Medición y comprensión del comercio de tareas en el sector de los servicios

La revolución de las TIC ha generado un alto riesgo de deslocalización de las tareas más comercializables en el sector de los servicios. Se revisan aquí estudios que proponen indicadores de comerciabilidad de los servicios, exploran las implicaciones de su deslocalización y desarrollan modelos teóricos al respecto. Tanto el nivel de calificación requerido como la comerciabilidad podrían ser determinantes clave de los efectos sobre los salarios y el empleo. Sin embargo, la falta de definiciones consensuadas de comerciabilidad y de datos fiables sobre el comercio de servicios, junto con la dificultad de evaluar la competencia de las importaciones a niveles desagregados, obstaculizan el avance de los estudios empíricos y descubren áreas para futuras investigaciones.     

Are Liberated Companies a Concrete Application of Sen’s Capability Approach?

Journal of Business Ethics - The capability approach (CA) developed by Amartya Sen focuses on the enhancement of people’s capabilities, i.e. their real freedom to choose a life course they...     

Do economic integration agreements affect trade predictability? A group effect analysis

Recent theoretical findings in the trade literature suggest that economic integration agreements (EIAs) not only increase the level of trade but also make it more stable and predictable. This paper proposes a Hausman–Taylor quantile regression approach to identify the causal effect of EIA membership on trade predictability. The proposed methodology accounts for group effects in the gravity equation and is computationally efficient. Our results corroborate the theoretical findings that EIAs make trade more stable and predictable and this conclusion is even stronger for deeper EIAs.     

From global start-ups to the borderless firm: Why and how to build a worldwide value system

Although the original concept of international new ventures included the geographic configuration of value activities, the subsequent development of the literature has gradually abandoned the concern about the geographic configuration of both input sourcing and output marketing to concentrate almost exclusively on the latter. Therefore, this paper argues that there is a need to re-focus the research so as to figure out how and why some companies are borderless. Borderless firms are defined as the result of the combination, early on, of geographically dispersed resources and capabilities, defying the home-base logic. A borderless firm presents the following characteristics (or a combination of them) from inception (or shortly thereafter): (i) value-added activities dispersed across different countries and regions; (ii) entrepreneurs not bounded by a home base; (iii) multinational founders and/or management teams; and (iv) a multinational workforce. To enquiry into this issue, the study uses five case studies of borderless firms. The results advance the understanding of the motives and processes behind the development, early on, of a borderless configuration of value activities.     

AHP-based approaches for supplier evaluation: Problems and perspectives

Supplier evaluation has assumed a strategic role in determining competitiveness of large manufacturing companies. An increasing number of researches have been devoted to the development of different kind of methodologies to cope with this problem. Nevertheless, while the number of applications is growing, there is little empirical evidence of the practical usefulness of such tools with a dichotomy between theoretical approaches and empirical applications. Considering this evidence, the goal of this paper is to contribute to understand the above dichotomy by implementing, in a corporate environment, a model for supplier evaluation based on the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP), one of the most prominent methodologies used to address the problem. The analysis of the implementation process of the methodology allows the identification of strengths and weaknesses of using formalized supplier selection models to tackle the supplier evaluation problem, also highlighting potential barriers preventing firms to adopt such methods. Relevant issues arising from the application and managerial implications for both customer and suppliers are discussed.     

Local persistence and the PPP hypothesis

This paper examines the statistical properties of the bilateral real exchange rates of the U.S. vs. France, Germany, and the U.K. during the Post-Bretton-Woods period, and draws implications on the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) hypothesis. Contrary to traditional studies that consider only unit root and stationary processes to describe the real exchange rate behavior, this paper considers an in-between process, the locally persistent process. The empirical results demonstrate the following two findings: (1) Locally persistent processes describe the real exchange rate movements better than unit root and stationary processes, which implies that PPP reversion occurs and PPP holds in the long-run. (2) The confidence intervals for half-life deviations from PPP under local persistence tend to be narrower than those obtained by assuming the ADF and the local-to-unity models.     

Reverse Knowledge Transfer on Emerging Market Multinationals: A Case Study of the Largest Private Bank in Latin America

Knowledge transfer between headquarters and subsidiaries and the study of emerging market multinationals (EMMNE) are two important and rapidly growing research topics in International Business (IB) studies. This research analyzes, through an in-depth single case study, the Reverse Knowledge Transfer (RKT) processes of an emerging market multinational, more specifically the largest private bank in LATAM—Banco Itaú Unibanco S.A.—to understand how emerging market parent companies benefit from their subsidiaries’ knowledge. Our findings validate important concepts in the IB and RKT literature, contribute with valuable insights to theory generation, and indicate possible avenues for future research.     

Conditional Cash Transfer and School Outcomes: An Evaluation of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program in Davao Oriental,Philippines

The present study adds to the empirical literature examining the effects of conditional cash transfers on school outcomes. Using school‐level and student‐level enrolment data from Davao Oriental Philippines, we evaluate the influence of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (also known as 4Ps), a social development policy program, on the growth rates in school enrolment outcomes. The findings show that 4Ps, on average, increased school enrolment of children by 1.12 percent. It was also apparent that using student‐level data as opposed to school‐level data revealed a more robust effect of 4Ps on school outcomes. We also found some school and socioeconomic characteristics influencing the change in school enrolments. Finally, this study highlights the role of government intervention programs in improving access to education in the poorest sector of the economy.     

Technical Inefficiency and Production Risk in Rice Farming: Evidence from Central Luzon Philippines*

There have been many previous studies of technical inefficiency in rice production in the Philippines, but none has focused simultaneously on production risk and technical inefficiency at the farm level. Rice production is inherently risky because of the heterogeneous production environment. In this study, we analyze technical inefficiency in a rainfed lowland rice environment in Central Luzon using a stochastic frontier production function with a heteroskedastic error structure. An 8‐year panel dataset collected from 46 rainfed rice farmers was used to estimate flexible functional specifications. Over the whole period, the average technical efficiency was found to be 79 percent. Results indicate that there is a high degree of variability in technical efficiency estimates, which can be attributed to the instability of farming conditions in the rainfed lowland environment. Mean output was signifificantly influenced by area planted to rice, labor and the amount of fertilizer used. Consequently, these inputs were found to be risk‐increasing, whereas herbicide was found to be a risk‐reducing input.     

Was Vilfredo Pareto Really a ‘Precursor’ of Fascism.?

A bstract . Vilfredo Pareto has been labelled a fascist and 'a precursor of fascism' largely because he welcomed the advent of fascism in Italy and was honored by the new regime. Some have seen in his sociological works the foundations of fascism. This is not correct. Even fascist writers did not find much merit in these works, and definitely condemned his economic theories. A s a political thinker he remained a radical libertarian till the end, and continued to express serious reservations about fascism, and to voice opposition to its basic policies. This is evident from his correspondence with his close friends. There are strong reasons to believe that, had he lived long enough, Pareto would have revolted against fascism.