European industrial districts: Influence of geographic concentration on performance of the firm

This paper reviews ideas and insights from recent firm strategy literature. We argue that these perspectives can be usefully extended to explain the competitive advantage of the industrial district. Most of the empirical studies seeking evidence of the competitive advantage of the industrial district consisted of case studies. This paper attempts to offer a measurement of the performance of industrial district firms on a comparative basis by using the case of the Spanish ceramic tile industry.     

Efficient Estimation of Data Combination Models by the Method of Auxiliary-to-Study Tilting (AST)

We propose a locally efficient estimator for a class of semiparametric data combination problems. A leading estimand in this class is the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT). Data combination problems are related to, but distinct from, the class of missing data problems with data missing at random (of which the average treatment effect (ATE) estimand is a special case). Our estimator also possesses a double robustness property. Our procedure may be used to efficiently estimate, among other objects, the ATT, the two-sample instrumental variables model (TSIV), counterfactual distributions, poverty maps, and semiparametric difference-in-differences. In an empirical application, we use our procedure to characterize residual Black–White wage inequality after flexibly controlling for “premarket” differences in measured cognitive achievement. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Not in the eyes of the beholder: envy among Bolivian migrants in Spain

This article explores a culturally sensitive topic, envy, among Bolivian migrants in Spain. Following a constructivist approach to emotions, we examine discourses of envy, as they are shaped by the cultural contexts in which they emerge. Our study uses a sample of 30 transnational households and multi-sited ethnography to illustrate the ways emotions and their effects on sociality serve as a mechanism of social control, especially when the boundaries of such a community have been stretched transnationally. Envy is an important component of a belief system central to understanding the emergence, or lack thereof, of trust and solidarity among migrants and can shape the types of social relations and conflicts between migrants and non-migrant households back in Bolivia. These conflicts have been exacerbated by economic instability, high unemployment rates and precarious wages especially for the undocumented migrant community in Spain.     

ON THE POSSIBILITY OF INFORMATIONALLY EFFICIENT MARKETS

This paper presents conditions for a resolution of the Grossman–Stiglitz paradox of informationally efficient markets. We display a market with asymmetric information where a privately revealing equilibrium obtains in a competitive framework and where incentives to acquire information are preserved as long as the correlation in traders’ valuations is not too large. The equilibrium is efficient, and the problems associated with fully revealing rational expectations equilibria are precluded without resorting necessarily to noise traders. The robustness of the results to general information structures is established and the effect of market power is examined in a large market approximation to the competitive economy. The model is applied to explain changes in bidding behavior in central bank liquidity auctions in the crisis period. (JEL: D82, D84, G14, E59)     

重构现场:新闻报道的空间叙事策略

新闻报道的空间建构是新闻报道有效叙事之重点环节,聚焦于现场的报道,是一种立足于深刻认知新闻现场和现场新闻之内在关联的选择性重构,现场既代表新闻报道的语境与情境还原,同时也是实现传受双方互动理解的一种审美超越。现场的报道空间建构不仅体现出新闻报道的时效要求对叙事策略选择的必然,更通过叙事设计的结构化、进入化策略来实践传受双方知觉场的共建,尤其在当代新媒体环境下,新闻报道的空间叙事策略将伴随社会空间的心灵感知而不断创新发展。重视并有效发掘、应用那些能够激发受众感知的想象力的空间要素,才是新闻报道未来创新的方向,空间的重构也绝非是媒介技术提供的拟态逼真,而是构建合乎受众认知需求与审美体验的空间实践,是叙事的社会参与,也是其心灵对话空间的共建。     

Transformations of Old Colony Mennonites: the making of a trans‐statal community

Through an analysis that combines the historical development of the Old Colony Mennonites, which covers their migrations from sixteenth‐century Europe to late twentieth‐century Latin America, with ethnographic field work in Bolivia and Argentina, I examine the genesis and maintenance of a religiously based trans‐statal community. I argue for the conceptual maintenance of a clear distinction between transnational and trans‐statal processes in understanding the cross‐border practices of Old Colony Mennonites. Mennonites do not move in and out of nations but between the territories over which different states claim sovereignty. I further show that the trans‐statal practices of Old Colony Mennonites are a strategic means of outmanoeuvring states in their imposition of national identities within a context of nation‐states being the dominant political formation. The case contributes to the call for a shift in emphasis from nations to faith communities in transnational and trans‐statal studies.