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This book tells the story of a largely forgotten enterprise: that of the International Scientific Committee on Price History. If this endeavour can nevertheless still be of interest today, it is not only because failures offer insights into social dynamics as well as successes do ; nor is it solely because we find, gathered around this failed enquiry, a slew of very famous names, and names indeed which one would not expect to stumble upon in this context – there is Beveridge and Kautsky, Bloch and Malinowski. First and foremost, it is because the object of this enquiry offers a rare opportunity to bridge the divide between national scientific traditions as well as between disciplines – such as history and economy, or epistemology and the sociology of scientific knowledge. Thus, the initially narrow scope of this study opens up to a vast field of enquiry, as the object of this study shifts to determining how a particular class of objects – those deemed scientific – are produced, and how epistemological, theoretical and institutional issues interact in this process. Indeed, the conversion of past prices (as they appear in the archives) into historical prices taken as scientific facts, raises diverse and crucial questions : on the respective standing of social and natural sciences, about monetarism, or on the transition from the academic field of the Humboldtian scholar to that of big science. Viewed through the prism of this particular case, these issues will appear in a new light for the simple reason that, in the case at hand, fields of enquiry which are ordinarily examined independently are found to be tightly interrelated.

We present and assess extensive statistics regarding poverty rates and depths for Vancouver, B.C., and Canada. We show that not only are single adults in B.C. the most likely to experience poverty, but they also experience the deepest level of poverty. Both single adults and single parents who are younger (i.e., ages 18–24) are more likely to be in poverty and are deeper in poverty than single older persons (i.e., 65+) or those who live as couples. These poverty rates and depths of poverty remain high for single adults and single parents as they get older (i.e., ages 26–65), at which point the depth of poverty decreases. Lastly, poverty tends to be experienced at higher levels by women than by men when conditioning on family type. For these reasons, B.C. government will have to consider these groups in reforms focused on addressing poverty reduction targets.

This paper examines the effects of intraregional spillovers propagated by Nigeria and South Africa on real economic activities and interest rates movement in three African regional blocs (i.e., ECOWAS, SADC and CEMAC) employing the factor augmented VAR (FAVAR) modelling approach over the period 1980Q2–2015Q1. Moreover, a counterfactual analysis, based on the same modelling approach, is conducted to assess what would happen to the real activities and monetary policy indicators of the three regional blocs in the absence of real and monetary shocks from the two countries. The paper finds that while the influence of Nigeria is limited to ECOWAS, South Africa plays an influential role on the real sectors and financial systems of all the regional blocs, albeit with short-lived impacts on ECOWAS and CEMAC. Moreover, the results of the counterfactual analysis show that real and financial activities in the SADC regions are highly influenced by South Africa. Our result suggests that countries with proper coordination of macroeconomic and monetary policies as well as organised financial market should be the sources of contagion and spillover, mostly at regional level.

In this article, I evaluate the challenges related to the European Commission’s output gap method of calculating the structural budgetary position, and assess its bottom-up alternatives in the EU’s fiscal framework using the Finnish data for the years 1984-2014. The results reinforce the impression of the limited capacity of the output gap method to predict cyclical changes in real time and suggest that using the output gap method to steer fiscal policy tends to lead to a procyclical policy (stimulus in upturns and austerity in downturns). The bottom-up assessment methods that are based on discretionary fiscal policy measures appear to work better, and using them to steer the fiscal policy could make the policy more countercyclical.

The mobilization of tax revenue continues to be a major challenge in Togo and the composition of this revenue reveals that the Value Added Tax (VAT) is its essential driver. However, there is a lack of targeted research or studies on the VAT gap. This paper evaluates and analyzes the difference between the VAT total tax liability and the amount of VAT actually collected through a top-down approach by distinguishing policy gap and compliance gap and identifying the sectors and branches of activity concerned. The results indicate that the VAT gap in Togo remains relatively large, although it has significantly improved in recent years to reach 45.9% of the amount of potential revenue (8.3% of GDP) in 2015, after 63.2% (11.4% of GDP) in 2007. Moreover, there is flexibility to improve VAT revenue through a more targeted tax administration for some branches, namely the products of extraction, wood, publishing and printing products, construction work, accommodation and food services, real estate and business services, and repair services.

