Establishing the need for a low‐cost Canadian debt relief procedure

Canada does not have a low‐cost bankruptcy option for debtors with low incomes and low assets. In this article, we present empirical evidence of the need for such an option by estimating the number of debtors who might benefit from it. We then review the successful low‐cost bankruptcy options in operation in New Zealand and in the United Kingdom and recommend that Canada adopt a similar system.     

Foreign direct investment via M&A and domestic entrepreneurship: blessing or curse?

There are conflicting predictions in the literature about the relationship between FDI and entrepreneurship. This paper explores how foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, measured by lagged cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A), affect entrepreneurial entry in the host economy. We have constructed a micro-panel of more than two thousand individuals in each of seventy countries, 2000–2009, linked to FDI by matching sectors. We find the relationship between FDI inflows and domestic entrepreneurship to be negative across all economies. This negative effect is much more pronounced in developed than developing economies and is also identified within industries, notably in manufacturing. Policies to encourage FDI via M&A need to consider how to counteract the prevailing adverse effect on domestic entrepreneurship.     

提高客户满意度是否会增加企业盈利

大多数研究者和企业管理人员都认为客户满意度和企业期望的经营结果成正相关。研究发现,客户满意对购买意愿具有可测量的影响,而且对于客户保持和企业的经营业绩也有同样的影响。同时,有关研究也认为,客户满意度与花费份额(SOW)、公司的营业收入也有正相关的关系。在一些不同行     

Wage inequality and the labor market impact of economic transformation: Croatia, 1970–2008

In this paper, we examine wage inequality and wage differentials in Croatia from 1970 to 2008 using two long aggregate time series on the distribution of income. We focus especially on changing income inequality related to educational and vocational attainment, changing income inequality within those groups, and how these two components of inequality were affected by the economic transformation from socialism to capitalism. We find that income inequality between groups rose moderately post-transformation, while overall inequality increased more sharply. This finding is consistent with a growing importance of individual rather than group productivity in labor market compensation, a change broadly consistent with the economic transformation of the Croatian labor market.     

Graduate Economics Programs in the United States

Sterrett and Barr comment on the results of a survey of graduate programs in economics in the United States and on the marked increase in the number of masters degrees granted by the responding institutions.     

Comparing a Traditional IRA and a Roth IRA: Theory Versus Practice

Financial planners often advise their clients to first take advantage of employer‐sponsored 401(k) plans, especially those with matching employer contributions. They often recommend next that clients consider a traditional or Roth IRA, depending on their current eligibility and tax bracket. Generally, the traditional IRA tends to be preferable to the Roth IRA if one expects to be in a lower tax bracket during the retirement versus the contribution years. This preference could be impacted by the theoretical or the practical assumptions one could make as to the tax bracket effect, minimum distribution requirements, and the impact of withdrawals on the amount of Social Security benefits taxed. This research compares the traditional and the Roth IRA, examining both the theoretical and practical assumptions of client behavior. The results indicate that the best choice between the types of IRAs depends on whether the investor's actual behavior is consistent with theory or practice.     

Size matters: entrepreneurial entry and government

We explore the country-specific institutional characteristics likely to influence an individual’s decision to become an entrepreneur. We focus on the size of the government, on freedom from corruption and on “market freedom” defined as a cluster of variables related to protection of property rights and regulation. We test these relationships by combining country-level institutional indicators for 47 countries with working-age population survey data taken from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Our results indicate that entrepreneurial entry is inversely related to the size of the government, and more weakly to the extent of corruption. A cluster of institutional indicators representing “market freedom” is only significant in some specifications. Freedom from corruption is significantly related to entrepreneurial entry, especially when the richest countries are removed from the sample, but unlike the size of government, the results on corruption are not confirmed by country-level fixed-effects models.     

Managerial markets in transition in Central and Eastern Europe: a field study and implications

In this paper, we report findings from the first comprehensive study of managerial labour markets in Central and Eastern Europe, drawing on field data from 157 firms in six countries. Results indicated widespread and deep changes occurring in the region’s managerial markets. Despite differences among countries in reform and economic performance, we found these particular changes to be surprisingly common across the countries studied. They included rapid rises in salary and benefit levels, narrowing of some skill gaps, shifts to more sophisticated methods of recruitment and an overall move towards Western management practices. The study also revealed severe shortages of qualified managers in all the countries studied. The resulting tightness in the managerial labour markets was reducing only modestly, despite other improvements. Foreign and joint-venture firms were relying disproportionately on expatriate managers, and may not have been sufficiently developing locals. We argue that, partly because of this, the distortions in pay, promotions and performance resulting from these tight markets are likely to persist for some time.     

Regulatory Barriers and Entry into a New Competitive Industry

We model the effects of license fees and bureaucratic delay on firm entry into a new competitive industry, whose profitability is initially unknown. A license fee alone reduces the number of first movers and the steady‐state number of firms. The combination of license fee and delay may cause some entrepreneurs to purchase licenses speculatively, only using them to enter production later if profitability is revealed to be sufficiently favourable. Alternatively, some entrepreneurs may wait, possibly buying a license only after profitability is revealed; but it is never found that some entrepreneurs adopt one of these strategies and some the other.