Who offers tax-based business development incentives?

Many American communities seek to attract or retain businesses with tax abatements, tax credits, or tax increment financing of infrastructure projects (TIFs). The evidence for 1999 indicates that communities are most likely to offer one or more of these business development incentives if their residents have low incomes, if they are located close to state borders, and if their states have troubled political cultures. Ten percent greater median household income is associated with a 3.2% lower probability of offering incentives; 10% greater distance from a state border is associated with a 1.0% lower probability of offering incentives; and a 10% higher rate at which government officials are convicted of federal corruption crimes is associated with a 1.2% greater probability of offering business incentives. TIFs are the preferred incentive of communities whose residents have household incomes between $25,000 and $75,000; whereas TIFs are much less commonly offered by communities whose residents have household incomes below $25,000. The need to finance TIFs out of incremental tax revenues may make it infeasible for many of the poorest of communities to use TIFs for local business development.     

Black Applicants, Black Employees, and Urban Labor Market Policy

In this paper, we use data from a new survey of employers in four large metropolitan areas to analyze the flow of black applicants to different kinds of employers and the extent to which these applicants are hired. The results show that less-educated black workers apply less frequently for jobs in the suburbs than in the central cities, especially at smaller establishments. Their lower tendency to apply for suburban jobs seems to be mostly accounted for by factors associated with higher costs of applying and/or lower information flows. Black applicants, especially less-educated black males, are also less likely to be hired at suburban establishments. These results suggest the need for policies to improve the access of less-educated blacks to suburban employers, and also more effective enforcement of antidiscrimination laws in suburban establishments.     

Retail Contracting and Organizational Form: Alternatives to Chain Affiliation in the Motel Industry

Most of the existing empirical literature on franchising investigates the share of company-owned versus franchised establishments within large retail firms. This literature typically has not considered the decision of a business owner to operate an independent business or to become a franchisee. This paper empirically analyzes what determines whether independent ownership or affiliation is observed, using data on the affiliation status of 2,293 motel establishments located throughout the United States. Heterogeneity in the underlying economic environment helps explain affiliation choices at the establishment level. The results also suggest that failure to consider independent establishments may explain the puzzling negative correlation between risk and vertical integration commonly found in the empirical franchising literature .     

A method for quantitative evaluation of burglary resistance

Quantitative models which could be used for comparison of security systems do not seem to be available in the literature. This paper presents a model which could be used to compare the resistance to burglary of differing building designs. Emphasis is on the burglary of apartments. The model is a stochastic process, and computes the probability of successful burglary, and also the probability of burglars being thwarted without being able to attempt entry into an apartment.     

Why don’t they answer? Unit non-response in the IAB establishment panel

The paper proposed focuses on the unit-nonresponse in the IAB (Institute for Employment Research) Establishment Panel, a comprehensive data set describing the employer side of the labour market in Germany. Every year since 1993 (1996) the IAB Establishment Panel has surveyed the same establishments from all branches and different size categories in western (eastern) Germany. Although great efforts are taken to convince the owner/manager to take part in the survey there are always firms that do not answer the questionnaire. In this paper the authors try to find out why some establishments are not willing or able to respond to the questionnaire. If the respondent has the authority to provide relevant information, is able to give reliable answers to the questions with a justifiable amount of effort and is interested in the survey in business terms, participation is less frequently refused. The results also confirm the central significance of the interaction between the respondent and the interviewer. If one of the two individuals changes, the probability of further participation falls clearly.     

Self‐Regulation and the Market for Activism

This paper presents a theory of the market for activism where citizens fund activists, campaigning activists pressure firms to change their practices, and firms self‐regulate to forestall or mitigate campaigns. Activists have leverage because firms must self‐regulate before they are targeted, and their self‐regulation must deter the activists conditional on being targeted. Activists anticipate gaining more from campaigns against soft (more vulnerable) firms than hard (less vulnerable) firms, so it is more costly for soft firms to forestall the activists, and some risk a campaign but self‐regulate to mitigate the probability that the campaign succeeds. Campaigns thus can occur in equilibrium. The threat from activism is the probability that a firm is targeted, and the stronger the threat the fewer campaigns there are because more firms self‐regulate to forestall a campaign. Radical activists target harder firms than do moderate activists, and the more radical the activists the more costly it is to forestall them. Some firms are too hard to be threatened by activism and maximize their profits. Firms that are too hard to target directly may be vulnerable to campaigns threatening their supply and distribution chains. Activists and their donors have an incentive to maximize the scope of activism; that is, the breadth of the threat from activism.     

