Economies of scale and gender discrimination in transition: the case of the Republic of Tajikistan

This article tests for economies of scale and for evidence of discrimination based on gender lines in intra-household consumption allocations using data from the Living Standards Survey in the Republic of Tajikistan (TLSS). Overall results support the existence of household economies of scale in Tajikistan; however, empirical evidence supporting boy–girl discrimination is limited despite anecdotal evidence otherwise.     

Does Corruption Have Social Roots? The Role of Culture and Social Capital

The aim of this work is to analyse the influence of sociocultural factors on corruption levels. Taking as starting point Husted (J Int Bus Studies 30:339–359, 1999) and Graeff (In: Lambsdorff J, Taube M, Schramm M (eds) The new institutional economics of corruption. Routledge, London, 2005) proposals, we consider both the interrelation between cultural dimensions and the diverse expressions of social capital with corruption. According to our results, the universalistic trust (linking and bridging social capital) constitutes a positive social capital that is negatively linked to corruption. In contrast, the particularistic levels of trust (bonding) can constitute a negative social capital directly related to corruption levels. Furthermore, cultures which are favourable to the legitimation of dependency relations and the formation of closed particularistic groups (power-distance and community factors) create a breeding ground for the development of these amoral rent-seeking structures.     

Persistence and Kurtosis in GARCH and Stochastic Volatility Models

This article shows that the relationship between kurtosis, persistenceof shocks to volatility, and first-order autocorrelation ofsquares is different in GARCH and ARSV models. This differencecan explain why, when these models are fitted to the same series,the persistence estimated is usually higher in GARCH than inARSV models, and, why gaussian ARSV models seem to be adequate,whereas GARCH models often require leptokurtic conditional distributions.We also show that introducing the asymmetric response of volatilityto positive and negative returns does not change the conclusions.These results are illustrated with the analysis of daily financialreturns.     

Business Incubation Centers and New Firm Growth in the Basque Country

The purpose of this article is an attempt to identify those factors related to human capital and organizational resources which help in overcoming barriers to survive during the infancy period of firm start-ups. The paper aims to find out the extent to which the support received by entrepreneurs from incubator centers is critical to ensure firm life. Primary data have been used to conduct an empirical analysis on a sample of 114 start-up firms participating in a business assistance program (i.e., business incubation centers). Results from regression analyses suggest that human capital attributes of entrepreneurs and certain start-up firm characteristics seem to be critical to explain business success. An important implication of this study is that, despite the economic advantages derived from this policy based on the promotion of business incubation centers policy makers should be cautious in its application. Empirical evidence from our study suggests that a portion of new firms being nurtured in business incubation centers may cause the exit of more efficient incumbent firms not receiving such policy support.