Trade Credit and the Propagation of Corporate Failure: An Empirical Analysis

Using an exhaustive data set on claims held by trade creditors (suppliers) on failed trade debtors (customers), we quantify the importance of trade credit chains for the propagation of corporate bankruptcy. We show that trade creditors experience significant trade credit losses due to trade debtor failures and that creditors' bankruptcy risks increase in the size of incurred losses. By exploring the roles of financial constraints and creditor‐debtor dependences, we infer that the trade credit failure propagation mechanism is driven by both credit losses and demand shrinkage. Finally, we show that the documented propagation mechanism constitutes a significant part of the overall bankruptcy frequency, suggesting that it has measurable implications for the aggregate level.     

Pediatric vaccine procurement policy: The monopsonist's problem

Vaccination against infectious disease is an extremely important public health endeavor. Yet, in the past 40 years, the manufacture of pediatric vaccines has become less profitable due to rising costs and limited demand, inducing many pharmaceutical companies to leave the market. To ensure the safe, secure, and reliable provision of vaccines, the economic interests of the vaccine industry must be considered by public health policy makers. The monopsonistic market power of the federal government uniquely positions it to significantly influence the pediatric vaccine market by negotiating contractual agreements that increase the vaccine manufacturers’ financial incentives to remain in the market. The Monopsonist Vaccine Formulary Pricing and Purchasing Problem (MVF3P) is introduced, which seeks pediatric vaccine prices and purchase quantities that ensure a birth cohort is fully immunized according to the recommended childhood immunization schedule at an overall minimum system cost while also ensuring that vaccine manufacturers each attain a reservation profit level. The practical value of MVF3P is demonstrated by analyzing and assessing pricing and purchasing policies that the Centers for Disease Control could adopt in attempting to actively manage the long-term provision of pediatric vaccines.     

Civil Society Opposition to Nonferrous Metals Mining in Guatemala

Drawing on a range of fieldwork interviews, this paper discusses the opposition of civil society to nonferrous metals mining in Guatemala. Guatemala’s mineral resources, and government efforts to encourage their extraction, are discussed, as is the emergent civil society of that nation. Guatemalan civil society has opposed mining due to the impacts of its environmental effects upon the poor engaged in subsistence agriculture. This opposition has involved protests, community consultations against mining, and networking with the forces of global civil society. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this opposition to mining is a manifestation of the opposition to neoliberalism currently underway in Latin America.

Family Trends and Transracial Adoption in the United States

Several demographic trends have changed family formation in the United States resulting in fewer babies being made available for adoption. At the same time the number of transracial adoptions appears to be increasing. We use the 5% Public Use Microdata Sample of the 2000 census and the National Survey of Adoptive Parents to examine the social and demographic characteristics of those who adopt transracially. Transracial adoption of Hispanic and Asian children, but not Black children, is associated with higher income and education levels. It is less likely in the South, but more likely among those who have had military experience.     

The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain

Alan Macfarlane et al. (ed.), Records of an English Village. Earls Colne 1400–1750 (1980), Computer Output Microfiche with printed guides (Chadwyck‐Healey, Cambridge, £125).

Felicity Heal, Of Prelates and Princes: A Study of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor Episcopate (1980), xvi+363 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, £17.50).

V. G. Kiernan, State and Society in Europe 1550–1650 (1980), x+309 (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, £12.00).

Martin Scharfe, Die Religion des Volkes. Kleine Kultur‐ und Sozialgeschichte des Pietismus [The Religion of the People. A Brief Cultural and Social History of Pietism.] (1980), 180 (Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mohn, Gütersloh, DM 24).

James C. McClelland, Autocrats and Academics: Education, Culture and Society in Tsarist Russia (1979), xiv+150 (Chicago University Press, Chicago &; London, £8.40).

A. E. Dingle, The Campaign for Prohibition in Victorian England: The United Kingdom Alliance, 1872–1895 (1980), 233 (Croom Helm, £12.50).

G. R. Hawke, Economics for Historians (1980), xii+237 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, £10.50, paperback £3.95).     

Problem solving: not good medicine for health care

Explore the challenging paradoxes that run throughout health care and consider ways to accept them into an organization.     

Applying statistical tests to empirically compare tabu search parameters for MAX 3-SATISFIABILITY: A case study

The application of stochastic heuristic, like tabu search or simulated annealing, to address hard discrete optimization problems has been an important advance for efficiently obtaining good solutions in a reasonable amount of computing time. A challenge when applying such heuristics is assessing when a particular set of parameter values yields better performance compared to other such sets of parameter values. For example, it can be difficult to determine the optimal mix of memory types to incorporate into tabu search. This in turn prompts users to undertake a trial and error phase to determine the best combination of parameter settings for the problem under study. Moreover, for a given problem instance, one set of heuristic parameter settings may yield a better solution than another set of parameters, for a given initial solution. However, the performance of this heuristic on this instance for a single heuristic execution is not sufficient to assert that the first set of parameter settings will always produce superior results than the second set of parameters, for all initial solutions.