Is emigration of workers contributing to better schooling outcomes in Nepal?

This paper presents evidence on how emigration for work affects schooling outcomes for primary and secondary school‐age children in Nepal. Using an instrumental variable strategy exploiting past migration network, we show that the identified effects critically depend on how schooling outcomes are measured. While conventional measures of school attendance indicate no impact, our new set of schooling status and schooling gap measures reveals significant impacts. Schooling status measures reveal favorable impacts for girls, and for emigration to India. Schooling gap measures reveal favorable effects of all emigration on schooling outcomes for girls and of emigration to other countries for boys.     

Will African Agriculture Survive Climate Change?

Measurement of the likely magnitude of the economic impact ofclimate change on African agriculture has been a challenge.Using data from a survey of more than 9,000 farmers across 11African countries, a cross-sectional approach estimates howfarm net revenues are affected by climate change compared withcurrent mean temperature. Revenues fall with warming for drylandcrops (temperature elasticity of –1.9) and livestock (–5.4),whereas revenues rise for irrigated crops (elasticity of 0.5),which are located in relatively cool parts of Africa and arebuffered by irrigation from the effects of warming. At first,warming has little net aggregate effect as the gains for irrigatedcrops offset the losses for dryland crops and livestock. Warming,however, will likely reduce dryland farm income immedia-tely.The final effects will also depend on changes in precipitation,because revenues from all farm types increase with precipitation.Because irrigated farms are less sensitive to climate, wherewater is available, irrigation is a practical adaptation toclimate change in Africa.     

CEO succession research: methodological bridges over troubled waters

Disappointed by the lack of consistent and robust findings, scholars suspect that the problems may be related to our research methods and have frequently called for longitudinal, clinical, and psychometric studies of succession. This article compares the findings from one such study with representative studies in the literature. Examining the operationalization of key variables used to study succession antecedents, processes, and organizational consequences, it reveals possible reasons for the disappointing results and suggests ways of strengthening those operationalizations. In addition to suggesting refinements in the measurement of performance, the comparative exercise demonstrates why current proxies for personality and power may create difficulty. It concludes that both field and large‐sample research stand to benefit from a closer collaboration. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do rapid political and trade liberalizations increase corruption?

Corruption scandals seem to abound in countries that have undergone reform. However, there has been no study of whether different combinations of reforms cause an increase in corruption. Theory provides some guidance as to the direction of causality—on the one hand, reforms make politicians accountable to voters as well as introducing more competition, which should decrease corruption. On the other hand, reforms may not be credible, which provides for an incentive for corruption. This paper uses the numerous cases of political and economic liberalizations that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s to examine this issue. The findings are that undertaking both types of reforms in rapid succession leads to a decrease in corruption, while countries that liberalized more than 5 years after democratizing experienced an increase in corruption.     

Interlinkages between payment and securities settlement systems

Payments systems involve a number of interconnected systems that center around a large-value payment system through which banks send funds to each other for various purposes. Of fundamental interest to central banks are the interlinkages among these types of systems. This paper builds on Mills and Nesmith (J Monet Econ 55:542–553, 2008) to construct a relatively simple economic framework to begin to understand some of the different linkages of such systems with particular emphasis on the impact various disruptions may have. It looks at three alternative arrangements through which a funds transfer system and securities settlement system are linked. Each arrangement differs by the way the securities settlement system is designed. The main finding is that, although the different arrangements have different possible implications during a settlement shock ex ante, the equilibrium behavior of banks leads to the arrangements having similar implications ex post.     

Modeling producer responses with dynamic programming: a case for adaptive crop management

Past research found agricultural producers’ conditional responses during the growing season are important adaptations to weather and other stochastic events. Failing to recognize these responses overstates the risks confronting producers and understates their ability to respond to adverse circumstances. Dynamic programming (DP) provides a means for determining optimal long‐term crop management plans. However, most applications in the literature base their analysis on annual time steps with fixed strategies within the year, effectively ignoring conditional responses during the year. We suggest an alternative approach that captures the strategic responses within a cropping season to random weather variables as they unfold, reflecting farmers’ ability to adapt to weather realizations. We illustrate our approach by applying it to a typical cereal farm in Karak, Jordan. The results show that including conditional within‐year responses to weather reduces the frequency of fallowing by 23% and increases expected income by 9%.     

Standard and Poor’s depository receipts and the performance of the S&P 500 index futures market

In response to the need for a simple financial instrument that enables retail investors to participate easily and quickly in the U.S. equity market and that facilitates basket trading by institutions, the American Stock Exchange introduced Standard and Poor’s Depository Receipts (SPDRs) on January 29, 1993. The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of the introduction of SPDRs on the pricing efficiency of the S&P futures market. Using a measure of efficiency that is based on the difference between the observed futures price and the theoretical futures price based on the Cost of Carry Model, as well as daily and intradaily data for the period January 2, 1990 through June 3, 1996, we found that some positive mispricing was reduced when SPDR’s were introduced. While dividend yield and time‐to‐maturity biases remained, SPDRs trading was shown to mitigate the extent of pricing errors that prevailed, and reduced the effects of dividend yield and time‐to‐maturity biases found for these contracts. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 20:705–716, 2000     

Sociocultural Integration in Mergers and Acquisitions: Unresolved Paradoxes and Directions for Future Research

Despite decades of research, the key factors for success in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and the reasons why M&As often fail remain poorly understood. While attempts to explain M&A success and failure have traditionally focused on strategic and financial factors, an emergent field of inquiry has been directed at the sociocultural and human resources issues involved in the integration of acquired or merging firms. This research has sought to explain M&A performance and underperformance in terms of the impact that variables such as cultural fit, management style similarity, the pattern of dominance between merging firms, the acquirer's degree of cultural tolerance, and the social climate surrounding a takeover have on the postmerger integration process. In this article, we attempt to take stock of, and synthesize, the findings from research on sociocultural and human resources integration in M&A, to identify conflicting perspectives and unresolved questions as well as several underresearched areas, and then use our analyses to propose an agenda for the next stage of research in this field. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Avatar-based learning in Second Life

Over the years, Second Life has provided ways for the world of academia to put creativity lending to immersive education, distance learning, knowledge sharing, faculty networking and many other ways to enhance the collective educational community＇s efforts in the real world. The success of such projects within Second Life can be credited to many innovative educators, academics and students who have chosen to utilize Second Life in education. Second Life was honored at the 59th Annual Technology ＆ Engineering Emmy Awards for advancing the development of online sites with user-generated content in 2008. Second Life is an open platform where information is generally freely available to all residents. This freedom is a mixed blessing. While on the one hand, free and open content promote creativity through what is known as ＂derivative works＂, which means work based on something someone has done previously, on the other hand it has a tendency of not crediting people properly for original innovative work. This research aims to investigate perceptions of using and continuance decisions of using Second Life Virtual Classroom as learning tools in the existing life. The research will use web based questionnaire to gather respondents. Particularly, the questionnaire surveys participants＇ perceptions of the usefulness, ease of use, perceived value, perceived quality, satisfaction, and expectation of Second Life Virtual Classroom as learning tools and their intention to re-use Second Life Virtual Classroom in education. It also questions the factors that influence participants＇ perceptions.