cent per annum over the post-privatisation period. Most gains have been achieved through labour reductions and increases in output from improved utilisation of existing inputs. Compared with the performance of the nationalised British Rail, gains made since privatisation are not as high as those made in the later period of public sector management. It is therefore concluded that it is commercialisation, i.e. the move towards a more market orientated organisation, rather than ownership form per se, that has been the key component in productivity gains.
The Cobb-Douglas Production Function: An Antipodean Defence?
(p.39)
by I Fraser In this paper a re-examination of the original time-series data sets used by Professor Douglas and associated researchers to establish the existence of an aggregate production function is undertaken. Particular attention is paid to the issue of whether the data provide deductive support for the ‘Laws of Production’ as claimed by Douglas (1948). Various statistical methods are used to analyse the data to see if the claims of Douglas are justified. Only the New South Wales data and to a lesser extent the New Zealand data yield results that support the assertions of Douglas - hence the Antipodean defence.
Process Recurrence and Input Use at the Industry Level: A Coherent Long-Period Analysis
(p.59)
by I Steedman The familiar partial equilibrium analysis of an individual industry's use of a particular input involves changing only one price (that of the particular input in question), even when long period equilibrium is considered. But this is incoherent, other than in fluke cases, since such a price change will always force other industries out of long period equilibrium. When this incoherence is removed, and equilibrium is taken seriously, the comparative statics results obtained can differ sharply from those derived from the familiar analysis.
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