The selection bias in court records: settlement and trial in eighteenth‐century Ottoman Kastamonu

Court records are used extensively in historical research. Preserved as summaries of daily legal proceedings, they give historians a unique opportunity to access information about the names, characteristics, and socio‐economic status of individuals and the laws, local customs, and legal institutions of societies. Although researchers have noted various limitations of these records, the problem of selection bias has not been systematically studied. Since litigants would probably settle disputes in which one side is likely to be a clear winner, the cases that go to trial are more likely to be the difficult and uncertain ones that comprise a non‐random subset of all disputes. This article presents a study of selection bias in Ottoman courts in the town of Kastamonu in northern Anatolia, from the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Disputes are categorized by type and the distribution of court participants is studied according to composition, gender, and socio‐religious status. A regression analysis is run to determine the factors affecting the likelihood of cases being tried in court. The results indicate that the cases that ended up in court were selected systematically. If the selection bias is ignored, research based on Ottoman court records may be seriously flawed in its ability to yield general conclusions.     

Direct and Indirect Exporting and Productivity: Evidence from Firm‐Level Data

This paper examines the separate productive impacts of direct and indirect exporting to further our understanding of the mechanisms underlying learning‐by‐exporting effects by utilizing a method that allows us to check the robustness of the results to the selection on unobservables. We found that the productivity effects of exporting are mainly associated with direct exporting, indicating that knowledge spillover, and thus, productive impact of exporting grows with increased interaction with international firms and consumers. Indirect exporters are unlikely to be able to efficiently exploit the productive capacity of foreign technology and knowledge. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

电镀废水处理研究进展

介绍了电镀废水的产生及危害,对国内外电镀废水处理研究进展进行了综述,分析了包括化学法、物化法、生物法处理电镀废水的方法及其优缺点,最后对电镀废水处理技术的发展前景做了展望。     

赤峰市沙化土地监测与评价

对赤峰市沙化土地1994年和2004年的情况进行了综合分析,结果表明:沙化土地总面积为1914983hm2,占全市总面积的22.2%;有明显沙化趋势的土地1029690hm2,占全市总面积的119%;流动沙地占7.8%,半固定沙地占10.1%,固定沙地占80.5%,露沙地占0.5%,沙化耕地占1.1%;沙化耕地占1.1%,沙化林地占24.8%,沙化草地占65.8%,未利用沙化土地占8.3%;轻度沙化土地占46.4%,中度沙化土地占35.2%,重度沙化土地占10.1%,极重度沙化土地占8.3%;10年间,沙化土地面积减少748797hm2,其中固定沙地增加81089hm2,半固定沙地减少174588hm2,流动沙地减少49066hm2,露沙地增加7457hm2,沙化耕地减少613690hm2。     

中国金融市场信用风险模型研究与应用

文章运用中国金融市场和原银行信贷登记系统数据及人民银行组织的信用评级等数据资源,在金融工程理论和技术方法创新的基础上,借鉴国际信用风险模型中违约模式代表——KMV模型原理,实证建立由判别函数和违约强度共同构成的中国金融市场违约预警模型;借鉴国际信用风险模型中盯市模式代表——CreditMetrics模型原理,使用蒙特卡罗模拟方法实证建立中国金融市场信用组合计量模型;探索这两类模型在中国信贷市场、外汇市场、货币市场和债券市场风险管理实务中的应用;并在此基础上提出了政策性建议。     

论实质公平理念下TWO农产品保障措施的变革

实质公平是农产品贸易的最终价值追求。由于发达国家与发展中国家农业发展阶段的不同,以及发达国家高额的国内支持和保护,当前的WTO农产品贸易规则对发展中国家来说实质上是不公平的。WTO一般保障措施(SG)由于难以照顾到农业的特殊性以及其高额的实施成本,难以保障当前农产品贸易的实质公平。WTO农产品特殊保障措施(SSG)是为应对乌拉圭回合谈判中各成员关税化改革的不同进度而设计的过渡性措施,实际上它主要保护发达国家的利益,亦不能保障当前农产品贸易的实质公平。为保障农产品贸易的实质公平,必须专为发展中国家创设新的机制,即WTO农产品特殊保障机制(SSM)。     

Trust types,distrust, and performance outcomes in small business relationships: the pharmacy–drug warehouse case

This study attempts to investigate the linkage among trust types, distrust, and relationship performance outcomes in the context of long-term supply agreement-type alliances between small business dyads. The results suggest a significant positive relationship among goodwill trust and risk-taking tendency, cooperation, satisfaction, and conflict resolution and a negative relationship between goodwill trust and transaction costs. Competence trust is found to have a positive relationship with cooperation, conflict resolution, and satisfaction and a negative relationship with transaction costs. However, no significant relationship is found between competence trust and risk-taking tendency. Distrust, on the other hand, is found to have a negative relationship with cooperation, satisfaction, and conflict resolution and a significant positive relationship with transaction costs with no effect on risk-taking tendency.     

The prioritisation of service dimensions in logistics centres: a fuzzy quality function deployment methodology

This study takes a customer focus that prioritises the service-offering dimensions of logistics centres (LCs) by considering potential LC customer expectations. Applying a survey and a quality function deployment methodology to logistics service providers, the study explores, categorises and prioritises LC customer expectations and LC service characteristics. The results indicate that customer preferences mainly prioritise infrastructure, and warehouse and intermodal dimensions. However, when the cost dimension is included, higher utility values are delivered through soft service dimensions like value-added or standard services. LC investors or undertakers can use these results to guide their design of market offerings by using the same methodology to assess expectations in their target markets.     

Understanding relational qualities of entrepreneurial learning: Towards a multi-layered approach

The aim of this paper is to present a multi-layered relational framework of entrepreneurial learning by embedding the conceptual tools of a continental thinker, Pierre Bourdieu, in a social constructionist paradigmatic approach. Through a longitudinal study based on participant observation and in-depth qualitative interviews, entrepreneurial learning processes of five nascent entrepreneurs who have formed a venture team have been examined as a case study. Relational qualities of entrepreneurial learning can be illuminated by exploring dispositions and different forms of capital that nascent entrepreneurs hold at the micro-individual level, which are inextricably linked to the meso-relational level of developing an entrepreneurial habitus as they navigate through the process of business venturing. Such a multi-layered conceptualisation of entrepreneurial learning transcends individual-, team-, firm- and network-level analyses of the subject by generating insights from both micro- and meso-layers.