This article analyses whether automation and offshorability risks overlap with non-standard employment. The research uses data from Spain, as this is a country with one of the highest temporary employment rates across the world since the 1990s. In general, the analysis shows that automation risks affect slightly more to those with non-standard work arrangements. However, higher educational level is crucial to be much less exposed to automation risks, irrespective of the type of contract or the working time. The offshorability risk also has a small overlap with non-standard employment, but has the opposite relationship with the educational level. The results suggest that specific training policies attending to those with lower educational levels in non-standard employment would be advisable to protect some workers against automation risks, but not against offshorability.

This study evaluates the extent to which fetal exposure to rainfall shocks influences birth weight outcomes in Kyrgyzstan, one of the most climate change vulnerable countries in Central Asia. We detect detrimental impacts of rainfall shocks during the prenatal period on birth weight. Specifically, a 0.1 log point increase in in-utero rainfall relative to the local norm reduces birth weight by 23.4 grams (or 0.84%). Furthermore, children born to poor mothers and mothers residing in rural areas are disproportionately affected. The adverse impacts of prenatal exposure to rainfall shocks could be partly attributed to prenatal care, diseases, and nutrient intakes. Besides, the impacts tend to concentrate in the first trimester of pregnancy.

We draw from documented characteristics of the biopharmaceutical industry to construct a model where two firms can choose to outsource R&D to an external unit, and/or engage in internal R&D, before competing in a final market. We investigate the distribution of profits among market participants, and the incentives to coordinate outsourcing activities or to integrate R&D and production. Consistent with the empirical evidence, we find that the sign and magnitude of an aggregate measure of direct (inter-firm) and indirect (through the external unit) technological externalities drives the distribution of industry profits, with higher returns to the external unit when involved in development (clinical trials) than in early-stage research (drug discovery). In the latter case, the delinkage of investment incentives from industry value, together with the ability of firms to transfer risks to the external unit, imply a vulnerability of early-stage investors’ returns to negative shocks, and the likely abandonment of projects with economic and medical value. We also find that competition in the equity market makes a buyout by one of the two firms more profitable to a research biotech than to a clinical services unit, and can stimulate early-stage investments. However, this long-term incentive can be minimal, notably if the superior efficiency of outsourced operations originates from economies of scope that can hardly be exploited when a firm takes control of the external unit exclusively for itself. R&D outsourcing thus does not always qualify as a relevant pathway to address the declining productivity in innovation that has characterized the industry over several decades.

Competitive advantage has an extremely important place in strategic thinking both within the organization and the country. The international competitiveness of a country is a reflection of the ability of the organizations within it to achieve success both on the national and international markets. The latest scientific researches attribute organizational performance and consequently competitive advantage to its leaders and their ability to optimally use available resources. Sources have shown that leaders facing the ongoing globalization market challenges through their behaviour can improve the organization's performance. Effective leaders enable it by increasing the level of entrepreneurial orientation of the organization (nurturing its proactive, innovative and risk-taking characteristics) through the interrelationships among its workers as well as their commitment, confidence and motivation for greater work quality. All these favourable effects are primarily enabled by transformational leadership style, first described by Burns (1978), and elaborated in detail by Bass (1985a), whose implementation is dominantly advocated in modern organizations. This paper explores which leadership characteristics can be used to improve the organization's performance, and whether less successful organizations can be distinguished from the ones that are more successful. The results of this study show that there are specific characteristics that the organization should nurture if it wants to be successful and that less successful organizations can be distinguished from the ones that are more successful according to leadership style they use.

A universal long-term care system was implemented in Spain in 2007 to address the issue of an ageing society and expand the welfare state. Nevertheless, the austerity policies adopted since the outbreak of the economic crisis have slowed and distorted its development. One of the most negative consequences has been its impact in terms of employment creation, which is far below all predictions. This study quantifies the loss in job creation by comparing the actual implementation with the expected scenario and explains the reasons for the gap. Results show that effective employment only accounts for 51.9 percent of the initially estimated employment. Almost the entire gap can be explained by two causes: delays in the allocation of services (waiting list) and the greater provision of cash allowances for informal care over care services. The case of Spain is highly relevant to the implementation of long-term care systems in other countries since it shows how austerity policies can significantly reduce the job creation benefits that these care systems are expected to have.