Estimation of Some Nonlinear Panel Data Models With Both Time-Varying and Time-Invariant Explanatory Variables

The so-called “fixed effects” approach to the estimation of panel data models suffers from the limitation that it is not possible to estimate the coefficients on explanatory variables that are time-invariant. This is in contrast to a “random effects” approach, which achieves this by making much stronger assumptions on the relationship between the explanatory variables and the individual-specific effect. In a linear model, it is possible to obtain the best of both worlds by making random effects-type assumptions on the time-invariant explanatory variables while maintaining the flexibility of a fixed effects approach when it comes to the time-varying covariates. This article attempts to do the same for some popular nonlinear models.     

Geopolitics and religion – a mutual and conflictual relationship. Spatial regulation of creed in the Baltic Sea Region

The geopolitical history of religion in the Baltic Sea area shows a development from the time of the Lutheran Reformation of a mosaic of states with very different jurisdictions of creed, from the tolerance under local containment of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the strict Evangelical mono-religion of the Scandinavian countries. With seventeenth-century mercantilism, groups of skilled people of ‘foreign’ religion were invited to newly founded towns and ironworks in order to promote the economy. In the eighteenth-century enlightened absolute monarchs, defying both church and bourgeoisie, allowed groups of Catholics and Jews to Scandinavia under spatial restrictions on settlement. In Russia non-Russians of different religions were tolerated, while dissidents to the Orthodox Church were deported to peripheral places. With the Prussian territorial expansion in Germany, more groups were included into citizenship, including Jews. The last states to include groups of ‘foreign’ creed were the early nineteenth century semi-independent states of Norway and Finland.     

Lean practices and their effect on performance: a literature review

This paper introduces a literature review of 83 studies dealing with the degree of adoption of lean manufacturing practices around the world, and the links between those practices and organisation performance. The results of this study revealed that lean practices application still occurs in a fragmented way, disregarding the systemic linkage that is essential to lean manufacturing. Forty-one articles have suggested a positive effect of lean practices in at least one operational, financial and/or environmental performance metric. Nevertheless, five studies indicated that some lean practices had a negative effect on operational or financial performance. High demand variability, a perceived result of long-term lean manufacturing implementation, a country/company’s organisational culture and the difficulty of traditional costing production systems to measure and compare investments and economic gains from adopting lean manufacturing over time are some of the reasons to explain that negative effect of lean practice on performance.     

Family firms and high technology Mergers & Acquisitions

We examine whether family firms undertake value creating high technology M&A. We also examine whether level of ownership, diversification, agency issues and CEO type matter. Our sample consists of high-technology M&A undertaken by Canadian firms over the period 1997–2006. Canada offers a setting with many family firms and the use of control enhancing mechanisms such as dual class shares and pyramid structures. We find a positive relationship between family ownership and announcement period abnormal returns. This relationship, however, starts to decrease at higher levels of ownership but remains overall positive. We also show that the agency conflict between shareholders and professional managers has a detrimental impact on announcement period abnormal returns whereas the conflict between controlling and minority shareholders via control enhancing mechanisms does not. Finally, we document that founder CEO undertake better high tech M&A than descendant or hired CEO.     

A model-driven DSS architecture for delivery management in collaborative supply chains with lack of homogeneity in products

Uniform product deliveries are required in the ceramic, horticulture and leather sectors because customers require product homogeneity to use, present or consume them together. Some industries cannot prevent the lack of homogeneity in products in their manufacturing processes; hence, they cannot avoid non-uniform finished products arriving at their warehouses and, consequently, fragmentation of their stocks. Therefore, final uniform product amounts do not match planned production ones, which frequently makes serving previous committed orders with homogeneous quantities impossible. This paper proposes a model-driven decision support system (DSS) to help the person in charge of delivery management to reallocate the available real inventory to orders to satisfy homogenous customer requirements in a collaborative supply chain (SC). The DSS has been validated in a ceramic tile collaborative SC.     

Current Challenges of North/South Relations in Gay-Lesbian and Queer Studies

ABSTRACT

The article assesses and analyzes different dimensions of the current configuration of North/South dialogues within gay-lesbian and queer studies, with particular attention to the interrelations between the United States and South America. It looks into how gay-lesbian and queer studies relate to the global division and hierarchy of intellectual labor traditionally embedded in academic practices, and it asks whether the scope of its radical program includes a revision of unequal academic dynamics. Its concerns are both ethical and epistemological, as they speak not only to the moral and political dimensions of academic practice, but also to how these modes affect the knowledge produced in the United States and in South America today. By offering a view from the South conversant with South American as well as Northern production, we hope to contribute to both local and international debates regarding the present and future of the field.     

The Evolution of Well-Being in Spain (1980–2001): A Regional Analysis

Evaluations of regional welfare conventionally rely on Gross Value Added (GVA) per capita as an indicator of well-being. This paper attempts to re-address the regional welfare issue using alternative indicators to per capita income. With this aim, a database for the Spanish regions (NUTS II) has been constructed for the period 1980–2001 and an augmented version of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) has been estimated incorporating indicators of health, education and per capita income. The results show that, whereas regional income per capita disparities have remained constant, regional convergence in the Augmented Human Development Index (AHDI) was achieved between 1980 and 2001. None the less, there is no evidence of intra-distributional mobility (leap-frogging) across regions in the AHDI