Collateral constraints and rental markets

We study a benchmark model with collateral constraints and heterogeneous discounting. Contrarily to a rich literature on borrowing limits, we allow for rental markets. By incorporating this missing market, we show that impatient agents choose to rent rather than to own the collateral in the neighborhood of the deterministic steady state. Consequently, impatient agents are not indebted and borrowing constraints play no role in local dynamics.     

CSD water partnerships: Privatization, participation and legitimacy

Public-private partnerships have been presented as an opportunity to improve the input and output legitimacy of global environmental governance, and they were endorsed by intergovernmental agreement at the Johannesburg Summit in 2002. However, their potential to contribute substantially to these aims has also been questioned. For partnerships working in the water sector, the implications of private sector participation for legitimate water governance have been disputed, for example regarding whether public-private partnerships can provide water that is affordable and accessible to all, and whether they provide opportunities for local stakeholder participation. In this article, these discussions are examined with respect to several examples of public-private partnerships registered with the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. The analysis indicates that these partnerships partially address these criticisms, but also have their own shortcomings.     

Implementing circular economy in the textile and clothing industry

This research reveals the current state of the circular economy (CE), challenges and opportunities of implementing CE and interventions that could facilitate effective implementation of CE in the textile and clothing (TC) industry. The study uses a survey method within 114 TC companies based in Bangladesh, Vietnam and India revealing the correlation of CE fields of action (take, make, distribute, use and recover) with sustainability (economic, environmental and social) performance. The lack of financial, technological and human resources along with management's reluctance and end-user's indifference to sustainability is the biggest challenge for CE implementation. The research further derives that the TC firms are unable to eradicate the challenges to CE implementation without a holistic approach that involves the collective effort from the industry, host government's incentives, their buyers and above all the conscience of the end-users. Finally, the study reveals that the collaborative efforts, knowledge sharing in sustainability management across the value chain and marketisation of the waste recycling, among others, are a few actions the stakeholders of the TC industry must adopt for implementing CE successfully.     

How ICT affects economic growth in the Euro area during the economic crisis

NETNOMICS: Economic Research and Electronic Networking - The financial and economic crisis in Europe highlighted issues related to the competitiveness of member states, as well as the importance of...     

Entrepreneurship in the Context of Crisis: Identifying Barriers and Proposing Strategies

The current crisis is considered by many economists to be the severest recession in post-war economic history and it has had great impact on the Spanish economy. Within this context, the entrepreneurs’ role is crucial, given that entrepreneurial activity is a main driver of economic recovery and growth. This study intends to explore entrepreneurs’ perceptions and experiences with regards to the barriers for recovery and identify possible strategies to respond to the crisis. In total, eight focus groups were conducted and a representative sample of 301 entrepreneurs was selected.     

Optimal Substantive Standards for Competition Authorities

Recent years have witnessed a significant resurgence in the debate concerning the optimal substantive standard to be used in the enforcement of competition law. One of the arguments proposed for using a Consumer Surplus standard, is that, when firms can choose from a number of mutually exclusive actions, it may induce firms to adopt actions that lead to a higher level of total welfare than would a Total Welfare standard. This important basic insight, initially due to Lyons (2002), has been discussed and extended in the recent literature always in the context of mergers. In this paper we generalise and re-examine this argument for any potentially anti-competitive action – we have in particular in mind actions often challenged as attempted monopolisation (abuse of dominance) or vertical restraints, taken by firms in different environments. We show that in the absence of any efficiencies the two standards lead to exactly the same outcomes but a choice between them becomes important in the presence of efficiencies. With positive marginal-cost reducing efficiencies we confirm the presence of what we term a Lyons effect in our more general setting. We then examine how the choice of standard depends on a number of relevant parameters. Most important in terms of their policy implications are the results that the Consumer Surplus standard will be the optimal choice, when the extant market power is significant, when the size of marginal cost-reducing efficiency effects is large and when the difference in the market power raising effects of mutually exclusive actions is large. These results are important since they suggest that in all cases where significant extant market power is a prerequisite for the enforcement of Competition Law it is best to use a Consumer Surplus standard.     

Support for part-time work as a channel to female employment: the moderating effects of national gender empowerment and labour market conditions

Using a multi-source data set collected across eight European countries, this article examines how characteristics of both the organizational environment and the larger national context relate to the organizational-level variable of women's employment. Our study revealed that, in countries that were high in gender empowerment measure (GEM), establishments that were more supportive of part-time work options also employed a higher proportion of women. One reason for this relationship may be that in high-GEM countries offering part-time employment is a way for an organization to signal its support for work–life balance, something that makes it more attractive to women. In countries with low GEM, an establishment's greater support for part-time work was associated with employing a greater proportion of women only when establishments experienced recruitment difficulties. Key differences in gender empowerment between countries are discussed.     

Factors Affecting Cigarette Demand

This paper addresses the impact of smoking restrictions in workplaces and educational establishments, cigarette price measures and various psychosocial indicators on cigarette demand, controlling for demographic and socio-economic factors. The data used for the analysis are collected via questionnaire that was administered in personal-in home interviews. A two-part model of cigarette demand [Cragg, J. G. “Some Statistical Models for Limited Dependent Variables with Application to the Demand for Durable Goods,” Econometrica, 39, 5, 1971, pp. 829–44.] is estimated. According to the estimations, cigarette price measures do not influence cigarette demand. On the contrary, smoking restrictions in workplaces and educational establishments and most of the psychosocial variables are found to affect cigarette demand considerably.