The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993: what does it mean for your organization?

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires that employers with 50 or more employees located within a 75-mile radius of a worksite be granted 12 weeks of unpaid leave. This article summarizes the arguments for and against mandated leave, describes the main tenets of FMLA and suggests how employers can implement FMLA leave in a manner favorable to both the employer and the employees.     

An evaluation of the relationship between minimum wage and unemployment: does the local cost-of-living matter?

This article examines the relationship between federal, state and municipal minimum wage laws, local cost-of-living (COL) and the unemployment rate. It finds a strong statistically significant positive relationship between minimum wages and unemployment once COL is taken into account. Our results suggest that federal minimum wage policy is likely to have more harmful effects in rural/low cost areas.     

Does capital and financing structure have any relevance to the performance of microfinance institutions?

This paper aims to explore the impact of capital and financing structure on the performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs) from an agency theoretic standpoint. GMM and IV estimations with instruments have been performed using a panel dataset of 782 MFIs in 92 countries for the period 2000–2007. Results confirm the agency theoretic claim that an increase in leverage raises profit-efficiency in MFIs. The study also finds that cost efficiency deteriorates with decreasing leverage. Likewise, the negative significant impact of leverage on depth of outreach can also be explained. However, the study finds that capital structure does not have any noticeable impact on breadth of outreach and neither is it significantly related with women’s participation as loan clients.     

What hinders innovation performance of services and manufacturing firms in Mexico?

Barriers to innovation are heterogeneous, of financial and non-financial nature. The importance of barriers to innovation and their actual influence on innovation depend on firms’ characteristics such as sectoral affiliation, technological behavior and their response to perceived obstacles to innovation. Firms either continue to engage in innovation, or they avoid the activity altogether. This paper explored the nature and perceived importance of the obstacles to innovation that firms confront, in a developing-country context; we build on survey data about firms in Mexico. Our findings suggest that two kinds of policy interventions should help offset a firm’s perception of barriers to innovation. On the one hand, policies should enhance the innovation capacity of firms interested in innovation; on the other hand, policies need to tackle factors that reduce the interest of firms in innovation. Policies that boost demand for locally generated innovations would assist in achieving both these goals.     

The franc shock and Swiss GDP: how long does it take to start feeling the pain?

The article addresses the question on what is the typical time horizon over which a full transmission of movements in the real exchange rate takes place into real economy. We base our analysis on the mixed-frequency small-scale dynamic factor model (DFM) proposed by Siliverstovs in 2012 fitted to the Swiss data. In this article, we augment the benchmark model with the real exchange rate of the Swiss franc vis-a-vis currencies of its 24 trading partners, while keeping the rest of model specification intact. We are interested in investigating the relationship between the common latent factor, representing the Swiss business cycle, and the real exchange rate. We explore the temporal relationship between these two variables by varying the time lag with which the real exchange rate enters the factor model by recording the magnitude and statistical significance of the factor loading coefficient in the equation pertaining to the real exchange rate variable. Our main conclusion is that the fluctuations in the exchange rate start influencing real economy after 1 month and their effect is practically over after 13 months. The largest effect is recorded at the time horizon of about 6 to 9 months.     

What Does it Take to Eliminate the use of a Strategy Strictly Dominated by a Mixture?

This paper reports an experiment to determine whether subjects will learn to stop using a strictly dominated strategy that can be an above average reply. It is difficult to find an experimental design that eliminates the play of the strictly dominated strategy completely. The least effective treatment used money to motivate behavior directly. The most effective treatment used a binary-lottery with money prizes to induce preferences, but even this treatment required giving subjects plenty of experience. Doing so reduced the play of the strictly dominated strategy to around 10 percent by the end of a session. There is no evidence for the explosive cycling needed to make the strictly dominated strategy an above average reply.Related research available at http://erl.tamu.edu/     

Exchange rate variability and trade: why is it so difficult to find any empirical relationship?

This paper discusses why previous literature has found little evidence of any effect of exchange rate variability on international trade. Methodological and statistical issues are discussed. In particular, comparisons are made of estimations based on different specifications or using different data sets and changes in the results depending on the method used are shown.     

Long swing in appreciation and short swing in depreciation and does the market not know it?—the case of Taiwan

This paper finds an asymmetric swing in Taiwan's exchange rate. In contrast to the developed countries, whose exchange rates exhibit long swings in both appreciation and depreciation regimes, the long swing only exists in an appreciation regime for Taiwan. A short swing, however, is found during a depreciation regime in Taiwan. These results may reflect to some extent the central bank's preference, which is to have a let‐it‐go policy during depreciation and a slowdown policy in appreciation. In addition, it may simply reflect the Japanese yen's influences.     

