Finance and innovation in British small independent firms

This paper is concerned with the effects of internal and external capital investment funding patterns on the innovativeness of British small independent firms. By using a combined sample of firms from the relatively prosperous South East and the more problematic Scottish development region, an additional diverse regional economic perspective is given to data initially presented in a national context. Beyond a presentation of the extent of external borrowing, the paper seeks to establish the characteristics of firms obtaining external funds and to assess whether this external capital borrowing sub-sample is mainly comprised of low technology firms in decline, or of high technology firms fueling innovation-led expansion. Data is included on the role of both public and private loan agencies in the external funding process. Conclusions are based on the pattern of results and focus on ways in which the delivery of financial aid might be improved to assist expansion, particularly in fast growing high technology small firms.     

Rebates, inventories, and intertemporal price discrimination

We demonstrate that universally redeemed rebates can increase manufacturer profits by reducing the incentives of downstream retailers to hoard inventories when optimal wholesale prices vary predictably over time. By bypassing retailers and making direct contracts with buyers, the manufacturer can increase the variations in effective prices paid by consumers without concomitantly creating larger incentives for retailers to hold inventories. During profitable, high-demand periods, manufacturer revenues are ordinarily constrained by'competition'from retailer inventories, thus limiting profits. However, by selectively offering rebates to consumers while maintaining high wholesale prices, low-demand periods can be accommodated without inducing retailer hoarding.     

UNMARRIED PARENTHOOD AND REDISTRIBUTIVE POLITICS

Political survey data for nine West European countries show that women have become increasingly left‐wing compared to men, and that this trend is positively correlated with the rise of nonmarriage in these countries. This pattern is mirrored in German longitudinal data (GSOEP), where transitions out of marriage make women, but not men, significantly more left‐leaning. Analysis of public spending data for high‐income OECD countries (1980–1998) suggests that the political impact of nonmarriage extends to the allocation of State resources with increases in nonmarriage first reducing, and then increasing, State redistribution towards children. (JEL: H31, H42, J12, J13)     

“The Paper that You Have in Your Hand is My Freedom”: Migrant Domestic Work and the Sponsorship (Kafala) System in Lebanon

A recent report on migrant domestic work in Lebanon has cited psychological disorder among Lebanese “Madams” as the leading cause of violence against their migrant maids (Jureidini, 2011, www.kafa.org.lb/StudiesPublicationPDF/PRpdf38.pdf ). This report typifies much of the existing scholarship on the experiences of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in the Middle East, where the focus is on employer–employee relationships, especially the abusive Arab “Madam.” In this paper, I argue that the portrayal of violations of MDW rights as abuse of one set of women by another is inherently problematic on several fronts. It privatizes the structural problem of workers’ and immigrant rights violations, delegates it to the household, and absolves the state of its responsibility. Moreover, the focus on abusive employers takes attention away from the root of the problem – the inherently exploitative system of migration and recruitment in the region, the sponsorship system. The sponsorship system not only creates conditions for much of these violations, but also systematically produces a new population of readily exploitable worker – the category of “illegal workers.” Oral histories and interviews with individual workers are employed to analyze the process by which illegal workers are “produced” in Lebanon. Finally, focus group discussions highlight critical policy recommendations made by the workers themselves, which address the systemic bases of their exploitation in Lebanon.     

The Public Face of a Private Domestic Violence

This article looks at violence against women in Indian society and gives an example of a best-practice response to domestic violence. It is divided into two parts. The first part of the paper examines the general characteristics of violence against women within India as a whole and the state of Andhra Pradesh in particular. The second part gives an example of the anti-arrack movement in Andhra Pradesh, a state in India, as an example of women's mobilization against government policy on liquor as a response to domestic violence. The paper aims to reconstruct this movement at the micro level using the experiences of women who were its chief participants.     

Pretrial negotiation, litigation, and procedural rules

We model the civil dispute resolution process as a two-stage game with the parties bargaining to reach a settlement in the first stage and then playing a litigation expenditure game at trial in the second stage. We find that the English rule shifts the settlement away from the interim fair and unbiased settlement in most circumstances. Overall welfare changes are in favor of the party who makes the offer in the pretrial negotiation stage. Lawyers however, always benefit from the English rule, because fee shifting increases the stake of the trial and thus intensifies the use of the legal service.     

“It May Be Her Eggs But It’s My Blood”: Surrogates and Everyday Forms of Kinship in India

This ethnographic study of commercial gestational surrogacy in a small clinic in western India introduces the concept of “everyday forms of kinship”—kinship ties as the product of conscious everyday strategy, and, at times, as a vehicle for survival and/or resistance. The surrogates’ constructions of kinship as a daily process disrupt kinship theories that are based solely on biology. So, too, do they disrupt the patrilineal assumptions made in studies of Indian kinship. Kinship ties instead find their basis in shared bodily substances (blood and breast milk) and shared company, as well as in the labor of gestation and of giving birth. By emphasizing connections based on shared bodily substance and by de-emphasizing the ties the baby has with its genetic mother and the men involved in surrogacy (the genetic fathers and the surrogates’ husbands), the surrogates challenge established hierarchies in kin relationships—where genes and the male seed triumph above all. Simultaneously, by forming kinship ties with the baby, the intended mother, and other surrogates residing with them, surrogates in India form ties that cross boundaries based on class, caste and religion and sometimes even race and nation. By focusing on the notions of blood (shared substance) and sweat (labor) as basis for making kinship claims, this study both extends anthropological literature that emphasizes the non-procreative basis of kinship and feminist works that denaturalize kinship ties and make visible the labor involved in forming kinship ties and maintaining a family.