Towards Normative Theories of Social Entrepreneurship. A Review of the Top Publications of the Field

Journal of Business Ethics - In this article, we apply deductive content analysis to the 100 most influential publications in the field of social entrepreneurship (SE) to identify...     

A macro stress test model of credit risk for the Brazilian banking sector

This paper proposes a model to conduct macro stress test of credit risk for the banking sector based on scenario analysis. We employ an original bank-level data set that splits bank credit portfolios in 21 granular categories, covering household and corporate loans. The results corroborate the presence of a strong procyclical behavior of credit quality, and show a robust negative relationship between the logistic transformation of non-performing loans (NPLs) and GDP growth, with a lag response of up to three quarters. The results also indicate that the procyclical behavior of loan quality varies across credit types. This is novel in the literature and suggests that banks with larger exposures to highly procyclical credit types and economic sectors would tend to undergo sharper deterioration in the quality of their credit portfolios during an economic downturn. Lack of sufficient portfolio granularity in macro stress testing fails to capture these effects and thus introduces a source of bias that tends to underestimate the tail losses stemming from the riskier banks in a system.     

THE ESSENCE OF THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL

In a lecture in November 2008, Professor Huerta de Soto set out the key contributions of the Austrian School to economic thought.     

Exporting and Economic Performance: Firm‐level Evidence of Spanish Manufacturing

In a previous paper, Delgado, Fariñas and Ruano (2002) report TFP differences between exporters and non‐exporters on the basis of a sample of Spanish manufacturing firms. In this paper, we extend the previous analysis in three directions using a similar data set. First, we investigate additional economic performance differences between exporters and non‐exporters. Second, we measure TFP differences estimating production functions that control for unobserved heterogeneity and simultaneity bias. Third, we explore the self‐selection and learning‐by‐exporting hypothesis as explanations for the greater performance of exporters. With respect to the results, we confirm that many indicators of economic performance such as productivity, size, wages and innovation are greater in exporting firms. Furthermore, TFP differences between exporters and non‐exporters estimated with parametric methods are remarkably similar to those estimated using index numbers. Finally, performance differences and transition patterns between the export market and the domestic market indicate higher performance for entering exporters with respect to non‐exporters at the moment of entry. We find evidence of selection in the entry and the exit side of the export market. One of the basic results that we obtain indicates that after controlling for self‐selection, the productivity growth of entering exporters does not significantly change with respect to non‐exporters. As the evidence we find indicates no systematic changes in performance between non‐exporters and exporters after entry takes place, we do not confirm the learning‐by‐exporting hypothesis.     

Technology roadmapping (TRM) and strategic alignment for an applied research centre: a case study with methodological contributions

Technology roadmapping provides a strategic tool to help companies develop an outside‐in view and challenge their current competitive perspectives. In this paper, the authors describe the roadmapping process, which is aligned, with the research and development (R&D) strategy of an applied research centre. This process is based in an adapted combination of state‐of‐the‐art methodologies, and as a result, the case study shows interesting findings in terms of R&D strategy, technology strategy and roadmapping processes and methodology.     

Pulse Fishing and Stock Uncertainty

Large variation in stock dynamics affects the accuracy of stock estimates, which fisheries managers rely on when determining quotas and other regulations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the implications of uncertainty on pulse fishing. We show that as the variance of the random natural fluctuations increases, the optimal pulse length decreases and converge toward a constant-escapement policy. Hence, in fisheries with large natural variability, a constant-escapement policy is a good approximation of the optimal policy.     

Competency Training for Managing International Cooperation Engineering Projects

Organizations are becoming more and more aware of how important it is to strengthen the competences of their project managers. This fact acquires greater relevance in the development and international cooperation sector because of the need to have qualified professionals who can take up the challenges and address the specific demands of an ever more demanding and constantly evolving sector. This article provides the results of research that more than 100 experts in project management and administration participated in to detect which competences are the most relevant in this context.     

Using Genetic Algorithms to Estimate and Validate Bioeconomic Models: The Case of the Ibero-atlantic Sardine Fishery

Synopsis The Neo-classical approach to fisheries management is based on designing and applying bioeconomic models. Traditionally, the basic bioeconomic models have used pre-established non-linear functional forms (logistic, Cobb–Douglas) in order to try to reflect the dynamics of the renewable resources under study. This assumption might cause misspecification problems and, in consequence, a loss of predictive ability. In this work we intend to verify if there is a bias motivated by employing the said non-linear parametric perspective. For this purpose, we employ a novel non-linear and non-parametric prediction method, called Genetic Algorithms, and we compare its results with those obtained from the traditional methods.