THE U.S. PRODUCTIVITY SLOWDOWN: A PEAK THROUGH THE STRUCTURAL BREAK WINDOW

This paper provides a formal test of the null hypothesis of a unit root in the log-level of labor productivity against the alternative of linear trend stationarity with a one-time structural break in the level and slope of the trend at an a priori unknown date. Using some newly developed time series tests, we show that the log-level of productivity is more accurately modeled as following a deterministic trend with a regime shift rather than as a unit root process. Some implications of the results for detrending and for testing cointegration relationships between productivity and other variables are discussed. ( JEL C22. O40)     

Strategies for model‐revision in a high school genetics classroom

Recent proposals to improve science education (e.g., AAAS, 1989; Rutherford & Ahlgren, 1990) have stressed the importance of providing high school students with a broad knowledge base consisting of a body of core concepts and theories. Science educators (Duschl, 1990; AAAS, 1989; Peterson & Jungck, 1988) have also argued that while concepts are an important part of any education, no student's scientific education can be considered complete without a complementary knowledge of the nature of science, including an understanding of the tentative nature of scientific knowledge and how it is constructed. In this paper we describe a science classroom in which students are given opportunities to construct and use scientific knowledge to solve realistic genetics problems, and suggest that allowing students to engage in the production of scientific knowledge can support science learning.     

The Assessment of Research Quality in UK Universities: Peer Review or Metrics?

This paper investigates the extent to which the outcomes of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise in the UK, determined by peer review, can be explained by a set of quantitative indicators. Three cognate units of assessment are examined in detail: business and management, economics and econometrics, and accounting and finance. The main finding is that each of the three components of research activity (namely, research output, esteem and research environment) is highly correlated with various quantitative indicators. A further finding is that the judgement of the Research Assessment Exercise panels was biased in favour of Russell Group universities. There is also evidence of bias by the economics and econometrics panel. The results support the use of quantitative indicators in the research assessment process, particularly a journal quality index. Requiring the panels to take bibliometric indicators into account should help not only to reduce the workload of panels but also to mitigate the problem of implicit bias.     

Does a food for education program affect school outcomes? The Bangladesh case

The Food for Education (FFE) program was introduced to Bangladesh in 1993. This paper evaluates the effect of this program on school participation and duration of schooling using household survey data collected in 2000. Using propensity score matching combined with difference-in-differences methodologies, we find that the program is successful in that eligible children on average have 15% to 26% higher school participation rates, relative to their counterfactuals who would have been eligible for the program had they lived in the program-eligible areas. Conditional on school participation, participants also stay at school 0.7 to 1.05 years longer than their counterfactuals.     

Human resource development in small organizations

This article draws upon case-study research into human resource development (HRD) within three small organizations in the north west of England. It positions the case-study work within an overall framework of doctoral research and summarizes the research design; discusses the characteristics and values of small organizations and how they influence HRD policies and practices: presents findings and conclusions about HRD in the case-study organizations, focusing in particular upon one case in the voluntary sector; compares and contrasts the different models of HRD in the three cases; and concludes with some suggestions for further research.     

Manufacturing in the Nineties By H.J. STRUDEL and P.DESRUELLE(Van Nostrand Reinhold,New York, 1992). £31.50.

Abstract

Looking for a world model for the manufacturing information flow diagram has brought us to the conclusion that it is impossible to build an all-encompassing, all-inclusive system. The redundancy and overlap would make the system excessively complex and ineffective. The best way to generalize a model of this type is to simplify. The result is that we eliminate nearly the entire production control mechanism that is found in the labour intensive MRP system (Fig. 1). We come up with a system that is much closer to the material intensive JIT system (Fig. 2). The conclusion is that effective production control requires that you choose which resource you wish to optimize, and then select a system that controls the plant around the selected resource base. This is the function of books like International Management and Production. A second conclusion would be that complexity (MRP—Fig. 1) gains very little over simplicity (JIT—Fig. 2 or World Model—Fig. 4) in productivity or efficiency. As Shozo Hibino says in his book Breakthrough Thinking, we need to run our plants smarter, not harder.     

Influence analysis in multivariate linear general models

In this paper we obtain several influence measures for the multivariate linear general model through the approach proposed by Muñoz-Pichardo et al. (1995), which is based on the concept of conditional bias. An interesting charasteristic of this approach is that it does not require any distributional hypothesis. Appling the obtained results to the multivariate regression model, we obtain some measures proposed by other authors. Nevertheless, on the results obtained in this paper, we emphasize two aspects. First, they provide a theoretical foundation for measures proposed by other authors for the mul¬tivariate regression model. Second, they can be applied to any linear model that can be formulated as a particular case of the multivariate linear general model. In particular, we carry out an application to the multivariate analysis of covariance.     

A Note on the Moments and Computer Generation of the Shifted Gompertz Distribution

In this paper we give a class of row-column designs with the property that the i-th row and the j-th column have precisely r treatments in common. A conjecture that such designs are quasi-factorial is disproved by showing that the designs given in this paper are not quasi-factorial. It is also shown that the designs given here are nearly optimal.