Organizational form and access to capital: The role of regulatory interventions

We examine how regulatory nudges mandating only disclosure of ownership information and no structural change impact a firm’s access to capital based on its organizational form. As a first of its kind, Clause 35 in India (characterized by weak enforcement and concentrated ownership) only required classifying shareholders into insiders and outsiders. Pre-regulation, group-affiliated firms exhibited lesser financial constraints than standalone firms. This reverses post-regulation, especially for group firms with higher insider ownership. More so for those with weaker compensating mechanisms or poorer future performance. In essence, regulation exclusively requiring information disclosure has been effective in reallocating capital more efficiently to firms with fewer agency problems.     

新形势下高职院校特殊学生群体思想政治教育工作路径选择

在高等教育普及化发展阶段,高职院校教育面临学生社会化意识日益强化、个性化特征日益明显及信息数据获取更加便捷等新形势。在此背景下,高职院校特殊学生群体主体范围扩大化、群体心理敏感化、发展诉求隐匿化、社会交往边缘化,这些特点的存在不仅加大了高职院校思政教育工作的难度,而且不利于高职院校完成育人目标,对高职院校学生日常管理、安全稳定、学风建设、学生资助、就业创业工作形成巨大压力。所以,高职院校应探究特殊学生群体的发展现状,有针对性地开展思想政治教育工作,不断提升思想政治育人实效。高职院校应从特殊学生群体的基本特征和行为特征入手,强化全面育人的思想政治教育工作理念,健全特殊学生群体的信息数据;完善全员育人的思想政治教育工作机制,形成特殊学生群体服务合力;落实全程育人的思想政治教育工作模式,解决特殊学生群体发展问题;运用全方位育人思想政治教育工作方法,提升特殊学生群体工作实效。     

基于K-means聚类方法的炼油企业战略群组划分

通过总结我国炼油企业的发展现状及存在的问题，依据炼油行业特点选择市场、生产、资本、绩效4个战略变量，应用Clementine软件进行K-means聚类分析，据此将我国国有炼油企业划分为骨干型、潜质型和待优化型3个不同战略群组，针对各战略群组中炼油企业的特征及存在的问题，从国家层面和企业层面提出相应的发展战略。     

Assessment of the effects of targeted poverty alleviation policy on differently poverty-stricken households: A multi-propensity score weighting model

Eliminating poverty is a multifaceted global challenge and a focal point of global development governance. With the implementation of targeted poverty alleviation (TPA), China's poverty alleviation efforts have had significant achievements. This study provides a new perspective by classifying poverty-stricken households based on poverty root causes at the household level, a multi-propensity score weighting model based on counterfactual inference is employed to examine the poverty reduction effect and policy precision on six non-equivalent poverty-stricken household groups in a Chinese county. The results reveal that the poverty reduction effects differed among poverty-stricken households with different root causes of poverty. Specifically, households impoverished due to disability have the lowest income of the six groups. The assistance policy effects also vary significantly and are found to be poorly suited to poverty-stricken households a lack of labor force and funds. A robustness test confirms this conclusion and a more nuanced analysis reveals that these differences are reflected in the wage and transfer incomes. Therefore, to ensure the stability of poverty reduction and the sustainability of income for poverty-stricken households, relevant associated aid policies need to place different emphases based on their household characteristics.     

Women self-help groups and intra-household decision-making in agriculture

This study examines the effect of women-centric agricultural self-help groups (SHGs) on intra-household decision-making in agriculture. Using data collected from an intra-household survey of 815 households, we analyze the effect of women's membership in different types of SHGs on 14 decisions related to farms and households. Specifically, we investigate the discord in decision-making, which is the difference in the perceived decision-making roles of spouses within a household. Our results show that women's participation in SHGs has increased their role in decision-making by 8–13%. However, the effects vary according to the type of intervention and the decision. We found fewer discords in intra-household decision-making in seed SHGs than in micro-finance SHGs. In conclusion, our study suggests that women's engagement in agriculture-based SHG interventions can encourage joint decision-making, but the magnitude of this effect depends on the type of SHG. Development agencies can use this information to design interventions targeted at empowering women through the improvement of the agricultural value chain.     

The employment effects of the minimum wage: A selection ratio approach to measuring treatment effects

I develop a method for measuring a binary treatment's effects when more than one control group is available but each control group is imperfect. To study effects of the minimum wage, for example, I compare border counties where the minimum wage increases to the set of neighboring counties, the set of neighbor-of-neighboring counties, and so forth. The key innovation is to model the ratio of the biases present in these comparisons. Crucially, the model contains a testable implication. The method can address spillovers and, in another application, is used to measure treatment effects away from the discontinuity in a regression discontinuity design.     

Risk preference interactions between individual farmers and small farmer groups: Experimental evidence from rural Ethiopia

The understanding of risk preference interactions among poor farmers in developing countries has important policy implications, as many programs that aim to alleviate poverty and address risk constraints are provided on a collective basis. We conduct a randomized field experiment in the drought-prone parts of Northern Ethiopia and elicit from poor, vulnerable farmers their hypothetical willingness to pay using individual and group lottery games. Analyzing the certainty equivalent ratios (CERs), we find that farmer groups are more risk averse than individual farmers. When the risk of the lottery is high, the group CER is primarily determined by the most-risk-averse farmer of the group, and to a lesser extent, by the least. The median farmer contributes to the group CER only when the lottery risk is moderate. After participating in the group elicitation, individual farmers also become as risk averse as the group on average. Specifically, the median and the least-risk-averse farmers become significantly more risk averse while the most-risk-averse farmer is unaffected. Our results show that policymakers should carefully consider how social interactions in rural communities affect individual and group risk preference and whether social interactions also affect the participation and effectiveness of development programs.     

Does agricultural official development assistance facilitate foreign direct investment in agriculture: Evidence from 63 developing countries

Although past studies have separately explored the direct impact of agriculture official development assistance (ODA) and foreign development investment (FDI) on agricultural production, the nexus between these two elements is often neglected. This article aims to understand the linkage between agricultural ODA and FDI, using data from 63 developing countries from 1991 to 2019. Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimations reveal that agricultural ODA considerably promotes FDI in the agriculture, fishery and forestry sectors (FDI_aff) by approximately 0.5%, while its impact on FDI in the food, beverages and tobacco industries (FDI_fbt) is overall insignificant. Geographical and ecological conditions play a decisive role in accounting for FDI in agriculture. While coastal and land-rich countries receive a significantly higher amount of FDI_aff and FDI_fbt, tropical countries are evidently more attractive destinations for FDI_fbt. The empirical analysis also shows that a peaceful social environment encourages FDI_aff. Well-established legal systems and reductions in corruption facilitate FDI_aff, whereas the impact of overall institutional quality on agricultural FDI is insignificant. Results suggest that donors prioritise agricultural initiatives with higher positive spillover effects, such as programmes supporting food crop production and agricultural research.     

Ownership effects on direction of multinationality: Evidence from Indian EMNEs

An essential yet challenging decision that emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) must make when setting up a subsidiary abroad is whether to do it in developed or emerging market economies. The extant literature has rarely probed what influences the location choice of EMNEs' outward investments. This paper aims to address this gap and hypothesizes that large shareholdings by promoters or foreign institutional investors negate agency problems (due to managerial risk aversion) and enhance the propensity to pursue risky but value-accrediting upmarket strategies. Furthermore, this paper argues that these beneficial effects of large owners are significantly weaker for group-affiliated firms compared to their standalone counterparts. We test our proposed hypotheses using a proprietary, longitudinal dataset during 2007–2013 for 213 Indian multinational firms and find support for our arguments.