Economies of scope in research and teaching: A non-parametric investigation

We propose a non-parametric methodology to study the presence of economies of scope between teaching and research (i.e., the teaching–research nexus). In particular, the paper advocates a conditional version of the ‘benefit-of-the-doubt’ approach to estimate the relationship between professors’ overall academic output, measured by a composite measure of multi-dimensional and importance-adjusted scores of teaching effectiveness and research productivity, and the time devoted to teaching and to research. The methodology is illustrated with a dataset of professors working at a Business & Administration department of a university college where the time allocation of teaching and research was assigned exogenously. The outcome of the analysis indicates the presence of limited scope economies for professors with an extensive research time.     

Leverage and Default in Binomial Economies: A Complete Characterization

Our paper provides a complete characterization of leverage and default in binomial economies with financial assets serving as collateral. Our Binomial No‐Default Theorem states that any equilibrium is equivalent (in real allocations and prices) to another equilibrium in which there is no default. Thus actual default is irrelevant, though the potential for default drives the equilibrium and limits borrowing. This result is valid with arbitrary preferences and endowments, contingent or noncontingent promises, many assets and consumption goods, production, and multiple periods. We also show that only no‐default equilibria would be selected if there were the slightest cost of using collateral or handling default. Our Binomial Leverage Theorem shows that equilibrium Loan to Value (LTV) for noncontingent debt contracts is the ratio of the worst‐case return of the asset to the riskless gross rate of interest. In binomial economies, leverage is determined by down risk and not by volatility.     

Culture,connectedness, and international adoption of disruptive innovation

Why might nations vary in whether and how fast to adopt potentially disruptive innovations? Our study investigates this issue, specifically how a nation's adoption of creatively destroying innovations is related to two previously unexplored variables: cultural looseness, which is a norm-based measure of informal institutions, and global connectedness. To highlight potential contributions from these new variables, we control for within-nation contextual variables examined in prior research, including formal institutions, Hofstede's dimensions of cultural values, socioeconomic attributes, and between-nation economic grouping. Our empirical analysis of a specific disruptive innovation, agricultural biotechnology adoption, covers 47 nations over a 14-year period and provides broad support for the usefulness of cultural looseness and global connectedness for understanding innovation adoption. Cultural looseness is significantly related to adoption of agricultural biotech. Global connectedness dimensions of depth and breadth are not directly related to adoption, only interactively with cultural looseness. These findings highlight the role of informal institutions and global connectedness in shaping complex interactions between disruptive innovation and industrial evolution within and across nations. The findings also have implications for what public policy makers might do to influence the extent of adoption of such innovations.     

The Mirror Effect: Corporate Social Responsibility,Corporate Social Irresponsibility and Firm Performance in Coordinated Market Economies and Liberal Market Economies

We investigate the classic management debate of agency versus institutional pressures through the application of the varieties of capitalism literature. In particular, we examine corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR) and their relationships with firm performance in two types of capitalist systems: coordinated market economies (CMEs) and liberal market economies (LMEs). We note that while the CSR literature has tended to develop a balanced view on the influence of agency and institutional pressures, the CSiR literature has tended to emphasize the influence of agency. The latter appears to be a result of the fundamental attribution bias, where irresponsible corporate behaviours are attributed to individual managers or organizations, rather than the institutional environment. Our results, which include five years of data across 16 countries, show significantly greater CSR and significantly lower CSiR in CMEs compared with LMEs. Further, we find a positive relationship between CSR and firm performance in CMEs but not LMEs, and a negative relationship between CSiR and firm performance in LMEs but not CMEs. Overall, our results demonstrate the influence of the institutional environment, suggesting that corporate behaviours mirror the external environment.     

