Service diversification and growth of professional service firms

This study investigates the impact of service diversification on the rate and mode of firm growth in professional service firms (PSFs). Drawing on the extant PSF literature, we identify differing views regarding the growth impact of service diversification. Specifically, some scholars suggest that the external client benefits associated with service diversification should allow PSFs to expand revenues at a rapid pace and pursue less merger and acquisition activity, whereas others imply that increased diversification can cause internal challenges with respect to learning costs, coordination and innovation that can limit the rate of revenue growth and encourage more mergers and acquisitions. We test these competing views using longitudinal data on 137 accounting firms and cross-sectional data on 125 law firms and find that service diversification is negatively associated with the rate of firm revenue growth and positively associated with the use of mergers and acquisitions.     

The Transnational Tilt of the Treadmill and the Role of Trade Openness on Carbon Emissions: A Comparative International Study, 1965–2010

There are various schools of thought regarding the relationship between the environment and economy. Ecological modernization argues that the harmful effects of economic growth and development on the environment decline through time, whereas the treadmill of production and ecologically unequal exchange postulate different perspectives. This study relies on World Bank and World Resources Institute data for the period of 1965–2010. Time‐series cross‐sectional Prais‐Winsten (PW) regression models with panel‐corrected standard errors (PCSE) are employed to examine whether economic growth and trade openness intensified or decoupled in relation to three measures of carbon dioxide (CO₂₎ emissions during this period. The findings of this study indicate that there has been a “tilt” in the treadmill of production—that is, the most environmentally degrading production processes have moved to less developed countries. Furthermore, integration into the world economy has been associated with an intensification in CO₂ emissions for less developed countries. Surprisingly, however, this phenomenon does not seem to be driven by exports sent to high‐income nations, suggesting that there are mechanisms embodied within the global organization of production that require further exploration.     

Exploring patterns of personal growth initiative and posttraumatic stress: A latent profile analysis

Objective: This study examined the inconsistent relationship found between personal growth initiative (PGI) and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) by exploring potential subgroups. In addition, after identifying the subgroups, potential predictors of these subgroups were examined. Participants: Participants were 534 undergraduate students who experienced a potentially traumatic event (PTE). Data collection occurred from March 2013 to December 2014. Methods: Because this was a preliminary study, archival data was used. Participants consisted of students who experienced a PTE within the past three years. Results: Latent profile analysis indicated a five-class model as the best-fitting model. Direct exposure and intentionality of the event were significant predictors of class membership; length of time since event and gender did not predict class membership. Conclusions: The current study provides a potential explanation of the inconsistent results between PGI and PTSS and also highlights the importance of acknowledging subgroups when utilizing PGI after a PTE.     

India’s Social Development in a Decade of Reforms: 1990–91/1999–2000

The economic reforms initiated in India in 1991 have brought about visible upliftment of economic conditions of the country. This paper examines if the economic process is associated with an enhancement of India’s social development in equal measure in the reform decade of nineties. Ray (1989) considered thirteen social indicators of India and constructed the country’s social development index (SDI) as a certain weighted average of the selected indicators, for the years between 1950–51 and 1975–76. The present work broadly follows Ray (1989) in tracking the social development in the decade of economic reforms from 1990–91 to 1999–2000. The movement of SDI in nineties has been compared with the movements of India’s per capita income and plan expenditure on the social sector. The results show that though there has been growth in the social sector, it is not by far quite encouraging and perhaps more needs to be done in the social sector. The views expressed in the article are those of the author and not of the institution he serves.     

Social time preference revisited

The article reconsiders the implications of the choice of pure social time preference for intergenerational equity in the presence of a time-consistent utilitarian social welfare criterion. The analytic framework is a setting with overlapping generations, lifetime uncertainty, population growth and technical progress. The analysis identifies upper and lower bounds for the feasible range of social discount rates and draws a corresponding distinction between “gerontocratic” and “Stalinist” optimal plans. The paper corrects a number of inaccurate propositions in a related earlier contribution by Marini and Scaramozzino (2000) to this journal.

