Resources for business resilience in a COVID-19 world: A community-centric approach

COVID-19 has drawn renewed focus on the importance of resilience, both among practitioners and in academia, as companies struggle to cope with the rapid swings, changing patterns, and disruptions in supply and demand. This article identifies and delineates a way forward for companies to support resilience, particularly recognizing the wider communities they are nested in and the resources that exist there. To identify such productive resources, known as capitals, we provide a novel and actionable integrated capitals framework (ICF). ICF integrates 10 existing frameworks drawn from both practice and academia and is comprised of nine different forms of capital that businesses can leverage and contribute toward supporting resilience. We provide insights into how businesses can use this framework to achieve resilience through this useful, yet underutilized, path.     

Capital Flows to Latin America (2003–17): A Critical Survey from Prebisch’s Business Cycle Theory

ABSTRACT

The economic literature on capital flows to developing countries has shared two important commonalities since the 1990s. Published works (whether they focus on the external situation or stress the domestic determinants of capital flows) tend to assume a beneficial effect of capital inflows, which leads to an improvement of peripheral institutions, whose deficiencies are ostensibly the main cause of economic turmoil and/or failure in attracting capital flows, in continuity with New Institutional Economics. In doing so, mainstream economists deliberately overlook the asymmetric characteristics of the international monetary system and the persisting hegemony of dollar. Raul Prebisch’s pioneering work on business cycles in Latin America provide an alternative view, one capable of amending the existing mainstream literature. On the one hand, Prebisch stressed the destabilizing role of capital inflows on Latin American economies, particularly short-term speculative capital. On the other hand, Prebisch designed a set of counter cyclical monetary policies in order to contrast capital volatility, particularly during downturns. An analysis of stylized facts shows that, when correctly updated, Prebisch’s theory has remarkable explanatory potential when applied to Latin America’s current economic and financial situation.     

技术创业型企业孵化资本投入的风险管控——来自多案例对比

待孵化的技术创业型企业同时具有概念性技术向差异化产品转化的高风险与产品异质性被认同后溢价评估的高收益特点，导致其投资者多处于隔岸观火却欲罢不能的的孵化投资矛盾中。对孵化资本实施有效的风险管控，成为吸引外部资本投入的关键。基于此，选择在可创概念选育与技术创业孵化领域探索出高成功率路径的概念证明中心、YCombinator和创新工场为研究案例，分析其在创业项目筛选、孵化资金运营等关键环节的风险管控方式，以期完善我国孵化资本管控理论、助力我国商业孵化器提高资金风险管控能力、促进外部资本投入。     

The effect of control deprivation on consumers’ adoption of no-pain,no-gain principle

Consumers often base their judgments on a no-pain, no-gain principle—that is, one must pay a cost in order to achieve a beneficial outcome. For example, they infer the quality of a product from its price and judge a bad-tasting medicine to be more effective than a tasty one. Although the use of this principle to infer the value of a product or service has been observed in several domains, the processes that underlie its use have not been fully explored. We find that when people feel out of control, they tend to use the principle because it exemplifies a causal relationship between actions and outcomes and endorsing it reaffirms their belief that they have control over the outcomes of their behavior. Our findings have implications for how marketers might position products and services to attract consumers who perceive themselves as having different levels of control.     

基于状态空间模型的政产学研资协同创新四螺旋影响因素实证研究

在三螺旋理论框架下，搭建政府、产业、大学、研究机构和资本部门四螺旋模型，运用文献归纳法选取多元主体协同创新6类影响因素，以主体间协同程度测度结果为因变量基础，利用状态空间模型动态分析这些因素影响方向、大小和趋势。实证结果表明，中国经济因素表现为促进作用持续提升；中国技术市场规模和创新产业规模表现为先抑制后促进，且促进作用不断提升；中国产品市场需求和创新投入表现为抑制作用持续提升；中国创新产出在时间上表现为促进作用先提升后下降并最终稳定的状态。最后，提出不同政策建议，以促进中国政产学研资协同创新体系后续发展。     

Farm Capital Investment and Deviations from the Optimal Path

We identify farms’ optimal investment path in capital assets and compare it with their actual investment to assess the direction and extent of deviation from the optimal investment. A probit model is further used to investigate the determinants of the probability that a farmer over‐ or under‐invests in capital assets. We use a panel dataset of Dutch dairy farms over the period 2003–2013, and find that most farms under‐invest in capital assets during the study period. Although the number of farms that had over‐invested in capital assets is relatively small, these farms account for the biggest share of total investment in capital assets. The probit results show that liquidity, agricultural support payments, age, land tenure and standard output size are important variables explaining the likelihood of over‐and under‐investment.     

Institutional Economics as Theory of Policy Change: Impact of Past Policy Failures on Present Policy

Social scientists have developed several theories for understanding or evaluating policy change over time. Since all costs or benefits are not internalized owing to positive transaction costs, policymaking is always implemented under cost underestimation conditions and, therefore, is imperfect. I call this trait policy failure in this article. Furthermore, I show that a new framework combining the social costs approach and the legal/economic approach in institutional economics is suitable and can be applied to evaluating how past policy failures affect present policy, providing as an example the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.     

Central bank disclosure as a macroprudential tool for financial stability

The Basel Capital Accord (pillar 3) states that disclosure of information (transparency) is essential to financial stability. This study analyzes, through inflation reports, the disclosure of information from the Central Bank of Brazil concerning the credit market. We consider credit risk and capital buffers as measures of financial stability in this analysis. Furthermore, in order to measure the perception of the monetary authority on the credit market, we built two indices based on the central bank’s communication on credit development. We performed a panel data analysis based on a sample of 125 banks for the period from June 1999 to September 2014 (7000 observations). The findings suggest that central bank communication regarding expectations concerning the credit market contributes to financial stability. Therefore, this kind of communication of central banks (about credit development) may constitute an important macroprudential tool to improve financial stability.     

就业结构调整对水库移民土地流转的影响研究*——以南水北调中线工程移民为例

[目的]为促进水库移民的生计恢复及转型,探寻就业结构和土地流转间的交互机制,分析两者间耦合作用对当前移民安置模式及政策的影响。[方法]文章从移民就业结构变迁出发,通过超边际理论构建了安置区移民土地的流转机制模型,推演了从业决策对土地流转行为的影响路径,并运用南水北调农业安置移民数据进行实证检验。[结果]大面积转出土地是移民搬迁后土地处置的主要行为,移民中土地转入户有所增加,但土地集中度却有所减少。移民非农就业较搬迁前有明显上升,并有向当地兼业转移的趋势,但与土地流转间并不互为因果,农村社保还难以弱化其对土地养老的依赖。劳动力数量、非农就业时间、非农收入占比、土地政策等对移民土地流转行为和规模均有显著影响,而外出就业前景和地租水平在促进土地流转行为的同时,却不一定能增加土地流转面积。[结论]移民外迁中可以采用无土安置代替农业安置,推动移民土地流转的关键在于技能培训、政策保障和地租补贴,简单的就业推荐和土地权属划分的作用有限。而对于移民中的农业大户,则需在满足土地转入面积的基础上,保障其在安置区的各项土地权益。     

Farm size and productivity growth in the United States Corn Belt

In recent decades, agricultural production in the U.S. has continued to shift to large-scale operations, raising concerns about the economic viability of small and midsized farms. To understand whether economies of size provided an incentive for the consolidation of production, the study estimates the total factor productivity (TFP) of five size classes of grain-producing farms in the U.S. Heartland (Corn Belt) region. Using quinquennial Agricultural Census data from 1982 to 2012 the study also compares TFP growth rates across farm sizes to gain insight into whether observed productivity differences are likely to persist. The finding of a strong positive relationship between farm size and TFP suggests that consolidation of production has contributed to recent aggregate productivity growth in the crop sector. The study estimates the extent to which sectoral productivity growth can be attributed to structural change versus other factors including technological change. The study also explores some tradeoffs associated with policies that raise the productivity of small versus large farms.