Market structure and corporate charitable donations: some Canadian evidence for 1976 and 1981

The business of business, not charity.

Say eleemosynary its more confusing.

Whatever, as long as we don't given 'em any cash.

Harv Antione, ‘The Buzz Words of Entrepreneurship’

in Apocryphal Northern Tales

This paper investigates the general determinants of corporate charitable donations in Canada and, in particular, the impact of imperfectly-competitive market structure. We utilize a profit-maximizing model and assume that charitable donations occur only if, by performing an advertising/public relations function, they increase revenue; or if, by acting as a fringe benefit, they result in a reduction in wage costs. In this context, because only firms in imperfect markets generate the rents from which donations can be made, we anticipate a positive relationship between donations and a measure of imperfect competition (concentration). The data is a cross-section sample of 38, 3- and 4-digit SIC manufacturing industries pooled for 1976 and 1981. The major findings are that: the results are generally compatible with the predictions of the model; concentration is a significant determinant of donations although non-linear; the cost of giving (the tax rate) is appropriately positive; and there are significant negative relationships for measures of foreign ownership and wage rates.     

社会和谐程度综合评价方法研究

“和谐社会”是党的十六大作为全面建设小康社会的目标之一提出的,十七大再一次强化。如何理解和把握社会主义和谐社会,对我国实现全面建设小康社会的宏伟目标意义重大。国家统计局建立了一个和谐社会统计监测可评价指标体系。依据这一指标体系,利用模糊统计学原理,建立一个对社会和谐程度综合评判的数学模型,可进一步对国家或地区的社会和谐程度作出一个操作性更强的综合评判。     

The influence of redemption time frame on responses to incentives

In the present research, Construal Level Theory is used to predict that consumers will mentally characterize incentive offers differently as a function of their redemption time frames. Data from two experiments indicate that concrete features, such as the face value of an offer or its mode of presentation (as a dollar figure or as a percentage discount), are prominent for incentives with short time frames but not for incentives with long ones. In the latter case, abstract features, such as the incentive’s goal congruity or fit with personal values, are more likely to influence responses.     

Sustainability and forest transitions in the southern Yucatán: The land architecture approach

Consistent with the challenges of sustainability science, land architecture offers a comprehensive approach to land system dynamics useful for numerous types of assessments, ranging from the vulnerability of coupled human–environment systems to forest transitions. With antecedents in several research communities, land architecture addresses the tradeoffs within and between the human and environmental subsystems of land systems in terms of the kind, magnitude, and pattern of land uses and covers. This approach is especially cogent for changes in tropical forests, given the broad-ranging forces acting on them and the equally broad-ranging consequences of their loss. The rudiments of the land architecture approach are illustrated for changes in seasonal tropical forests in the southern Yucatán of Mexico, the pivot of which is the Calakmul biosphere reserve. Simplifying the dynamics involved, the region-wide land architecture is the collective design of stakeholders with different land-use goals that favor tradeoffs in subsystem outcomes serving better either the reserve and related programs or the smallholder farmers that populate the region. A major tradeoff involves forest cover per se, which holds implications for forest transition theory. Evidence for an incipient transition involves the scale of analysis taken. The dynamics involved hold too much uncertainty to forecast a permanent transition to more forest cover and imply that more complex but robust versions of the theory are required.     

Physician practice style variations

This article studies the variation in physician practice style among geographic regions and across time. A physician practice profile is defined and a simple model for profile variation is developed. Ratios are calculated for the components of the profile—ambulatory visit rate, hospitalization rate and length of hospitalization—and studied in terms of adaptation to resource constraint and nonspecific style. The methods are applied to hospital use in the Census Metropolitan Areas of Canada.     

The quarterly national accounts trend–cycle filter versus model–based filters

Abstract. In this paper, we first review the Spanish Quarterly National Accounts (Sqna) trend–cycle filter and give a formula to compute the first component of the filter that corrects an error in the expression that has been used in the Sqna System so far. Then, the results obtained with this last filter are compared to the ones obtained using the Tramo andSeats programs, which apply a model–based methodology. It is concluded that the {sc Sqna} filter presents some problems, such us the generation of spurious cycles, a phase delay, non–efficient initial conditions and larger estimation errors, which can be avoided if model–based filters are used. A Hodrick–Prescott filter with a suitable smoothing parameter is proposed to smooth trend–cycle series that are somewhat volatile and have been obtained with model–based filters. In this way, smooth signals can be obtained that are free of spurious cycles.     

A theory of global strategic alliances: The case of the global auto industry

The theory articulated in this paper suggests that the desire to reduce demand and competitive uncertainty are two separate, important motives for alliance formation. Taking this as a starting point, we predict the configuration of horizontal alliances that we might expect to observe within an industry when firms experience these uncertainties to different degrees. An empirical test of this theory using data from the global auto industry yields results consistent with the view (1) that alliances are a device for reducing both the uncertainties that arise from unpredictable demand conditions and those that arise from competitive interdependence, and (2) that variation of demand uncertainty and competitive uncertainty across firms explains differentials in both the intensity and structure of their horizontal alliance activity.     

Forecasting the volatility of asset returns: The informational gains from option prices

A new class of forecasting models is proposed that extends the realized GARCH class of models through the inclusion of option prices to forecast the variance of asset returns. The VIX is used to approximate option prices, resulting in a set of cross-equation restrictions on the model’s parameters. The full model is characterized by a nonlinear system of three equations containing asset returns, the realized variance, and the VIX, with estimation of the parameters based on maximum likelihood methods. The forecasting properties of the new class of forecasting models, as well as a number of special cases, are investigated and applied to forecasting the daily S&P500 index realized variance using intra-day and daily data from September 2001 to November 2017. The forecasting results provide strong support for including the realized variance and the VIX to improve variance forecasts, with linear conditional variance models performing well for short-term one-day-ahead forecasts, whereas log-linear conditional variance models tend to perform better for intermediate five-day-ahead forecasts.