Impact of foreign direct investment on greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture of developing countries

This research analyses the impact of foreign direct investment on greenhouse gas emissions in the agriculture sector of developing countries. Panel data from 63 developing countries for the period 2005 to 2014 was used to estimate a dynamic econometric model by applying a system‐generalised method of moments. The empirical results indicate a positive impact of foreign direct investment in agriculture on the carbon dioxide equivalent emission intensity in developing countries. The results provide weak support for the pollution havens hypothesis and imply the importance of coordination between foreign direct investment and environmental policies.     

Sick pay provision in experimental labor markets

Sick pay is a common provision in most labor contracts. This paper employs an experimental gift exchange environment to explore two related questions using both managers and undergraduates as subjects. First, do workers reciprocate generous sick pay with higher effort? Second, do firms benefit from offering sick pay? Our main finding is that workers do reciprocate generous sick pay with higher effort. However, firms benefit from offering sick pay in terms of profits only if there is competition among firms for workers. Consequently, competition leads to a higher voluntary provision of sick pay relative to a monopsonistic labor market.     

Saliency of outside options in the lost wallet game

This paper reports an experiment designed to shed light on an empirical puzzle observed by Dufwenberg and Gneezy (Games and Economic Behavior 30:163–182, 2000) that the size of the foregone outside option by the first mover does not affect the behavior of the second mover in a lost wallet game. Our conjecture was that the original protocol may not have made the size of the forgone outside option salient to second movers. Therefore, we change two features of the Dufwenberg and Gneezy protocol: (i) instead of the strategy method we implement a direct response method (sequential play) for the decision of the second mover; and (ii) we use paper money certificates that are passed between the subjects rather than having subjects write down numbers representing their decisions. We observe that our procedure yields qualitatively the same result as the Dufwenberg and Gneezy experiment, i.e., the second movers do not respond to the change in the outside option of the first movers.     

Legitimacy of Control

Control sometimes triggers negative responses. Although there is empirical evidence for such negative reactions and theories that can explain them, it remains to be examined when they occur. We conjecture that these negative responses disappear if control is legitimate, that is, if it averts antisocial behavior. Specifically, we predict that fewer individuals respond negatively to control if control prevents selfishness or theft. We confirm these predictions in an experiment.     

The impact of foreign direct investment on host country exports: A meta-analysis

In this paper, we present a synthesis of the literature examining the impact of foreign direct investment on host country exports. We reviewed and summarised 37 theoretical papers, 27 micro-level empirical studies and analysed 627 specifications from 117 macro-level empirical studies. In exploring the reasons behind the variations of the reported effects in the empirical literature, we applied meta-regression methodology. Our results indicate that the existing empirical literature generally reports a positive impact of foreign direct investment on exports, especially in developing countries. The reported effects are sensitive to research design, model specification and the context of the research. No publication bias was detected in the sampled studies. Based on our results, we provide some avenues and guidelines for future research on this topic. Our results could also have some important implications for policymakers.     

Status quo effects in fairness games: reciprocal responses to acts of commission versus acts of omission

Both the law and culture distinguish between acts of commission that overturn the status quo and acts of omission that uphold it. This distinction is of central importance when it comes to reciprocal actions. A stylized fact of everyday life is that acts of commission elicit stronger reciprocal responses than do acts of omission. We report experiments that directly test whether this stylized fact characterizes behavior in controlled experiments. We compare reciprocal responses to both types of acts in experiments using binary, extensive form games. Across three experiments, we examine the robustness of our results to different ways in which the status quo can be induced in experiments. The data show a clear difference between effects of acts of commission and omission by first movers on reciprocal responses by second movers.     

Mandatory sick pay provision: A labor market experiment

The question whether a minimum rate of sick pay should be mandated is much debated. We study the effects of this kind of intervention with student subjects in an experimental laboratory setting rich enough to allow for moral hazard, adverse selection, and crowding out of good intentions. Both wages and replacement rates offered by competing employers are reciprocated by workers. However, replacement rates are only reciprocated as long as no minimum level is mandated. Although we observe adverse selection when workers have different exogenous probabilities for being absent from work, this does not lead to a market breakdown. In our experiment, mandating replacement rates actually leads to a higher voluntary provision of replacement rates by employers.     

River-sea shipping - competitiveness of various transport technologies

This paper evaluates two existing and one new river-sea transport technology. As existing technologies, we are dealing with river-sea transport with transhipment of cargos from sea to river ships and vice versa at ports located in the river mouths and technology with river-sea vessels and the river-sea push barge system. The new cost based models are developed for each of these technologies and illustrated through various examples. The proposed models consider the dependence between minimal total costs and relations of sea transport distance to total transport distance, on one side, and a level of cargo handling rates in ports, on the other side. An analysis of the results provides us with the possibility of drawing useful guidelines for further improvement and development of river-sea transport and its technologies.