Whom do you distrust and how much does it cost? An experiment on the measurement of trust

We advance the measurement of trust in economics in two ways. First, we highlight the importance of clearly identifying the target of trust, particularly for obtaining concordance between attitudinal and behavioral measures of trust. Second, we introduce a novel behavioral measure of (dis)trust, based on individuals? willingness to pay to avoid being vulnerable to the target of trust. We conduct an experiment in which we vary the target of trust among passersby at several locations around a city, measuring both behavioral distrust and trust attitudes towards these varying targets. We find that subjects discriminate based on perceived characteristics of different targets in determining whether to trust, in a manner consistent with trust elicited using attitudinal measures and with actual trustworthiness. Risk aversion and altruism do not correlate highly with our measure of distrust.     

How does the entrepreneurial orientation of scientists affect their scientific performance? Evidence from the quadrant model

In order to identify the effect of academic entrepreneurship on science, this work compares the publication performance of entrepreneurial scientists with that of conventional scientists. Using Stokes's ‘quadrant model’, this paper examines how the entrepreneurial orientation affects scientific performance. The results on advanced materials research in Japan found that (i) entrepreneurial scientists publish more papers than conventional scientists do; (ii) the papers of conventional scientists demonstrate better citation performance than those of entrepreneurial scientists do, on average; (iii) coming to the top-cited papers, entrepreneurial scientists show higher propensity for publishing high-impact papers than conventional scientists do; and (iv) the portfolio interdisciplinarity of papers authored by entrepreneurial scientists is higher than that of conventional scientists. Although the influence of academic entrepreneurship on scientific performance is still unclear, our findings suggest that entrepreneurial scientists could make a relatively large contribution to furthering the scientific frontier by relying on innovation rather than convention.     

What Explains the High Returns to the IPOs of China's A‐Shares?

Abstract

This paper investigates the initial returns of Chinese A‐share initial public offerings (IPOs) under the split‐share structure before 2005. The split‐share structure refers to the coexistence of shareholders of tradable shares and shareholders of non‐tradable shares. The average initial return is much higher than those of other countries, even though this has been declining. We argue that the split‐share structure causes the initial returns of Chinese IPOs to be very high level in the beginning, and then to decrease slowly because of the institutional transition and the path‐dependent characteristics. With the reform of non‐tradable share offerings, the average initial return of Chinese IPOs is likely to fall.     

And if the ball does not cross the line? A comprehensive analysis of football clubs’ performance

The football club market is changing fast in the social media era. In this global market, clubs must maintain or improve fans’ attendance at the stadium; simultaneously, they need, more than ever, to take care of social media. The aim of this article is to test and discuss a comprehensive approach to analysing the performance of football clubs regarding their multiplicity of objectives. We analyse the efficiency of English Premier League (EPL) clubs during three seasons (2012/13–2014/15). The methodologies employed are data envelopment analysis (DEA) and a bootstrapped DEA model. The input is the market value of the squad, and the outputs are sports results, total revenue, the ratio of stadium utilization during the season and an index of social media impact. The results are robust to alternative estimation methods and indicate that EPL clubs still have a margin for improving their overall efficiency, mainly the medium clubs. The analysis of football clubs’ performance with the proposed comprehensive approach provides a useful tool to help managers with evaluation and feedback considering the actual context of the market. The approach brings closer the opportunity to design appropriate strategies to improve clubs’ efficiency as well as competition policies.     

What are the drivers of business demography and employment in the countries of the European Union?

ABSTRACT

The aim of this contribution is to establish a typology of European entrepreneurship countries with respect to variables related to entrepreneurial activity and economic development. Using a combination of multidimensional data analyses allows us to extend the concept of ‘entrepreneurial regimes’ and leads to the distinction of five such entrepreneurial regimes. Moreover, in order to better characterize these classes, a wide set of illustrative variables representative of national economic development, labour market functioning, and formal and informal institutional environments, as well as variables specific to the entrepreneurial population, are considered. Finally, discriminant analyses show that the five explanatory themes considered (Innovation, Employment, Formal Institutions, Entrepreneurship and Governance) differentiate the classes, and significantly explain the diversity of entrepreneurial regimes. These findings have important implications for the implementation of public policy, in order to promote entrepreneurial activity and reduce unemployment.     

Why is the teen birth rate in the United States so high and why does it matter?