Agglomeration economies and university program creation in the knowledge economy

Existing academic literature on the relationship between agglomeration economies and university activities is both under-theorized and relatively sparse in terms of empirical examination. This paper addresses each of these voids by contributing and analyzing a market model of pro-revenue education program creation such as graduate-level executive business education (e.g. EMBA) that reveals some intriguing characteristics. For instance, it shows that demand for these pro-revenue programs is inelastic and therefore uniquely determines their availability. More specifically, we show that through agglomeration economies these types of education programs are more likely to emanate from universities located in metropolitan areas and from less academically prestigious universities. Regression analysis of a cross-section of national public universities lends support to important facets of our formal model by suggesting that agglomeration economies continue to increase the probability of offering EMBA programs through a city size of approximately 2.12 million and that the probability that a given business school will offer an EMBA is negatively related to the academic prestige of the institution to which it is affiliated.     

Are Suburban Firms More Likely to Discriminate against African-Americans?

This paper assesses whether African-Americans are more likely to experience employment discrimination in the suburbs relative to the central city. We compare central city–suburban differences in racial hiring outcomes for firms where whites are in charge of hiring to the comparable difference for firms where blacks are in charge of hiring. Both suburban black and white employers hire fewer blacks than their central-city counterparts. This geographic gap among black employers is at least as large as that of white employers. Assuming no discrimination by black employers in any location, this implies that the probability of experiencing discrimination does not vary over space. Black firms, however, are substantially more likely to hire black workers regardless of location.     

Non‐competes,business dynamism,and concentration: Evidence from a Florida case study

Most research on non‐competes has focused on employees; here we study how non‐competes affect firm location choice, growth, and consequent regional concentration, using Florida's 1996 legislative change that eased restrictions on their enforcement. Difference‐in‐differences models show that following the change, establishments of large firms were more likely to enter Florida; they also created a greater proportion of jobs and increased their share of employment in the state. Entrepreneurs or establishments of small firms, in contrast, were less likely to enter Florida following the law change; they also created a smaller proportion of new jobs and decreased their share of employment. Consistent with these location and job creation dynamics, regional business concentration increased following the law change in Florida. Nationwide cross‐sections demonstrate consistent correlations between state‐level non‐compete enforcement and the location, employment, and concentration dynamics illustrated in Florida.     

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND DISSENT FOR POSTCOLONIAL URBAN SUSTAINABILITY TRANSITIONS

Environmental justice principles are widespread at national and global levels of transition discourse, but this is sometimes irrelevant to marginalized communities. To address this issue, we apply environmental justice theory to a participatory postcolonial urban case study where poverty, unemployment and inequality continue to incentivize unregulated exploitation of vulnerable environments and people. It is unclear how national legislation can provide for indiscriminate access to environments that promote wellbeing in complex postcolonial communities, where xenophobic and economic discrimination reproduces colonial-style inequalities. To resist this injustice, the combination of academic and ordinary expressions of critique that confront regressive praxis and orthodoxies becomes a valuable and constructive political innovation for transitions. Empirical results suggest that enfranchising the most vulnerable proponents of transformation could advance their political capital to advocate for themselves, formulate and enculturate decolonized visions of urban sustainability, demand governmental and commercial accountability and foster urban reform that is relevant to them.     

Towards Unrestricted Public Use Business Microdata: The Synthetic Longitudinal Business Database

In most countries, national statistical agencies do not release establishment‐level business microdata, because doing so represents too large a risk to establishments’ confidentiality. One approach with the potential for overcoming these risks is to release synthetic data; that is, the released establishment data are simulated from statistical models designed to mimic the distributions of the underlying real microdata. In this article, we describe an application of this strategy to create a public use file for the Longitudinal Business Database, an annual economic census of establishments in the United States comprising more than 20 million records dating back to 1976. The U.S. Bureau of the Census and the Internal Revenue Service recently approved the release of these synthetic microdata for public use, making the synthetic Longitudinal Business Database the first‐ever business microdata set publicly released in the United States. We describe how we created the synthetic data, evaluated analytical validity, and assessed disclosure risk.     

The determinants of nonresidential urban land values

This paper presents the results of an empirical study of nonresidential urban land values in the Dallas metropolitan area. The data base consists of 467 vacant land transactions from 1978 to 1982. By concentrating on sales prices of vacant land rather than improved property, problems normally encountered from use of appraised values or improved properties are eliminated. Separate models are developed for industrial, commercial, and office land. The study focuses on the tendency toward agglomeration for consumers of each land use as measured by the impact on land values in the central business district, suburban nodes, and other employment concentrations. The results provide insight into a number of influences on urban land value and offer evidence that office land derives greater benefit from agglomeration than does commercial or industrial land.     

The business case for equal opportunities

It has long been argued that equality of opportunity brings business benefits and that it is in employers' interest to implement policy to promote equality of opportunity. Our analysis of the Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2004 found neither large and widespread business benefits, nor large and widespread costs associated with Equal Opportunities policies amongst the establishments that implement these. Given the net benefits to society of equal opportunities policies, this suggests that public and private benefits are likely to differ substantially and points to the need for policy intervention.     

