Regional convergence in Italy, 1891–2001: testing human and social capital

The article aims to present and discuss estimates of levels of human and social capital in Italy??s regions over the long term, i.e., roughly from the second half of the nineteenth century up to the present day. The results are linked to newly available evidence for regional value added in order to begin to form an explanatory hypothesis of long-term regional inequality in Italy: convergence in value added per capita is tested in light of the neoclassical exogenous growth approach, which incorporates human capital and social capital as conditioning variables into a long-term production function. In contrast with conventional wisdom (e.g. Putnam 1993), we find that social capital was not a significant predictor of economic growth in post-Unification Italy: It grew in importance only in the last decades. Conversely, human capital was more important in the first half of the twentieth century. Results suggest that there was not one single conditioning variable over the long run, thus supporting the view that, in different periods, conditioning variables can be determined by technological regimes.     

Customer relationship management and company performance—the mediating role of new product performance

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is widely accepted as an effective approach for collecting, analyzing, and translating valuable customer information into managerial action. However, the potential of CRM has been investigated only in the context of existing products. CRM’s potential to aid in future new product development (NPD) has been neglected. We develop a conceptual framework in which multiple facets of CRM are linked to new product and company performance. We test this model based on a cross-functional sample consisting of 115 R&D and 122 Marketing managers from firms spanning multiple industries. The results provide evidence that CRM has a positive effect on new product performance and further, that this effect is moderated by CRM reward systems but not CRM technology. We also show that new product performance mediates the relationship between CRM and company performance. These findings have important implications for research and practice in both the CRM and NPD areas.     

Human capital formation in the long run: evidence from average years of schooling in England, 1300–1900

In this paper, I quantify average years of education present in the English population between 1307 and 1900. The estimates are based on extensive source material on literacy rates, number of primary and secondary schools and enrolment figures. An additional distinction is made on the basis of gender and of level of schooling. The trends in the data are indicative of significant increases in the level of educational attainment during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This remarkable growth in schooling was followed by a strong decline in average years of education after ca. 1720. Whilst one in seven boys entered secondary schooling at the end of seventeenth century, this had decreased to one in thirty by the 1880s. Overall, the trends in the data suggest that education was beneficial to pre-industrial economic growth, but this was not sustained following the initial stage of the industrialisation process.     

Reassessing the bank–industry relationship in Italy, 1913–1936: a counterfactual analysis

Until the banking reform in 1936, banks and industrial companies in Italy were strongly intertwined (both in terms of ownership and interlocking directorates). Using Imita.db—a large dataset containing data on over 300,000 directors of Italian joint-stock companies—this paper analyzes what would have happened to the Italian corporate network in the years 1913, 1921, 1927 and 1936 if the German-type universal banks and their directors would have not been there. Our test shows that new centers of the system would have emerged (financial, electricity, and phone companies), confirming the interconnected nature of the Italian capitalism. We also analyze two industries (textiles and iron and steel) characterized by different labor-to-capital intensities to check for sectoral differences. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that local banks were important in funding both industries.     

When one bad apple spoils consumers’ judgment of the brand: exposure to an employee’s non-workplace transgression and potential remedies

Four experiments investigate consumers’ moral judgments of a firm’s brand reputation when given information about an employee’s non-workplace transgression. To the extent that the employee is perceived to have power in the firm (i.e., control over resources and decisions), the employee’s offensive action damages the firm’s reputation and decreases consumers’ purchase intentions. These effects occur even though the action occurs in the employee’s private life and is unrelated to product quality. The results replicate for three types of products and three types of offenses. The employee’s perceived power in the firm provides the most consistent explanation of customers’ negative responses and is a better predictor than the alternative explanations tested (e.g., perceived status). Results also show that after an offense comes to light, firm reactions that decrease or eliminate the employee’s power in the organization—such as reducing decision-making responsibilities or firing the employee—can help restore the firm’s reputation.     

Corporate sponsorship as an image platform: understanding the roles of relationship fit and sponsor–sponsee similarity

Studies have shown that the fit between a sponsoring brand and the sport, art, or charity sponsored influences outcomes such as brand awareness and image. This research adds the role of sponsor–sponsee similarity to the discussion of fit. The authors argue that similarity interacts with fit when conditions evoke suspicion or disrupt typical inferences regarding sponsorship relationships. Interaction is particularly important when the sponsor seeks to develop its image by association with a cause, and is also of consequence for the cause in terms of its branding. Three studies test sponsorship effects with respect to blood donation and cancer prevention organizations. Results support the predicted moderated mediation model, showing that similarity between a corporate sponsor and a sponsored cause can interact with fit, influencing sponsorship evaluations directly and shaping attitudes and behavioral intentions toward constituents indirectly. This work reveals a counterintuitive effect of similarity for some sponsorship relationships.     