Gender Unemployment Dynamics: Evidence from Ten Advanced Economies

The paper investigates gender unemployment dynamics in 10 advances economies applying a recent methodology on widely available Labour Force Surveys data. We calculate the job finding and separation rates for each gender and use them to construct the steady‐state unemployment gap as well as two counterfactual gender unemployment gaps: one generated by differences only in job finding rates and the other by differences only in separation rates. We find that in all countries the gender unemployment gap attributed to differences in the job finding rate is lower than the gap attributed to differences in the separation rate, suggesting that gender differences in the separation rate are the major factor behind the gender unemployment gap.     

Institutional Change and Debt-based Corporate Governance: A Comparative Analysis of Four Transition Economies

Countries in transition now represent a significant sector of the international political economy. One of the challenges that they face in moving towards market-based systems and institutions is that of transforming the structure of business enterprises into forms more compatible with capitalist economies. Corporate governance is an important part of this. We argue that, certainly during an interim stage whilst equity markets are weak or non-existent, debt finance has a useful role to play. However for this to be possible there are some important institutional changes that are necessary in order to provide the infrastructure within which debt finance can operate effectively and efficiently. We then present an overview and evaluation of the progress of change in four selected transition countries. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Market Penetration and Acquisition Strategies for Emerging Economies

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are expanding their global reach, carrying their products and brands to new and diverse markets in emerging economies. As they tailor their strategies to the local context, they have to create product and brand portfolios that match their competences with local needs. A multi-tier strategy with local and/or global brands may provide MNEs with the widest reach into the market and the potential for market leadership. However, it has to be supported with an appropriate combination of global and local resources. Foreign entrants therefore have to develop operational capabilities for the specific context, which requires complementary resources that are typically controlled by local firms. As institutional obstacles and weaknesses of local firms often inhibit the direct acquisitions, foreign investors may pursue unconventional strategies to acquire local resources.We outline the strategies for penetrating local markets through multi-tier branding and the acquisition of local firms, and offer new typologies that describe staged, multiple, indirect, or brownfield acquisitions. We illustrate them by analysing the entry and growth of Carlsberg Breweries in four very different emerging economies: Poland, Lithuania, Vietnam and China.     

转型经济中的战略剥离分析:以中国上市企业为例

随着转型经济中企业并购与重组活动的日益增多,理论界和实业界都期望有适合转型经济的理论来指导企业的重组行为.为此,本文以战略反馈和代理理论为理论基础.探讨以中国为代表的转型经济中企业战略剥离的动因.通过对1999-2003年中国上市企业剥离行为的分析,本文发现中国上市企业的剥离行为主要出于战略考虑,包括并购后整合的需要、过度多元化调整的需要以及绩效改进的需要;传统的代理理论则缺乏解释力度.这一结果表明,中国企业已经能够根据战略需要来进行业务重组,同时也呼吁政府和业界加强公司治理,以充分发挥公司治理的作用.     

Existence of Equilibria in Economies with Bads

We consider an exchange economy in which there are infinitely many consumers and some commodities are bads, that is, cause disutility to consumers. We give an example of such an economy for which there is no competitive equilibrium or its variants (quasi‐ or pseudo‐equilibrium), and an example of the failure of the so‐called uniform integrability condition of equilibrium allocations of increasingly populous finite economies.     

Productivity Competitiveness among Non Cooperating Integrated Economies: A Negative-Sum Game

ABSTRACT: The strategies adopted by European countries during the 1970‘s and 1980‘s have been unsuccessful in their attempt to produce more employment. These strategies have been centred on attempts to improve the international position of a country at the expense of the others through increasing productivity and competitiveness. The negative effects on employment due to higher productivity should have been offset, in the longer run, by an increasing share of exports. But the eventual result has been that relative positions of countries have remained fundamentally unchanged. This is due to the fact that all countries adopted the same strategy. Aggressive strategies do not pay in terms of employment. More effective policies, in a situation characterized by accelerated technical progress, can be more easily implemented in a more co-operative international context. Even if there is no moral solidarity between the nearly related races of Europe, there is an economic solidarity which we cannot disregard. Even now the world markets are one. This is to put the issue on its lowest grounds. There are other arguments, which the most obtuse cannot ignore, against a policy of spreading and encouraging further the economic ruin of great countries (J.M. Keynes) ¹⁸     

