Shall we follow the money? Anti-mafia policies and electoral competition

Building upon the evidence that the mafia increases the degree of vote concentration, we use data on regional elections in Sicily to estimate the impact of anti-mafia policies on electoral competition. We find robust evidence that the reassignment for social purposes of property and assets seized to the mafia reduces the degree of electoral concentration. This result supports the hypothesis that policies that create social value, such as the reallocation to social-driven organizations, are more effective than those targeted to public and political institutions.     

The myth of price convergence under economic integration: A proposed explanation for the difference in food prices across European countries

Conventional globalization theory states that regional economic integration will precede price standardization across participating countries due to the increased buying power of large retail groups and parallel imports. The resulting price corridor should merely reflect differences in logistic costs and short-term, local competitive actions. Yet, this study uses panel data from 25 European countries to examine how hefty food and beverage price differentials between regions remained constant over the last decade. Income, store productivity, and market concentration all contribute to the explanation for regional price differences. These findings suggest that, contrary to straight-line globalization theory, large European retailers’ decisions can influence price convergence and maintain important price dispersion between economically integrated countries. We provide recommendations to enhance market integration.     

Does state ownership really matter? The dynamic alignment of China's resource environment and firm internationalization strategies

Recent research suggests that unequal access to home country institutional resources affects firm internationalization strategies. We add to this debate, based on an analysis of state-owned (SOEs) and non-state-owned (NSOEs) Chinese mining firms, by developing a more dynamic and multi-layered understanding of this interplay. We find that home institutional support can be ownership-based or performance-based, whereby the former benefits SOEs and the latter favors high-performing NSOEs. Combined, these support structures serve as institutional control mechanisms in promoting competition, performance and loyalty to national policies. In addition, they establish a permanent link between firm- and home country-specific assets and incentivize firms to develop dynamic resource access capabilities at home and abroad. Our findings inform our understanding of the firms-institutions nexus and Chinese foreign direct investment dynamics, especially in industries of strategic importance to the state.     

Pollutant Ground Concentrations of Nonneutrally Buoyant Particles

A methodology is suggested for the estimation of the mass density and the cumulative ground deposition of a nonvolatile, nonneutrally buoyant, air pollutant (liquid or solid) released from a polluted column (following an explosion caused during routine operation in, e.g., the chemical industry or due to any kind of hostile act) and deposited on the ground via gravitational settling. In many cases, the deposited mass due to gravitational settling constitutes a significant fraction of the original inventory released from the source. Implementation of the methodology in preliminary risk assessments can serve as an efficient tool for emergency planning for both immediate and long‐term measures such as evacuation and decontamination. The methodology considers, inter alia, an estimation of the critical particle diameter, particle size, and mass distributions along the polluted column. This methodology was developed to apply in rural regions since proper application of relevant meteorological input data can be accomplished mainly for such areas.     

Assessing Risk‐Based Upper Limits of Melamine Migration from Food Containers

Melamine contamination of food has become a major food safety issue because of incidents of infant disease caused by exposure to this chemical. This study was aimed at establishing a safety limit in Taiwan for the degree of melamine migration from food containers. Health risk assessment was performed for three exposure groups (preschool children, individuals who dine out, and elderly residents of nursing homes). Selected values of tolerable daily intake (TDI) for melamine were used to calculate the reference migration concentration limit (RMCL) or reference specific migration limit (RSML) for melamine food containers. The only existing values of these limits for international standards today are 1.2 mg/L (0.2 mg/dm²) in China and 30 mg/L (5 mg/dm²) in the European Union. The factors used in the calculations included the specific surface area of food containers, daily food consumption rate, body weight, TDI, and the percentile of the population protected at a given migration concentration limit (MCL). The results indicate that children are indeed at higher risk of melamine exposure at toxic levels than are other groups and that the 95th percentile of MCL (specific surface area = 5) for children aged 1–6 years should be the RMCL (0.07 mg/dm²) for protecting the sensitive and general population.     

