Redistribution,trade and corruption: an empirical assessment

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of institutional quality in the trade and inequality nexus. Does corruption shape the relationship between trade and inequality through its impact on redistribution? Our answer to this question builds on the hypothesis that trade raises inequality and that governments may want to intervene through appropriate redistribution schemes that aim at taxing the gains from trade in a way that offsets the negative effects of trade on inequality. Moreover, we argue that this mechanism may be distorted by corruption and bad institutions in general. Quite to the contrary to common wisdom, we find that trade reduces inequality in countries with high institutional standards by means of a low level of corruption but increases inequality in countries with low levels of institutional quality.     

Entrepreneurs’ Resources,Technology Strategy,and New Technology‐Based Firms’ Performance

This study is based on the configuration approach and argues that the new technology‐based venture's performance depends on how well the entrepreneur's resources allow the chosen technology strategy to be executed, in other words, the fit between the resources and the strategy. The authors study this idea by using a sample of 175 Spanish new technology‐based ventures. The results indicate that the fit between the chosen technology strategy and the entrepreneur's resources explain the firm's performance, when this is measured through foreign market performance. That fit is also related to the technology‐based firm's financial results and generic and domestic performance.     

Instability of the Inflation–Output Trade‐Off and Time‐Varying Price Rigidity

This paper studies the time instability of the Phillips curve by paying particular attention to the inflation environment and price stickiness. We identify various inflation episodes and investigate the changing nature of the curve across these periods for five advanced countries over 1960–2013. We show that the mean inflation, the slope of the curve and the threshold mean inflation that erodes price rigidity are time varying. The inflation environment is a key determinant of the inflation–output relationship, rejecting the evidence of a flat curve and restoring the inflation–output trade‐off above certain inflation thresholds.     

Solidarity, Transfers, and Poverty

There is abundant evidence that inter-vivos transfers are more important in low-income countries than in industrialized countries. The authors use a new specification of altruism to explain this stylized fact. Under this specification, individuals feel altruistically towards other individuals genetically related to them. However, they worry about them only when their relatives' consumption falls below a certain level. Simulation results mimic the stylized facts concerning the relation between inter-vivos transfers and income.     

Export Credit Guarantees, Moral Hazard and Exports Quality

We analyse the role played by export credit guarantees (ECGs) in encouraging exports to developing countries. The existence of moral hazard on the side of the firm is introduced. We show that the inability of the exporter's government to verify the actual quality of the product will limit its ability to encourage trade through ECGs, once the coverage provided goes beyond a certain threshold. This result provides a rationale behind the limited coverage on ECGs.     

Beyond the audit expectations gap

In seeking to encourage a broader, European dimension to research on auditing and audit expectations, this paper examines the recent history of auditing and its regulation in Spain within the context of international developments in the accounting profession. The more expansive role being assigned to the audit function in Spain following the implementation of the Fourth and Eighth European Company Law Directives is generally viewed by Spanish writers as a progressive step, with largely positive effects. Such views stand in some contrast to the history of auditing in Britain, where the prevalence of an ‘audit expectations gap’ suggests a rather more problematic state of affairs. In exploring both the Spanish context and the nature of the audit expectations gap in Britain, however, the paper reveals a common underlying belief in the potential of auditing. Through this comparative analysis, and by drawing on recent audit research challenging certain long-held assumptions about auditing, a number of questions are asked of the current form and status of auditing and auditing expectations in Britain and Spain. In so doing, the paper raises issues that go beyond the current confines of the audit expectations gap debate, stressing, in particular, the need for greater consideration to be given, through less Anglo-centric analyses, to the varying nature and capabilities of European audit practice.     

Identifying Innovators in Consumer Service Markets

This article describes the use of a short, valid, reliable self-report scale to measure consumer innovativeness in a service industry context, thereby identifying the potential earliest buyers in a specific service-market category. Suitable for mail questionnaire or personal interview, this six-item, Likert-type scale enables marketers and researchers to identify these important consumers prior to introducing any specific service innovation. This study used a survey of 185 adult men and women to demonstrate how the scale performs by giving valuable insights into the travel services market     

Determinants of proactive innovative behaviour in new services: empirical investigation of service versus manufacturing firms

The research performs a complete analysis of the differences between services and products based on factors associated with the innovation process. The research analyses the factors/dimensions and their repercussions that determine firms' capacity to adapt to their environment and observes how the critical dimensions of the innovation process influence the gap generated by the difference in the firm's current level of innovation and the level developed by the competition. The results show that the client's participation in the process of innovation is greater in service firms that possess a larger innovation gap and are more proactive. The opposite is the case for formalization and decentralization, which occur in lower levels in this kind of firm. Further, decentralization and formalization are lower in service than in manufacturing firms.