Scarp the C.A.P.

The abuses of the Common Agricultural Policy are familiar. Richard Howarth argues that they cannot be patched up but can be removed by abolition of the system that supports inefficient French and German small farmers.     

Ranking industry performance in the US

In recent decades, rankings of states on virtually every basis have proliferated. Prominent among these rankings have been those that attempt to measure the economic/business environment of states. These rankings tend to be an indexing based on many types of sometimes unrelated data rendering the rankings of questionable meaning. This paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to provide rankings of state economic performance. By using DEA, we develop rankings that are systematic and have a meaningful interpretation.     

Desingularization and Dequalification: A Foray Into Ranking Production and Utilization Processes

Abstract

Although some authors highlight the benefits of journal rankings, previous research is often highly critical of them, insinuating that they can lead to desingularization of academic journals (i.e. their impoverishment and standardization) and dequalification of researchers (i.e. a weakening of researchers’ ability to evaluate academic research). However, as very few authors have empirically assessed these presumptions, we aim to address this gap in the literature. Based on Lucien Karpik’s notions of singularities, judgment devices, forms of involvement, and emulation and rivalry, we assess whether the processes surrounding the production and use of journal rankings might lead to desingularization and dequalification. Our findings support previous research by highlighting that processes where passivity and heteronomy (i.e. lack of autonomy) prevail are conducive to desingularization, rivalry and dequalification. Our findings, however, introduce some nuances into the debate by underscoring instances where emulation logic is employed instead of mere rivalry logic, and where substantial judgment devices and active involvement are mobilized in the production and use of rankings, thereby somewhat alleviating the spread of desingularization and dequalification. Ultimately, our study raises questions that point to a need for serious collective reflection within the academic community on the processes by which published research is evaluated.     

Assessing the impact of individual and context factors on the entrepreneurial process. A cross-country multilevel approach

This paper attempts to fill the gap on the existing entrepreneurship literature by empirically testing the influence of two groups of individual-level factors (socio-economic, demographic and perceptual characteristics) and two groups of country-level factors (both formal and informal institutional measures and macroeconomic variables) on three stages of the entrepreneurial process. We analyze the interplay between individual and context factors in nascent, young and established entrepreneurs across 49 different countries, mixing data from different sources and applying multilevel binary logistic regression models. Our results show that entrepreneurial activities are male headed, irrespectively of the entrepreneurial stage of their activities, and that highly-educated entrepreneurs are more oriented to start up new ventures. The existence of a wider network of people involved in entrepreneurship contributes to updating information on new markets and opportunities, leading to a more accurate entrepreneurial decision. The level of development of a country constitutes an important determinant of entrepreneurship but also moderates the relationship between entrepreneurship and institutional factors. In more developed countries, individual characteristics may be still determinant factors shaping the decision to become an entrepreneur, although their magnitude may depend on the stage of the entrepreneurial process. Finally, the key to entrepreneurship for both more and less developed countries seems to be their fiscal systems: a fair tax system that actively fights tax evasion and corruption seems to be essential to reducing the economic pressure associated with the creation and survival of ventures.

     

Entry mode choices in the international new ventures context. A study from different theoretical perspectives

Few studies have investigated the factors that enhance entry mode choice in the context of international new ventures (INVs). In this paper, we hypothesize that the characteristics of INVs’ products or services can explain their preference for equity entry modes. We also hypothesize that the inter-firm networks in which INVs are embedded play a deciding role in their choice of non-equity entry modes. When INVs are in inter-firm networks in which activities are developed to manage them, non-equity entry modes are preferred. We have adopted an effectuation approach to study the influence of different inter-firm network management activities on entry mode choice. In short, we have studied the effect of developing inter-firm network knowledge exchange, coordination, adaptation, conflict resolution and resource sharing management activities. In this paper we attempt to contribute to international entrepreneurship studies by reconciling the most widely accepted approaches to entry mode choice (Transactional Cost Economics, Organizational Capabilities-based and Network perspective) and international new ventures. Our findings show that the technological complexity of INVs’ products/services explain their preference for equity entry modes. Additionally, the development of network management activities among the networked firms determines the INVs’ preference for non-equity entry modes. Our results draw a decision model that differs from the ones derived from previous perspectives, which highlight the role of different characteristics of international new ventures.     