Teens in the United States are far more likely to give birth than in any other industrialized country in the world. U.S. teens are two and a half times as likely to give birth as compared to teens in Canada, around four times as likely as teens in Germany or Norway, and almost 10 times as likely as teens in Switzerland. Among more developed countries, Russia has the next highest teen birth rate after the United States, but an American teenage girl is still around 25 percent more likely to give birth than her counterpart in Russia. Moreover, these statistics incorporate the almost 40 percent fall in the teen birth rate that the United States has experienced over the past two decades. Differences across U.S. states are quite dramatic as well. A teenage girl in Mississippi is four times more likely to give birth than a teenage girl in New Hampshire--and 15 times more likely to give birth as a teen compared to a teenage girl in Switzerland. This paper has two overarching goals: understanding why the teen birth rate is so high in the United States and understanding why it matters. Thus, we begin by examining multiple sources of data to put current rates of teen childbearing into the perspective of cross-country comparisons and recent historical context. We examine teen birth rates alongside pregnancy, abortion, and "shotgun" marriage rates as well as the antecedent behaviors of sexual activity and contraceptive use. We seek insights as to why the rate of teen childbearing is so unusually high in the United States as a whole, and in some U.S. states in particular. We argue that explanations that economists have tended to study are unable to account for any sizable share of the variation in teen childbearing rates across place. We describe some recent empirical work demonstrating that variation in income inequality across U.S. states and developed countries can explain a sizable share of the geographic variation in teen childbearing. To the extent that income inequality is associated with a lack of economic opportunity and heightened social marginalization for those at the bottom of the distribution, this empirical finding is potentially consistent with the ideas that other social scientists have been promoting for decades but which have been largely untested with large data sets and standard econometric methods. Our reading of the totality of evidence leads us to conclude that being on a low economic trajectory in life leads many teenage girls to have children while they are young and unmarried and that poor outcomes seen later in life (relative to teens who do not have children) are simply the continuation of the original low economic trajectory. That is, teen childbearing is explained by the low economic trajectory but is not an additional cause of later difficulties in life. Surprisingly, teen birth itself does not appear to have much direct economic consequence. Moreover, no silver bullet such as expanding access to contraception or abstinence education will solve this particular social problem. Our view is that teen childbearing is so high in the United States because of underlying social and economic problems. It reflects a decision among a set of girls to "drop-out" of the economic mainstream; they choose non-marital motherhood at a young age instead of investing in their own economic progress because they feel they have little chance of advancement. This thesis suggests that to address teen childbearing in America will require addressing some difficult social problems: in particular, the perceived and actual lack of economic opportunity among those at the bottom of the economic ladder.     

Did the Thai rice-pledging programme improve the economic performance and viability of rice farming?

This article evaluates impacts of the rice-pledging programme on the economic performance and viability of rice farming in Thailand. It also investigates whether the effects of the programme are heterogeneous across different farm types using the propensity score matching technique to address the self-selection bias in the farm-level data set. We found that the programme enhanced the economic performance less than hoped for. Overall, the programme was estimated to improve the net direct farm income for participating farms by $175.12–$194.82 per hectare. Taking into account the heterogeneous effects of the programme across farm types, we calculated that the greatest effects may be realized by farmers within the small farms subsample, at $404.41–$439.85 per hectare, but only $139.80–$213.36 per hectare for midsize farms, and $138.82–$173.34 per hectare for large farms. With regard to the economic viability of the programme, we discovered that it had an insignificant effect on farm modernization investment initiatives. Thus, future strategies incorporated into the programme that better control increases in production costs, improve small farmers’ access to the programme and require participating farms to spend a portion of the money received on farm modernization may improve long-run benefits of the programme.     

What explains the performance of students in a heterogeneous environment? Conditional efficiency estimation with continuous and discrete environmental variables

Efficiency estimations which do not account for the operational environment where production units are operating in may have only a limited value. This article presents a fully nonparametric framework to estimate relative performance of production units when accounting for continuous and discrete background variables. Using insights from recent developments in nonparametric econometrics, we show how conditional efficiency scores can be estimated using a tailored mixed kernel function with a data-driven bandwidth selection. The methodology is applied to the sample of Dutch pupils from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's Programme for International Student Assessment (OECD PISA) data set. We estimate students' performance and the influence of its background characteristics. The results of our application show that several family- and student-specific characteristics have a statistically significant effect on the educational efficiency, while school-level variables do not have impact on performance.     

What does IT Take for Congress to Enact Good Policies? an Analysis of Roll Call Voting in the US Congress

We study the conditions under which members of Congress incorporate policy‐specific considerations in their decisions. To do this, we estimate a model that accounts for the influence of private information about legislation quality on voting patterns in the House and Senate. We find that minority party members are more likely to evaluate proposals on their merits than majority members, but institutional and electoral considerations significantly attenuate these partisan differences. In particular, seniority, electoral safety, and constituents' political knowledge have a balancing effect on partisan predispositions to rely on policy‐relevant information, making minority (majority) members less (more) likely to vote informatively.     

Do data policy restrictions impact the productivity performance of firms and industries?

This paper examines how policies regulating the cross‐border movement and domestic use of electronic data on the internet impact the productivity of firms in sectors relying on electronic data. In doing so, we collect regulatory information on a group of developed economies and create an index that measures the regulatory restrictiveness of each country's data policies. The index is based on observable policy measures that explicitly inhibit the cross‐border movement and domestic use of data. Using cross‐country firm‐level and industry‐level data, we analyse econometrically the extent to which these data regulations over time impact the productivity performance of downstream firms and industries, respectively. We show that stricter data policies have a negative and significant impact on the performance of downstream firms in sectors reliant on electronic data. This adverse effect is stronger for countries with strong technology networks, for servicified firms, and holds for several robustness checks.