Firm Ownership and Rent Sharing

In this paper we analyse—theoretically and empirically—how the degree of private versus public ownership of firms affects the degree of rent sharing between firms and their workers. Using a particularly rich linked employer-employee dataset from Portugal, covering a large number of corporate ownership changes across a wide spectrum of economic sectors over more than 20 years, we find that rent sharing is significantly higher in firms with a larger share of private ownership. Estimates from our most preferred empirical specification suggest that an increase in the private ownership share of 10 percentage points increases (on average) the rent-sharing elasticity by 0.0002. Based on a theoretical analysis that incorporates union-firm wage bargaining and efficiency wage effects within the same modelling framework, this result cannot be explained by private firms being more profit oriented than public ones. However, the result is consistent with a scenario whereby privatisation leads to less job security for workers, implying stronger efficiency wage effects.     

Heterogeneous firm response to organized crime: Evidence from FDI in Mexico

We thank Editor Massaki Kotabe and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. In addition, we appreciate helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper from Myles Shaver, Jennifer Oetzel, Adam Fremeth, anonymous reviewers for the 2011 31st Strategic Management Society Annual International Conference and conference participants. Jorge Delgado and Avilia Bueno provided valuable assistance with data collection.This paper examines the impact of organized crime on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) considering the role of foreign investor home-country experience. Extant research shows a negative impact of organized crime on FDI. We expect investor home-country experience with organized crime to ameliorate this deterrent effect. We do not find support for this prediction analyzing FDI net flows into Mexican states from 2001 to 2010. Our analysis does, however, reveal a heterogeneous investor response to organized crime. Our results suggest, surprisingly, that crime in host locations is actually positively associated with investment from high-crime countries. This research makes several contributions. Our evidence suggests that firms seek to leverage home experience with high levels of local organized crime, involving seemingly localized routines and practices, as they expand abroad. In addition, our work draws attention to the effect of institutional variation within host countries in foreign entry. It also expands the literature by focusing on organized crime, a largely unexplored source of country risk in international management research. Finally, it brings attention to the role of powerful international criminal organizations, drug cartels, in shaping cross-border business activity.     

Nativity and Self‐Assessed Health among Pre‐Retirement Age Hispanics and Non‐Hispanic Whites1

Economic, social and familial resources are known to influence subjective health assessments. We examine the salience of nativity in determining how these resources influence self‐assessed health using a large, nationwide sample of Hispanic and non‐Hispanic white adults. The results indicate that while education, accumulated assets and marital status benefit the physical and emotional health of the native and foreign‐born, family resources and income are significant only for the native‐born. English language proficiency is a significant protective factor for both groups and is especially protective for immigrants. These surprising findings call into question previous studies stressing the positive role of the family in maintaining immigrant health.     

On influence diagnostic in univariate elliptical linear regression models

We discuss in this paper the assessment of local influence in univariate elliptical linear regression models. This class includes all symmetric continuous distributions, such as normal, Student-t, Pearson VII, exponential power and logistic, among others. We derive the appropriate matrices for assessing the local influence on the parameter estimates and on predictions by considering as influence measures the likelihood displacement and a distance based on the Pearson residual. Two examples with real data are given for illustration.     

L p –Estimators as Estimates of a Parameter of Location for a Sharp–pointed Symmetric Density

We study the asymptotics of L _p estimators, p > 0, over a sample having a symmetric density with a sharp–point at the centre of symmetry of the distribution. The rates of convergence of the L _p estimators in this situation depend on p and on the shape of the density. To obtain some of the limit distributions, we present new results in the asymptotics of M–estimators. We extend the delta method to the case when the Euclidean norm of the conveniently normalized M–estimators converge to a power of the Euclidean norm of a (possibly Gaussian) stable distribution.     

The Effects of Praising Qualifying Autoclitics on the Frequency of Reading

In the current study, tacts with positive qualifying autoclitics for reading were reinforced in order to determine if this procedure would increase the time spent reading by participants. Participants included 5 children, between 9–10 years old. Participants were individually exposed to 4 free operant sessions during which they were instructed to independently choose play activities. During pre- and post-treatment conditions, no consequences were provided for choosing reading. In addition, 4 treatment sessions were conducted on days separate from the free operant session days, during which the experimenter praised each positive reading-related statement emitted by the participant. Following treatment sessions, 4 out of 5 participants increased the time allocated to reading, suggesting that reading could be increased when praise is delivered contingent upon positive reading-related verbalizations.     

Mexican American Challenge to a Sacred Cow,by Deluvina Hernandez. Aztlan Publications,Chicano Studies Center,University of California,Los Angeles, 1970. 60 Pages

This study explored the attitudes of MSW students (N?=?147) toward transracial adoption and included an investigation of the students' personal experiences that may affect their attitudes. Statistical analyses revealed that although the majority of students supported the practice of transracial adoption, a number of students gave neutral responses to several items related to transracially adopted children's ethnic identity, likely indicating a lack of awareness of the consequences of transracial adoption. White students were more likely than students of other racial groups to support the practice of transracial adoption. Personal experiences, such as dating interracially and supporting interracial dating, appeared to affect students' attitudes toward transracial adoption. Limitations and implications for social work education and research are discussed.     

Out-of-sample forecast errors in misspecific perturbed long memory processes

In this paper we examine the relative increase in mean square forecast error fro fitting a weakly stationary process to the series of interest when in fact the true model is a so-called perturbed long-memory process recently introduced by Granger and Marmol (1997). This model has the property of being unidentifiable from a white noise process on the basis of the correlogram and the usual rule-of-thumbs in the Box-Jenkins methodology. We prove that this kind of missspecification can lead to serious errors in terms of forecasting. We also show that corrections based on the AR(1) model can in some cases partially solve the problem. Received: March 15, 1999; revised version: February 14, 2000     

Strong formulation for the spot 5 daily photograph scheduling problem

Earth observation satellites, such as the SPOT 5, take photographs of the earth according to consumers’ demands. Obtaining a good schedule for the photographs is a combinatorial optimization problem known in the literature as the daily photograph scheduling problem (DPSP). The DPSP consists of selecting a subset of photographs, from a set of candidates, to different cameras, maximizing a profit function and satisfying a large number of constraints. Commercial solvers, with standard integer programming formulations, are not able to solve some DPSP real instances available in the literature. In this paper we present a strengthened formulation for the DPSP, based on valid inequalities arising in node packing and 3-regular independence system polyhedra. This formulation was able, with a commercial solver, to solve to optimality all those instances in a short computation time.     

Delta Method,Moment Convergence,and Inference

Statistics, as functions of the observations, are usually given by well-behaved functions. This fact is used to obtain limit distributions for statistics whose components are given by asymptotically linear functions. These results are then extended to the moments of distributions, covariance matrices and confidence regions for parameters of interest. These regions may be used to test, through duality, hypothesis on these parameters. A theoretical application is presented.