Urban agglomerations,knowledge-intensive services and innovation: establishing the core connections

This paper investigates how resources available in urban agglomerations influence the organizational form, innovation activity and collaborative linkages of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) firms. Compared with their counterparts elsewhere, KIBS located in Norwegian large city labour market regions are more likely to be independent of multi-establishment business organizations and thus reliant on resources available externally, in their locations. This is most pronounced in the central and Western business districts of the capital, wherein independent KIBS exhibit high turnover of professionals and are less inclined to engage actively in innovation. Yet, those that do engage use the capital region economy as a platform for engaging with both domestic and international collaboration partners. Only by consecutively analysing these aspects and accounting for the selection processes involved is the empirical analysis able to uncover contrasting firm-level responses to the same urban economy resource base.     

Defining hospital clusters and associated service communities in metropolitan areas.

According to traditional concepts of hospital governance, each institution is considered responsible for the care of a defined community. Evaluation of hospital performance and effective service planning both require that hospitals' service communities be identified. However, in metropolitan regions it is difficult to associate a geographic population with any one hospital because of the wide choice of facilities available to area residents. The service community concept becomes more meaningful in these regions if several hospitals with overlapping geographic communities are defined as a cluster.This paper describes a two-step method for identifying hospital clusters and their associated service communities. The first step involves analysis of patient origin data to identify logical clusters of hospitals. Three algorithms for performing this analysis are presented. In the second step, analytical findings are reviewed by a panel of area planners and hospital experts who, considering additional qualitative factors, determine how the hospitals may be most appropriately grouped. Experience in using this method for hospitals in the seven-county region around Detroit, Michigan suggests that reasonable clusters can be identified, although clusters of central city hospitals are less well-defined than those in the suburban areas.     

National Ownership and Hr Practices In Uk Greenfield Sites

This article reports research on the influence of country of ownership on HR policy and practice in UK establishments. It is hypothesised that establishments will conform to national stereotypes in the practices they adopt and that establishments owned by firms from the USA, Japan and Germany, will, albeit in different ways, adopt more HR practices and report better outcomes than their UK counterparts. the research is based on the Third Workplace Industrial Relations Survey and on a sample of new establishments, opened in the 1980s. Analysis of the data from the 1990 Workplace Industrial Relations Survey finds no evidence that foreign-owned firms are more likely to adopt HR practices. the study of new workplaces finds that UK-owned establishments are as enthusiastic as the foreign-owned in their adoption of HR policy and practice. There is also evidence to support, at least partially, the stereotypes of the American and Japanese approaches. However German-owned establishments do not conform to the expected home country pattern. They are the least likely to adopt HR practices and also report poorer HR and employee relations outcomes. the study challenges the assumption that foreign-owned firms in the UK are more likely to adopt HR practices and indicates that we must be cautious in applying stereotypical national approaches to HRM both among foreign and UK establishments.     

Militant rhetoric and the business cycle: the case of the American Federation of Labor‐Congress of Industrial Organization

During economic downturns, when the strike becomes less of an option, labour unions may use militant rhetoric to target often electorally vulnerable actors in the political system. I find that labour's rhetorical intensity is largely determined by the business cycle and the partisanship of administrations, and provide evidence of its political effect.     

商业建筑研究分析——朗豪坊

朗豪坊位于香港旺角,整个朗豪坊贯穿整体的部分,就是零售商业部分了。设计师将裙房上部的商业空间分为四个部分,整个零售商业部分通过两部直插入"峡谷"的直达通天电梯联系在一起。这个创造性设计,不仅仅使购物的过程轻松而又愉快,同时,也使所有的店铺有均好性。"岩石峡谷"和"数码天幕"是朗豪坊最引人入胜的地方了。     

Owner and Organizational Characteristics of Black-and White-Owned Businesses: Self Employed Blacks Had Less Training, Fewer Resources, Less Profits, but Had Similar Survival Rates

Abstract . Owner and organizational characteristics of 94 Black-owned businesses and 385 White-owned businesses in Chicago, Boston, and Washington, D.C, are examined. Black business owners had fewer years of education and less business experience than their White counterparts. Black businesses were also smaller, more labor intensive, located in poorer neighborhoods, less likely to have insurance, visited by fewer customers per day, more likely to rent their shop space, and to be less profitable than White businesses. However, despite these organizational and individual characteristics, the survival rates of Black and White businesses were not significantly different. Logit analyses suggested that variables such as race, education, size of business, and the average income of those living in the neighborhood, in this sample, did have significant effects on business profitability but did not explain business survival.     

商业银行顾客满意度研究述评

在国内外商业银行顾客满意度的相关研究中,顾客满意度测评指标体系设计、指标测评、诊断分析均存在问题。因此,应该根据商业银行业务发展的现状和所处的经营环境科学设置测评指标体系,应该测量各指标的相对满意度而非绝对满意度。