Trade liberalization in services: Investor responses to NAFTA’s cross-border trucking provisions

ABSTRACT

We investigate the response of US trucking firms to the removal of barriers to cross-border trucking under NAFTA. This was done via a program implemented in 2007, cancelled in 2009, and reinstated in 2011. We use a model of endogenous exporting to show that this can arise from incorrect expectations of import competition. We find that, unsurprisingly, the program’s start resulted in lower stock returns, particularly for border firms. However, later policy changes indicate that investors, and particularly those investing in US multinationals, viewed the pilot as beneficial.     

The Coal Crisis in Appalachia: Agrarian Transformation,Commodity Frontiers and the Geographies of Capital

Capital's commodity frontiers strategy has at once woven together regional differences within an expanding world‐system and remade the productive and reproductive activities of humans and the rest of nature. The development of successive commodity frontiers gave way to long waves of economic expansion that have been pivotal to accelerating accumulation and transcending capital's recurrent crises. In short, commodity frontiers are constitutive of world‐ecological moments premised on booms and crises of accumulation. In this paper, I examine the coal commodity frontier in Appalachia, to illustrate the region's history as one of succeeding frontiers in and out of the region over the long twentieth century of American capitalism. I argue that the origin of Appalachia's coal frontier was decisively made through the nineteenth‐century agricultural revolution expressed outside of the region. Appalachia's full‐fledged development was an outcome of capital's under‐reproduction strategies. The crisis of the region's frontier turned on a lack of surplus from under‐reproduction strategies, competing coal basins, economic diversification and competing energy sources. I find that the commodity frontier concept not only illuminates regional political economies and ecologies of difference, but also explains the production of nature of historical capitalism.     

The emergence, advance and future of international entrepreneurship research — An introduction to the special forum

Since its genesis over twenty years ago, research in International Entrepreneurship has emerged as a field of study, and moved through the process of differentiation, mobilization and legitimacy building. Generally referred to as IE, research in this area is conducted by scholars worldwide and supported by various community structures, conferences and journals. In recognition of IE, this Special Forum was initiated to help clarify its parameters and history of development, the areas of research pertinent to it and critically, directions for future research.     

Pattern of childhood falls in a low-income setting: a cross-sectional study in Dar es Salaam

The objective was to determine patterns and circumstances of childhood falls in a low-income setting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This cross sectional study is based on a household survey conducted in July 2009. A total of 3927 children up to age 18 from 1928 households in 15 sampled wards were surveyed through a structured questionnaire. The current study includes information regarding fall occurrence, socio-demographic and economic factors. Data were analysed using chi-square, t-test and logistic regression. Male children had 42% higher odds of falls compared to females, and rural residents had more than two times higher odds compared to urban residents. Falls occurred three times more among age group 1-4 and two times more among age group 5-9 compared to those between 15 and 18 years. Most falls occurred outdoors (62%) while playing (51%) with boys being over-represented. Females and children aged 1-4 years fell more from stairs whereas most infants fell from furniture. Male gender, younger age groups and rural residence were significant factors for fall injuries. The circumstances in which these falls occur also differ significantly. Intervention efforts should emphasise these patterns.     

Wettbewerb und Regulierung des Bahnmarktes

Die Wettbewerbssituation auf dem deutschen Bahnmarkt ist vielschichtig: Sowohl die verschiedenen Teilsegmente des Bahnmarktes als auch der intermodale Wettbewerb müssen berücksichtigt werden. Dabei besteht die Gefahr, die Wettbewerbsposition des gesamten Eisenbahnverkehrs gegenüber anderen Verkehrstr?gern aus den Augen zu verlieren.     

Corruption perceptions vs. corruption reality

This paper examines the accuracy of corruption perceptions by comparing Indonesian villagers' reported perceptions about corruption in a road-building project in their village with a more objective measure of ‘missing expenditures’ in the project. I find that villagers' reported perceptions do contain real information, and that villagers are sophisticated enough to distinguish between corruption in a particular road project and general corruption in the village. The magnitude of the reported information, however, is small, in part because officials hide corruption where it is hardest for villagers to detect. I also find that there are biases in reported perceptions. The findings illustrate the limitations of relying solely on corruption perceptions, whether in designing anti-corruption policies or in conducting empirical research on corruption.     

FINANCING AND HOUSE PRICES

Recent empirical evidence on the effect of below-market financing on house prices has suffered from estimation and interpretation problems. In this paper, a methodology is developed to solve these problems. Using data for mortgage revenue bonds, the methodology is tested with results indicating that all financing subsidy is capitalized into house prices.     

Information and trade sizes: The case of short sales

In this study, we examine short selling of NASDAQ stocks and observe that more information about future returns is contained in small short sales than in medium-sized and large short sales, thus supporting the idea that NASDAQ short sellers stealth trade. These results are robust to different subsamples of stocks with and without tradable options and stocks that are more likely to face binding borrowing constraints. Further, these findings are contrary to the results in Boehmer, Jones, and Zhang (2008) who find that large NYSE short sales contain the most information. Combined, our study supports the idea that NASDAQ's bid test is less restricting than the NYSE's uptick rule and therefore attenuates the likelihood of stealth trading (Diether, Lee, & Werner, 2009a).