Survival chances of new businesses: do regional conditions matter?

This article analyses the effects of industry-, regional- and firm-level characteristics on the post-entry performance of new businesses by means of an econometric survival time model. First preference is given to an accelerated failure time model assuming a log-logistic distribution. The data involve a representative sample of businesses in the private sector of West Germany during 1993 to 2002 period. The results demonstrate that the regional dimension is most important; whereas firm-level characteristics play a subordinated role.     

Immigration and economic growth: do origin and destination matter?

This article assesses the heterogeneous effects of immigration on economic growth depending on both the origin and the destination countries. Following the development of a growth model augmented by human capital of immigrants, we estimate it in a dynamic panel setup using the system-GMM estimator. We find that the growth-enhancing effect of immigration is significantly larger when immigration flows from developed to developing economies than when it does to those that include both developed and developing economies. We interpret these results as evidence of immigrants from developed countries bringing with them their advanced knowledge into the developing countries.     

Gender and culture: do they matter for norms?

In a natural experiment, we observed that the influence of a norm depended upon the gender and cultural background of participants. Both gender and cultural background contributed to the effect of peer pressure that partly controlled against the act of cheating among participants as they completed a group task. Furthermore, both factors served to describe the characteristics of hardworking individuals in the group. We therefore conclude that the effectiveness of a norm in a group is expected to depend upon the presence of hardworking individuals therein.     

Exports and firm survival: do trade regime and productivity matter?

This article aims to investigate the role of trade regime and productivity in the link between exporting and firm survival. We use firm-level data from China to examine whether exporters engaged in different trade regimes and with different levels of productivity react differently with regard to survival probability. We find that exporters engaged in all types of trade regimes have higher survival probabilities in comparison with nonexporters; however, the survival probability of exporters engaged in processing trade is less positively affected by productivity.     

Women and work: what role do social norms play?

Against the background of the current (economic) research which concentrates particularly on individual and structural factors, this paper examines if and to what extent social norms (in terms of attitudes towards gender roles and work commitment) can make a complementary statement in explaining women’s employment status and number of working hours. The impact is presumed to be enhanced through norms shared by people belonging to the same households, peer groups, and by residents of the same region. The analysis relies on a rich German dataset and employs a probit model with sample selection. The results highlight, among other things, the importance of the ‘relevant others’ (particularly partners living in the same household and peers sharing similar social and work characteristics, but not necessarily geographical proximity) in explaining women’s employment status.     

Choice of specialization: do peers matter?

Social influence is an important factor in learning and decision-making. We estimate peer influence on student choice of specialization using data on undergraduate students of a Russian university. Information about individual social ties has been gathered from a questionnaire survey. We show that specialization choice is significantly influenced by friends as well as by study partners. The strongest effect is produced by friends who are study partners and those who have similar academic achievements. Reciprocal friendship ties have a stronger influence on the choice than nonreciprocal ones. Also, the decision is affected by classmates with similar academic achievement. The results allow us to better understand the mechanisms of peer effects in the specialization choice.     

Strategic complementarities and social transfers: how do PROGRESA payments impact nonbeneficiaries?

The article examines local economy effects of social transfers by focusing on food consumption and asset holdings of noneligible households in rural Mexico following the introduction of Programa de Educación, Salud y Alimentación (PROGRESA) in 1997. The quasi experimental nature of the evaluation data collected for the purposes of evaluating the impact of PROGRESA enables comparison of welfare indicators among noneligible households in treatment areas and control areas. The analysis finds that noneligible households in treatment areas show significantly higher levels of food consumption and asset holdings following the introduction of PROGRESA, compared to noneligible households in control areas. These results are interpreted to suggest that transfers in poor rural areas in Mexico enable agents to interact more strategically such that nonbeneficiaries, as well as beneficiaries, reap consumption and production advantages.     

The market for corporate control: do countries and technological regimes matter?

Using DATASTREAM and LexisNexis databases, we examine the experience from 1995 to 2005 for eight European countries and 21 sectors, and compute the frequency of merger transactions at sectoral level, controlling for the roles of country variables and focusing on distinct technological patterns of innovation. We found that, even in market‐based countries, where transfer of control is a frequent phenomenon, mergers are less frequent in those sectors where innovation follows cumulative processes and where takeovers represent a ‘breach of knowledge.’ This study provides empirical support to the fruitful line of research of varieties of capitalism (Hall and Soskice 2001 Hall, P. A. and Soskice, D., eds. 2001. Varieties of Capitalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] [Google Scholar]) and shows that sectoral differences in M&A (mergers and acquisitions) may be seen in their complementarities with differences by country and their institutional frameworks. Results confirm that acquisitions may occur even in those economies where block‐holders are present, but where the good quality of institutions leaves no space for defence against takeovers. It also highlights the significant role played by takeover regulation, and suggests that the recent reforms in European harmonization should be implemented, so that the obstacles impeding takeovers can be removed. However, policy‐makers should also try to identify for which economies and sectoral fields of specialization, merger activities produce more beneficial effects and which turn out to be detrimental.     

