Monopolistic competition,aggregation of competitive information,and the amount of product differentiation

Consider an industry with a large number of homogeneous firms. Each firm's profits are a function of its own strategy and the strategies the other firms select. Suppose other firms' strategies enter into each firm's profit function only through one or more statistics. For example, average price in the market may parameterize every firm's profit function. We prove that, as a general rule, the industry's firms will in equilibrium follow at most M + 1 distinct strategies, where M is the number of statistics by which competitors' strategies affect each firm's profits.     

Fifty Years of Regional Inequality in China: a Journey Through Central Planning, Reform, and Openness

The paper constructs and analyzes a long‐run time series for regional inequality in China from the Communist Revolution to the present. There have been three peaks of inequality in the last fifty years, coinciding with the Great Famine of the late 1950s, the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s, and finally the period of openness and global integration in the late 1990s. Econometric analysis establishes that regional inequality is explained in the different phases by three key policy variables—the ratio of heavy industry to gross output value, the degree of decentralization, and the degree of openness.     

Labor Supply and Targeting in Poverty Alleviation Programs

The introduction of variable labor supply raises some fundamentalissues in analyzing the targeting of poverty alleviation programsin developing countries. It forces a reconsideration of thestandard objective function, which is based on income or expenditureand so makes no allowance for the effort made in earning thatincome. We show that alternative views on the appropriate valuationof effort have very different implications for commodity-basedtargeting rules. We also establish a benchmark for marginaleffective tax rates (inclusive of benefit withdrawal) in income-testedschemes and show that indicator targeting rules may also haveto be modified significantly when labor supply responses arerecognized.     

The international marketing strategies of New England high-technology firms

This paper examines the relationship between international marketing strategy, foreign sales performance and overall corporate performance for a small sample of 39 New England high technology firms. The results show that existence of an international marketing commitment is beneficial to overall corporate performance; however, no incremental contribution to corporate performance is evident from the use of foreign manufacturing operations over foreign sales subsidiaries.     

Optimal taxation and public provision for poverty reduction

The existing literature on optimal taxation typically assumes there exists a capacity to implement complex tax schemes, which is not necessarily the case for many developing countries. We examine the determinants of optimal redistributive policies in the context of a developing country that can only implement linear tax policies due to administrative reasons. Further, the reduction of poverty is typically the expressed goal of such countries, and this feature is also taken into account in our model. We derive the optimality conditions for linear income taxation, commodity taxation, and public provision of private and public goods for the poverty minimization case and compare the results to those derived under a general welfarist objective function. We also study the implications of informality on optimal redistributive policies for such countries. The exercise reveals non-trivial differences in optimal tax rules under the different assumptions.     

Decomposing the contribution of migration to poverty reduction: methodology and application to Tanzania

In an economy with migration, poverty changes are composed of a number of forces, including the income gains and losses realized by the various migration streams. We present a simple but powerful decomposition methodology that uses panel data to measure the contributions of different migration streams to overall poverty change. An application to Tanzania shows the new insights that are provided – in particular on the role of migration to secondary towns in poverty reduction.     

Time is of the Essence!: Retired Independent Directors’ Contributions to Board Effectiveness

Journal of Business Ethics - Institutional investors, policy makers, and researchers have advocated for greater director independence in hopes of improving corporate governance and discouraging...     

Evaluation and Selection of Sustainable Strategy for Green Supply Chain Management Implementation

The aim of this study is to explore the implementation of green supply chain management (GSCM) strategies and to select the best GSCM strategy using fuzzy analytical network process (ANP) methodology. The ANP helps in analyzing the interdependence and interrelations among the various determinants and dimensions of GSCM strategy selection. Fuzzy set theory is applied to avoid the vagueness and uncertainty in human preference judgement. This study uses an empirical case study of an Indian automobile organization to validate the applicability of the proposed model. The results show that the resource based strategy is in first position, having the maximum impact on each determinant. The case organization should improve the green management system with the assistance of a suitable GSCM strategy, i.e. the resource based strategy. This study may help managers to make decisions, and to analyze and standardize their environmental advantages dynamically. The robustness of the projected model is checked by conducting a sensitivity analysis. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment