Learning to export and the timing of entry to export markets

Firms that engage in exporting normally enter their first export markets a number of years after beginning to sell locally, then enter subsequent export markets progressively. Standard trade models are essentially static and do not capture these elementary facts about exporting, which biases the estimation of trade patterns and limits understanding of potentially important aspects of firms’ exporting behaviour. This paper proposes a model for the timing of entry to new export markets. The model endogenously generates the timing of entry to each market through a learning mechanism: the fixed cost of entry to a given export market is reduced by the experience gained from having entered other markets. More productive firms are less sensitive to the learning effect and therefore (1) enter markets more quickly and (2) enter larger markets earlier and smaller markets later than less productive firms. These predictions are confirmed using Swedish firm-level data. The latter prediction in particular is difficult to explain using alternative mechanisms and therefore endorses the learning effect as an explanation for the timing of entry. The model additionally predicts that more productive firms export more widely and that firms of all productivity levels enter nearer markets earlier, which are strong features of the data.export market entry; learning by exporting; fixed costs; heterogeneous firms

Regional Policy in a Multiregional Setting: When the Poorest are Hurt by Subsidies

Regional policies that seek to reduce economic inequalities between regions are common. These policies normally involve subsidies or transfers to the poorest regions. Over any given short-term horizon such subsidies serve to reduce inter-regional inequalities, but as they also affect migration patterns the long-term effects are less clear. This paper demonstrates using a three-region, general equilibrium model that subsidising the poorest region may be to the detriment of the periphery as a whole and even to the very region that receives the subsidy, if the subsidy draws firms away from a nearby region that would function better as a production centre. Though further research is needed to isolate the conditions under which such an effect would arise, the result has potentially important implications for the design of regional policy.Regional policy; production externalities; agglomeration; multiregion model

Engaging the 'Xbox generation of learners' in Higher Education

The research project identifies examples of technology used to empower learning of Secondary school pupils that could be used to inform students’ engagement in learning with technology in the Higher Education sector. Research was carried out in five partnership Secondary schools and one associate Secondary school to investigate how pupils learn with technology in lessons and to identify the pedagogy underpinning such learning. Data was collected through individual interviews with pupils, group interviews with members of the schools’ councils, lesson observations, interviews with teachers, pupil surveys, teacher surveys, and a case study of a learning event. In addition, data was collected on students’ learning with technology at the university through group interviews with students and student surveys in the School of Education and Professional Development, and through surveys completed by students across various university departments. University tutors, researchers, academic staff, learning technology advisers, and cross sector partners from the local authority participated in focus group interviews on the challenges facing Higher Education in engaging new generations of students, who have grown up in the digital age, in successful scholarly learning

Hearing behaviour: social interaction as a means of creating emergent situations in/as/through music

This body of writing serves as accompaniment to a portfolio of musical compositions and visual media composed between September 2013 and August 2014. The work is in three parts. Part one sets the context of the compositions with reference to numerous other artists, explaining the political need for compositions of this kind and how these relate to the topic of emergence in relation to group performance and social enrichment. This part also makes reference to the philosophical influence behind the works and how these ideas might be relevant to wider society. Part two offers a commentary on the works themselves, explaining the thinking that brought them about, and a narrative of the development from one composition to the next. Part three offers a reflection of how well these works relate to the originally stated political agenda, as well as outlining my plans for future artistic direction

Doctors in Whitehall: medical advisers at the 60th anniversary of the NHS

• The government’s requirement for expert medical advice from the 1850s led to the development of a medical Civil Service, which reached its peak in size and authority in the 1970s. • The successive Whitehall efficiency reviews from 1979 onwards culminated in 1994 in the merger of the parallel reporting hierarchies, effectively reducing the Chief Medical Officer’s ability to call upon the support of medical civil servants, at a time of increasing new health threats such as AIDS and MRSA. • In the last ten years, the government has become more imaginative in its use of temporary specialist medical advisers (tsars) brought in from the NHS, in relaxing the formal Civil Service hierarchies, and quietly abandoning the statutory Standing Medical Advisory Committee (SMAC). • Historical examples show that when the government has failed to give adequate support to its Chief Medical Officers, the medical Civil Service has suffered from poor morale, experienced recruitment difficulties, and the ability to respond to health crises has been compromised. • Virtually none of the Whitehall and NHS reviews have considered their historical context. The current NHS review has been crudely timetabled to produce a politically favourable report in time for the 60th anniversary in July 2008. As with earlier reviews, it does not appear to be addressing more deep-seated issues such as the location and management of medical expertise. • The government needs to acknowledge that some of its tasks, such as protecting the public’s health, do not easily fit into fashionable Public Service Agreements or the ethos of New Public Management

A role-based perspective on leadership as a network of relationships.