Adolescent premarital childbearing: do economic incentives matter?

This paper develops and tests a three-stage nested logistic model of teenage childbearing that is influenced by economic incentives and costs created by US public policy. The modeling of teenage childbearing involves becoming pregnant, the choice to have an abortion or to bear the child, and the choice to bear the child premaritally or maritally. Data were obtained from a sample of 1718 Black and White women aged 14-16 years in 1979 from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. In 1990, the birth rate among unmarried youth was 29.5/1000 unmarried White women vs. 110.1/1000 unmarried Black women. In the sample, the pregnancy rate was 24% among White teenagers and 48% among Black teenagers. Miscarriages or stillbirths occurred among 11% of Whites and 12% of Blacks. Abortions were performed for 37% of Whites and 12% of Blacks. An incentive variable is the welfare guarantee. Cost variables include the cost of obtaining an abortion and the cost of obtaining contraceptive services and supplies. Access to family planning services is also accounted for in the model. Findings indicate that welfare, abortion, and family planning policy variables have a racially specific impact. For White teenagers, these variables have significant effects on pregnancy outcomes. For Black teenagers, the insignificance may reflect differences in sample size or important unmeasured racial differences in factors that influence fertility and marital behavior. The authors suggest that the rational choice perspective does not adequately explain premarital childbearing. It is also suggested that the specification of the variables on abortion, family planning, and adolescent sexual behavior may be fundamentally different and reflect differences in state attitudes and social customs. Only if the policy variables really change the costs of different pregnancy outcomes will changes in social policy change individual adolescent behavior. The authors state that focusing on only economic incentives did not rule out other influences on premarital childbearing.     

Effectiveness of One-Euro-Jobs: do programme characteristics matter?

Recent German labour market reforms introduced a large scale workfare programme called One-Euro-Jobs to activate welfare recipients and improve their employment prospects. In programme design leeway is left to regional actors. Using administrative data and Propensity Score (PS) matching, this article investigates the association between programme design and effectiveness, so as to provide insight on how to increase programme effectiveness. First, effects of different types of One-Euro-Jobs according to planned duration and weekly working hours compared to ‘waiting’ are estimated. Second, programme types are compared directly to disentangle selection and programme effects. As expected lock-in effects are larger for participations with a longer planned duration, but not for those with longer weekly working hours. One-Euro-Jobs do not generally increase the employment prospects for East German men beyond 2 years after programme start and longer and more intensive participations even decrease employment prospects. In West Germany, One-Euro-Jobs generally increase the employment chances and longer participations lead to slightly greater employment opportunities roughly 2 years after programme start. The initial advantages of short participations decrease over time. Following these results, a reallocation of participants might improve programme effectiveness.     

Farmers adoption of integrated crop protection and organic farming: Do moral and social concerns matter?

We investigate empirically the role of moral and social concerns in farmers' decision to adopt integrated crop protection (IP) and organic farming (OF). A survey questionnaire has been sent to 1286 fruit-growers and vegetable producers located in the French areas of Alpes de Haute Provence, Hautes-Alpes and Vaucluse. Analysis of individual responses (N = 243) shows that, although economic concerns play a strong role, a significant number of respondents give high importance to moral and social ones. We also examine how these considerations matter according to different crop protection strategies, that is, conventional farming, IP and OF. Using a multinomial logistic regression, we find that (1) social concerns (e.g., showing to others one's environmental commitment) drive both IP and OF adoption, (2) moral concerns (e.g., do not feel guilty about one's choices) increase the probability of organic farming adoption only, and (3) farmers who give high importance to economic concerns (e.g., cutting production costs) are less likely to adopt OF.     

Migrants’ well-being during the global financial crisis: Economic and social predictors

This paper investigates the economic and social predictors affecting the well-being of temporary migrants before, during and after the financial crisis. Exploiting unique panel data which cover migration spells from Tajikistan to Russia between 2001 and 2011, we find that migrants earn less but stay longer in the destination during the crisis; at the same time, they become more exposed to illegal work relations, harassment and deportation through the Russian authorities. The overall income loss can be attributed to wage cuts and to rising illegal employment that is generally poorly paid. Despite the similarities in the demographics and jobs of migrant workers, we find substantial heterogeneity in how the financial crisis affects their well-being. Migrants who experience wage losses during the crisis rationally stop migrating.     

