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"This paper makes three contributions to the literature on the effects of collective bargaining on the performance of German establishments. We include the analysis of firms' efficiency and we model productivity and efficiency simultaneously. Confronted with 25% observations with missing values, we check the missing data mechanisms and find effects of firm size and collective bargaining on it, among others. After proper multiple imputation of the missing values - thus avoiding obvious nonresponse bias -, the results on the collective bargaining effects on productivity and efficiency change significantly. Finally, we suggest to multiply impute implausible zero values in the capital proxy as well." (author's abstract)

AbstractThe use of spatial econometric models in political science has steadily risen in recent years. However, the interpretation of these models has generally ignored the important substantive, and even spatial, nature of the estimated effects. This leaves many papers with a (non-spatial) interpretation of coefficients on the covariates and a brief discussion of the sign and strength of the spatial parameter. We introduce a general approach to interpreting spatial models and provide several avenues for an exposition of substantive spatial effects. Our approach can be generalized to most models in the spatial econometric taxonomy. Building on the example of the diffusion of democracy, we elucidate how our approach can be applied to modern political science problems.

This article focuses on the most important factors shaping the spatial behaviour of transborder consumers in Słubice and Frankfurt on the Oder, towns split by a state border. The factors are highly diversified and differ in the spatial range of influence. They can be divided into seven groups, viz. geographical, political-administrative, legal-normative, economic, demographic, psycho-social and cultural, and the foreign-language information layout of a town. But it is economic factors, like the level of prices in the given country or the currency exchange rate, that have the strongest effect on the movement of inhabitants and the intensity of transborder contacts between the two frontier towns.

This article focuses on the most important factors shaping the spatial behaviour of transborder consumers in Słubice and Frankfurt on the Oder, towns split by a state border. The factors are highly diversified and differ in the spatial range of influence. They can be divided into seven groups, viz. geographical, political-administrative, legal-normative, economic, demographic, psycho-social and cultural, and the foreign-language information layout of a town. But it is economic factors, like the level of prices in the given country or the currency exchange rate, that have the strongest effect on the movement of inhabitants and the intensity of transborder contacts between the two frontier towns.

The US space program currently faces declining public support. Space technology seems to have grown beyond the government's ability either to pay for it or to direct it. Not only its military function but also its other aspects create sensitive international problems: remote sensing offers environmental benefits but can violate national privacy; communications satellites may be used for propaganda; the location of geostationary orbits & the exploitation of space resources are felt by many nations to infringe on their rights. The formation of an agency with international membership is suggested as a possible means of administering a supranational law of space. C. Waters.

This paper provides first micro-level evidence of the global university production frontier, allowing to estimate technical efficiencies of 273 top research universities across 29 countries between 2007 and 2009. Exploiting comparable international data improves the estimation of the production technology, allows to assess the distance of individual countries to the global frontier and enables comparison of university efficiencies between and across countries. The estimated input distance function uses undergraduate students, graduate students and citations to capture university outputs and staff to measure inputs. Contrasting two alternative econometric strategies to identify technical efficiency yields relatively stable results. Furthermore, the paper addresses the problem of unobserved heterogeneity by relating the obtained efficiency rankings to quality rankings and by exploiting the panel structure of the data to account for unobserved heterogeneity explicitly. The results suggest that technical efficiency rankings can be obtained in a relatively simple econometric setting.

1. Introduction -- A timely argument .. -- ... a good argument .. -- ... but a difficult argument -- 2. Two paradoxes of globalization -- Economic inequalities -- Political inequalities -- Growing demand for migration -- 3. Some historical perspective -- Migration in the long arc of history -- The mercantilist period -- The liberal period -- The new liberal period -- Conclusion -- 4. The moral argument -- Mobility as a universal right -- The instrumentalist argument -- Conclusion -- 5. A political argument -- The problem with closed borders : the case of apartheid -- A market-based approach -- The political benefits of free migration -- 6. An economic argument -- Host-country benefits -- Sending-country benefits -- International benefits -- Conclusion -- 7. Who opposes free migration? -- Public opinion -- The undying state -- Diffuse and particular interests -- 8. Questioning conventional wisdom -- The great flood of immigrants -- Brain drain -- Migration's effect on culture -- The challenge of political realism -- Security concerns -- 9. Conclusion and policy responses -- Policy responses -- Broadening the debate.