The research described in this article seeks to address the question of the extent to which a role-based perspective can provide insight into the distributed and networked form of leadership

Space, place and (waiting) time: reflections on health policy and politics

AbstractHealth systems have repeatedly addressed concerns about efficiency and equity by employing trans-national comparisons to draw out the strengths and weaknesses of specific policy initiatives. This paper demonstrates the potential for explicit historical analysis of waiting times for hospital treatment to add value to spatial comparative methodologies. Waiting times and the size of the lists of waiting patients have become key operational indicators. In the United Kingdom, as National Health Service (NHS) financial pressures intensified from the 1970s, waiting times have become a topic for regular public and political debate. Various explanations for waiting times include the following: hospital consultants manipulate NHS waiting lists to maintain their private practice; there is under-investment in the NHS; and available (and adequate) resources are being used inefficiently. Other countries have also experienced ongoing tensions between the public and private delivery of universal health care in which national and trans-national comparisons of waiting times have been regularly used. The paper discusses the development of key UK policies, and provides a limited Canadian comparative perspective, to explore wider issues, including whether ‘waiting crises’ were consciously used by policymakers, especially those brought into government to implement new economic and managerial strategies, to diminish the autonomy and authority of the medical professional in the hospital environment.</jats:p

Quantifying life: Understanding the history of Quality-Adjusted Life-Years (QALYs)

Quality-Adjusted Life-Years (QALYs) are central to healthcare decision-making in Britain and abroad, yet their history is poorly understood. In this paper, we argue that a more in-depth and political history of the QALY is needed to allow a critical evaluation of its current dominance. Exploiting rich data from archives and 44 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2015 and 2018, we employ Multiple Streams Analysis to construct a complex and dynamic picture of how the idea of QALYs emerged and was adopted within UK health policy. Through its historical and political approach, the paper illuminates the relative roles in the policy-making process of experts (especially economists) and politicians as ‘entrepreneurs’ in the development of new ideas; how these were influenced by negotiation within established and emerging institutional structures; and the role of serendipity and crisis

Non-linear growth of short-wave instabilities in a Batchelor vortex pair

Recent investigations have identified a variety of instability modes which may develop to enhance dispersion of co- and counter-rotating vortex pairs. This has application in the aviation industry, where an aircraft’s trailing vortices pose a significant hazard for other nearby aircraft. Batchelor vortices adopt the radial velocity field of Lamb – Oseen vortices, but with an axial velocity component through the core of the vortex, and are often used to represent vortices within an aircraft wake. Recently, the vortex swirl ratio of the Batchelor vortex pair has been identified as a key parameter which may be used to select the mode of instability which develops. Several modes have recently been identified via linear stability analysis. This study extends these prior investigations by considering the non-linear growth of the three-dimensional instabilities acting to disperse the vortex pair. Here, we validate prior linear instability investigations, and compare and contrast the relative ability of several instability modes to achieve improved vortex dispersion. The study has been conducted using a high-order, three-dimensional spectral element method to solve the timedependent incompressible Navier – Stokes equations. The study is conducted at a circulation Reynolds number of 2 800

Airports and the production of goods and services

This paper estimates the effect of air transport on local production in the manufacturing and service sectors. The analysis is conducted using data from the United States. These effects are important for the design of policies that aim to develop an airport or to otherwise attract airlines to operate to and from the airport. This type of policy is commonly employed by national and local governments, indeed most large commercial airports in the United States and Canada are publicly owned. Though it is common for local authorities to construct new runways, terminals, or other facilities, the effects of such policies are not currently well understood. The estimation of the effect of airport size on local production is subject to an obvious endogeneity problem, as airlines are likely to expand operations in response to increased demand. This problem is addressed by using the 1944 National Airport Plan of the Civil Aeronautics Administration to instrument for the distribution of airports. The National Airport Plan passes the statistical tests for relevance and exogeneity, which is not surprising as the federal funding connected to it was important for the rapid development of the air network after the Second World War and the criteria used to select sites was unrelated even to the contemporary distribution of sectors. Better air connections are found to have a positive effect on the size of the local service sector, with an elasticity of approximately 0.2. A larger airport – hosting more frequent flights to a wider range of destinations – is associated with a greater share of the population in the metropolitan area being employed in the service sector. This is interpreted as indicating that services are being produced in the metropolitan areas with larger airports for export elsewhere. There appears to be no effect on non-tradable services, such as beauty salons and auto repair, precisely as we would expect. The effect on manufacturing is negative, though this appears to reflect substitution to the expanded service sector rather than a direct effect, as the analysis of manufacturing shipments between pairs of cities does not appear to be related to air traffic