Harmonizing conflict in husband–wife purchase decision making: perceived fairness and spousal influence dynamics

To market important products to families successfully, salespeople must understand how couples behave in concert to resolve conflict across major decisions. The authors develop a model of spousal fairness and test it with a study of multi-period family purchase decision making. The results show that a spousal sense of fairness serves as a mechanism for contemporary couples to harmonize conflict over time in family decisions. Specifically, spouses’ perceived fairness mediates the relationship between spousal prior influence and spousal decision behavior in subsequent decisions. Spouses also consider their partner’s perceptions of fairness when taking action to restore fairness. Moreover, the effects of perceived fairness are moderated by spousal traits of empathy, egalitarianism, and empowerment in a gendered pattern.

The moderating role of institutional networking in the customer orientation–trust/commitment–performance causal chain in China

This study uncovers the ignored role of institutional environment for marketing strategy and customer relationship management. Hypothesis tests in a sample of Chinese firms find support that channel networking strengthens the customer orientation–customer trust/commitment–firm performance (CTP) causal chain. In addition, the results show that government networking moderates this chain in a non-linear fashion. The CTP linkages are most salient when the firm develops a moderate level, rather than a high or low level of networking ties with government agencies.

Institutions and opportunism in buyer–supplier exchanges: the moderated mediating effects of contractual and relational governance

The marketing channel literature has paid limited attention to institutional environments that constrain buyer–supplier exchanges, though such institutions are fundamental determinants of transaction costs, and thus of the occurrence of opportunism in the buyer–supplier dyads. Drawing on transaction cost economics and institutional theory, this study uncovers the critical influence of formal and informal institutions (i.e., legal effectiveness and networking expenditure) on the use of governance in deterring opportunism, as well as the moderating role of government support on the efficacy of governance mechanism. The findings from a buyer–supplier dyadic survey and 2 secondary datasets reveal that legal effectiveness mitigates opportunism through increased use of both contractual and relational governance; in contrast, networking expenditure reduces opportunism through relational governance, yet increases opportunism via lowering contractual governance. In addition, contractual governance is more efficient in constraining opportunism when government support is high, whereas relational governance deters opportunism more when government support is low. These findings offer important implications for academic research and managerial practice.     

Relative deprivation and labour conflict during Spain’s industrialization: the Bilbao estuary, 1914–1936

What drove social conflict in Spain’s industrial areas in the period before the Spanish Civil War? This paper is concerned with contrasting the determinants of working-class conflict in northern Spain at the beginning of the twentieth century. Our hypothesis is that the key determinant of conflicts in emerging industrial areas during the interwar period was the struggle to obtain satisfactory family income in a context of combined high price fluctuation, unemployment and economic boom and bust. We suggest two new ways to decipher how economic factors interact with labour conflict. We introduce the family as the relevant income unit when considering wage struggles and relative deprivation. And secondly, we study the reactions to short-term variations of income on families by using monthly rather than quarterly or annual data.     

Human capital,knowledge and economic development: evidence from the British Industrial Revolution, 1750–1930

Endogenous growth models raise fundamental questions about the nature of human creativity, and the sorts of resources, skills, and knowledge inputs that shift the frontier of technology and production possibilities. Many argue that the experience of early British industrialization supports the thesis that economic advances depend on specialized scientific training, the acquisition of costly human capital, and the role of elites. This paper examines the contributions of different types of knowledge to industrialization, by assessing the backgrounds, education and inventive activity of major contributors to technological advances in Britain during the crucial period between 1750 and 1930. The results indicate that scientists, engineers or technicians were not well-represented among the cadre of important British inventors, and their contributions remained unspecialized until very late in the nineteenth century. The informal institution of apprenticeship and learning on the job provided effective means to enable productivity and innovation. For developing countries today, the implications are that costly investments in specialized human capital resources might be less important than incentives for creativity, flexibility, and the ability to make incremental adjustments that can transform existing technologies into inventions and innovations that are appropriate for prevailing domestic conditions.     