The importance of being mature: the effect of demographic maturation on global per capita GDP

Given that savings behaviour and worker productivity have strong life-cycle components and given that demographic profiles vary across countries, population age structure should be linked to differences in levels of economic development. In this paper, we measure the economic importance of age structure variation for the global economy. We find that demographic maturation has been associated with nearly half of the evolution of global per capita GDP since 1960. We also find that age structure differences can account for just over half of the variation in worldwide per capita GDP (i.e. the lack of sigma convergence) observed since 1960.

养老保险现收现付制的挤出效应——一个内生生育率模型

文章在一个内生经济增长的OLG模型框架下研究现收现付制养老保险计划的挤出效应。具体考察公共养老金税率变动对家庭的消费与储蓄、生育选择以及经济增长的长期影响。结果表明,存在向上利他动机的情况下,挤出效应的大小取决于养老基金的规模,适度规模的公共养老金计划不会挤出私人储蓄。而有利于消费增加与经济增长;较大规模的公共养老金计划会对私人自愿储蓄与消费产生负面影响,并且对储蓄的挤出作用要大于对消费的挤出。人口老龄化进程在一定程度上缓解挤出效应,促进资本积累与经济增长。     

Conflicts in urban fringe in the transformation era: An examination of performance of the metropolitan growth management in Beijing

The performances of urban growth management are often criticized because their original objectives are frequently inconsistent with local development facts. Underlying the many reasons for this are the political and institutional contexts that influence policy-making and development activities. The urban fringe, a zone is managed to against urban sprawl in many countries, represents the conflicts between urban management system and local development resulting from political transformation. This study examines the case of decentralised-concentration strategy, one of the most important metropolitan growth management in Beijing since the 1990s, and sheds some lights on the performance of the growth management in the transformation context. The results suggest that the aims of municipal growth management to concentrate developments in urban fringe have partly been achieved through actual local developments; however, some unexpected and illegal local developments outside the planned areas are counterproductive from the perspective of municipal growth management. The performance of the present growth management is being challenged by new trends towards political decentralisation and locally fiscal responsibilities. In the interest of future policymaking, the dominant central planning system in Beijing should take these decentralisation trends into growth management account, compared with the great progress in decentralisation in economy system. The urban policy needs to shift from the dictatorial manner and put more efforts into creating a harmonious relationship between municipal growth management and actual local demands on development.     

A lost family-planning regime in eighteenth-century Ceylon

Based on Dutch colonial registers (thombos), this paper reconstructs fertility for two districts in Ceylon, 1756–68. It overcomes challenges in data quality by establishing the outer bounds of plausible estimates in a series of scenarios. Among these, total fertility rates (TFRs) averaged 5.5 in one district, but only 2.7 in the other. These figures exclude the victims of infanticide, a custom noted in European travelogues between about 1660 and 1820. Sex ratios among children differed depending on the number of older siblings, and overall, 27?per cent of girls are missing in one district and 57?per cent in the other. There was little significant variation either in the TFR or the sex ratio by socio-economic status, suggesting that poverty was not a key factor in motivating infanticides. Instead, we argue that at least parts of Ceylon had a forward-looking culture of family planning in the eighteenth century, which was lost in subsequent decades.     

Another economy: towards a cultural dialectics between energy and society

The looming oil crisis, pollution, and climate change have pushed governments, corporations, and individuals to think of new policies, new objects/products and new manners to market them – usually under the label of “green economy” (or the shifting towards a sustainable economy).

The changes that are on the way as a result of the envisaged “green revolution” need a broad vision that couples the economy of energetic techniques with the related socio-cultural economy that is induced by, and at the same time reciprocally influences, the mere technical transformations.

Based on previous analysis of theories of socio-technological change and putting at its center the concept of subjectivation in social sciences, this article proposes a theoretical understanding of cultural shifts and their relationship with changes in the practices of production, transfer and use of energy.

First part presents a schema of subjectivation in triangulation, that links the biological level with the material culture and with the representational realm of normativities in our society. It will be developed through the example of electric vehicle as metaphor of the energetic transition. Through this understanding, second part deals with the modeling of the three items as a processual energetic system by using the concepts of surplus and expenditure. Within this frame, we show how disruptions in one of the poles of this model influences the others and bring about changes in the entire Anthropo-Social level. Third part proposes possible types of emerging subjectivities and advances the idea of extending the realm of consciousness to the energetic transfers and their potentiality.