Springer Science and Business Media LLC

This paper evaluates the survival potential of Russian firms. First, a composite measure of survival potential is developed using select characteristics of the firm, the firm's management, and the market structure faced by the firm. The measure is applied to 51 Russian firms, based on in-depth interviews with top-level managers of manufacturing, trade and other organizations conducted in 1995 in Moscow, Volgograd, Rostov and Taganrog. Using arbitrarily assigned weights for each element in the composite measure and a straight scale for categorizing firm performance, ten percent of the firms emerge as champions, more than fifty percent emerge as chaff. Second, two different proxies are used as a measure of survival potential, and the relative importance of firm, management and market structure characteristics is estimated. The weights are adjusted in the composite measure to reflect the regression results. The results indicate that survival potential is not driven by ownership structure, firm size, or the presence of monopoly power.

An alternative course to Brexit for the UK is evaluated. The purpose of the study is to determine whether the UK would have been better off had, instead of Brexit, remained in the EU and joined the Eurozone. The model specification is based on the neoclassical theory of growth extended to include human capital accumulation. Counterfactual analysis in terms of the difference-in-differences methodology is applied to evaluate the effect in UK’s per capita income if the UK had joined the Eurozone when the Eurozone was formed. The dataset is a balanced panel of annual observations for fifteen countries and covers the period from 1980 to 2017. The analysis reveals that had the UK joined the Eurozone, UK’s per capita income would have been 15.48% higher on the average for the period after the formation of the Eurozone. This effect increases to 24.98% if Eurozone’s less performing economies of the southern periphery are excluded from the analysis. The study shows that Brexit is a move toward the wrong direction. The UK should have sought further integration with the EU in terms of presence in the Eurozone than pursue Brexit and leave the EU.

This article explores the way economic cycles influence the relationship between innovation and employment in manufacturing industries. We investigate whether the ups and downs of cycles alter the possibility of exploiting technological opportunities and affecting patterns of job creation. A model that explains industries’ employment change by combining technology and demand is proposed; the empirical test is based on data on 21 manufacturing sectors from 1995 to 2007 for Germany, France, Italy, the UK, the Netherlands and Spain. Results show that, in upswings, employment change is affected by new products, exports and wage growth, while during downswings new processes contribute to restructuring and job losses.

Several leading candidate countries will eventually enter the European Monetary Union (EMU). A key question is what exchange rate management policy should be pursued after joining the European Union (EU). This paper focuses on the impact of Euro-area monetary policy on Hungary. We find that Euro-area monetary policy shocks may be destabilising for Hungary as the impact of these shocks appears to be much greater on Hungarian industrial production than on Euro-area industrial production. Thus, Hungary has much to gain by retaining some monetary policy independence during the interim period between admission to the EU and adoption of the euro in order to isolate itself from Euro-area monetary policy shocks.

We conduct a meta-regression analysis of 69 studies that generated 937 renminbi (RMB) misalignment estimates. The Bayesian model averaging approach is adopted to allow for model selection and sampling uncertainties in assessing effects of study characteristics on these RMB misalignment estimates. Misalignment estimates are found to be influenced by the eight selected study characteristic types. The RMB misalignment estimates from models with various hypothetical combinations of study characteristics, however, are mostly insignificantly different from zero. It is also shown that the set of significant study characteristics is sensitive to the use of the least-squares estimation method.