Convergence (and divergence) in the biological standard of living in the USA, 1820–1900

Standard economic indicators suggest that the USA experienced long-run economic growth throughout the nineteenth century. However, biological indicators, including human stature, offer a different picture, rising early in the century, falling (on average) mid-century, and rising again at the end of the century. This pattern varied across geographical regions. Using a unique data set, consisting of mean adult stature by state, we test for convergence in stature among states in the nineteenth century. We find that during the period of declining mean stature (1820–1870), heights actually diverged. Later in the century (1870–1890) we find a type of “negative” convergence indicating that stature among states tended to converge to a new, lower steady state. Only towards the end of the century (1880–1900) do we find classic convergence behavior. We argue that the diversity of economic experiences across regions, including urbanization, industrialization, and transportation improvements, explain this pattern of divergence and then convergence.

Transatlantic wage gaps and the migration decision: Europe–Canada in the 1920s

As has been seen in other contexts, workers in similar occupations earned much higher wages in Canada than Europe during the 1920s. This observation and related aspects of immigration are addressed with a life-cycle model of the migration decision. The characteristics of immigrants from five European countries: Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden, are explored in a way that sheds light not just on those population flows but on the process of immigration generally. We draw on passenger manifests from immigrant ships for information on the individual migrants. Simulations, based partly on the these manifests, reveal that the costs of migration, borrowing constraints, concern for status, and country-specific taste preferences account for key immigrant characteristics, and help explain the large wage differentials that persisted despite Canada’s relatively open immigration policy.     

The antecedents and consequences of manufacturer–distributor cooperation: an empirical test in the U.S. and Japan

We develop a conceptual model for studying the antecedents and consequences of achieved and optimal levels of manufacturer–distributor (M–D) cooperation. We hypothesized that levels of market turbulence, competitive intensity, and the manufacturing firm’s strategic type (i.e., prospector, analyzer, or defender) affected the optimal level of M–D cooperation. We also hypothesized that the level of under- and overachieving the optimal levels of cooperation negatively affects firm performance. The conceptual model is tested using empirical data collected from 295 manufacturing firms in the U.S. and validated using data collected from 104 distributors in the U.S. We also collect data from 255 Japanese manufacturing firms and 98 Japanese distributors. The empirical results support the model’s hypotheses with only one unexpected finding: in the Japanese sample, overachieving the optimal level of cooperation has a greater negative effect on performance than underachieving. We conclude by discussing theoretical and managerial implications.

The stability of money demand in the long-run: Italy 1861–2011

Money demand stability is a crucial issue for monetary policy efficacy, and it is particularly endangered when substantial changes occur in the monetary system. By implementing the ARDL technique, this study intends to estimate the impact of money demand determinants in Italy over a long period (1861–2011) and to investigate the stability of the estimated relations. We show that instability cannot be excluded when a standard money demand function is estimated, irrespectively of the use of M1 or M2. Then, we argue that the reason for possible instability resides in the omission of relevant variables, as we show that a fully stable demand for narrow money (M1) can be obtained from an augmented money demand function involving real exchange rate and its volatility as additional explanatory variables. These results also allow us to argue that narrower monetary aggregates should be employed in order to obtain a stable estimated relation.     

Equilibrium and adjustment of exchange rates in the Chinese silver standard economy, 1928–1935

We examine the equilibrium and adjustment of exchange rates in the Chinese silver standard economy, 1928–1935. We find a robust long-run relationship between the Chinese dollar exchange rate and the metallic value of the Chinese dollar. The deviation from the equilibrium is short-lived and is quickly eliminated by arbitrage activities. We also find that governmental measures to limit free silver flows can disrupt this equilibrium relationship.     

Quantifying the relative importance of export industries in a small open economy during the great depression of the 1930s: an input–output approach

This paper provides a quantification of the relative importance of export industries in a small open economy using new data provided by input–output tables describing the Finnish economy in 1928. The Finnish analysis of the Great Depression of the 1930s has been particularly focused on the importance of foreign trade. Despite the lack of quantified evidence, it is commonly accepted that the export industries had a major role in the economic development. The basic input–output framework is extended into a production–consumption model to produce a more elaborate model that provides a quantification of changes in final demand of some key industries in the economy. Results suggest that even though the role of export industries was dominant, domestic market industries and private consumption also had a significant role in the depression.