Manipulating uncertainty

Uncertainty about the distributional incidence of policy reforms may, if it impinges selectively on particular subsets of voters, alter the direction of the majority vote. This possibility should be a matter of special concern when subject to potential manipulation by a purposeful agent such as a Leviathan-like bureaucracy. This paper discusses a constitutional defense against such prospect. This paper was prepared for a conference on “Constitutional Status Quo and Prospects for Change” held at George Mason University in April, 1994. I am grateful to participants in that conference and to my colleagues at Nova, especially to Mário Páscoa, for their comments and criticisms. I also benefited from comments of an anonymous referee. Responsibility for errors remains with me.     

Finding Closest Targets in Non-Oriented DEA Models: The Case of Convex and Non-Convex Technologies

This paper draws attention for the fact that traditional Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models do not provide the closest possible targets (or peers) to inefficient units, and presents a procedure to obtain such targets.It focuses on non-oriented efficiency measures (which assume that production units are able to control, and thus change, inputs and outputs simultaneously) both measured in relation to a Free Disposal Hull (FDH) technology and in relation to a convex technology. The approaches developed for finding close targets are applied to a sample of Portuguese bank branches.     

Bridging Business and Society: The Abrinq Foundation in Brazil

This article presents the process of creation and expansion of the Fundação Abrinq pelos Direitos da Criança et do Adolescente (Abrinq Foundation for Rights of Children and Adolescents). Established in 1990 by a group of entrepreneurs from the Brazilian Toy Manufacturers’ Association (ABRINQ), the Fundação Abrinq has been successful at raising the issue of children in Brazilian society by bridging business and several other sectors of society. This article more particularly examines (1) the societal challenges related to the situation of children in Brazil; (2) the creation and development of the Abrinq Foundation; and (3) the achievements of this innovative bridging organization over 15 years.     

Commissioning of CIL's ammonia II plant

Special features of this process design contributed to fast start-up, including the role of the computer simulator for training purposes and the concept of commissioning by process test system.     

Examining the predictive validity of SUS-TAS with maximum parsimony in developing island countries

The Sustainable Tourism Attitude Scale (SUS-TAS) has been used as a tool to gauge the sentiment of local residents toward sustainable tourism development. This scale has been validated in cross-cultural settings by several scholars. In a like manner, in order to validate this scale, data were collected in the Cape Verde islands (off the coast of Africa) and the results showed (1) a parsimonious version of the 21-item SUS-TAS that facilitates the process of data collection without compromising its robustness and psychometric properties, (2) a validated second-order factor model, confirming that the seven factors of SUS-TAS can be loaded in two broader dimensions named “perceived tourism impacts” and “expected tourism sustainability”, (3) a SUS-TAS second-order factor model with validity in predicting residents’ support for sustainable tourism development, (4) that SUS-TAS can be interpreted by seven individual factors and/or as a global factor as indicated by the hierarchical measurement model and predictive validity. Methodological and theoretical interpretations are discussed and future refinement and applications are also offered.     

Knowledge diversity and coordination: The effect of intrafirm inventor task networks on absorption speed

Research Summary: We combine the absorptive capacity and social network theory approaches to predict how intrafirm “whole” network characteristics affect the firm's speed of absorption of external knowledge to produce inventions. We start from the widely accepted view that distant, externally‐developed knowledge is difficult to absorb into the focal firm's own knowledge production. We suggest that high levels of intrafirm inventor task network diversity and task network density are essential for a diversity of knowledge inputs and coordinated actions regarding knowledge transfer, which in turn, reduces problems related to the absorption of knowledge—especially in the case of knowledge that is distant from the focal firm. The results of an event history study of 113 pharmaceutical firms that engaged in technology in‐licensing from 1986 to 2003 provide general support for our hypotheses. Managerial Summary: Firms keen to keep up with an uncertain and ever‐changing industry environment, can benefit from the speedy introduction of inventions. We examine how firms absorb licensed‐in technologies to nurture the rapid development of own related inventions. We show that a firm's absorption speed depends on the characteristics of the internal collaboration networks among the firm's inventor employees. More specifically, technologically diverse and well‐connected inventor networks improve the firm's ability to absorb external technologies quickly. This applies especially to externally acquired technologies that are unfamiliar to the firm. Depending on the distance of the acquired technology from the focal firm combined with speed‐inducing inventor network characteristics, our estimates suggest that firms can reduce the time needed for absorption by several months.     

Accounting for the Gender Technology Gap Amongst Smallholder Rice Farmers in Northern Ghana

Narrowing the gender technology gap in agricultural production has become a critical policy issue in sub‐Saharan Africa. A better understanding of the gender technology gap is essential for policy formulation and programme planning to ensure equity in resource allocation, and household‐level food security in low and middle income countries, such as Ghana. We employ a metafrontier approach to analyse the differences in the efficiency of male and female farmers, recognising the endogeneity of some of the variables in the inefficiency effects model, in particular the credit constraints of the rice farmers under study. Our findings show that while the rice farms themselves are very similar, average yields for male managed farms tend to be significantly higher than female managed farms reflecting higher seeding and fertiliser application rates on male managed farms. However, there is no significant difference between the genders in either land used for rice or total output per farm household. We find some evidence that relative to the metafrontier, male managed farms are less efficient than female managed farms. The results further show gender technology gap amongst the smallholder rice farmers with females’ technology gap ratio being significantly greater than that of males, with females operating on a production frontier closer to the metafrontier. Policies that provide females more access to productive resources and other agricultural services could assist in the generation of relatively higher output.