Skill Acquisition in the Informal Economy and Schooling Decisions: Evidence from Emerging Economies

Informal jobs offer skill acquisition opportunities that may facilitate a future switch to formal employment for young workers. In this sense, informal training on the job may be a viable alternative to formal schooling in an economy with a large and diverse informal sector. In this paper, I investigate if these considerations are relevant for the schooling decisions of young individuals using panel data for 17 Latin American countries and micro‐level data for Turkey. Specifically, I ask if the prevalence of informal jobs distorts schooling attainment. I concentrate on three measures of schooling outcomes: (1) secondary education enrollment rate; (2) out‐of‐school rate for lower secondary school; and (3) tertiary education graduation rate. I find that the secondary education enrollment rate is negatively correlated with the size of the informal economy, whereas the out‐of‐school rate is positively correlated. Moreover, the tertiary education graduation rates tend to fall as the informal employment opportunities increase. This means that informal training on the job may be crowding out school education in developing countries. Policies that can potentially affect the size of the informal sector should take into consideration these second‐round effects on aggregate schooling outcomes.     

众包模式下基于参与者胜任度 和接受度的任务推送模型

资产价格泡沫是关系金融、经济能否稳定发展的重要经济现象.现有国内外文献鲜有对资产价格泡沫驱动因素的实证探讨.以理性资产泡沫理论为依据, 使用20个代表经济体2000年—2015年的经济金融数据, 采用面板Logit模型实证研究了股权资产泡沫的驱动因素, 弥补了该领域研究的不足.研究发现, 交易量和价格波动率是股权资产泡沫的显著正向驱动因素, 但对程度严重的股权泡沫而言, 交易量不再是显著的决定因素;货币政策是驱动股权资产泡沫产生的显著因素之一;银行对私人部门的信贷规模及其滞后项也是股权资产泡沫的稳健决定变量.除此之外, 还考察了制度变量对股权泡沫发生的作用, 基本结论可概括为普通法、小投资者保护度低、政府透明度高、套利自由的国家更易发生股权资产泡沫.最后, 还通过BMA-Logit模型和其他方法做了一系列的稳健性检验, 确保了研究结论的稳健性.     

Potential Negative Impacts of Nuclear Activities on Local Economies: Rethinking the Issue

Surveys of public opinion about perceptions of risk associated with the nuclear fuel cycle have shown that the public professes a widespread feeling of dread, a fear of associated stigmas, and a concern about possible catastrophic nuclear accidents. Various interest groups and state governments that oppose congressionally mandated siting of centralized high-level radioactive waste (HLW) storage and disposal facilities are using this negative imagery to create a powerful, emotional obstacle to the siting process. From statistical analyses of images and location preferences, researchers have claimed that possible significant economic losses could potentially accompany the siting of HLW facilities. However, several paradoxes, or self-contradictory statements, apparently exist between the responses expressed in surveys and the actual economic and demographic behavior evidenced in the marketplace. Federal policymakers need to evaluate whether the request for a change in siting policy is based on subjective fear of a potential negative economic effect or on proven negative effects. Empirically observed behavior does not support predicted negative economic effects based on survey responses.     

The Diffusion of Wal‐Mart and Economies of Density

The rollout of Wal‐Mart store openings followed a pattern that radiated from the center outward, with Wal‐Mart maintaining high store density and a contiguous store network all along the way. This paper estimates the benefits of such a strategy to Wal‐Mart, focusing on the savings in distribution costs afforded by a dense network of stores. The paper takes a revealed preference approach, inferring the magnitude of density economies from how much sales cannibalization of closely packed stores Wal‐Mart is willing to suffer to achieve density economies. The model is dynamic with rich geographic detail on the locations of stores and distribution centers. Given the enormous number of possible combinations of store‐opening sequences, it is difficult to directly solve Wal‐Mart's problem, making conventional approaches infeasible. The moment inequality approach is used instead and works well. The estimates show the benefits to Wal‐Mart of high store density are substantial and likely extend significantly beyond savings in trucking costs.     

