Measurement of the efficiency of football teams in the Champions League

In the case of football it could be argued that the purpose of clubs is to win the competitions in which they participate. However, the assessment of football clubs from the efficiency would be relevant in judging whether the results have been obtained without waste. The chosen sample is football teams who played in the Champions League from 2003 to 2007 and the method of calculating the efficiency will be both the traditional version of the DEA as well as the version proposed by Andersen and Petersen (1993), which allows discrimination among efficient units. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessing financial reporting comparability across institutional settings: The case of pension accounting

The drive for comparability of financial information is to enable users to distinguish similarities and differences in economic activities for an entity over time and between entities so that their resource allocation decisions are facilitated. With the increased globalisation of economic activities, the enhanced international comparability of financial statements is often used as an argument to advance the convergence of local accounting standards to international financial reporting standards (IFRS). Differences in the underlying economic substance of transactions between jurisdictions plus accounting standards allowing alternative treatments may render this expectation of increased comparability unrealistic. Motivated by observations that, as a construct, comparability is under-researched and not well understood, we develop a comparability framework that distinguishes between four types of comparability. In applying this comparability framework to pension accounting in the Australian and USA contexts, we highlight a dilemma: while regulators seek to increase the likelihood that similar events are accounted for similarly, an unintended consequence may be that preparers are forced to apply similar accounting treatment to events that are, in substance, different.     

Mergers and acquisitions in the european union frame

In the first step, the research analyzes the different European waves of mergers and acquisitions and the restructuring market characteristics. It is followed by a study of such corporate restructuring methods as divestitures, spin-offs, split-ups, split-offs, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), and equity carveouts, paying special attention to corporate mergers and acquisitions, the different types and their diversity of targets. The European situation regarding mergers and acquisitions, their different characteristics, and the way to do them are studied in the tables.     

Wood and industrialization: Evidence and hypotheses from the case of Spain, 1860-1935

The aim of this paper is to study wood consumption during the industrial expansion which took place in the western world in the second half of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century, through the analysis of the case of Spain. For this purpose, we present the series of Spanish wood consumption both as a raw material (WRM) and as firewood (FW) between 1860 and 1935 and we carry out two exercises with these series. The first calculates the intensity of use (IOU), which relates wood consumption in physical terms with the evolution of the GDP. The second, more complex, exercise estimates a standard consumption function that allows us to know the elasticity of WRM with respect to the GDP, the Spanish price of wood and the Spanish price of a substitute material like iron. Based on our results, we discuss the lower dependence of the Spanish industrial economy on wood, the “liberation” of forest areas that may have occurred in Spain as a result of industrialization, and to what extent the trends observed for the Spanish case can be extrapolated internationally. The main conclusion is that industrialization transformed the uses of wood and, though the importance of this resource per unit of GDP decreased, its overall consumption increased, generating greater pressure on forests at an international level.     

LIFETIME AND VERTICAL INTERTEMPORAL INEQUALITY, INCOME SMOOTHING, AND REDISTRIBUTION: A SOCIAL WELFARE APPROACH

Between and within-households intertemporal inequality indices are proposed to highlight the vertical and lifetime (i.e. cyclical) components of overall intertemporal inequality. Comparison with the classical static inequality indices is made. Income redistribution and smoothing (i.e. stabilization) are conveniently defined as the public policy impact on welfare, by means of the relative increase in intertemporal vertical and cyclical equity, respectively. The issue is important as many public policies are aimed at both (vertical and cyclical equity) objectives. Our approach provides a more appropriate evaluation of the desirability of public reforms aimed at achieving a greater vertical and cyclical equity, within a social welfare framework.     

Manufacturing Skill‐biased Wage Inequality,Natural Resources and Institutions

We use an extensive dataset on occupational wages to measure the manufacturing skill premium and assess, for the first time, the influence of natural resources and institutional quality—in addition to traditional drivers—for advanced and less‐advanced countries and the full sample. The new findings, regarding 21 countries between 1988 and 2008 in the main panel estimations, suggest the premium of advanced countries rises with tertiary enrollment, net foreign direct investment (FDI) and institutional quality, and falls with centralized wage negotiations and geographically diffuse natural resource activities, mainly re‐exportation related. In less‐advanced countries, the premium rises with net FDI, scale effects, centralized wage negotiations and geographically concentrated natural resource activities (absorbing scarce skilled workers), and falls with trade, diffuse natural resource exploration (using mainly unskilled workers) and high‐technology exports, as emerging national low‐end technology industrial exporters may lower skill pay compared with foreign industrial exporters. In the full sample, the premium rises with scale effects, trade, institutional quality and concentrated natural resources, and falls with the relative skilled‐labor supply, centralized wage negotiations and diffuse natural resources. The results account for a wider diversity of situations compared with the previous studies.     

Fragmented networks and transnational entrepreneurship: Building strategies to prosper in challenging surroundings

Transnational entrepreneurship studies highlight the importance of personal profiles, institutions, and networks in creating and succeeding in this type of entrepreneurship. Even so, less is known about migrants whose networks are fragmented and closed, facing challenging environments at home and abroad. This paper aims to study the attributes of transnational entrepreneurs with small and fragmented networks, from post-conflict environments, who can perform an important role in the socioeconomic development and internationalization level of their countries of origin due to the cross border mobilization of resources they encourage. For that reason, the specific case of Colombian transnational entrepreneurs who have been able to overcome those obstacles with their transnational business is analyzed with the intention of understanding how they manage those shortcomings when engaging in transnational entrepreneurship. In aiming to obtain a deeper understanding of their characteristics, similitudes, differences, and motivations, the research uses multiple case studies. The main findings suggest that transnational entrepreneurs form purposeful–strategic networks to compensate their lack of amalgamated social systems, and that they have special qualities that distinguish them from other Colombian migrants and transnational entrepreneurs. Moreover, Colombian transnational entrepreneurs focus their business in the international market, using strategically their knowledge of both the local and foreign environment, while their main interest to do so is not altruistic but business oriented. Governments from post-conflict countries should promote transnational entrepreneurship while facilitating network formation and institutional trust through diverse strategies. Finally, implications for further research are drawn.