The inequality trap. A comparative analysis of social spending between 1880 and 1930

It is often assumed that the fight against inequality played an important role in the rise of the welfare state. However, using social transfers as an indicator of redistribution and three alternative proxies for inequality—the top income shares, the ratio of the GDP per capita to the unskilled wage, and the share of non‐family farms—this article shows that inequality did not favour the development of social policy between 1880 and 1930. On the contrary, social policy developed more easily in countries that were previously more egalitarian, suggesting that unequal societies were in a sort of inequality trap, where inequality itself was an obstacle to redistribution.     

Managers, investors, and crises: mutual fund strategies in emerging markets

We examine the trading strategies of mutual funds in emerging markets. We develop a method for disentangling the behavior of fund managers from that of underlying investors. For both managers and investors, we strongly reject the null hypothesis of no momentum trading: mutual funds systematically sell losers and buy winners. Selling current losers and buying current winners is stronger during crises, and equally strong for managers and investors. Selling past losers and buying past winners is stronger for managers. Managers and investors also practice contagion trading—they sell (buy) assets from one country when asset prices fall (rise) in another.     

Long-period Positions and Economic Change. A rejoinder

Roncaglia and Nell have criticised the interpretation of Sraffa's normal prices as centres of gravitation for actual prices. Roncaglia mainly focuses on the interpretation of the notion of gravitation in Smith and on the meaning of the ‘given outputs’ in Sraffa. Nell attempts to confine the relevance of Sraffa's theory to specific historical circumstances and to find a role for Sraffa's prices in his version of post-Keynesian price theory. This rejoinder criticises the case made by both Roncaglia and Nell, and defends Sraffa's centre of gravitation view.     

Firms’ performance under different bankruptcy systems: a Europe–USA empirical analysis

This study empirically analyses the effect that the bankruptcy law has on firms’ performance based on its financial situation. To do this, we considered the different types of efficiency and their influence on firms’ value. The study was carried out for Germany, Spain, the United States, France and the United Kingdom. We applied System‐GMM estimation to dynamic panel data. The main results show that under creditor‐oriented systems, there is a decrease in the value of both financially distressed firms and those filing for bankruptcy.     

Users' perceptions of the free,virtual-only service experience

Like manufacturing multinational enterprises, multinational banks, although being more subject to local regulation and market preferences, are increasingly changing their international attitude. Namely, they rely on foreign activities not only as a means to exploit their own competitive advantages within foreign markets, but also to access exclusive assets, resources, and competencies that could be transferred back to the whole network to enhance and strengthen their competitive advantages. The reported research refers to data on the evolution of the Italian banks' foreign initiatives in the 1998–2004 period. Using such data, the authors investigate the determinants of the coexistence of strategies that are both competence-exploiting and competence-enhancing, using the traditional eclectic approach.     

Good standing and cooperation

Indirect reciprocity is generally considered one of the leading mechanisms to explain how cooperation may emerge by natural selection. The basic intuition is that establishing a reputation of being a helpful individual increases the probability of being in turn helped. Two models have been proposed to describe how indirect reciprocity may work: the standing model (Sugden 1986/2004 in The economics of rights, cooperation and welfare. Blackwell, Oxford.) and the image-scoring model (Nowak and Sigmund 1998a in Nature 393:573–577, b in J Theoretical Biol 194:561–574). Although there is evidence that the former model would perform better under a wide set of circumstances, it is often maintained that it requires individuals with an implausibly large capacity of processing recursive information. In this paper, I argue that this is not actually the case. I further emphasize that even if the hypothesis of indirect reciprocity is unable to give a fair account of the ecological bases of cooperation, it has inspired a deal of research precious to social sciences.     

INTERTEMPORAL COMPETITIVE EQUILIBRIUM,CAPITAL AND THE STABILITY OF TÂTONNEMENT PRICING REVISITED

This paper reconsiders a recent criticism which contends that the theory of general intertemporal equilibrium, formulated by taking the physical endowments of capital goods as given, is not protected from the problem of capital at the centre of the two Cambridges debate of the 1960s. The author confirms such a criticism following a different approach. He argues that the stability analysis of an intertemporal equilibrium via tâtonnement must be consistent with a uniform rate of return on capital. He shows that the resulting non‐orthodox tâtonnement subverts the traditional analysis of equilibrium stability.     

Gay tourism in a sun and beach destination

Gay tourism is seen as an attractive business opportunity for many destinations. However, there is a lack of research at identifying the resources necessary for success in this type of tourism. This work is aimed at filling this gap by using the premises of the resource based view and transfers them to the analysis of territories to identify the valuable resources that are required for a sun and beach destination to attract gay tourists. To this end, this study has focused on a gay tourism sub niche, tourists lodged in gay-exclusive resorts in Gran Canaria. In order to confirm the validity of this approach, the relationship between the satisfaction of gay tourists and the condition of the valuable resources was studied by means of a robust statistical new method, namely Bayesian model averaging. That method permits the inclusion of uncertainty in the theoretical models that determine destination competitiveness, thus reducing many of the problems that arise in the application of the more conventional statistical methods in this type of analysis.     

A social welfare function characterizing competitive equilibria of incomplete financial markets

A classic characterization of competitive equilibria views them as feasible allocations maximizing a weighted sum of utilities. It has been applied to establish fundamental properties of the equilibrium notion, such as existence, determinacy, and computability. However, it fails for economies with missing financial markets.We give such a characterization for economies with a single commodity and missing financial markets, by an amended social welfare function. Its parameters capture both the relative importance of households welfare, through the classic welfare weights, as well as the disagreements among them as to the value of the missing markets.As a by-product, we identify the dimension of the set of interior equilibrium allocations.     

Complementarity between heterogeneous human capital and R&;D: can job-training avoid low development traps?

This paper uses a non-overlapping generations model of endogenous growth to emphasize the effect of human capital’s heterogeneity on economic growth. In addition to education, we present two different typologies of training. The first, technology-general, is independent of R&D; the second, technology-specific, is connected to the success of innovative activities and it is only provided to workers engaged in research. By extending Redding (Econ J 106:452–470, 1996), we demonstrate that human capital composition is important in determining the probability of innovation and the economy’s growth rate. Moreover, the paper shows that technology-general training avoids low development traps when R&D is absent.