Agricultural disaster payments in the southeastern US: do weather and climate variability matter?

Governments around the world are forced to react to disasters caused by weather. The agricultural sector is particularly susceptible to weather extremes and adverse climate conditions. In the US, agricultural disaster payments account for a significant part of total agricultural subsidies. The payments, and their distribution, are more important in the areas most affected by disastrous weather events, usually coinciding with areas of pronounced impact of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). In this article, the impact of weather and climate, as well as some economic variables, on disaster payments is analysed using county level data from four states in the southeastern United States. The results suggest that weather and climate variables explain most of the crop disaster payments at the county level while socioeconomic variables do not, suggesting that advancements in weather and climate forecasts could be helpful in planning for disaster compensation.     

Poverty dynamics in rural China revisited: do assets matter?

This paper uses an asset-based approach to examine poverty dynamics in rural China over the period 1989–2006. The analysis documents a significant structural component in the poverty dynamics of households. The lack of profitable agricultural asset accumulation plays an unneglectable role in causing households to be trapped in persistent poverty. The escape from poverty is increasingly dominated by stochastic upward mobility rather than by structural movement in terms of asset accumulation. This could threaten the prospect of poverty reduction in rural China. It is argued that future reform and policy-making should pay more attention to building households’ asset base.     

Trade and unions: Does size matter?

Our empirical analysis builds upon the hypothesis that unions are detrimental to a firm's efficiency. Using a rich survey of German manufacturers, we investigate firm-level determinants on the probability of collective wage bargaining with particular focus on the impact of a firm's engagement in foreign markets. An interesting and very robust finding is that exporters are less likely to engage in union wage bargaining. This finding is in line with a pessimistic perception of unions. The negative effect of collective bargaining can be offset by efficiency gains for larger exporters, who can benefit from operation cost saving effects. Size does matter as larger firms export and may find bargaining with a single entity representing the workforce more convenient than bargaining with each worker individually. We are using firm level information on IT investment as instrument for the export dummy and successfully test for the validity of this instrument.     

The caregiving responsibilities of retirees: what are they and how do they affect retirees’ well-being?

Using data from the 2010 and 2012 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS) and the associated Well-being Modules (WBM), this article examines how caregiving affects the well-being of retirees who are caregivers. Different caregiving activities are examined, including caring for household adults, caring for non-household adults, and caring for children. Different aspects of well-being are examined, including how meaningful respondents find their activities and how happy, sad, tired, in pain, and stressed their activities make them. The results show that, controlling for selection into caregiving, most caregiving negatively affects the well-being of retirees. This suggests that policies that remove some of the caregiving burden from retirees would increase their well-being.     

The effectiveness of aid on savings and investment in Sub-Saharan Africa: do volatility and institutional quality matter?

The effectiveness of aid is somewhat subject to its volatility. This study investigates the impact of aid volatility, especially on savings and investment, with a particular focus on the role of institutional quality in 45 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period from 1990 to 2013. We used the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) technique combined with a measure of volatility, namely an averaged data method involving six 4-year sub-periods. Our results suggest that while aid is positively associated with savings and investment, its volatility is harmful to savings and investment. However, when higher quality institutions exist, the volatility of aid has a less negative impact on savings and investment.

The policy implications are diverse; first, donors and SSA aid-dependent countries need to take into account the diversity of shocks to which aid can respond in mitigating its unpredictability. Secondly, SSA countries should be encouraged to establish the conditions for better quality institutions to mitigate the negative effects of the volatility of aid on macroeconomic aggregates such as savings and investment.     

The political determinants of liberalization: do ideological cleavages still matter?

We investigate the political determinants of liberalization in OECD network industries, performing a panel estimation over 30 years, through the largest and most updated sample available. Our results contrast with the traditional wisdom according to which right-wing governments do promote market-oriented policies more intensively than left-wing ones. Our findings reveal a neglected role of the so-called neoliberalism in promoting left-wing market-oriented policy. As a result, we claim that ideological cleavages ceased to act as determinants of the liberalization wave observed in network industries. This result is confirmed when controlling for the existing regulatory conditions that executives find when elected. Furthermore, we find that the country’s exposure to other countries’ policy initiatives acts as a positive stimulus for liberalization policies.