Statistical Regularity and Free Will: L.A.J. Quetelet and P.A. Nekrasov

In the 19th century, causes of empirically observed stability of averages in settings relating to human behaviour were a topic of intense discussion in western Europe. This followed an extensive study of empirical stability by the founder of modern statistics (and of the International Statistical Institute) L.A.J. Quetelet, published in 1835, in what he called "Social Physics". The eminent mathematician of strong probabilistic and philosophical inclination and Russian Orthodox religious belief, P.A. Nekrasov, took up and modified Quetelet's Social Physics in 1902, with (social) independence seen as prime cause of statistical regularity. Our paper focuses on the role free will plays in the statistical writings of Quetelet and of Nekrasov. The work of the latter has remained little known in general, mainly for politico-ideological reasons.     

A nonparametric test of weak separability and consumer preferences

Two stochastic nonparametric procedures are developed to evaluate the significance of violations of weak separability. When the data have measurement error, we show that the necessary and sufficient weak separability conditions of Varian [Varian, H., 1983. Nonparametric tests of consumer behavior. Review of Economic Studies 50, 99–110] must also satisfy the Afriat inequalities. The tests detect weak separability with high probability for weakly separable data. In addition, the procedures correctly reject weak separability for both nonseparable and random utility simulated data sets. The tests also fail to reject weak separability for a monetary and consumption data set which suggests that measurement error may be the source of the observed violations.     

A note on consistency and unbiasedness of point estimation with fuzzy data

Based on the SLLN for fuzzy random variables in uniform metric d, some asymptotical properties of point estimation with fuzzy random samples are investigated. The results of this paper establish a corresponding version on the consistency and unbiasedness of point estimation with n-dimensional fuzzy samples under considering a kind of fuzzy statistic.     

A necessary and sufficient condition for rationalizability in a quasi-linear context

The aim of this note is to give a simple characterization of the rationalizability of decision rules (or action profiles). The necessary and sufficient condition we obtain suggests interesting analogies between the Implementation Problem and Revealed Preference Theory. Two particular cases are examined:

• 1.(a) The one-dimensional context, which shows that our condition is a generalization of the monotonicity condition of Spence-Mirrlees,
• 2.(b) The linear set-up, which shows that rationalizability in multiple dimension requires more than monotonicity: it implies also symmetry conditions which are translated by Partial Differential Equations (analogue in this context of Slutsky equations for Revealed Preference Theory).

     

On the measurability and consistency of minimum contrast estimates

Summary The concept of minimum contrast (m.c.) estimates used in this paper covers maximum likelihood (m.l.) estimates as a special case. Section 1 contains sufficient conditions for the existence of measurable m.c. estimates and for their consistency. The application of these results to m.l. estimates (section 2) yields the existence of m.l. estimates for families ofp-measures (probability measures) which are compact metric or locally compact with countable base, admitting upper semicontinuous densities, whereas the classical results refer to continuous densities. This generalization is insofar of interest as upper semicontinuous versions of the densities exist whenever the densities areμ-upper semicontinuous (whereasμ-continuity does not, in general, entail the existence of continuous versions). Under appropriate regularity conditions, consistency of asymptotic maximum likelihood estimates is proven for compact (and also locally compact) separable metric families ofp-measures with upper semicontinuous densities and for arbitrary families having uniformly continuous densities with respect to the uniformity of vague convergence. The conditions sufficient for consistency are shown “indispensable” by counterexamples. Section 3 contains auxiliary results. Besides their relevance for sections 1 and 2, some of them may also be of interest in themselves, e.g. Theorem (3.4) on the selection of semicontinuous functions from semicontinuous equivalence classes.