Risk and diversification of nonprofit revenue portfolios: Applying modern portfolio theory to nonprofit revenue management

This study uses modern portfolio theory (MPT) to estimate the risk of nonprofit revenue portfolios and examines to what degree the revenue concentration measure based on Herfindahl–Hirschman Index is associated with the portfolio risk measure based on MPT. The findings suggest that nonprofits with greater revenue concentration have lower revenue portfolio risk in the whole sample analysis. However, it is plausible that this result is dominated by organizations reliant on commercial income, which comprise over half of the sample. In fact, when examined separately, the relationship varies by an organization's primary funding structure. While higher revenue concentration is positively associated with portfolio risk for organizations relying on donations or those without a consistent primary funding source, it appears to associate with a lower portfolio risk for commercial organizations and those relying on government grants. This study reflects on the concept of diversification derived from portfolio theory and calls attention to a more nuanced approach to nonprofit revenue strategy.     

客户集中度、市场环境与存货管理效率

客户处在供应链的下游,对企业存货的采购、生产和销售都会产生重要影响,而多变的市场环境也在无形当中影响着客户与企业之间的关系。从企业所处行业、地区产品市场和客户三个角度所带来的市场环境变化入手,采用2011—2017年我国沪深两市A股制造业上市公司的数据,实证分析客户集中度与企业存货管理效率之间的关系。研究发现:(1)客户集中度越高,企业存货管理效率越高；(2)产品市场竞争力度越强,客户集中度对企业存货管理效率的影响越大；(3)产品市场发育越好,客户集中度对企业存货管理效率的影响越大。进一步研究发现,当企业因客户生产经营原因导致需求发生较大变化时,客户集中度对企业存货管理效率的正向影响更加显著。研究结论表明,政府应当注重市场竞争力的提升和良好经营环境的建设,使得企业在维护客户关系的同时充分发挥客户集中度对企业存货管理效率的积极作用。     

行业干中学、市场规模与市场结构——中国微观制造企业的实证研究

本文使用中国制造业微观企业1999至2007年的大样本数据,探讨干中学在市场规模扩张的过程中对市场结构动态变化的影响。研究发现,干中学有助于提高行业市场集中度的下限;其次,在较低的干中学行业中,随着市场规模的增加,行业会形成无序的片状的市场结构,行业集中度极度分散;然后,在动态的市场结构中,行业的干中学效应有助于缓解市场结构扩散,使行业市场结构的变动保持一种"粘性";最后,在很高的干中学行业中,行业的市场集中度会呈现U型的态势,当市场规模达到最佳市场规模后,行业的市场集中度开始上升,此时,内生的市场壁垒会催生行业的市场势力。     

Estimation and diagnostic for skew-normal partially linear models

Partially linear models (PLMs) are an important tool in modelling economic and biometric data and are considered as a flexible generalization of the linear model by including a nonparametric component of some covariate into the linear predictor. Usually, the error component is assumed to follow a normal distribution. However, the theory and application (through simulation or experimentation) often generate a great amount of data sets that are skewed. The objective of this paper is to extend the PLMs allowing the errors to follow a skew-normal distribution [A. Azzalini, A class of distributions which includes the normal ones, Scand. J. Statist. 12 (1985), pp. 171–178], increasing the flexibility of the model. In particular, we develop the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm for linear regression models and diagnostic analysis via local influence as well as generalized leverage, following [H. Zhu and S. Lee, Local influence for incomplete-data models, J. R. Stat. Soc. Ser. B 63 (2001), pp. 111–126]. A simulation study is also conducted to evaluate the efficiency of the EM algorithm. Finally, a suitable transformation is applied in a data set on ragweed pollen concentration in order to fit PLMs under asymmetric distributions. An illustrative comparison is performed between normal and skew-normal errors.     

集体所有、村委管理与村民的行政诉讼原告资格——兼论“村”的公法人地位

村民是否有资格对村委会的集体财产处分行为提起诉讼,是当下我国村民自治实践中急待解决的法律问题。在实证法没有明文规定的背景下,法院都把集体财产处分纠纷作为民事案件处理,但对村民的原告资格问题却给出了两种相互矛盾的回答。而且,不管法院是肯定还是否定村民的原告资格,都分别隐含了把集体财产等同于村民共有财产,或者把"村"定性为私法人的理论错误,充分暴露了村民原告资格在民事诉讼制度框架下的解释困境。实际上,对依据法律和政府行为设立并承担大量公共管理职能的"村",我们只有把它定性为大陆法国家行政法上的公法人才是准确的。一旦恢复"村"的公法人面貌和地位,把村委会处分集体财产纠纷纳入行政诉讼,集体财产的均等分配性特征使村民个人和集体财产之间构成"法律上利害关系",每个村民对集体财产处分行为就都具有行政诉讼原告资格。