Decomposing Preference Shifts for Meat and Fish in the Netherlands

The changing preferences of Dutch consumers for meat and fish are investigated using a switching almost ideal demand system. Structural change in demand between January 1994 and May 1998 is decomposed into underlying trends, temporarily irreversible preference shifts triggered by the BSE crisis of March 1996, and a “panic” reaction against beef in the month of the crisis itself. Preference shifts due to the BSE scare reduced expenditure shares for beef, minced meat and meat products by 2.5, 3.3 and 7.9 percentage points respectively. There were offsetting gains in the shares of pork, prepared meat and fish. Taking underlying trends also into account, changing preferences over the whole period reduced beefs share by 4.9 percentage points and increased those of poultry, prepared meat and fish by 4.1, 4.9 and 5.2 percentage points respectively.     

TRANSFERS FROM MIGRANTS TO THEIR CHILDREN: EVIDENCE THAT ALTRUISM AND CULTURAL FACTORS MATTER

This paper focuses on the determinants of financial inter vivos transfers by migrants living in France in 2003 to their adult children. From a theoretical viewpoint, such transfers may be explained either by altruism or by exchange. While parents would direct their assistance to their less well off children under altruism, support should be channeled to children who live nearby their parents under the exchange motive. We assess the relevance of these two motives using the French PRI survey. Unequal sharing is frequently observed and children are more likely to receive financial transfers when they are in poor circumstance, but not necessarily when living in proximity to parents. We also emphasize the role of cultural factors as determinants of the parental allocation among children. Muslim parents, in particular, are more likely to make transfers to sons than to daughters.     

Implications of Economic Shocks for CEO Performance Evaluation†

I study the implications of economic shocks for objective and subjective CEO performance evaluation. A shock perturbs pay-setting parties' information about the firm and the CEO. I argue that pay-setting parties then lack information they need for evaluating the CEO objectively, and de-emphasize objective CEO performance evaluation in favor of subjective CEO performance evaluation; over time, pay-setting parties become better informed about the firm as well as the CEO, and increasingly use again objective CEO performance evaluation. My evidence, which uses data on objective and subjective CEO performance evaluation in US executive pay between 1992 and 2013, is consistent with my argument.     

Shaping the landscape: Agricultural policies and local biodiversity schemes

This paper analyses the potential effect of local agro-environmental policies in promoting multifunctionality in a rural landscape, with a two-scale modelling framework: a regional scale for food demand and a local scale for the forces driving land use. The framework has been designed in four steps. First, the relative influence of the driving factors on the current land use pattern has been analysed. Two scenarios are designed that vary the external demand for the total land use, and alter more or less quickly the specific location factors that drive the landscape pattern. The first scenario considers trends in the external and internal driving forces. The second relies both on totally decoupled farm subsidies and unregulated housing growth. In both scenarios a local agro-environmental policy is introduced and we compare its consequences with the previous scenario's landscape pattern. The third step consists of a modelling exercise that analyses the likely outcome of each scenario on the development of land use patterns on a local scale. Last, these landscape patterns have been translated into ecological indexes that assess the effect of the policy options on the multifunctionality of the local landscape.     

COLLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE,PROLIFIC INVENTORS AND THE VALUE OF INVENTIONS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF FRENCH,GERMAN AND BRITISH PATENTS IN THE US, 1975–1999

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to test two related hypotheses: The first is that the involvement of both prolific and foreign inventors in the production of knowledge has a direct, positive impact on the collective dimension of this knowledge production as measured by the size of the inventive team. The second is that the involvement of both prolific and foreign inventors has a direct, positive impact on the value of the new knowledge produced. We use detailed information from nearly 300,000 patents granted by the US Patent Office to French, German, and British inventors over the period from 1975 to 1999. From the data available from each patent regarding citations of prior patents and the numbers and identities of the inventors listed in the patent application, we are able to construct measures of collective knowledge, the presence of prolific and foreign inventors, and the imputed value of patents. In a novel approach in this literature, we estimate negative binomial multiple regression models for determining both the size of the collective dimension and the value of the patents. After controlling for the effects of years, technological fields, and patenting country, we find a strong support for the hypothesis that both prolific and foreign inventors tend to be parts of larger teams of inventors and for the hypothesis that prolific and foreign inventors tend to produce inventions having more value. In the conclusion, we draw some implications from these results for knowledge governance.     

Smoke and Mirrors? Disclosures in the Marijuana Industry in Canada

Licensed producers (LPs) of marijuana in Canada are embedded in a highly competitive industry where they raise funds from investors to finance their growth. They face substantial risks from the uncertain legal status of marijuana and from its unsettled health and safety consequences. We argue that this context stands to have implications for the disclosures of firms in the marijuana industry. We rely on a multicase study of three large Canadian LPs to explore their mandatory and voluntary disclosures during the third quarter of 2018. We find that their mandatory interim disclosures are largely consistent with disclosure rules that target marijuana operations. We also find that they make voluntary disclosures relevant for their context (e.g., about risks from legal, health, and safety consequences), and that there is variation in these disclosures. We use our findings as a springboard for discussing the antecedents of mandatory and voluntary disclosures in the marijuana industry (i.e., proprietary costs, investor interest, detection costs of selective disclosures), and their consequence (i.e., lack of comparability). We offer suggestions for future research.