Infrastructure,returns to scale and sovereign debt

This paper explores the nexus between the issue of sovereign debt and investment in infrastructure, emphasizing the case of economies of scale. The focus is on debt contracts that are incentive compatible. It is shown that public and private financial institutions may need to lend amounts above some threshold to force the borrowing sovereign to take full advantage of any economies of scale that may be present. Low levels of lending may or may not result in default. Sufficiently high amounts of lending may be needed to ensure repayment and may prove to be mutually beneficial.     

Trigger happy or gun shy? Dissolving common‐value partnerships with Texas shootouts

The operating agreements of many business ventures include clauses to facilitate the exit of joint owners. In so‐called Texas Shootouts, one owner names a single buy‐sell price and the other owner is compelled to either buy or sell shares at that named price. Despite their prevalence in real‐world contracts, Texas Shootouts are rarely triggered. In our theoretical framework, sole ownership is more efficient than joint ownership. Negotiations are frustrated, however, by the presence of asymmetric information. In equilibrium, owners eschew buy‐sell offers in favor of simple offers to buy or to sell shares and bargaining failures arise. Experimental data support these findings.     

Misleading Forecasts in Accounting Estimates: A Form of Ethical Blindness in Accounting Standards?

Drawing from research on strategic choice, this study investigates the relationship between market turbulence and firms’ sustainable behavior, in the context of sustainability-related institutional adversity. It argues that the relationship between market turbulence and sustainability is mediated by network embeddedness, and this mediating role in turn is moderated by a firm’s innovative orientation. Data collected from a sample of Ontario restaurants inform predictions about firms’ propensity to adopt local wines in their portfolios, despite the limited market and normative support that these wines receive compared with imported wines. The study shows that market turbulence enhances sustainable firm behavior, through the development of strong network relationships. Furthermore, the mediating effect of network embeddedness is particularly salient among firms that exhibit a stronger innovative orientation. These findings reveal how and when turbulent market conditions can contribute to a firm’s sustainable behaviors in the presence of limited institutional support for such behaviors.     

INCOME DISTRIBUTION, SOVEREIGN DEBT, AND PUBLIC INVESTMENT

We develop a political economy model of sovereign debt that shows that income inequality leads to popular pressures on the government to use foreign debt to finance a redistribution of income at the expense of productive public investment. Recognizing this fact, international lenders impose credit ceilings with the consequence that developing country borrowers invest less and grow slower.     

AIDS Home- and Community-Based Waivers: Effects on Use of Services,Expenditures, and Survival

State Medicaid home- and community-based waiver programs for persons with AIDS (PWAs) were implemented with the expectation that PWAs would use these services in lieu of more expensive hospital-based care. If so, Medicaid spending per PWA should decline, and program costs fall. We analyze Florida Medicaid claims data for PWAs from December 1995 through December 1997 to determine how participation in the waiver program affects the use of inpatient services, the receipt of antiretroviral combination therapies (available to Medicaid recipients throughout the study period), monthly expenditures, and survival of PWAs. We find that waiver participants are more likely to receive combination therapies but less likely to use hospital-based care than nonparticipants; white men and sicker patients are more likely to join the waiver program than other eligible PWAs; monthly expenditures for waiver participants are 52% lower than for nonparticipants; and waiver participation does not affect survival.     

Stability, Asymmetry and Seasonality of Fund Performance: An Analysis of Australian Multi‐sector Managed Funds

Using a sample of Australian Multi-sector trusts we examine selectivity and market timing performance and extend the analysis to include the relatively new measure of volatility timing. This is of particular relevance to our data set, as high levels of volatility persistence are prevalent in Australia. In addition we consider the stability, asymmetry and seasonality of the various performance and risk measures. A survivorship adjustment procedure is also employed in order to assess the impact of survivorship on selectivity, market timing and volatility timing performance.     

The 'Parent Shift' program: incentives for nurses, rewards for nursing teams

To create new opportunities for nurses to reenter the workforce, a RN p.r.n. program must meet the needs of nurses who wish to make dual commitments to home and work. The Parent Shift program provides an innovative model of attracting and retaining nurses in a hospital workforce. Many nurses who joined the program were away from the field of nursing for many years and were drawn to the program because of the promise of flexible shifts and minimal requirements for participation. In this study, flexible shifts not only encouraged program entry, they were also a powerful motivator for continued program participation over time. Parent Shift nurse presence was perceived by nurse managers to decrease stressors and improve time efficiency of full-shift staff.     

Worlding Water Supply: Thinking Beyond the Network in Jakarta

This article draws on scholarship in Southern theory to ‘world’ the study of water’s urbanization. This means complicating scholarship by widening the focus beyond the application of Northern norms to engage with complex and diverse practices in Southern cities. For water’s urbanization, this means focusing on what water supply is for the majority: neither the centralized piped‐water network nor its absence, but the range of practices and technologies that unite people, nature and artefacts in a complex socio‐ecological politics of water. Drawing on scholarship from Southern urbanisms, urban political ecology, and science and technology studies, we illustrate how expanding water’s urbanization to include more than networked infrastructure in Jakarta draws attention to the importance of ecological connections between piped water, groundwater, wastewater and floodwater. Thinking beyond the network requires deeper engagement with the ecological connections between the diverse flows of water in and around urban environments. These produce distinct forms of fragmentation that are missed when analysis is limited to piped‐water supply. The emphasis on ecological connections between flows of water and power seeks to draw attention back to the importance of the uneven exposure to environmental hazards in cities in which neither water nor nature are wholly contained by infrastructure.     

Barriers to entry and competitive strategies

The relationships between the difficulty of entry and competitive strategies in five industries, chosen for their differing structural contexts, were tested. Statistical support was found for the value of pre-entry analysis of entry barriers and of firms' predicted responses to potential entry. In particular, the creation of idle productive capacity appears to be a potent deterrent to new entrants.