Entrepreneurial openness: Concept development and measure validation

This study introduces entrepreneurial openness as a construct that helps understanding the impact of entrepreneur's personality on small firm's performance. We draw from the entrepreneurship and positive psychology literature to conceptualize entrepreneurial openness as an individual-level positive personal cognitive strength that has three subdimensions: engaging in learning, searching for novelty, and seeking feedback. We validated the construct's structure in three consecutive studies: Study 1 provided initial empirical evidence in support of the proposed scale with a pilot sample of Slovenian business owners; Study 2 assessed the reliability and validity of the scale with a cross-cultural study in Canada, Slovenia, and USA; and Study 3 tested the scale for its impact on business performance and job satisfaction. Findings from our empirical studies demonstrate the utility of entrepreneurial openness in explaining firm's performance by showing strong reliability, appropriate dimensionality, convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity.     

Weight of Evidence: A Review of Concept and Methods

"Weight of evidence" (WOE) is a common term in the published scientific and policy-making literature, most often seen in the context of risk assessment (RA). Its definition, however, is unclear. A systematic review of the scientific literature was undertaken to characterize the concept. For the years 1994 through 2004, PubMed was searched for publications in which "weight of evidence" appeared in the abstract and/or title. Of the 276 papers that met these criteria, 92 were selected for review: 71 papers published in 2003 and 2004 (WOE appeared in abstract/title) and 21 from 1994 through 2002 (WOE appeared in title). WOE has three characteristic uses in this literature: (1) metaphorical, where WOE refers to a collection of studies or to an unspecified methodological approach; (2) methodological, where WOE points to established interpretative methodologies (e.g., systematic narrative review, meta-analysis, causal criteria, and/or quality criteria for toxicological studies) or where WOE means that "all" rather than some subset of the evidence is examined, or rarely, where WOE points to methods using quantitative weights for evidence; and (3) theoretical, where WOE serves as a label for a conceptual framework. Several problems are identified: the frequent lack of definition of the term "weight of evidence," multiple uses of the term and a lack of consensus about its meaning, and the many different kinds of weights, both qualitative and quantitative, which can be used in RA. A practical recommendation emerges: the WOE concept and its associated methods should be fully described when used. A research agenda should examine the advantages of quantitative versus qualitative weighting schemes, how best to improve existing methods, and how best to combine those methods (e.g., epidemiology's causal criteria with toxicology's quality criteria).     

Conversations, coping, & connectedness: a qualitative study of women who have experienced involuntary pregnancy loss

The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe processes and strategies used by women to cope after pregnancy loss. Twenty women with a history of involuntary pregnancy loss were interviewed. All of the women were in the last month of a subsequent pregnancy, married or partnered, and most were EuroAmerican or Asian American and had completed college. Taped interviews, fieldnotes, and analytical notes were transcribed then subsequently coded and developed in individual or team sessions. Construction and confirmation of the categories and related themes derived from the data was a collaborative process. Three themes were revealed that described the coping behaviors used by the women: being myself, connecting with others, and avoiding and pretending. The core concept of connectedness and coping after involuntary pregnancy loss was further validated in this study. The purpose of this study was to describe processes and strategies that facilitate coping for 20 women, pregnant subsequent to an involuntary pregnancy loss (IPL). Involuntary pregnancy loss (IPL) refers to miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, fetal deaths, and stillbirths (Van & Meleis, 2003). This current study was designed to replicate two prior qualitative studies, with African-American women, by the author (Patterson, 2000; Van, 2001). Based on the author's previous work, a theoretical framework entitled "A Model of Living with Grief after Pregnancy Loss" was constructed (Patterson, 2000). For the current study, a more diverse sample was used to potentially expand the applicability of the Model of Living with Grief after Pregnancy Loss to women who are of races other than African American.